Review of Concert

Happy Birthday, Bernard!
Auros Group for New Music

Saturday, October 23, 2004, 8:00 P.M.
Edward M. Pickman Recital Hall, Longy School of Music, Cambridge, MA

The Auros ensemble's first concert of the season, celebrating Bernard Rands's 70th birthday, focused on this tonemeister's less frequently encountered shorter works. It showed that Rands, besides being a first-rate handler of more expansive formats, is a gifted miniaturist.

Two examples from the composer's Memo series stood out prominently on the program. Memo 4 (1997) asks its solo flautist to navigate waters both intense and contrast-laden—challenging from both a technical and interpretive level. Its narrative curve based shape is cleverly expressed, requiring sensitivity in pacing to delineate balance. In a discerning performer's hands, it's an arresting listen.

With its theatrical elements and often non-syntactical text setting, Memo 7 (2000) demonstrates kinship to Luciano Berio's solo vocal works. But this piece for soprano alone is no lazy copy—Rands's fingerprints in this striking opus are unmistakable.

For solo piano, Tre Espressioni (1960) is one of its composer's last student-era utterances, and like much cutting edge music from the mid-20th century, shows fascination with pointillist serialism (though in this case, shot through with aleatoric modifications). But even here, Rands thinks musically, not didactically: there's a well-developed sense of linear unfolding in the work's manner of speech that makes it anything but a drab artifact.

Like Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, Rands's Scherzi (1974) is scored for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. But there, the similarities end—Scherzi is tight, witty, no-nonsense stuff that leaves the listener perfectly satisfied, not Thanksgiving-day bloated. Writing, while angular, is deft and polished, and forms, while intuitive, are convincing.

Rands's wife, Augusta Read Thomas, showed equal skill in delineating small forms in ...a circle around the sun... (2000) for piano trio. Its slow introduction-fast main body layout is evocative without being derivative, loaded with energetic material that ably references the intricate rhythms of East Coast styles and the mildly Impressionist/jazzy sounds of sonorities peppered with thirds.

Performances were terrific. Susan Gall's flute playing in Memo 4 was confident and well-controlled, featuring a big, round tone and scintillating technique. Pianist Nina Ferrigno brought out the inherent horizontal logic behind Tre Espressioni’s prickly surface, all the while imparting sonic beauty from end to end. And Janna Baty was no less than inspired throughout Memo 7, sporting fine diction, spot-on stage presence, and a huge voice that resonated tellingly regardless of register. Catherine French (violin), William Kirkley (clarinet), and Jennifer Lucht (cello) rounded out the evening's roster of worthies.

Fine music splendidly presented—yes, this was a birthday party to savor. Excellent work all around.

--David Cleary