REVIEW: SummerFest Celebrates the Music Traditions of Central Europe in ‘Roots’

August 9, 2026

The traditional music of Central Europe is an astonishing treasure that is nothing like the cute French and German folksongs you learned in elementary school. Angular, modal, and cast in irregular meters, this traditional music shaped the classical composers from this part of the world, although they rarely quoted these traditional songs in their compositions.

Saturday’s SummerFest concert, titled Roots, featured four composers from this region, two well-known—Antonín Dvořák and Béla Bartók—and two little known—the Croatian composer Marko Tajčević and the Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg.

Dvořák’s “Dumky” Piano Trio, Op. 90, one of the most acclaimed chamber music works, was inspired by the dumka, a Ukrainian dance that typically begins with a slow section followed by a fast, rousing segment. Although most piano trios have four movements that rely on the sonata allegro format, Dvořák structured his Piano Trio, Op. 90, in six movements based on the dumka.

This Piano Trio partnered violinist Tessa Lark and cellist Efe Baltacigil with the Hungarian pianist Zoltán Fejérvári. Recalling Fejérvári’s inspiring debut recital with the La Jolla Music Society in January of 2022, I was especially eager to hear him again, and these three musicians gave a brilliant account of the Dvořák. Their vivace escapades conjured the earthy, pagan roots of the dumka without compromising the composer’s sophisticated counterpoint, and their contrasting quiet moods conveyed that noble simplicity which is the composer’s trademark.

Although Weinberg wrote his 1949 Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes, Op. 47, for orchestra, it occasionally appears in more compact arrangements as a violin solo. When Hitler invaded Poland at the outbreak of World War II, Weinberg, who was Jewish, escaped to the Soviet Union, where he survived the war and learned to accommodate his music to the rules of Socialist Realism, Stalin’s traditionalist doctrine of music composition that was literally a matter of like and death.

So Weinberg’s Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes comes from this dangerous era for Soviet composers, who used the cover of traditional folk music to get their compositions past Stalin’s censors. Weinberg’s exuberant Rhapsody may be a bit over the top, but violinist Tessa Lark and accordion virtuoso Radu Rǎțoi gave a rollicking duo version of the Rhapsody that joyously rattled the rafters of The Conrad.

Bosnian pianist Pedja Mužijević proved the right artist to interpret Croatian composer Marko Tajčevič’s set of Seven Balkan Dances that opened this SummerFest concert. He made the composer’s rapid arabesques that drive these spirited dance movements sparkle, and his briskly accented phrases easily conjured rustic villagers dancing in a quaint town square.

The twenty musicians assembled on The Conrad’s stage for Bartók’s Divertimento for String Orchestra brought the concert to an exhilarating close. Performing without a conductor but taking their cues from first violinist Erin Keefe, they sailed through the composer’s taut themes—lyrical yet acerbic—with panache.

This concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society on August 8, 2026, at La Jolla’s Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center. La Jolla SummerFest continues through August 29, 2026.