SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

 

International Contemporary Ensemble

So Percussion

Anu Komsi, soprano

Alan Held, bass-baritone

Claire Chase, flute

Mika Rännäli, piano

Jonathan Golove, cello theremin

Natasha Farny, cello theremin

Musica Sacra

Kent Tritle, chorus master

Steven Schick, conductor

 

Poème Électronique (1958)

Un Grand Sommeil Noir (1906)

Hyperprism (923)

Offrandes (1921)

Intégrales (1925)

Ecuatorial (1934)

Dance for Burgess (1949; ed. Chou Wen-chung, 1998)

Étude pour Espace (1947; orch. and arr. for spatialized live performance by Chou Wen-chung, 2009)

Density 21.5 (1936)

Déserts (1954)

 

 

If, as a friend commented, the music of Edgard Varèse is almost a religious experience for percussionists, last night the International Contemporary Ensemble turned Alice Tully Hall into a church packed with believers. The evening was the first of two Lincoln Center Festival concerts under the umbrella, Varèse: (R)evolution, with the second night to include the composer’s large orchestral works with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic.

 

Born in Paris, Varèse eventually found his way to the United States, where he wrote most of his surviving works. One captivating exception is Un Grand Sommeil Noir (1906), a hypnotic, Debussy-esque song, here done with luxurious phrasing and expressivity by the extraordinary Finnish soprano Anu Komsi and pianist Mika Rännäli. Later Ms. Komsi returned for Offrandes, the opening of which resembles portions of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (and a motif that would later appear in Varèse’s Amériques). Seething brass anchors a ritualistic pulse, and a vocal line which Ms. Komsi delivered with unearthly clarity. Komsi returned later in the evening with members of Kent Tritle’s chorus, Musica Sacra, for Étude pour Espace, written in 1947 but reorchestrated by Varèse disciple Chou Wen-chung in 2009, with the spatialized sound ricocheting around the hall.

 

The packed program included the dazzling cracks, sizzles and siren of Hyperprism, with a jazzy bent that one friend wryly said reminded him of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra—but Dorsey would probably have been rocked to his core hearing this performance by ICE and So Percussion. In Intégrales, a clarinet fanfare (done to a turn by Josh Rubin), introduces increasing squalor amid a snare drum march, as if participating in some stately, bizarre funeral procession, with conductor Steven Schick leading the ensemble as if his life depended on it. And in Ecuatorial, the towering bass-baritone Alan Held (whom I last saw in the title role of Wozzeck) made the piece sound like a prayer to a god on another planet. One passage in particular, with Held joined by Jonathan Golove and Natasha Farny on two cello theremins, delicately reminded me of the composer’s brilliance with timbre.

 

When I saw the title for Dance for Burgess, another rarity rediscovered by Mr. Chou, I would not have guessed that it refers to actor Burgess Meredith (perhaps best known as the Penguin in the 1960s television show, Batman), who—believe it or not—was a friend of Varèse. Meredith requested this short novelty for a failed musical called Happy as Larry, with staging by—get ready—artist Alexander Calder.

 

In a burst of energy near the end, ICE’s flutist and Executive Director, Claire Chase, gave an astoundingly confident reading of Density 21.5, originally written for flutist Georges Barrère to introduce his new platinum flute. I wasn’t alive to hear Barrère, but I now feel lucky to have heard Ms. Chase perform this piece not once, but twice. And the full ensemble charged in afterward for a shimmering, iridescent reading of Déserts, for chamber ensemble and electronics. The final electronic interlude is a disturbing mélange of white noise, crashes, car engines, propellers and screams—as Whit Bernard writes in his superb notes, “romantic and austere, fluid and static, beautiful and appalling.”

 

The program opened with one of the composer’s last works, Poème Électronique, performed on loudspeakers in total darkness. Despite its primitive production techniques (not a laptop in sight in 1958), it sounded surprisingly modern, and to my ears the actual tape heard here seemed to have been given a gentle scrubbing. One would never have guessed that the sounds were created over 50 years ago, a haunting preview of the future of electronic music.

 

Bruce Hodges