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Review of concert Sound Encounters: A Workshop for Contemporary Music. Opening Night Faculty ConcertThursday, June 15, 2006, 8:00 PM 2006 was the inaugural year for the New England Conservatory festival Sound Encounters, a four-day affair consisting of a Friday evening composer lecture, two Sunday afternoon presentations by students enrolled in the festival, and a Thursday night opening faculty concert. Your reviewer attended the last of these, and if the quality encountered here was any indication, this will be a most worthy addition to the Boston summer calendar. The composer-in-residence for Sound Encounters, Chicago-based Augusta Read Thomas, offered up four excellent items. Chant (1991) is the earliest piece Read Thomas acknowledges and is well worth hearing. For cello and piano, it contains lovely lyric writing for the former and comparatively spiky textures for the latter, the cello gradually becoming more forceful as the piece unfolds. A modified narrative curve shape neatly binds everything together. Originally for violin solo, Pulsar appeared in a 2006 arrangement for viola. Its two large sections, the first hugely commanding and the second more expressive, prove to be cleverly disguised variants of each other. Despite being labeled as homages to other well-known composers, the three Piano Etudes (1996-2005) are anything but blatant snitches. Rather, they all demonstrate Read Thomas's distinctive personality while using the styles of Messiaen , Bartok, and Feldman as fertile springboards. Her violin/viola duo Rumi Settings (2001) was, according to Read Thomas, not well received at its premiere. Your reviewer wonders what parallel universe those listeners were from, as this alluring yet sturdy quartet of character pieces projects an ideal combination of surface appeal and crafty depth. Of the rest, two selections pleased most. For violin, clarinet, and piano, Rain Waves (1997) by Joan Tower utilizes a scalar though not tonal idiom to telling effect. Fleet of foot and energetic in speech, this fine piece ably incorporates a rondo-like recurring unison passage into a large-scale altered ternary format. Rondo principles this time in service to narrative curve architecture distinguish the violin and piano duet Subito (1992), one of Witold Lutoslawski's last works. There's much to like in the details, too, including clearly articulated ideas, gestures filled with profile, flashy yet idiomatic instrumental writing, and deft handling of a somewhat tonally (or at times polytonally) focused harmonic language. Sorry to say, Krzysztof Penderecki's Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio (1993) works less well. In an idiom that lies between tonality and more clangorous ways of thinking, this opus delineates structures slackly at best, speaks less than memorably, and projects moods that are either brooding or sardonic without respite. Performances were top-shelf wonderful, among the best heard all season. Festival organizers Carol Rodland (viola) and Michael Norsworthy (clarinet), joined by violinist Ariadne Daskalakis , cellist Scott Kluksdahl , and pianist Max Levinson, played as if their very lives depended on it. All aspects of execution -- pitch, tone, technique, pacing, interpretation -- were flawless, as was chamber interaction and blend. --David Cleary |