by Kevin McLaughlin
Strange thing about masks: they sometimes reveal more than they conceal.
In “Masquerading Melodies,” Studio Espressivo’s latest program, pianists Allison Hillier and Chris Neiner, violinist Zachary Brandon, and tenor Timothy Culver turned to the world of commedia dell’arte with its clowns and lovers, disguises and reversals, and found in it a way of letting characters speak plainly from behind their disguises.
The program, presented on June 7 at the Studio’s gallery in Little Italy, was cleverly assembled. The characters wandered in from different countries and across two centuries, but all belonged to the same unruly comedy troupe.
Neiner and Hillier’s four-hand account of Gabriel Fauré’s Overture from Masques et bergamasques opened the program with style and dispatch. Written late in Fauré’s life for a Monaco entertainment with roots in commedia, the piece looks backward without sounding ancient. The pianists brought out its clean lines and elegance — French wit without caricature, charm without sucre.
Sergei Rachmaninoff introduced a darker comedy with the sly, faintly menacing trickster, Polichinelle, letting him stride, brood, and pounce. Neiner played with cinematic grace. The piece can turn noisy when played for show, but here the theatrics served the character, and the mischief kept its menace.
With Jean Sibelius’s “Scène d’amour” from Scaramouche, the program moved from caper to seduction. Here, Scaramouche is far removed from the stock commedia trickster: a hunchbacked, black-clad itinerant musician whose viola playing has a hypnotic, erotic pull. While violinist Zachary Brandon’s playing suggested Scaramouche’s seductive voice, pianist Allison Hillier supplied the hush, pulse, and unease around it.
Brandon remained onstage for Niccoló Paganini’s Caprice No. 24, a proving ground for violinists that can become pure display. Brandon chose a steadier path, attending closely to rhythm and the clarity of each variation. His left-hand pizzicato was exact, his intonation firm, and he found dry humor in Paganini’s mischief.
Hillier’s selections from Robert Schumann’s Carnaval brought the first half’s masquerade theme into sharpest focus. The 1830s piano cycle is itself a masked ball, with commedia dell’arte figures mingling with Schumann’s alter egos and private codes.
In “Préambule,” “Pierrot,” “Arlequin,” “Eusebius,” and “Pantalon et Colombine,” Hillier suggested the sweep of the whole work without overplaying its miniatures. Her quick shifts of character and supple pedaling caught the music’s comedy, inwardness, and flickering disguises.
Timothy Culver closed the first half with “Vesti la giubba” from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, the program’s starkest image of the mask as torment. He approached the familiar aria with restraint, befitting the small space, but there was no question about hearing or believing him. He let the clown Canio’s anguish emerge not as mere effect but as conflict between man and role.
After intermission, Neiner and Brandon turned to Drigo’s “Sérénade,” from the 1900 ballet comique Les Millions d’Arlequin, treating it as a graceful theatrical confection. Neiner’s own Burlesquing then answered that older world from the present day. Originally written for saxophone sextet and arranged here for violin and piano, it was fast, cheeky, and fun, with a Gershwin-like tang that suited the afternoon’s theatrical frame.
Two settings of Clair de lune made a natural pair. Hillier played Claude Debussy’s familiar version without sentimentality, giving it a steady pulse and clear shape. Joseph Szulc’s chanson, sung by Culver with Hillier at the piano, returned to Paul Verlaine’s world of fêtes galantes — masks, music, moonlight, and melancholy.
Ottorino Respighi’s “Bergamasca” from Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No. 2 brought the afternoon to a satisfying close, with Hillier and Neiner sharing the bench in buoyant articulation and neatly interlocking rhythms.
Masquerading Melodies featured enough variety and conviction from its performers, to keep its conceit afloat. For an hour and a half, the old figures of commedia dell’arte were let loose in the music — sly, tender, vain, ridiculous, and recognizably human.
Published on ClevelandClassical.com June 19, 2026
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