SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mostly Mozart Festival 2010 (3) -  Bach, Georgian Polyphony, Ligeti, Xenakis: Ars Nova Copenhagen, Paul Hillier (conductor), Ensemble Basiani, Alice Tully Hall, New York City, 13.8.2010 (BH)

Bach: Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227 (1723)

Trad.: Georgian Polyphony

Ligeti: Lux aeterna (1966)

Trad.: Georgian Polyphony

Xenakis: Nuits (1967)

One of Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s many talents is the ability to dream up a program in which the whole becomes greater than the individual components. This fascinating adventure, part of “Bach & Polyphonies” that Aimard curated within this year’s Mostly Mozart Festival, drew on the cross-references generated by two very different vocal ensembles, each thrilling the audience in a packed Alice Tully Hall.

Ars Nova Copenhagen opened with Bach’s Jesu, meine Freude, a motet created from the Lutheran hymn of the same title, and the group quickly demonstrated its rich, clean sonorities. The sixteen singers, working with conductor Paul Hillier, gave the contrapuntal lines care and freshness, with Paolo Bordignon offering a beautifully restrained organ accompaniment.

Ensemble Basiani was founded in 2000 in Georgia, sandwiched between Russia and Turkey, and judging from the enormous reaction when they walked onstage, they clearly have an enthusiastic fan base. Clad in identical black chokhas, the traditional Georgian costumes festooned with bandoliers across the chest, the twelve singers offered five examples of Georgian polyphony from the 11^th and 12^th centuries. The music often has a mesmerizing bass drone, against which the upper voices harmonize in raw open fifths—always with minimal vibrato. Some of the selections open with deliciously unstable dissonances, often resolving into a tight unison ending. This dark, somber, elemental music, anchored in folk traditions centuries old, was made even more striking following the Bach, and the singers, led by George Donadze, gave the selections the kind of care that only long, intimate acquaintance can bring.

After intermission, the Danish group returned for a stunning reading of Ligeti’s Lux aeterna, one of the composer’s examples of what he termed “micro-polyphony,” written in sixteen separate parts. Each section begins with a unison note that slowly divides into clouds of microtones, creating voluptuous sonorities that, as the title implies, give the impression of generating brilliant light. This created a backdrop, entirely different from the Bach, for the return of the Georgian singers in a second set of traditional songs. The second set opened with one of the evening’s most exquisite works, “Shen Khar Venakhi,” often sung at weddings, followed by several works with harmonies resembling those found in shape-note singing of the Southern United States. One traditional favorite called for a singer to yodel dramatically against the fabric created by his colleagues.

Somehow this bit of Georgian history seemed exactly right to precede Xenakis’s Nuits, written in 1967 for the Shah of Iran. Xenakis uses syllables taken from Persian and Sumerian texts, but sets them in ways that are strikingly original. Pitched vocals intertwine and glide into portions of sprechstimme, whistling and talking; occasionally the choir resembles a jeering crowd. The virtuoso reading by Ars Nova Copenhagen showed off seemingly every vocal trick at their command, giving them the last word in this evening’s wholly intriguing, cross-cultural conversation.

Bruce Hodges

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