Valentin
Bibik (1940-2003)
Little Concerto,
Op. 26 (1976) (New
York Premiere)
Two Psalms of David,
Op. 114 (1996)
String Quartet No.
2, Op. 116 (1996) (U.S.
Premiere)
Leonid
Hrabovsky (b. 1935)
Trio (1964/75)
Hlas II – Obituary, In Memory of Dmitri Shostakovich
(1994)
And It Will Be (1993)
Wonjung
Kim, soprano
Bo Chang, mezzo-soprano
David Gresham, clarinets
Renée Jolles, violin
Airi Yoshioka, violin
Stephanie Griffin, viola
Kristina Reiko Cooper, cello
Katherine Cherbas, cello
Victor Kioulaphides, double bass
Joel Sachs, piano, conductor
Cheryl Seltzer, piano, keyboard
It was
almost worth the entire price of admission
to see the excellent, usually poker-faced
Renée Jolles playing her violin while
simultaneously blowing on a police whistle
– just one of the many entertainments in Leonid
Hrabovsky’s stunningly original And it
Will Be. Commissioned by Continuum as
a touring piece, the score asks the musicians
to double up: clarinetist David Gresham got
a turn on cymbal and was asked to vocalize,
and pianist Cheryl Seltzer could sometimes
be seen on bongos and a tambourine.
Seltzer
was also dealt one of the most striking colors
of the evening, using a Casio C100 keyboard
that apparently Hrabovsky discovered in a
search for a temporary piano substitute. As
Joel Sachs revealed in his usual superb notes,
the composer "…became thoroughly captivated
by the pre-programmed sounds of a device that
is hardly more than a sophisticated toy. The
result is a major role for this simple instrument,
exploring capabilities that its manufacturer
is unlikely to have imagined!" It
is unlikely that anyone in the audience would
have imagined seeing it employed primarily
for its unadorned wail, as it was here. The
vocal part requires a relatively uninhibited
singer, here the outstanding Bo Chang, who
made an indelible impression last summer in
Salvatore Sciarrino’s Infinito nero
and Le Voci sottovetro at the Lincoln
Center Festival. And Joel Sachs expertly coordinated
all of this, with his usual humor and talent
for deftly getting to the bottom of any mysteries
in a particular score.
The
evening was a tribute to two composers whose
output is generally off the radar for most
listeners, each from the Ukraine. Bibik died
just last year, while the still-living Hrabovsky
looked impressively hale in his curtain call.
The Bibik works heard here are somewhat slow,
quiet and intense, very much in the vein of
Gorecki or Pärt, but with episodes of
violence that prevent his music from being
easily categorised. The ten-minute Little
Concerto opens with a fairly naked unison
G (if I heard correctly), then unfolds gradually,
episodically, before making its way to land
on B, a third above, at the work’s conclusion.
In Two
Psalms of David, written for the ensemble,
Wonjung Kim released a nicely controlled clear
tone, her gentle meandering underscoring the
almost memorial feeling of the work, as each
psalm rises to a climax and gently subsides.
And the mostly hushed Second String Quartet
uses striking pizzicati and glissandi,
often simultaneously, with the string players
circling legato, within close intervals
of major and minor seconds. This is passionate,
emotional music, and the four artists here
– Jolles, Yoshioka, Griffin and Cherbas –
seemed to have devoted extra rehearsal time
which paid off in nuance.
Bibik
could not be more different than his contemporary,
whose work came after intermission. Hrabovsky’s
eclecticism might be put in the same camp
as that of Alfred Schnittke: invigorating
use of highly contrasting styles, and rapid-fire
changes in timbre and color. Unusually cast
for violin, piano and double bass, the Trio
is a veritable catalogue of extended techniques,
including strummed strings inside the piano,
naked unison octaves and extensive use of
harmonics.
The
word Hlas is used in this case to signify
"voice," and this was the second
of Hrabovsky’s works with that title. Gresham
showed eye-opening control in the ghostly
attacks that extend into long phrases, punctuated
here and there with whirring honks that appeared
to be the clarinet equivalent of string double-stops
– two notes sounding at once. (Perhaps some
circular breathing here?) Plus, Gresham used
a simply ravishing-looking black and silver
bass clarinet, which was a pleasure to observe
all by itself.
And
then came And It Will Be, which Continuum
has recorded. Since it derives much of its
power from the poems by Mykola Vorobyov (translated
by Hrabovsky), it seems appropriate to leave
the reader with a small sample, such as the
first of the eight texts:
The Spirit of Darkness’s crown is beside a
stone.
On the stone, there is a bloody script:
"Let X by Y,
and let Z assist him
but let Z want to be X,
then all of them shall perish…"
Bruce
Hodges
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