Concert celebrates Goethe

When Arcady Music Festival organizers decided to devote the first concert series of the summer season to Germany’s great romantic writer Goethe, they must have known they ran the risk of producing an evening of sturm und drang. But “Music Inspired by Goethe,” which was performed Monday at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Bangor and will be presented in Bucksport tonight and Bar Harbor tomorrow, proved to be a vibrant evening of decisively undepressing music.

In large part, this is due to the remarkable talents of the Jacques Thibaud String Trio, three fresh-faced musicians who began working together six years ago as students at the Berlin Art School and have since flourished in a clear case of spunk und skill. Burkhard Maiss on violin is powerfully articulate. Philip Douvier’s viola has the richness of velvet. And Uwe Hirth-Schmidt’s cello has a trance-inducing delicacy.

With graced collaboration, the musicians performed an eyebrow-raising program including Beethoven’s Trio in G Major, Opus 9, No. 1, and Schubert’s Trio Movement in B-flat, D. 471. In a performance that overflowed with wit, intensity and Brahmsian beauty, the trio summoned forth Ernst von Dohnanyi’s Serenade in C Major, Opus 10.

Named after the French violinist who was killed in an air crash in 1953, the Jacques Thibaud String Trio presents all its pieces from memory, which only adds to the extraordinary excitement of being in the same room when the music pours forth.

While the string players were the headliners, the concert was well-balanced by the clear tones of soprano Katherine Harris, who teamed up with Arcady music director and pianist Masanobu Ikemiya to impart six vocal selections on Goethe’s poem “None but the Lonely Heart.” Beethoven, Schubert, Carl Friedrich Zelter, Schumann, Hugo Wolf and Tchaikovsky all tried variations on this sad verse, and Harris’ scrupulous voice took them to a place of glory. She ended the concert robustly with Charles Gounod’s “Jewel Song” from Goethe’s lyrics for the opera “Faust.”

As with all Arcady concerts, a youth competition winner — in this case, Portland’s 15-year-old pianist Nicholas Place — made an able contribution. Place offered a short piece by Bach and three preludes by Alberto Ginastera. True to his word, he played them fast and gave the audience a happy jolt of youthful determination.

Arcady Music Festival will present “Music Inspired by Goethe” 7 p.m. July 19 at the Alamo Theater in Bucksport, and 8 p.m. July 20 at Holy Redeemer Church in Bar Harbor. For information, call 288-3151.