CONTENTSCONGRATULATIONS
TO . . ., 3 LIVE EVENTS Veddy British Music
(Kraft) <> Going Into 'Understated Drive' (Kroll), 6 DOTTED NOTES from … Kraft, Kroll, Greenfest, Hickey, BLC, 16 SPEAKING OUT! Thoughts on the Pulitzer Prize, 17 AN INTERVIEW WITH … David Holzman, 19 THE PRINTED WORD Berger's Reflections (Kraft), 20 THE SCOREBOARD Sperry's Encores (Drogin), 21 RECORDINGSMini but Not Mousy
(Cleary) <> Bell's Echoes of Bela (Cleary) <> Just a Few Will Do (Cleary),
22 RECENT RELEASES, 24 THE PUZZLE CORNER, 25 COMPOSER INDEX, 27 BULLETIN BOARD, 27
WEB SUPPLEMENTA John Adams biography and an interview LIVE EVENTS Boston
Modern Orchestra Project CD REVIEWS Angel
Shadows: Laurel Ann Maurer |
… and Don't Forget the PublisherB.L.C. 'JOSEF MARX AND STEFAN WOLPE: A FRIENDSHIP IN MUSIC.' Wolpe: Blues and Tango^ (1926); Two Pieces for Piano (1941); Piece in Two Parts for Flute & Piano (1960); Sonata for Oboe & Piano (1937-41) ~~ Isaac Nemiroff: Perspectives (1965) ~~ Raoul Pleskow: Two Pieces in Honor of the Wolpe Years* (2003) ~~ Charles Wuorinen: Flute Variations (1963) ~~ Music by Calvisius, Jenkins and Janitsch. Presented by DaCapo and friends; David Holzman, guest pianist. Merkin Concert Hall, NY, NY. April 2, 2003. (* world premiere; ^ NY premiere) The season-long Stefan Wolpe festival continued this evening with a program featuring two works dedicated to a man Wolpe referred to in his holograph as "my dear friend Josef Marx and his fire-oboe." Marx (1913-78) was a noted oboist, musicologist and publisher. Aside from his lifelong mission to encourage living composers with something new to say, he set out to rediscover neglected composers of the past. One such discovery was that of Johann Gottlieb Janitsch (1708-1763), whose delightful Suonata da Camera a 3 in Ab (for flute, oboe, bassoon and continuo) was played along with short works by the German Sethus Calvisius (1556-1615) and the Englishman John Jenkins (1592-1678), two of the Renaissance composers appearing on programs of the Josef Marx Baroque Ensemble. Stefan Wolpe's Sonata for Oboe & Piano performed by Susan Barrett and Anne Chamberlain at the very end, is the second of the three works composed for Marx, whom he met in Palestine in the 1930's. Made up of a "Dance," an adagio, a very brief but forceful third movement, and a frolicking finale marked Allegro con grazia, the sonata makes use of middle Eastern folk material while it looks ahead to the composer's American years with rhythmic ideas often cited by his adherents as influential in 20th century developments. In fact, Wolpe found standard notation something of an obstacle to the radical metrical plan he wished to develop. Even in this early work, these ideas render the composi-tion something more than a work built on folkloric elements, though the design of the piece, as with much of Wolpe's music, is hard to get a handle on. But we were treated to a much more substantial sampling of his output and were able to note style changes. Indeed, one can be sure the presenters had this in mind when they put the program together. From his "cabaret music" of the twenties, Barbara Speer played Blues and Tango, a set for piano that was lost and then found by Mrs. Speer and her late husband, Wolpe student Herbert Sucoff, who had copied it from the original, which probably burned up in a fire in Wolpe's apartment. At age 24, Wolpe was clearly forward looking, reusing popular forms in a thoroughly esoteric way. Here the "blues" is given a marchlike beat, while the tango is craftily distorted and made undanceable, so that one might easily rename the set "Marche bleu" and "Tango Eccentrico." Whatever the case, Mrs. Speer's readings were splendid. In his early American years, Wolpe wrote another mainly tonal two-part set, originally a sedate "pastorale" and a "Dance in the Form of a Chaconne," the latter to be replaced by a "con fuoco." That is certainly a fiery piece of music built around a subject which, in its reappearance is in what Austin Clarkson calls, "canon with itself, after which rhythmic dislocation between the hands creates a metric tension that almost runs off the rails." Wolpe's most recent work played on this program, the piece for flute and piano, best demonstrates the advanced level he had reached in terms of style and sophistication. The "two parts" may deceive the ears, for the work, as played here, runs close to 17 minutes, and its complexities are numerous. In one of the most elaborate syllabi he ever presented, he referred to the work as having a "weightless" character. Whether or not he was affected by the jargon of space travel, he surely appeared intent on creating a body of work, which like Iannis Xenakis, could be based on scientific principles, perhaps Einsteinian in scope. For the two instruments at play here he lay out the materials at hand: 88 tones (musical space), thickenings, sparse textures, pauses, melodic figures, sound images, punctuations, time articulations, intensities and "the capacity of each element to change at each moment into any other." And so the various simultaneous actions are "often all completely within a narrow reach of space," perhaps like electrons around a nucleus. He sets up an analog of a painting in which an image is filled and then emptied again and again; it is displaced, thrown to pieces and again reassembled at a completely astonish-ing speed." In effect, the Piece in Two Parts represents music at the extreme end of the spectrum, well opposed to the standard accepted precepts held until the 20th century. One might see those earlier ideas as Newtonian. In that setting, music must have a to-nal center and, at its freest, still have a recognizably fixed attitude and use only a small part of the possible range (space) of materials available in the tonal universe. Although one can see this work as either one of tremendous discipline and intelligence or an example of indulgence gone over the top, one must recognize the enormous virtuosity required. Flutist Spencer and pianist Holzman made up a duo that had the concentration and the stamina to follow Wolpe's demanding score without the slightest lapse. That includes the tight balance be-tween the instruments, which often rendered the illusion of a single sonic producer at play. The remainder of the program was taken up by three of Wolpe's adherents. Isaac Nemiroff's Perspectives, also published by Marx, is a typically Wolpe-inspired example of the dodecaphony that was taking shape during the sixties and setting the stage for the decades of academicism to follow. Yet this 6½-minute-long piece states its ideas in a manner that is concise and without intellectual indulgence. It is scored for flute, oboe and piano. Charles Wuorinen's very early variations, on the other hand, looks to Wolpe, and also to Milton Babbitt, in its use of a "frag-ment composition" technique, "a kaleidoscope of evolving ges-tures and textures." Written for flutist Harvey Sulzberger, it led the way in the call for extended techniques, though they are not as prominent in this piece as in others to follow. Fresh off the drawing board is Raoul Pleskow's composition honoring Stefan Wolpe. According to Mr. Pleskow, Wolpe had written a piece called Form V and another called Form IV, shortly before his death. Because "God did not cooperate" in Wolpe's hopes to write numbers I, II and III, Mr. Pleskow was urged to do so by the dying composer. In close to eight minutes he has written music which he told us was more or less "on the same wave-length." Perhaps when we get an opportunity to speak with him again, we'll ask him if he intends to complete the job with a fifth "form," whatever number he decides to place upon it, or whether this is as far as his inspiration will take him. <> |