The award-winning Kostov-Valkov Duo (Lachezar Kostov on piano and Viktor Valkov on cello) has performed in world-class music halls around the world, including Carnegie Hall and the Gewandhaus of Leipzig. So it would be reasonable that the pair would have a somewhat casual approach to performing in a gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Not so, Kostov tells us via email. “The Houston Friends of Chamber Music had the fantastic idea to pair current exhibitions at the MFAH with performances of works directly connected to the art, and they had secured a great performance space, as well as a top-notch piano in the big gallery at the MFAH…we knew that something remarkable would come out of it.”
The two will be joined by violinist Oleg Sulyga for A Musical Homage to Sargent by Trio SLAVA. (The three have worked together under the name before.) The program includes works by John Singer Sargent’s contemporaries Frank Bridge, Edward Elgar and Gaspar Cassado. “We open the program with Phantasie for Piano Trio by Frank Bridge — a lush, romantic one-movement work that [transports] the listeners to…London [at the turn of the 20th century],” Kostov says. Oleg Sulyga performs short works by Elgar and Shchedrin. The Kostov-Valkov Duo performs “Rossini Variations” for cello and piano, by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu. (Kostov calls the work “one of the milestones of the 20th-century repertoire for cello and piano.) Piano Trio in C Major by Catalan cellist and composer Gaspar Cassado closes the program.
7 p.m. 1001 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-639-7300 or visit mfah.org. $18.
Sun., May 4, 7 p.m., 2014
This article appears in May 1-7, 2014.