Cygnus Ensemble
Tara Helen O’Connor, flute
Calvin Wiersma, violin
Robert Ingliss, oboe, English horn
Susannah Chapman, cello
Oren Fader, guitar
William Anderson, guitar, mandolin, banjo
Haleh Abghari, soprano
Judith Bettina, soprano
Lucy Shelton, soprano
Starobin Duo, guitar and percussion
Stephen Gosling, piano
James Goldsworthy, piano
Julia Barenboim, soprano
James Welsch, tenor
If a
bomb had been dropped on the pleasantly dowdy
Ethical Culture Society this evening, it would
have claimed the lives of Milton Babbitt,
Elliott Carter, and Mario Davidovsky, plus
a number of distinguished advocates for contemporary
music. All of them were in the audience for
a celebration of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s work,
marking the 200th anniversary of
his birth.
I was
able to catch the second of the evening’s
two parts, and arrived just as the excellent
Sarah Lawrence Improvisation Ensemble began
John Cage’s Music for 3, which included
some unintentional humor. With the three musicians
scattered around the hall, Elliott Carter
arrived shortly after the music began and
said quite loudly, audible to everyone, "It
doesn’t matter where we sit, since I can’t
hear anything anyway." As the chuckling
rippled through the crowd, I couldn’t help
but savor the moment, as one of the world’s
greatest living composers created a true Cage-ian
image.
Lucid
and intelligent performances abounded, with
the superb Cygnus Ensemble as the evening’s
solid core. Soprano Lucy Shelton was in gorgeous
voice for Carter’s Of Challenge and Of
Love, with the commanding Stephen Gosling
in typically keen form at the piano. Shelton
should get points for her memory alone; texts
to the five John Hollander poems took up a
good two pages in the printed program.
David
Starobin’s Three Places in New Rochelle
was one of the evening’s unexpected delights,
with the composer on amplified guitar, and
his daughter Allegra on percussion. The first
section incorporates siren and wooden blocks;
the second uses eggbeaters and the sound of
running water; and the last, The Top of
Mount Joy, is filled with gongs. (As an
aside, the program listed "Choking Victim"
as one of Allegra’s favorite bands, and if
I were programming this festival, I might
have invited them to perform some Emerson-related
works. No, I’m not kidding.)
The
soprano Haleh Abghari, a magnetic presence
on New York’s new music scene, was given the
lion’s share of the new works, several of
which made a strong impression. William Anderson’s
gentle Bacchus, just a few minutes’
long, had strong overtones of Barber, and
seemed perfectly cast for the evening’s metaphysical
focus. In his introduction to Merlin 1,
composer Frank Brickle confessed, "I
don’t really understand this poem. Despite
having lived with it for over a year I could
not now provide you with a credible close
reading or a coherent paraphrase of it."
I quite admired this implicit confession that
his setting of the text might have grown from
a wellspring of feeling about the writing
that is either unclassifiable or flat-out
unidentifiable. Meanwhile, however, it didn’t
hurt that his result was quite beautiful.
And Robert Martin’s Emerson Songs –
delicate, to my ears somewhat Asian-influenced
– were the favorite of many in the audience.
The common thread through all of these was
the glistening contribution of Ms. Abghari,
radiating confidence all night and brimming
with intelligent musical ideas.
Veteran
new music interpreter Judith Bettina sounded
wonderful in Babbitt’s Pantun, with
text by Mr. Hollander, and even more glowing
in Davidovsky’s Lost, in this case
with a text by Carl Sandburg. The beautiful,
lonely words could not have sounded better
as intoned by Bettina, helped by James Goldsworthy
on piano.
The
program concluded with an attractive work
by Matthew Greenbaum called Wild Rose,
Lily, Dry Vanilla, set to an apparently
incomplete and untitled Emerson fragment that
as the composer himself notes may have "simply
too much message for the amount of music."
Thankfully, Mr. Greenbaum’s fears proved unfounded,
with Ms. Abghari again making the most of
his intriguing setting of an equally intriguing
text.
Bruce Hodges
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