Universe Service
Each time Dian Baker and Roger Drinkall offer a recital in the 500-seat Madsen Recital Hall at Brigham Young University, they routinely play to standing-room only audiences plus a considerable spill-over crowd.
“During our last performance, we had some administrators who sat on the steps,” Drinkall explained. “It was not only uncomfortable, but it also created an unacceptable fire hazard.”
The cello and piano team, known as the Drinkall Baker Duo, will be performing in the larger de Jong Concert Hall in the Harris Fine Arts Center for their first fall recital Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are available through the Performing Arts Ticket Office or by calling 378-4322. Admission is $4 for students, faculty and staff, $5 for senior citizens and $6 for the general public. All proceeds will be used for the BYU String Scholarship Fund.
The Drinkalls are calling the recital “An Evening of Folk Songs” because — although some of the music is highly sophisticated — every piece relates in some way to a folk song.
Composers Faure, Kodaly, Max Bruch, DeFalla, and Ralph Vaughn-Williams have written music that represents France, Hungary, Germany, Spain, and England.
Professors with specialties in folk literature will introduce each piece. Jerry Jaccard, for example, a member of the International Kodaly Society, will discuss the Kodaly sonata.
English professor Eugene England will introduce the English folk songs by Vaughn-Williams, Quina Hoskisson of the Spanish Department will explain the Spanish work and Robert Cundick will talk about the German piece, the Bruch “Kol Nidrei.”
Available for sale at the recital will be the seventh compact disc by the Drinkall Baker Duo. The CD includes the works of BYU faculty members Michael Hicks, David Sargent, Reid Nibley and Robert Cundick and was produced exclusively by the BYU Music Department under its new label “Tantara.”
“My respect and admiration for Dian’s talent has no bounds,” Drinkall said. “Although she plays the piano in a way that makes it enormous and full in tone color, she is so tuned into what we are doing that she avoids obliterating the cello playing.”
“It is a joy to be and perform with her worldwide. She is so good. I like to joke that I could not afford her if I were not married to her,” he said.
The duo finished their seventh tour of South America this summer, but perhaps the most memorable recent tour was a U.S. State Department assignment to perform in Nicaragua right after the war stopped there.
“It was an emotional tour,” Baker explained. “People in little towns everywhere had not heard any live music for three years. They were so thrilled to hear us — they cheered between every single piece.”
Photo courtesy of the Drinkall Baker Duo
IN PERFECT HARMONY: The husband-and-wife cello and piano duo, Roger Drinkall and Dian Baker, have performed for more than 800 audiences in 27 countries in the 10 years that they have been married. They will perform “An Evening of Folk Songs” in the de Jong Concert Hall at 7:30 p.m. Saturday
