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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
November 3, 2006
For his movie 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick commissioned music from film composer Alex North. North went ahead and composed a full-length score which, at the last moment, Kubrick abandoned for the music he had been using as his "temp" soundtrack.
Among the music Kubrick selected, only a single living composer was represented: the expatriate Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti, hardly a household name in the 1960s - or today, come to that.
Whatever the merits of North's score - which I admit I have not heard, although it was (finally) recorded a few years back - it is hard to imagine anything conveying the utter other-ness of outer space more effectively than the Ligeti pieces Kubrick employed: Adventures, Atmospheres, the Requiem and Lux Aeterna.
It was this last, a fiendishly difficult work for unaccompanied voices, that closed Friday's excellent Sonic Lab concert. Christopher Butterfield directed a performance that marvellously captured the unutterable strangeness of the music; his singers may have sounded a little tentative at first, but soon grew in confidence.
As he led the group back onto the stage to take another bow, Butterfield - quite spontaneously, as it transpired - announced "perhaps we'll do it again."
This remark was greeted with a certain amount of consternation from the choir (some of whom had to leave the stage once more to retrieve their scores) but the unanticipated reprise proved even more impressive than the original - that tentativeness at the opening was completely absent and the entire performance flowed beautifully.
A modern classic, without a doubt.
The evening opened with Stephen Lochbaum and Alexander Dunn playing Steve Reich's Nagoya Guitars.
Although, as the composer remarks, there is some similarity to his music of the 60s and 70s - particularly in the fascination of the patterns which can be heard between the parts - the basic process is different and moves much more quickly.
Nonetheless, it is an entertaining and commendably brief piece, technically hair-raising and very well played. A first-class opener.
James Tenney's Critical Band is a wonderful piece; its opening sounds as if the ensemble is tuning up, but it soon becomes apparent that the focus on a single note, gradually widening, is the music's modus operandi.
With all but two cellists - who were at either side of the stage - arrayed around the auditorium, the music made one feel as if in the middle of an inexorable, living process. I particularly enjoyed the beats which started to sound as the pitch started to widen.
Perhaps, though, the music could have been a little shorter; I would not say that, having made its point it continued to belabour it, but the last couple of minutes did hint at the possibility of ennui.
Frederic Rzewski is, for my money, one of the greatest living composers. I had not encountered Moonrise With Memories before, but it did nothing to make me waver in my admiration.
Composed for bass trombone and "any six instruments that can play in the soprano range", the work is cast into three sections - and a tiny (vermiform?) appendix. The accompaniment uses the vocabulary of minimalism, but in Rzewski's hands it is a means to an end, rather than the raison d'être of the music.
Chelsea Walton was a magnificent soloist, from the series of slow glissandos which open the solo part to the rapid-fire passages of the finale, she impressed with her tone and easy command of her instrument.
In a typically iconoclastic Rzewskian gesture, the second section opened with a duet, between the trombone and the (voice of) the harpsichordist. Strange indeed, but not as strange as the tiny coda to the entire work: a handful of notes, once again as a trombone/voice duet.
Superb; now, how about his The People United or Les Moutons de Panurge?
The only aspect of Rudolf Komorous's The Sweet Queen which rather escaped me was the relevance (if any) of its title.
That minor (infinitesimal) quibble aside, it was a fascinating exercise in bass sonorities, consisting of isolated notes from the lower register of the piano (the strings being plucked on the inside), bass drum, bass harmonica (a fearsome looking device) doubling with melodica (an instrument I thought had been banned by International Treaty years ago).
The one composer I was reminded of - not so much by the sound as the sheer sparseness of the music - was Morton Feldman, although where Komorous made his point in just four or five minutes, Feldman would probably have happily stretched it out to a couple of hours.
John Adams may be approaching his 60th birthday (next year) but he is still considered one of the younger generation of minimalist composers.
Phrygian Gates, a work for solo piano dating from 1977, predates most of the music with which Adams established his name and, frankly, it is the kind of music which gives minimalism a bad name.
Pianist Jessica Deitcher gave a superbly energetic, thoroughly committed performance of some very difficult and physically taxing music; I just wish that her evidently considerable talents had been expended on music more worthy of them - have I mentioned that Rzewski has composed some truly wonderful piano music?
Adams apparently randomly-chosen series of minimalist gestures seemingly has no rhyme or reason and after the first few minutes tedium set in with a vengeance. The work lasted between 20 and 25 minutes - which, for me, made it between 15 and 20 minutes too long.
But it seems churlish to spend too much time on the one disappointing aspect of an otherwise superbly entertaining evening's music.
Reich: Stephen Lochbaum, Alexander Dunn, guitars. Tenney: Stephen Lewis, Shane Monkman, saxophones; Eden Oliver, Daniel Bossé, flutes; Deborah Tin Tun, oboe; Allan McPherson, clarinet; Laura Barton, bassoon; Kailie Biglow, horn; Rebecca Lanon, euphonium; Max Murray, tuba; Jeff Morton, sinus tones; Will MacFarland, Emily Redhead, violins; Laine Longton, Ted Boey, Rcahel Capon, cellos. Rzewski: Chelsea Walton, bass trombone; Tina Wu, flute; Shawn Earle, clarinet; Jeff Morton, harpsichord; Susu Robin, accordion; Michael Dias, guitar; Corey Rae, marimba; Komorous: Christopher Reiche, piano; Kevin Grady, bass drum; Stuart Kinnear, bass harmonica, melodeon. Adams: Jessica Deitcher, piano. Ligeti: Sarah Head, Jennifer Bergstreser, Corrine Borgford, Shannon Renning, sopranos; Nina Horvath, Jame Henigmann, Nicole West, Lara Oberg, altos; Jeremey Notheisz, Alex MacArthur, Isaiah Bell, Steven Craigen, tenors; Allan McPherson, Cairan Ryan, Ryan Noakes, Dylan Phillips, bass.
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