Music Reviews : Cellist Carlos Prieto at Plaza de La Raza

As a generous encore to his formal appearance on the Chamber Music in Historic Sites series over the weekend, cellist Carlos Prieto on Monday night gave an informal performance at Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Park. In the airy but intimate Margo Albert Theater, it was a mini-version of the recital he had offered at the Doheny Mansion on Sunday afternoon.

The veteran musician, colleague of Stravinsky and Shostakovich and devotee of works by Villa-Lobos, gave this outreach program under auspices of the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College, sponsor of the Historic Sites series..

Plaza de la Raza may not yet be an historic site, but it turned out to be an amenable place for this concert by Prieto and his splendid pianistic partner, Doris Stevenson.

Their performance proved brief but potent.

Rachmaninoff’s famous “Vocalise” immediately established the duo’s intensity and musical communicativeness. Two movements from Shostakovich’s Sonata, Opus 40, exhibited their colorful virtuosity in tight, mordant readings.

They served the causes of variety and lyric tautness in Carlos Chavez’s “Madrigal” (1921), then capped this display with mercurial but deeply probing accounts of works by Ginastera and Tchaikovsky.

Throughout, the cellist produced a consistent stream of pure and articulate sounds in support of stylish music making; in this, he was assisted wholeheartedly by Stevenson. They make an exceptional team.