The Composers' Series

Tuesday, November 1, 2005, 8:00 PM
Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory of Music, Boston , MA

Duke University 's Ciompi Quartet (Eric Pritchard and Hsiao-Mei Ku on violin, Jonathan Bagg on viola, Frederic Raimi on cello) came north to serve as the anchoring ensemble for this event. They provided excellent performances, laden with splendid intonation and technique as well as a seasoned ensemble blend, at what proved to be a worthwhile evening.

Originally dating from 2001, Malcolm Peyton's fine String Quartet No. 2 benefited from this composer's 2005 revisions. Its opening Prelude serves as basis for the six character-piece variation movements that follow; Peyton's changes consist of tightening both motivic consistency and overall unfolding, further pointing up the work's rondo-like aspects. The String Quartet No. 4 (1999) of Lee Hyla teems with his usual raw, rocking energy while liberally folding in simultaneously stated contrasting tempos and ideas that recall Elliott Carter. Cast in a single movement outlining a ternary with slow coda, it's a first-rate listen. Pianist Alan Feinberg added his prodigious talents to the Ciompi's copious excellence in presenting Thomas Ades's Piano Quintet (2000). It's a worthy composition, a strong candidate to characterize as Ades's best chamber opus so far. Quintet's single movement traffics in evocatively decadent post-Romantic gestures bordering on the surreal, while the polytonal verticals strain mightily to achieve a more triadic focus. Best of all, there's a clear structure present that derives from sonata constructs, though harmonic underpinnings tend to be lacking.

One often finds music/video multimedia items containing aural fare in a highly experimental vein, but Michael Gandolfi's As Above (2005) shows that the triadic approach can work every bit as well. To Ean White's large-scale two-part visuals respectively depicting water strider bugs and impressionist lights in motion, Gandolfi provides neo-process material of much angularity and energy, overlaid with rondo-derived aspects. Scored for mixed ten piece ensemble, it's evocative and enjoyable. Robert Ceely's Whitman (2005) for soprano and piano proves more of a mixed bag. His settings of five poems by the title author tend towards the introspective regardless of textual voice, though always prove a logical, if at times unusual take on their tone and subject. The pervasive high tessitura vocal writing contains its fair share of ungrateful vowel setting, though, at times rendering the words unintelligible.

Spaces and Cries (1963) for brass quintet was Robert Cogan's doctoral thesis offering for graduation from Princeton University . And it's not surprising the piece provoked lots of controversy at the school back then. Spaces and Cries employs then-fashionable dissonant harmonies but is otherwise the antithesis of the early 1960s Uptown aesthetic. Aleatoric techniques, spatially placed and ambulatory players, visceral textures, and encyclopedic use of mutes are the rule here. It still packs a punch 40 years later.

Performances were top-flight good. In addition to the aforementioned Feinberg and Ciompis, one should cite the remarkably flexible and accomplished singing of soprano Jennifer Ashe (her high range was exceptional) solidly backed by keyboardist Shen Wen in the Ceely as well as the forthright efforts of Andrew Stetson and Fred Sienkiewicz (trumpets), Kristen Dirmeier (horn), Lindsey Wedewer (trombone), and Michael Stephan (tuba) in the Cogan. Joshua Gersen conducted Gandolfi's work skillfully.

--David Cleary