Chasing the Musical Rainbow

by Sean Hickey ©2006

Brian Ferneyhough: Carceri d'invenzione IIb • Edward Taylor: Second Piano Sonata • Milton Babbitt: None but the lonely flute • James Romig: Piano Sonata. Society for Chromatic Art; John McMurtery, flute; Ashlee Mack, piano. Christ & St. Stephen's Church, New York, NY. Nov. 22nd, 2005.

Brian Ferneyhough

Founded at Rutgers University by composers James Romig and Edward Taylor, The Society for Chromatic Art has been producing concerts in New York for some eight years. Tonight's program consisted of two works each for solo flute and solo piano. The piano portion explored new works in established forms, while the flute represented a more improvisatory compositional nature in the two works presented. Flutist John McMurtery opened the program with Brian Ferneyhough's Carceri d'invenzione IIb, a dense traversal of extended techniques for solo flute. The expected clipped notes are here, as one familiar with the composer's string music might expect, as is a massive array of approaches to making sound. McMurtery seemed very comfortable with this music, imbuing it with a sense of theatre when others might get bogged down in the composer's implicit instructions. Meticulously notated graded dynamics, trills, fluttertongue, pitch bends and “spit” tonguing-which I found quite effective-didn't faze the soloist in the least. Ferneyhough's music requires scrupulous precision, which McMurtery has in spades.

Pianist Ashlee Mack divebombed into the opening of Taylor's dense and complex Second Piano Sonata , a work that merits repeated listening, especially when this pianist finds novel ways of wringing out color from the dense chords and intriguing harmony. I found the glassy, high-register music, especially in the scherzo-like section some 10 minutes into the piece, particularly effective, as was the enigmatic three-note ostinato that informs some of the work's closing pages.

McMurtery executed the Babbitt work with great aplomb, but I found the piece a bit dull. James Romig's Piano Sonata provides an interesting contrast with Taylor's second essay in the form though both employ a similar harmonic language. Romig's work is marked by its sparseness of movement (except for some explosively jarring sections), and very keen harmonies that Mack let us savor with her careful pedaling. The final page recalls Satie's Gymnopedies where the atonal language seems to search, and locate, a tonal ending, with a major third proudly chiming like an ominous bell.

All in all, a fine concert nicely programmed and wonderfully played by Mack and McMurtery. I would have liked to have heard more compositional variety overall-at least in terms of harmony-though perhaps that might have been outside the mission of the Society for Chromatic Art.