Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

altaVoz at Juilliard

Juilliard’s Paul Hall played host last night to the nascent composers' collective altaVoz. altaVoz consists of five young Latin-American composers who live and work in North America and Europe: José Luis Hurtado, Felipe Lara, Pedro Malpica, Mauricio Pauly, and Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann. They are a very accomplished group, and the Juilliard Pierrot Ensemble gave their pieces fine readings.

The concert, however, did not begin well. Instead of beginning with the first piece, altaVoz asked a Harvard PhD-student to say a few words about their music and lives. This was a self-aggrandizing, pompous gesture which the collective should never repeat. The poor student was disorganized, long-winded, and had nothing really to say beyond how each piece would "reflect each composer's individual style." altaVoz, as the evening would reveal, is a fearsomely talented group of composers, but they haven't yet earned a Place in Music History.

Pauly's "Atento pero cabizbajo" ("Attentive but crestfallen") got things underway. The piece, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion, begins with an aggressive, low, and relentless polyphonic texture. Gradually – and elegantly – the piece calms down, takes breaths, and climbs to higher, sparser regions. The ending floats away nicely on high notes from the violin and cello. Next up was Hurtado's "De relieve doble" for piano trio. In some ways the weakest of the evening's pieces, Hurtado's piece never really gets off the ground. But through its fitful, irregular rhythms, powerful moments of pathos burst through, and his writing takes advantage of all the colors this seemingly limited ensemble has to offer. The first half concluded with Grossmann's "Pensar geométrico al trasluz" for flute, cello, and percussion. Grossmann is a softer, gentler soul than Pauly and Hurtado and is more inclined to create traditional melody-and-accompaniment textures. The middle section of the piece's slow-fast-slow construction strikes me as formally flat and indicative of the usual problem with contemporary composers: an inability to establish and develop tension. But Grossmann's melodies are beautiful, and one finds oneself surrendering to his delicate cello harmonics and marimba tremolos nonetheless.

The second half began with the only piece I would have suspected bore any relationship with the composer's ethnic background. Malpica’s "Tarikapuy" for flute, cello, and piano is a storm of blurry, jagged sound that seems to come from some distant, dangerous past. The furious lines erupting from the instruments eventually give way to a hypnotic repeated high-C in the piano, which in turns gives way to a mad collective push to the end. Malpica's was perhaps the strongest of an evening of generally strong work. Felipe Lara's "Tutti," the last piece on the program, once again brought to the stage the entire ensemble. The piece's big, swooping gestures come across like the tempestuous motions of a single, giant being, and, with a prominent gong part underscoring bird-like thickets of sound, the ghost of Messiaen is not far away. One hopes to hear more from all these composers in the future.

posted by David Salvage 5/23/2006