Cool Brittania
Da Capo Chamber Players
Merkin Concert Hall, New York,
October 10, 2011
By Anne Eisenberg
The veteran Da Capo Chamber Players have a knack for programming, and on October 10 at Merkin Concert Hall they showed that flair yet again when they opened their 41st season with “Cool Britannia”– an innovative program featuring contemporary chamber music by composers born in the British Isles.
Wigmore Hall in London might be a typical venue for this program, but it transplanted beautifully to the upper westside of Manhattan. The young, appreciative audience had a chance to hear the work of musicians across the pond too rarely performed here, including Luke Bedford, currently the first composer in residence at Wigmore Hall, as well as Sir Richard
Rodney Bennett, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Thomas Adès, and others.
Luke Bedford’s Self-Assembly Composition No. 1 was a spirited highlight of the evening. Like Terry Riley’s In C, the piece is written to be played by any number of instruments. “It’s up to the group to create the structure of the piece from the written suggestions in the score,” Mr. Bedford says in the program notes.
“The duration is entirely up to the performers.” In this performance, the music created by the players was fast, intricate and lively, as though a Conlon Nancarrow piece for player piano had been turned into tumultuous, virtuosic chamber music.
Each selection of the evening was introduced by a flute solo played by Patricia Spencer from Sir
Bennett’s Songs for the Instruction of Singing Birds that evoked the calls of the starling, woodlark, canary, bull finch, and nightingale. The bird calls, which sounded nothing like Messiaen’s, were stretched and molded by the jazz idiom that the composer, who once supported himself playing jazz piano, has used to effect in his film scores.
The program also featured an unusual, powerful piece from the opera The Tempest, composed by Thomas Adès and Meredith Oakes, and transcribed by Mr. Adès for violin, clarinet, cello and piano. The music changed moods swiftly, an occasional sweet strain floating into dissonance and then reappearing lyrically.
“Cool Britannia” was the occasion not only to celebrate modern British music, but to salute a departing member of the players: Andre Emelianoff, who has played with the group since 1976. James Wilson is the new cellist. In honor of Mr. Emelianoff, the American composer Stephen Jaffe wrote Cameo, a short, striking jewel of a piece that featured both cellists at the October performance. “I was honoring the passing of the torch,” Mr. Jaffe said.
The theme of the lovely, haunting piece is heard in a call and response pattern as the two cellos answer one another across the stage. Mr. Jaffe, who is a professor at Duke University, said that the theme of Cameo originated in a piece he’d written earlier for Da Capo called Partito, for cello, piano and percussion that he wanted to revisit as part of the occasion.
The music was playful and elegant. “Contemporary music is often so severe,” Mr. Jaffe said. “I wanted the cellists to have fun with this.”
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