Review of festival

The Boston Conservatory 2005 New Music Festival

Monday-Sunday, November 14-20, 2005
Seully Hall, Boston Conservatory of Music, Boston, MA

This contemporary music festival, organized by composition faculty member Andrew Vores, was an ambitious undertaking of a week's worth of concerts. Your reviewer was able to attend three presentations, two of which were utterly top-drawer.

Much of the music at Tuesday's Boston Conservatory Faculty Recital proved inessential, though the playing was excellent. The sole keeper from the compositional end of things was Dmaathen (1976) by Iannis Xenakis. Harsh and grouchy this may be, but it's gutsy, compelling fare. Arranged by the composer for soprano sax and percussion from its original oboe/battery instrumentation, the work expresses its binary construct in an unusual fashion. The predominating wind multiphonics and trills that open this piece gradually peter out, overtaken by initially less emphasized martial material in the drums.

Jennie Gottschalk, a recent Boston Conservatory graduate, contributed El angel de la memoria (2001), a song cycle on political poetry of Marjorie Agosin scored for soprano with violin and cello backing. Gottschalk's Spanish text setting is exemplary and her handling of a scalar, at times triadic language is consistent, though the songs are prevailingly slow and brooding without respite.

John Adams and William Bolcom have first-class listens in their portfolios, but the former's Road Movies (1995) and the latter's Second Sonata for Violin and Piano (1978), both for violin/piano duo, are not among them. Adams 's work inhabits a post-process world in which the pianist is often more doctrinaire than the violinist in playing minimalist textures. But structures seem loose and the ideas do not compel. The Bolcom entry has some striking moments, including an opening jazzy piano riff and some energetically forceful atonal passages. And that's precisely its problem -- there's nothing to cohere its eclectic tendrils or elegantly conceived formal shell. There's simply too much stop-and-start or just plain wandering going on here. A transcription of Bolcom's Graceful Ghost Rag (1971) by the composer, also for the sonata's pairing, is a Joplin style study, though a fetching one.

Violinists Gabriella Diaz and Irina Muresanu performed with strong stage presence and polished technique in both hands, while Michael Lewin and Karl Paulnack furnished yeoman piano support. The Yesaroun' Duo (Eric Hewitt on saxophone and Samuel Solomon on percussion) provided their customary intense and splendid musicianship. Soprano Sara Goldstein possessed a haunting, dark tone that would have benefited from less pronounced vibrato and crisper enunciation; Klaudia Szlachta (violin) and Charlotte Orsmond (cello) assisted capably.

Friday's concert came courtesy of the Ludovico Ensemble, an in-house new music group made up of and run by students at the school. Their program was an inventive one encompassing fare that runs counter to the Uptown aesthetic to varying degrees. Marti Epstein's excellent cello and piano duet Lazy Susan (1997) proves aptly titled. Much of the music here tends towards the languid and atmospheric, though a few gruffly forceful punctuating chords are heard; also, one encounters a series of disparate sections floating one after the other, analogous to what one might see in the slowly revolving title contraption. But things are not overly scattered, as some of these sections concern themselves with repeated loop ideas and the last division more or less repeats the opening. It's yet another imaginative wrinkle in Epstein's post-Feldman approach.

Of the two programmed works by Bang on a Can icon David Lang, one was excellent and the other weak. I Feel Pretty (2001) breaks the one cardinal rule of solo contrabass music at its peril -- do not let the texture get too muddy. Unfortunately, Lang crams this opus with low double stops and scrubby bow stroke attacks, sinking its post-process aesthetic into a turgid, undifferentiated quagmire of sound. Scored for mixed sextet, Cheating, Lying, Stealing (1993) is by contrast a remarkably inventive and effective piece of the neo-minimalist sort. Here, Lang takes short phrases and repeats each several times, altering them both subtly and differently before going on to the next one. The composer wisely frames all this within a large-scale ternary format and imbues this normally sunny sounding style with aggressive, skulking music that startles and engrosses.

The percussionist is the featured player in Steven Mackey's Pierrot-plus-battery extravaganza Micro-Concerto (1999). It convincingly mixes minimalism and pop elements with older ways of thinking such as toccatas and variation sets, never veering towards the extremes of stuffiness or disarray. Vibrant and engaging from first to last, it traverses a vivid range of colors and textures in its five movements. Fine stuff indeed.

The students here produced performances every bit as good as those at rival local schools. Special bravos go to cellist Eliza Jacques and bassist Christopher Johnson (who double as ensemble directors for this season) as well as percussionist Mike Williams and pianist Karolina Wozniakiewicz for particularly notable efforts. Faculty conductor Yoichi Udagawa led the Mackey and Lang's Cheating with a model combination of cleanliness and energy.

The festival closed Sunday in grand style with a faculty recital featuring cellist Rhonda Rider assisted by Judith Gordon on piano and Robert Schulz on percussion. For solo cello, the Parisonatina Al'Dodecafonia (1963) shows Donald Martino at his most unabashedly East Coast pointillistic. But even here, Martino refuses to produce a dry, dull utterance; there's strikingly multi-hued writing involving extended techniques and other less traditional modes of execution as well as an ethos that effortlessly combines drama and playfulness. Arthur Berger's Duo for Cello and Piano in Two Movements (1951) presents this late master at his fractured Neoclassic best. The work's two fast movements show plenty of contrast as well as impeccable craftsmanship and a spunky vitality.

Clapping Music (1972) is one of Steve Reich's classic process phase pieces: taut, vivacious, and enjoyable. While the original is scored for two performers clapping their hands, this version -- believe it or not -- was arranged by Schulz for solo performer; more on that later. John Harbison's Gatsby Etudes (2000) is a set of three character pieces for piano alone drawn from music from his opera The Great Gatsby . Each movement conjures up the feel of a Chopin study as reinterpreted by Gershwin, Joplin , Debussy, or combinations thereof. Its evocative, attractive music speaks with fluid ease. Bongo-O (1986), scored for a pair of the title instruments and composed by Roberto Sierra, finds more variety for playing these drums than anyone might think possible. It's a delightful, bouncy bauble, brief and fun -- essentially a small set of Latin-flavored variations.

Because of its drivingly forceful cello writing and its employment of piano and drum textures that evoke a rhythm section aesthetic, the trio Dream of Innocent III (1987) probably rocks harder than any other Lee Hyla opus. But underneath all the kinetic excitement is careful architectural control; a seven section rondo-like construct with palindromic tendencies (underscored by having the second and sixth divisions be cello cadenzas) makes itself manifest. Like all Hyla's mature work, it's essential listening, though this afternoon's presentation was notably marred by muddy miking of the cellist.

Performances were extraordinary. Rider's cello playing was terrific, featuring a scintillating left hand, wonderfully controlled bow arm, exquisitely musical phrase shaping, and a simultaneously full and unforced tone quality. The piano was in secure hands, literally and figuratively, with Gordon; she was a splendid soloist in the Harbison and provided solid yet tasteful backing elsewhere. And what can be said about percussionist Schulz? His bongo playing in Bongo-O was picture perfect as was his support in the Hyla piece. But it was his solo presentation of Clapping Music that deservedly brought down the house; Schulz slapped out the static line with hands on thighs, while stomping out the phasing line with his bare feet, ankles resting on the floor. Not only was it a great idea, it was flawlessly executed. Simply amazing.

--David Cleary