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I grew up in the country, so when I see the word "bass," I still think of a fish. Please don't carp about my crappie pronunciation. Besides, the sole topic of this feature is classical music.
The Duo consists of Gary Karr on double bass viol and Harmon Lewis on piano. They have performed all over the world together since 1971. Karr is retired from "public" performances but still plays every day and is working with Lewis on a recording of many of the pieces they transcribed and performed over the years. "Transcribe" is what you do when there hasn't been a lot of music written originally for your instrument. The opening pieces were two of Felix Mendelssohn's lovely piano miniatures entitled "Songs Without Words." No. 4 is solemn and sweet, while No. 5 is bright and merry, with staccato piano and a playful ending. The double bass sounded much like a cello at first, but as Gary reached down to ever-lower notes, the woody richness of the instrument's tone was unmistakable. The second piece, the "Vocalise-Étude" by Gabriel Fauré, was a beautifully simple tune with subdued whole notes on piano backing a nice string melody. Then they played the "Reverie and Tarantella" by Giovanni Bottesini, who wrote difficult pieces for the bass. The reverie was true to its title, a slow, ethereal dream, while the tarantella opened with a pompous piano announcement leading to tricky trills and rapid triplets played all over the neck of the bass. Karr told us beforehand that even in the technically challenging tarantella, "Bottesini couldn't resist writing something lyrical." Karr matched the playful mood with a lot of humorous facial expressions. During a brief slow section, he leaned over and gave his bass a noisy, come-wiss-me-to-zee-casbah smooch on the neck. I remember Mikhail Simonyan dancing with his violin during a scherzo at a 2002 Soirée, and it was good to see a bassist having such fun, too.
With all this humor, a scherzo was practically inevitable. It was written by Dutch composer Daniel Van Goens, and Karr made sure we knew to pronounce the name "Hhhhhhuntz," as if clearing our throats. Karr played very fast sixteenth notes as if he were holding a violin. Then the mood turned somber with Stanley Myers's "Cavatina," from the movie The Deerhunter. Actually quite melodic, this tune featured long, soft high-pitched string notes and lower, fuller notes that resonated throughout the living room of the Awad house. If you play Bottesini, violinist Niccoló Paganini can't be far behind, since the two virtuosi seem to have been rivals. The "Fantasy on Themes from Rossini's Opera 'Moses in Egypt'" was written by the insanely talented Paganini while in jail for allegedly making a pact with the devil in return for his amazing abilities. He composed the Fantasy to be played on a single string after he broke the other three while playing in his cell. The livelier parts of this piece require the bassist to make long, fast reaches up and down the neck in order to play the notes on just one string.  We couldn't let the pair get away without an encore, so they performed a tune named "When I Wake in the Morning," a Canadian folk song they learned of while living in Nova Scotia. It had a calm, atmospheric sound and rounded out the performance nicely.The Las Vegas Philharmonic's season finale is May 8, 2004 and next season there will be more of these intimate performances in gracious homes. And why not? In Las Vegas, we can throw soirées just for the, uh, halibut. — By Robert LaGrone, Las Vegas Jetsetters Magazine Entertainment Editor.
   
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