Review of Concert

Collage New Music

Sunday, October 17, 2004, 7:30 P.M.
Walsh Theater, Suffolk University, Boston MA

The Collage New Music group’s season opener concerned itself with composers at opposite ends of the age spectrum. Two elder statesmen offered up first-rate song cycles, while the rest of the program featured music by two teenagers and a college student.

Co-winners of the ensemble’s latest young composer competition, Sebastian Chang’s Resurrection and Zachary Bernstein’s Star Music are scored for piano trio and were written in 2004. Both items demonstrate respectable craft and an earnest manner of speech that belies the fledgling status of their creators. Promising starts both. Montserrat Torras, a doctoral student at New England Conservatory and Collage’s composer-in-residence for this year, was represented by a flute/piano duo Three Movements for Sarah (2003). Persian, Spanish, North Indian, French, and avant-garde elements insinuate themselves into the work’s pages. Truth be told, this plethora of influences proves a little too wide ranging to mingle successfully, but one should also positively note Torras’s effective feel for color and felicitous unfolding of material.

Both aging tonemeisters furnished infrequently encountered older pieces from their portfolios. Mario Davidovsky’s Biblical Songs (1990) for soprano and Pierrot ensemble are dramatic and very appealing. Strong risks are taken in text setting here; moods suggested by the accompaniments sometimes seem rather at odds with the words, one example being the rather bouncy music underscoring Samson’s boast of slaying thousands with the jawbone of an ass. But these apparent incongruities work surprisingly well, not appearing at all to be eccentric miscalculations. On This Most Voluptuous Night (1982) shows Yehudi Wyner setting William Carlos Williams’s spare poetry to full bodied music of much personality, profile, and depth. Total and atonal idioms are neatly straddled here without seeming inelegant. And vernacular influences add tasty spice to this complex, delicious stew of a piece.

Performances were excellent throughout. David Hoose directed the Wyner and Davidovsky with a perceptive ear for color, texture, and mood. Among the players appearing, one can cite Catherine French (violin), Christopher Krueger (flute), Joel Moerschel (cello), and Christopher Oldfather (piano) for particularly memorable efforts. Ilana Davidson’s voice was warm and light, less forceful than that of many sopranos, but demonstrated an appealing agility and nuance. Her diction was mainly all right.

Clearly, we had at this event the musical equivalent of the best baseball teams, a worthy balance of veterans and rookies. Accomplished, thought-provoking, and enjoyable indeed.

--David Cleary