NEW YORK – Composer Louis Karchin has been prolific, even during the pandemic years. In a program at Merkin Concert Hall of chamber works and songs composed between 2018 and 2024, he was abetted by some of New York’s go-to new music performers, who acquitted themselves admirably throughout.
All photos: Julie Karchin.
Stephen Drury is an abundantly talented pianist. But even with a repertoire list as lengthy and challenging as Drury’s, Sonata-Fantasia (2020, New York Premiere) is an imposing addition. The piece is in four large sections combined into a single movement, with elements such as chromatic and bitonal harmonies, chains of angular gestures, trills, and thrumming bass notes appearing frequently. One of the distinctive techniques employed pits a middle register chord repeated against impressionist sounding arpeggios cascaded above and below it. Apart from the meditative third section, sprightly virtuosity ruled the day.
Two Sacred Songs (2018, World Premiere) were workshopped via Zoom during the pandemic. Soprano Marisa Karchin and pianist Steven Beck performed these settings of George Herbert, a seventeenth century poet and Anglican priest. The soprano has radiant top notes, clear diction, and a sure sense of phrasing. “Denial” requires all of these characteristics, its wide vocal range matching the various emotions on display in the poem. Beck is a versatile pianist, who matched Marisa Karchin’s attention to the intricacies of the texts and provided vivid accompaniment. The two were a powerful pair when demonstrating the intensity of “The Storm.”
Beck frequently plays with instrumentalists too, and he performed Sonata quasi un Capriccio (2023, world premiere) with violinist Miranda Cuckson, a longtime collaborator of Karchin’s. This association benefited both piece and performance, as the composer knows how reliable Cuckson is, even in stratospheric altissimo lines. Sonata quasi un Capriccio is a white-hot piece filled with dramatic flair. It closed the first half.
The second half was also a mix of vocal and chamber music. The poet Steven Withrow heard Karchin’s music and was impressed. He approached the composer and suggested providing two texts based on paintings – San Vigilio: A Boat with a Golden Sail by John Singer Sargent and I And the Village by Marc Chagall – for Karchin to set as art songs, the result being Compositions on Canvas (2021, World Premiere). Soprano Alice Teyssier, joined by Beck, clearly reveled in the detailed texts, the first describing Sargent’s relationship to Italian patrons, the second detailing a virtual menagerie of animals found in Chagall’s painting. Karchin’s songs supply many coloristic shifts, dynamic gradations, and widely spaced gestures to encompass the imagery found in Withrow’s words. Teyssier navigated these handily, and Beck’s accompaniment glistened persuasively, particularly in the impressionist-simulating arpeggiations.
The concert concluded with a substantial work that, while maintaining Karchin’s musical language, provides a few hat tips to the concert tradition. Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano (2019) was performed by the Horszowski Trio: Jesse Mills, violin; Ole Akahoshi, cello; and Rieko Aizawa, piano. Cast in three movements that run over twenty-five minutes, its first movement is marked Allegro con spirito and in sonata form. It begins with a mercurial upward arpeggio in the piano that references the opening gesture of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet. This is quickly countered by descending sixteenths. Gradually, lines compact into whorls of stacked thirds and seconds with trills adding zest. The presence of ascent is underscored by upward leaps in a subordinate theme in the cello. The tempo of the development shifts three times, slower and then quicker, with a misterioso section deconstructing the constituent themes. A recapitulation embellishes the material with even more scalar sixteenths, building in intensity until it closes with a forceful, registrally duplicated major third.
The second movement, marked Lento, begins with thirty-second note pile-ups and octave bass notes in the piano undergirding a sustained violin solo. A tremolando duet between the strings is succeeded by sul ponticello playing. The cello and piano imitate the violin’s sustained tune in canon against pulsating piano left hand octaves. A slow chain of rising, alternating intervals unveils a gradual reference to the first movement. Silvery piano arpeggiations and long chromatic ascent in the piano accompany the theme in several string variations.
The final movement, marked Vivace, begins with sustained low F octaves in the piano and a low F tremolando in the cello. The latter instrument adds short trills to abet a triplet-filled motive in the violin. These are succeeded by angular imitation in all three instruments, with the conflict between ascending and descending permutations of similar lines being restored. Pizzicato and trills in the strings are next set against the triplet passages in the piano, the variations in instrumentation opening a potent development section. Eventually, arpeggiations of seconds and fourths succeed the added note triads, and eighth note triplets once again propel the violin. A series of descending sustained bass notes in the piano are set against quarter note triplets in the strings, effectively stretching out the prior thematic material. This is followed by a kaleidoscopic reframing of all the motives from the third movement. The coda has a compound feeling, with quarter note and eighth note triplets overlaid and a fortissimo Bb major chord to conclude.
One of Karchin’s gifts as a composer is the ability to employ a relatively consistent musical language to a number of expressive ends. The variety of the program at Merkin Hall was impressive, as was the high quality of all of the music. One hopes that recordings of these pieces will soon be forthcoming.
Sequenza 21 readers know Carey very well through his insightful reviews of concerts and recordings in this publication. He is also a superb composer with a lengthy catalogue of varied works.
Christian B. Carey
Quintet 2 is scored for oboe, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, and Carey wrote it for the East Coast Contemporary Ensemble, who commissioned it and premiered it in 2016. In his program note, Carey writes that much of his music – including this work – is based on the idea of labyrinthine structuring. “Quintet 2 deals with a spectrum of harmonic shadings, from triads to microtonal verticals with a great deal expressed in between. Likewise, the short melody at the beginning is offset by long passages of linear counterpoint. A number of rhythmic layers corruscate to create overlapping and frequently syncopated gestures.”
Also on the program, music by Augusta Read Thomas, Oliver Knusson, Jeremy Beck, Jonathan Newman and the world premiere of “I Like Chocolate Ice Cream” by David Macdonald (me too, says the writer).
Performers include: Calvin Wiersma and Conrad Harris, violins; Daniel Panner, viola; Chris Gross and Peter Seidenberg, cellos; Huan-Fong Chen, oboe; Benjamin Fingland, clarinet; Jonathan Faiman, piano; Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, mezzo-soprano
At a TIME:SPANS concert at DiMenna Center this summer, I sat next to a gentleman who asked me, “How do you find out about concerts like this one?”
It used to be easy, but…..over the past decade or so we’ve seen the demise of New York Times’ “Guide to the Lively Arts”, Time Out New York‘s extensive performing arts listings, and The New Yorker’s classical and opera Goings On Around Town section decimated to a mere one or two events per issue.
I have long wanted to create a classical events calendar for New York City, but my own limited resources (time, money) have made that project impractical. What I CAN offer is this list of terrific sites:
Live Music Project – LMP launched in 2014 as a Seattle-only classical calendar service, and expanded a couple of years ago to cover the entire United States. It is largely events that are posted by the presenters or artists themselves, so its level of comprehensiveness depends on the community.
New Music Calendar – launched and maintained by composer Todd Tarantino. A no-frills but fairly comprehensive listing of contemporary classical music events in New York
Extended Techniques – Co-founded by musicologists Oksana Nesterenko and Alex Minkin, the main purpose of the site is a podcast series about contemporary music, but the well-maintained monthly concert listing is the most informative part of the site
New York Classical Review – Primarily a site with well-written concert reviews, NYCR also posts a curated, linear list of events
New Music USA – A user-posted events calendar of new music around the country
Club Free Time – A listing of free performing arts events in New York, as well as films, walking tours and other free things to do. Detailed information is by subscription.
Go Out! The List: A highly curated weekly performing arts list, heavy on new music, distributed by subscription newsletter (there are both free and paid versions). Each event listed is paired with a bar or restaurant recommendation.
I hope these resources get you to where you want to go this season.
Have I missed any major calendars? Let me know in the comments section below.
Earle Brown’s Calder Piece performed at the Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, August 1967
I don’t know when else you’d have a chance to see expert musicians interact with a sculpture by one of the most iconic American artists of the 20th century. This rare event, on August 20 at the Dimenna Center in New York, is part of the annual TIME:SPANS festival.
In Earle Brown’s Calder Piece the artist’s mobile is an essential part of the piece. The artwork will “conduct” the Talujon Percussion Quartet as its sections sway from their pivot points. And, yes, you will also get to see the instrumentalists “play” the sculpture, though the artist himself initially expected a more forceful display. “I thought that you were going to hit it much harder—with hammers,” said Calder after the first performance in the early 1960s.
Calder Piece is “the focal point and central hinge of this year’s festival,” according to the introduction in the festival booklet by Thomas Fichter and Marybeth Sollins, executive director and trustee respectively of The Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust which produces and presents TIME:SPANS. But it is by no means the only highlight of the dozen concerts in the festival.
Talea Ensemble, JACK Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, Argento…..once again, since 2015, some of the most acclaimed contemporary music ensembles in the country descend on the Dimenna Center for this late summer aural spectacle. Performances are nearly every night August 12 – 26, chock full of 21st century concert music in a myriad of styles.
It seems almost impossible to pick out highlights from the dozen performances – there are so many intriguing programs. In addition to the Calder event, here are a few that I am particularly looking forward to:
JACK Quartet playing Helmut Lachenmann (August 13) – my mind was blown the first time I heard Lachenmann’s music performed live. He calls his compositions musique concrète instrumentale, creating other-worldly sounds through extended techniques.
JACK Quartet photo by Beowulf Sheehan
Ekmeles performing Taylor Brook, Hannah Kendall and Christopher Trapani (August 22) – though vocal music isn’t my first choice genre, I am drawn to a cappella ensembles, especially when they are as high quality as Ekmeles. Trapani’s music is always a treat to hear, and his End Words lives alongside music by the equally deserving Kendall and Brook.
Ensemble Signal’s program on August 15 is brought to you by the letter “A”: music by Anahita Abbasi, Augusta Read Thomas. Aida Shirazi, Agata Zubel. I’ve been following Abbasi ever since she won an ASCAP composer award about eight years ago. Her music, though not always easy to listen to, is intense and visceral. I predict it will be a great contrast to Read Thomas’s more tuneful style.
I first met Hayes Biggs in Venezuela in the 1990s, at a contemporary music festival in Caracas. We bonded over a street artist’s unique t-shirt designs, and over the performances by musicians from all corners of the Americas.
Since then, Biggs has been a regular fixture at new music concerts in New York City, as well as on stage with C4, the Choral Composer/Conductor Collective ensemble. He has been on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music teaching theory and composition since 1992. On May 31, 2023, four long-time champions of contemporary chamber music – violinist Curtis Macomber, violist Lois Martin, cellist Chris Gross, and pianist Christopher Oldfather – perform Biggs’ works in recital in a composer portrait at Merkin Hall in New York City.
In advance of the concert, I asked Biggs about the evolution of his compositional style and his career path. Here is our interview.
Gail Wein: In addition to your work as a composer and as a teacher at MSM you are also a choral singer. How does that experience inform your instrumental compositions?
Hayes Biggs: I strive to write beautiful melodic lines, harmonies and counterpoint. Studying voice as a college student, singing in choirs, and accompanying singers and choral groups has had a profound effect on all the music I write, in whatever medium or genre. More than once it has happened that bits of my vocal music (and occasionally that of others) have found their way into my instrumental works. For example, my String Quartet: O Sapientia/Steal Away (2004) is based to a great extent on two such pieces: a choral motet for Advent that I wrote in 1995, and the African American spiritual Steal Away. I had sung the latter in my college choir in William Dawson’s magnificent arrangement as a freshman in college, and that version was the inspiration for the last movement of the quartet.
GW: The piano preludes on your May 31 program are inspired by poetry. How do these preludes reflect the poems?
HB: Only the first three of the preludes (commissioned by Thomas Stumpf) have specific connections to poems, and I would see them as suggestive of certain general moods rather than as attempting to depict literally any events or images contained in the poetry. In No. 1, “The Secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal,” on Billy Collins’s “The Afterlife,” where the poet imagines the dead all going wherever they imagined they would go after death, I had the idea of a kind of jazzy march, tinged a bit with blues and gospel, as they all parade off in their separate directions. The second, on Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things,” seems to me to move from a mood of sadness and anxiety to one of serenity. The third prelude, on one of Rilke’s Annunciation poems from DasMarienleben, is dedicated to the memory of my mother-in-law Lois Orzel, and is intended to convey the quiet strength of the Virgin Mary and the awe in which the powerful angel Gabriel regards her. The fourth prelude is simply a short, playful study in rhythm, with bright major triads and crisply articulated eighth notes in shifting meters alternating with a heavier, bluesier, swinging triplet feel. It is dedicated to my friends David Rakowski and Beth Wiemann.
GW: The selections on the May 31 program are all fairly recent works. Tell me about your compositional style and approach, and how it has changed over the years (or not).
HB: I’m as eclectic as they come, kind of a musical omnivore. I tend to view stylistic purity as highly overrated. As far as my love of classical music is concerned, I think that initially I was knocked sideways by Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart, and then became enthralled by Chopin, Brahms, Schumann, Wagner, and later, Richard Strauss. I fell in love with harmony, the richer the better.
The first modern music I responded to was in an American idiom inspired by Stravinskian neoclassicism and Hindemith, including Persichetti, Bernstein, Copland, William Schuman, and others. I later discovered the Second Viennese School and the late works of Stravinsky. Two favorite composers of mine, Alban Berg and Stravinsky, both exemplify something that has preoccupied me for years: the reconciliation of tonal and non-tonal elements in the same work. Being diametrically opposed in their respective aesthetics, they approach this reconciliation in very different ways. Berg goes for a seamless fusion of atonal elements with Romantic gestures and tonal-sounding harmonies, in a language that evokes Mahler, while Stravinsky in a work like Agon, seems to embrace discontinuity, the juxtaposition of seemingly incongruous musics in the same piece.
GW: As New Yorkers, we sometimes forget there are other areas of the United States with rich, vibrant and interesting cultures. How has growing up in Alabama and Arkansas influenced your compositional style, your career path and your work?
HB: I was born in Huntsville, AL, but only because my dad happened to be stationed there when he was in the Army; our family wasn’t there for any significant amount of time. After that we lived in Memphis until I was four, when we moved to Indiana for one year. After that my dad got a job as the radiologist at the hospital in Helena, AR, where we lived from the time I was about 5 until I graduated from high school in 1975.
There were limited opportunities to hear classical music in Helena, though I do remember a concert series where touring artists performed in the Central High School gym. Later, another series, the Warfield Concerts, was founded after a wealthy man named S. D. Warfield died in 1967 and left a lot of money to be used for bringing famous performers and ensembles to Phillips County. The series continues to this day. I was able to see a number of classical performers, including Van Cliburn, the U. S. Air Force Band, the National Symphony conducted by Arthur Fiedler, as well as touring opera and ballet companies. More opportunities for such events, however, were available about an hour and a half away, in Memphis, which has its own symphony orchestra, as well as an opera company.
When I was young the Metropolitan Opera went on tour every spring and Memphis was one of its stops. I was eleven in 1968 when I saw my first opera during one of those tours, Carmen, with the late, great Grace Bumbry. Memphis also had a lot of churches with fine music programs that presented organ and choral concerts, as well as a fine community theater, Theatre Memphis.
The whole area where I grew up — the Mississippi Delta — was of course the home of many celebrated vernacular musics: gospel, rhythm & blues, country, rock & roll, and others. Famous people from near where I grew up include baritone William Warfield, Conway Twitty, and Levon Helm. B. B. King and Elvis were of course ubiquitous presences in that region. While Helena has become a center of Delta blues with its annual Blues Festival, I recently discovered how this cultural richness parallels the excitement found in goksites met de beste uitbetaling, where players seek platforms offering optimal rewards, much like the Delta’s artists seeking the perfect note to captivate their audiences. It’s a rich cultural and musical heritage, but I think it’s only been fairly recently that I’ve started to allow influences of pop, rock, jazz, and blues to filter into my own music.
GW: When did you first become aware of your interest in music? How and when did you realize that you enjoyed writing music?
HB: It’s a very corny story; while I had sung in choirs from the time I was very small, I started piano lessons quite late, at the age of nine. My mother had been quite a good pianist when she was young but would never have had a chance to pursue it professionally. My dad had no formal musical training apart from a few trumpet lessons when he was about 10, but he and my mom both loved classical music, which was heard in our house regularly, along with Broadway shows and other popular music, including jazz.
The first music I can remember hearing was the original cast album of My Fair Lady, which had opened on Broadway about a year before I was born. My parents played it a lot, along with other original cast albums, movie soundtracks, what used to be called “highlights” albums from favorite operas, and many standard classical pieces. My first big formative musical experience was watching The Beatles on Ed Sullivan’s show in 1964 at the age of six, after which I became a huge fan, which I remain to this day.
About a year after beginning piano lessons, my classmates and I were assigned to read a story about Mozart in a fifth grade reading class at Helena Elementary School. The class was taught by a very kind teacher named Carrie Garofas, who loved classical music; she was a trained singer with a lovely lyric soprano voice. Soon after we read a story about Gershwin, and another about Beethoven, and I was hooked.
I became fascinated by the idea of composing and with musical notation, though I had little idea about how it worked. I was brought up in a fundamentalist evangelical tradition — I call myself a “recovering Southern Baptist” — but my first piano teacher was a nun, Sister Teresa Angela, who taught at the local Catholic school. She readily observed that I was very interested in the manuscript paper she kept in a drawer and used for writing out scales and exercises for students. She also quickly figured out that a good way to get me to practice was to promise me a few sheets of it as a reward for a lesson well played. Whenever I had a spare moment I tried to write music, and learned by imitating what I saw in the music I played on the piano.
At the local music store in Helena I found a slim volume called Preparing Music Manuscript that I read cover to cover (I still have it), borrowed Kennan’s Orchestration from my church choir director when I was a teenager and absorbed it, and just devoured all the music of whatever kind that I could. Soon my mind opened to modern music by way of my high school band director N. Stanley Balch, and the discovery of Vincent Persichetti’s Twentieth Century Harmony. My Christmas list for many years included recordings of classical works almost to the exclusion of anything else. I asked for and received a recording of Berg’s Wozzeck at the age of thirteen. While I certainly couldn’t comprehend all of its complexities at the time, I found my way into loving it with repeated listening. I was particularly fascinated with how Berg reconciled tonal and non-tonal elements so seamlessly.
I continued playing the piano, singing in choirs at church and at school, and accompanying vocal solos and choral music. When I got to college (at what is now Rhodes College in Memphis, TN) in the fall of 1975, I was a piano major, but also took voice lessons, sang in the choir, and continued accompanying, mostly voice students. I learned a tremendous amount about how voices work from those experiences. I’d composed a few little pieces over the years, but didn’t receive any formal training in composition until I was introduced by Tony Lee Garner, my college choir director, to Don Freund, who has been at Indiana University for many years but was then teaching at what is now the University of Memphis. Don took me on as a private student, as there was no composition program at Rhodes. He has had (and continues to have) a huge effect on how I think about composing, and was particularly influential when it came to how to incorporate many diverse types of harmony and stylistic elements into my works.
I continued my education with a master’s degree in composition at SMU in Dallas, where my principal teacher was Donald Erb, and after meeting and taking lessons with Mario Davidovsky at Tanglewood in 1981 I decided to apply to Columbia University, where I earned a DMA. Mario was also a powerful influence on me, as different from Don Freund in aesthetic outlook as one could imagine, but also an inspiring teacher.
April the First proved a propitious date for the New York Classical Players’ much anticipated program featuring a new collaboration – and premiere – with the Parker Quartet. In the mere twelve years since their inception, NYCP has consistently brought spirit and devotion to so much of what they do, and this early Spring concert at W83 Auditorium was no exception. In many respects, the highlight of the evening was Jeremy Gill’s joyous new work, “Motherwhere,” a concerto grosso for the Parker Quartet and NYCP. But well-worn, oft’-loved music by Tchaikovsky was also on offer, delivered with great heart. And that is how the evening began:
Opening the program as soloist in the Andante Cantabile for cello and strings, Madeline Fayette, (NYCP’s own), commanded centerstage. Forthright, with an immediate brand of lyricism, Fayette radiated warmth from her cello, upheld by a muscularity of execution. Her global tone seemed born of a seductively dark palette. While lush and nourishing was Fayette’s romantic sense, the coloring became all too similar at times. One hankered for more variety in sonority, extracted from the piano end of the dynamic spectrum. Brighter hues too, would have enhanced an admittedly emotionally satisfying reading. Conductor Dongmin Kim guided the chamber orchestra deftly, ever sensitive to Fayette’s richly etched lines. Notably, Tchaikovsky’s moments of silence were realized expertly by Fayette, aided again by the orchestra’s soft touch. At times it seemed as though conductor Kim was a little too aloof and might well have taken opportunity to invigorate the proceedings with contrasting textures and inner accompaniment parts, especially from the upper strings.
Photo credit: New York Classical Players
From the start, it was apparent that NYCP has an affinity for Tchaikovsky and such canonic works remain a hallmark of their repertoire. The second Tchaikovsky item on the program was the irresistible Serenade for Strings of 1880. It can easily be observed that the New York Classical Players straddle two worlds: that of a high-level ensemble who don’t really need a conductor, and that of the effortless sinfonietta who follow their leader with attentive skill and palpable delight. NYCP’s performance of the Serenade threw both spheres into sharp relief.
From the outset of Movement 1, this “Pezzo in forma di sonatina” bristled forth with an excess of springtide energy and conviction. Every single player was committed to the sum of the parts and proved adept at sweeping, upsprung passages. The full-blooded fortes were ever impressive, generous in their tonal production. The orchestra seemed less able to dig into the finer work of textural detail and soft timbres; refined aspects of blending were, at times, problematic. Nevertheless, moments of delicacy and whispered tunefulness were gloriously realized in the third movement, the Élégie.
In what has come to be earmarked as a personal work from Tchaikovsky, the Serenade’s folksy tendencies were cleverly enlightened by NYCP. At times, the spirit of Dvorak came to mind, as dance elements and rhythmic physicality were exemplified by the orchestra, flattering much of the performance. Kim’s conducting was precise and encouraging yet missed the larger picture. A “bird’s eye view” of this music would have been more satisfying.
A particularly memorable solo from the concert master nearly stole the show but it seemed to encourage the entire ensemble to really shoot for the top in the final movement, rhapsodically reaching every phrase with a breadth of expression. (This approach does prove effective – and often necessary! – in Tchaikovsky’s music.)
The evening’s premiere, Jeremy Gill’s Motherwhere, leapt to an earnest start, giving ample platform to the Parker Quartet’s myriad attributes. Vitality and playfulness abounded as this concerto grosso was set A-reveling, an ideal showcase for what the Parkers have become celebrated for. Characteristics of each of the four solo instruments (the concertino) bubbled happily to the fore, where divergent gestures narrated a candid mode of expression, integral and benevolent, perfectly suited to the musicians Gill so reveres. During a recent interview, the composer declared his affection for the Parker Quartet: “Writing for them is a joy, and I hope that joy is manifest in the notes I write for them.” He also emphasized his desire for “creating ideal environments in which ensembles can play and sound their best.” Motherwhere boasts eclectic source material, various in its own inspirations. Night School: A Reader for Grownups (2007) is a book of stories by author, Zsófia Bán. This was the starting point for Gill in an endeavor to “evoke, musically, the experience of reading her book.” The structure of Gill’s musical “metamorphosis” indicated itself, as he converted Bán’s “bag-of-tales” into a tightly wrought, nearly continuous set of twenty-one bagatelles. Self-proclaimed, this represents his objective to “match up the emotional evocations of the music and the tale.”
Composer Jeremy Gill; photo by Arielle Doneson
The Parker Quartet divine much from Gill’s 슬롯사이트 economy of means, transforming terse, even simple motives into a lingua franca for the listener to relish. Elements of familiarity are welcomed, as Gill’s sunny, near-hummable lines ring of truth and of beauty, distilled with a congenial dose of Americana. His carefully considered formal structures urge a dramatic, even theatrical, listening experience. Also finding folk aspects implicit to the string orchestra profile itself (cf. Tchaikovsky), Gill’s penchant for highlighting the concertino serves his purposes well; lower strings were especially punctuated. Some extended techniques proved effective throughout Motherwhere, often serving as percussive devices (ie. pizzicato, strumming and glissandi). The unison passages, while arresting, posed intonation challenges and became cumbersome, if not gritty.
Jeremy Gill’s vision of form, interaction and brightness of spirit must be thoroughly commended here. Through strength of artistic vision, technical expertise and familiarity with the commissioning ensemble, the composer has achieved a kind of cinematic, fictive musical world, jolly and inviting.
Equal enthusiasm for Zsófia Bán’s literary talent cannot be overstated. Indeed, her “bag-of-tales” might be requisite reading after this musical premiere. Bán herself mused on the “accidental encounter” that composer Gill had with her work. She likened it to “the clicking of two billiard balls on a global pool table.” And the entire performance at West 83rd Street, on this first April night in 2022, had that very air about it: a spirited, celebratory meeting of like-minded colleagues and friends. The specter of Antonio Vivaldi, with his ubiquitous provenance of “Spring,” saluted us too from on high.
NOTE: This concert review dates from a performance on Friday, April 1, 2022 at W83 Auditorium, New York
Kronos Quartet excepted, there have been a lot of really bad arrangements of pop music for string quartet. Part of the problem is that the arrangers of these covers attempt to translate a medium that involves amplification, electronics, and a flexible sense of rhythm into straight notation for acoustic ensemble. Attacca Quartet’s Real Life, on the other hand, sees the opportunity for collaboration in electronic music covers.
Their recordings are subjected to production from some of the top electronic musicians in the industry: Tokimonsta, Squarepusher, and Daedelus among them. The songs are by the artists Flying Lotus (“Remind U” is a particular standout), Louis Cole, Anne Müller,and Mid-Air Thief. The title track, by Cole, features propulsive beats that are offset by chordal strings and the song’s melody doubled in octaves. After a fragmentary opening, Mid-air Thief’s “Why” is populated with reverberant crescendos. Pizzicatos, drumset, and quirky harmonies give Squarepusher’s “Xetaka 1” a fascinating, off-kilter feel, like Bartôk in a blender.
At thirty-five minutes, the recording doesn’t overstay its welcome, with several of the selections truncated from their original versions. A welcome exception is “Drifting Circles” by Anne Müller, in which minimal ostinatos adorn the song’s sumptuous chord progression and evolving textures are explored. Cole’s “More Love Less Hate” provides an aphoristic, supple coda to the proceedings.
No matter how old the violinist Midori is,
I’ll always think of her as a child prodigy, the young teenager in the 1980s who
played with A-list orchestras around the world.
She hasn’t disappeared from public eye between then and now, and the
thrill of a child performing beyond her years is gone, but her name and her
reputation still garner great admiration and respect. This month, Midori is
touring a recital program she devised: works by five living female composers, including
the premiere of a brand-new piece. On November 4, 2019, her performance in New York
City with the pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute was at the nightclub Le Poisson Rouge.
From the first notes of Vivian Fung’s Birdsong,
Midori’s effortless technique and silvery tone were evident. Also immediately evident
was Jokubaviciute’s role as confident and equal partner, rather than solely an accompanist.
Fung’s 2012 work, true to its name, had the violinist flitting the bow across
the strings with subtlety and grace – this was not an “in your face” Flight
of the Bumblebee derivative.
Dancer on a Tightrope by the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina featured delicate work inside
the piano, with Jokubaviciute strumming strings inside the piano with her
fingers and with a drinking glass. Midori drew a wistful melody across the
strings of her violin, accompanied by a tremolo of low notes from within the
piano.
Olga Neuwirth’s 1995 composition, Quasare/Pulsare
called for the pianist to use an ebow, an electronic device that uses a
pickup and sensor coil to vibrate the piano strings. The eerie effect was matched
by the violin’s swooping notes that recalled a moaning ghost.
The world premiere of Unruly Strands by
the Boston-based composer Tamar Diesendruck was just two days prior, at the
Library of Congress in Washington DC (LOC commissioned the work). The most cohesive and coherent work of the
evening, it was played with distinct finesse by Midori and Jokubaviciute. The work
at times had a rather cartoonlike character, as the two instruments seemed to
chase each other like a cat and mouse. The
oldest piece on the program, Habil Sayagi, written in 1979 by the Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, afforded
both instrumentalists plenty of opportunity to display virtuoso technique, with
Midori’s violin replicating the sound of a middle eastern folk instrument and Jokubaviciute
taking a percussive role, rhythmically slapping the piano case with open palms,
ending the piece, and the entire evening, with a flourish.
Distractions from Le Poisson Rouge’s servers
aside (“Did you order the meatballs?”), the audience was rapt by the
performances and the selections. I, however, became fidgety by the last quarter
of the program. Though all the works were
terrific compositions, spanning 40 years and four countries, there was a
certain sameness of style that wore on me.
Prism I is the first of five CDs by the Danish String Quartet, each featuring a work by Bach, a work by Beethoven, and a complementary piece. The key of E-flat is the central focus of this recording. J.S. Bach’s Fugue in E-flat major (transcribed from Book Two of the Well-Tempered Clavier) is a buoyant opener. Shostakovich’s last string quartet, in E-flat minor, vividly contrasts with it. Shostakovich brings together pensive passages, a funeral march, and what appears to be a reprise of the “knock on the door” from the Eighth Quartet, meant to describe the danger of the secret police to the composer: all intimations of fragility and mortality.
The disc concludes with the first of Beethoven’s late quartets, Op. 127 in, you guessed it, E-flat major. Writing for strings, it is fascinating to note how these composers have responded to this key. E-flat can be tricky: the instruments only have thirds (G and D), not roots, of the tonic and dominant triads to play as open strings, which lends interesting chordal voicings to these pieces. From the muted angst of the Shostakovich quartet’s opening to the nobility and grandeur embodied by Beethoven’s finale, the Danish Quartet are expressive and authoritative throughout. Looking forward to what else will be refracted through the Prism series.
Marsyas Trio
In the Theatre of Air
NMC Recordings
A CD of flute, cello, piano trios by female composers (mostly British), In the Theatre of Air is thoroughly engaging. The title work by Hilary Tann is filled with the calls of various birds, ranging widely from goldfinches and starlings to white owls and wild geese in a poetic manner that, while quite distinct from Messiaen’s birdsong transcriptions, is eminently evocative. Laura Bowler’s Salutem provides a forceful representation of multiple epochs of human civilization, affording the ensemble the chance to let loose: even scream with abandon.
Several Concertos by Judith Weir gives each member of the trio a virtuosic solo turn. York Minster by Georgia Rodgers plays with off-kilter ostinatos, creating a loping groove with incisive punctuations. An arrangement of Thea Musgrave’s Canta, Canta is an all-too fleeting visit with this composer; a miniature finely sculpted with undulating, overlapping lines. Two charming short works by the Nineteenth century American composer Amy Beach round out the program.
In the Theatre of Air will likely provide a number of listeners with an excellent entrée into the music of these must-hear composers. The Marsyas Trio are formidable advocates for contemporary music.
Duo Gazzana
Ravel, Franck, Ligeti, Messiaen
ECM Records
In their third recording for ECM, the violin-piano Duo Gazzana (Natascia and Raffaella) assay one of the great warhorses of the standard repertoire, the César Franck Sonata in A-major. Their rendition, full of life and long-breathed lines, rivals and bests many of the totemic recordings of the piece. The other works on the CD are under-programmed pieces by iconic composers, mostly early in their respective catalogues. Ravel’s Sonata Posthume, composed in 1897 but not published until after his death, is a lovely example of his early incorporation of stylistic hallmarks of Impressionism. Duo for Violin and Piano, filled with Bartokian ostinatos, was written by Gyorgy Ligeti to be performed by another famous composer: Gyorgy Kurtag. This is its first recording — it certainly merits a second and a third. Theme and Variations by Olivier Messiaen was written in 1932, but its musical language sounds of a piece with his more mature works, like Quartet for the End of Time and Vingt Regards, both from roughly a decade later. From their very first recording until now, Duo Gazzana have programmed imaginatively: this disc is exceptional both in terms of imagination and execution.
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY – Violist and composer Lev “Ljova” Zhurbin has been a guest artist this semester at Princeton University’s Atelier. The special courses in this program feature guest artists in interdisciplinary collaboration: student participants can “mirror” or “shadow” their work. Zhurbin’s course, “Grandma’s Russian Painting: Puppetry and Music,” also involves puppeteer Basil Twist.
As part of his residency, on Tuesday, February 27th Zhurbin gave a composer/performer portrait concert. Held in The Forum, downstairs in the Lewis Center for the Arts, the event’s vibe was casual; the intensity of the actual performances was anything but.
The core ensemble for the concert was The Secret String Quartet: Zhurbin with violinists Cornelius Dufallo and Jennifer Choi, and cellist Yves Dharamraj. They presented the violist’s first string quartet, “Culai,” an homage to one of the violinists in the Gypsy band Taraf de Haïdouks. Boldly polystylistic and exquisitely well scored, it is a formidably challenging piece that hybridizes classical and folk music. All the members of the Secret Quartet amply demonstrated an affinity for the various playing styles contained in the piece. It is rare to hear such a seamless performance of demanding and versatile music.
Secret Quartet was joined by Vasko Dukovski for “Clarinet Quintet: The Refugee,” a poignant work that references the current refugee crisis in the United States and elsewhere. Zhurbin showed a depth of feeling in this piece with corresponding sensitivity to scoring and pacing. It equaled the quartet’s polished performance standard.
Much more music was on offer. A solo with loops provided an impressive sequence of post-minimal layering. Arrangements of repertoire from Zhurbin’s other ensemble, Ljova and the Kontraband, as well as a set of Yiddish and Russian folk songs, added vocalist Inna Barmash and accordionist Patrick Farrell to the assembled musicians. Both are tremendously talented exponents of Eastern European folk music who supplied performances that encompassed lilting inflections and, where required, burning intensity. An excellent concert; one looks forward to what Zhurbin’s collaboration with Twist will yield.
