Review of concert

Collage New Music

Monday, January 30, 2006, 8:00 PM
Pickman Concert Hall, Longy School of Music , Cambridge, MA

This latest offering by the Collage New Music group featured five Boston-area composers to fine effect, the latest bit of evidence that Beantown takes a back seat to no other city in the quality of its tonemeisters.

Of the five selections encountered, the three most convincing were scored for what is perhaps the late 20th century's most typical ensemble, Pierrot grouping plus percussion. David Rakowski's Dances in the Dark (1998) consists of four movements of incidental music from a children's ballet originally commissioned by Boston Music Viva. But like the best art for the moppet set, encompassing everything from Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh to Disney's The Lion King , this is intelligent, sophisticated stuff that will also please adults. It's energetic, wide-ranging, impeccably crafted music in a dissonant style that both engages and compels. Private Fantasy Booth (1993) by Marti Epstein shows this composer yet again creating a compelling personal utterance within her preferred Feldman-inflected approach. Low-key like many of this past master's pieces, it nevertheless contains some well placed forceful moments. Despite a good bit of variety in sound and gesture, there's a recurring expression of items clumped in pairs, derived from the opening series of two-chord gestures, all serving to anchor what might to the casual listener appear scattered. The fleet-footed, cheeky, and decidedly jazz-influenced outer movements of Peter Childs's long-ago Collage commission Tableaux I (1991), provide a strong contrast to the work's slow and intense Elegy midpoint. More scalar and less Atlantic Seaboard sounding than much of this composer's output, it proves both hugely engrossing and sturdily built. The bouncy finale, heavily imbued with scat-style figuration, was reprised as an encore much to the audience's delight.

Paradigm Exchanges (1991) shows Gunther Schuller eschewing percussion while maintaining Schoenberg's original instrumental quintet. One encounters here a lengthy roster of character pieces, many derived from classic formats, which features a welter of solo cadenza writing. Despite compelling passages, this clangorous selection comes across as scattered and unfocused. Scored for piano trio, Eugene Birman's Rhapsodie (2004) was this year's winner of Collage's Young Composers Competition. Spiky verticals and a forthright common practice period gestural sense coexist quite well here. And Birman is creative in his architectural thinking, imposing elements of arch form over this trio's two-movement setup. In brief, an auspicious start to what will hopefully be a most fruitful career.

Performances were mostly excellent. Epstein's fragile piece initially suffered a bit from awkwardly balanced voicings and a somewhat cold sound, but gained confidence as it progressed. All the other items went terrifically well. Christopher Krueger (flutes), Robert Annis (clarinets), Daniel Stepner (violin), Joel Moerschel (cello), Christopher Oldfather (piano), and Sam Solomon (percussion) expertly brought conductor David Hoose's top-drawer conceptions to sonic reality.

--David Cleary