Invisible communication

An ongoing recital series in University Hall is a showcase for student talent and the intimacy of chamber music. Our blogger captures what that looks and sounds like. 

By Rebecca Cadenhead '23
OFA Staff Blogger

It was snowing in a soft way on the last Thursday of February, the date of a concert presented as part of the Department of Music’s Recital Series in University Hall. On that day everything in the Faculty Room, the setting of the concert, was cast in bright white light; it reflected off the marble busts, the paintings of distinguished professors long gone, the robin-egg walls and high ceilings.

In the minutes before the concert began, an observer might have noticed the performers, Lucas Amory — a junior playing the piano — and Camden Archambeau — a senior playing the cello — looking around, adjusting their music, and laughing with each other. Amory and Archambeau have known each other for six years; they initially met in the Juilliard Pre-College program. They are both conductors in the student-led Bach Society Orchestra. 

Still, it was the first time that Amory and Archambeau had performed together, just the two of them, though it would have been impossible to tell. “Once you get to work with someone over such a long period of time, there's so much you can contain in one look,” said Archambeau. “We're able to really anticipate each other,” added Amory. 

This kind of invisible communication was key to the success of the concert. As Amory sounded the opening of the first piece, Leoš Janáček’s Pohádka for Cello and Piano, Archambeau appeared to relax into the music. He raised his arm slightly before plucking a few, questioning notes, a response to what Amory played. From the rest of the concert, they were completely in sync; through the rest of the Janáček, through Zoltán Kodály’s Adagio for Cello and Piano, and through Benjamin Britten’s Sonata in C. Neither instrument overwhelmed the other. The cello and piano were engaged in a give and take, as if speaking to each other.

The effortless quality of the performance was, of course, undergirded by a lot of hard work. Archambeau asked Amory if he’d like to perform together in October, and the two have been rehearsing intensely since early January. Putting together the program for the concert was as much of a collaboration as the performance itself. Archambeau selected the Britten, which he calls “colorful and theatrical and imaginative in a late 20th century way.” Meanwhile, Amory wanted to play the Janáček — “He’s a bizarre Czech composer with all kinds of emotions jutting out in all directions,” he says with a smile. “A lot of it doesn't make sense. And I think that's why it appeals to me.”

When it came time to play in University Hall’s Faculty Room, Amory and Archambeau were both awed and intimidated. “It’s a special place to do a program like that,” says Archambeau. “It's an intimate audience and a very unique space. There are all these portraits and busts of Longfellow and Ben Franklin along the walls. Even before the audience showed up, we already had an audience of old people in paintings.”

“You have to have a certain amount of bravery to fill that space with your art,” Amory added.

Still, the two managed to inject a kind of humor into the space. “I think in a lot of ways, our rehearsal process is as playful as how we kind of deal with each other every day. There's a lot of irreverence,” Archambeau says. While playing, “there's all this give and take and interrupting and little jokes here and there. And I think that the humor of how we put it together came across the piece.”

The University Hall Concerts are put on every few weeks by the Music Department. The next concert is 12:15-1 pm March 30 and features cellist Noah Lee.