Friday, July 12, 2002, 7:30 PM. Irasburg Town Hall, Irasburg, VT: Michael Leese: Solus; Ruth Crawford Seeger: Diaphonic Suite No. 2 for Bassoon and Violoncello; *Allen Anderson: Salva’dai; Irving Fine: Fantasia for String Trio; Elena Ruehr: Black and White; Yu-Hui Chang: Subliminal Waters; Bohuslav Martinu: Quartet for Clarinet, Horn, ‘Cello, and Side Drum
Saturday, July 13, 2002, 2:30 PM, Goodrich Memorial Library, Newport, VT: *Sara Doncaster: Two Supernatural Songs; Donald Jamison: Three Threshold Songs; Martin Boykan: A Packet for Susan; Virgil Thomson: Portraits and an Etude; Ruth Crawford Seeger: Five Songs
Saturday, July 13, 2002, 7:30 PM, Haskell Opera House, Derby Line, VT: Charles Fussell: Trio; Marjorie Merryman: La Musique; *Erica Muhl: Range of Light; Ursula Mamlok: Girasol; Edward Cohen: Trio
Sunday, July 14, 2002, 12:00 PM, Irasburg Town Hall, Irasburg, VT: Mario Davidovsky: String Trio; Verne Reynolds: Elegy; *William Pfaff: Trio; Donald Martino: Canzone e Tarantella sul nome Petrassi; Samuel Headrick: Fall Suite 2001
(*denotes premiere)
The weekend of July 13-14, 2002 was picture perfect in the northeastern part of the Green Mountain State, warm and not the least bit humid. Under these circumstances, it takes something really special to coax a visitor to the area to spend the weekend indoors. Sara Doncaster has of course known the answer to this challenge for years. As director of the Warebrook Contemporary Music Festival, she has been putting on a terrific mid-July weekend of concerts in Northeastern Vermont for eleven years now. This was no exception.
The first half of Friday night’s concert was loaded with first-rate selections. Michael Leese’s Solus for flute alone is a winsome, nicely turned delight with a well-considered sense of unfolding, cleverly basing much of its material upon oscillations between tritones and perfect fifths. The three brief movements that make up Diaphonic Suite No. 2 for Bassoon and Violoncello by Ruth Crawford Seeger are anything but inconsequential. Craggy and dripping with confidence, they are packed with craft and depth—drops of hot acid to be reckoned with. The splendid, eloquently written Fantasia for String Trio by Irving Fine is a piece eminently worthy of revival. It makes pervasive, yet never ostentatious use of imitative writing in its triumvirate of movements, cutting an effective middle ground between Bartok-like vigor and serial integrity. A careless listen to the marimba/cello duet Salva’dai by Allen Anderson might lead one to focus unduly on its dizzying changes of mood and texture—a serious error to make, as one would miss the work’s clever large scale ternary organization and tight gestural world. It’s showy and well written, a pleasure to hear.
After intermission, the music got, as they say in Alice in Wonderland, “curiouser and curiouser.” Scored for clarinet and piano, Elena Ruehr’s Black and White sports a solid measure of charm, but strongly invokes memories of Stravinsky in its bouncy, often motoric, jazz-influenced writing. Its employment of pitch material, derived from the five-note grouping outlined by the piano’s black keys, is deftly handled, though. If an award for the “Piece Most in Need of a Valium” were given out at this festival, the hands-down winner would have been Yu-Hui Chang’s solo violin selection Subliminal Waters. Every figure in this tough-to-play entry is so choppy and nervous that it would make a shrew’s metabolism seem placid. But a linear sense does lie buried in the music, however herky-jerky it may be. It took much work to listen to but did provide a payoff of sorts. Stravinsky’s influence surfaced in spades in the eccentrically scored Quartet for Clarinet, Horn, ‘Cello, and Side Drum by Bohuslav Martinu. Written in 1924, it sounds as if it’s stitched together from outtakes and scraps discarded from L’Histoire du Soldat—though a modicum of facile charm does surface on occasion.
Saturday afternoon’s song recital contained a decent helping of essential listens. Your reviewer encountered Martin Boykan’s A Packet for Susan a second time with great pleasure, having heard it on a Dinosaur Annex concert in February. For mezzo-soprano and piano, the piece handles its serial sound world with a relaxed command of technique, scattering consonant fourths and fifths throughout its prevailingly dissonant harmonies and imbuing the whole with a significant depth of feeling. Crawford Seeger’s marvelous soprano/piano duo Five Songs puts forth a crafty palette of clangorous verticals, matching Carl Sandberg’s quintet of perfectly chiseled poems with music that excellently combines vital sturdiness and exquisite sensitivity. Two Supernatural Songs continues Doncaster’s fascination with the verses of William Butler Yeats, being an excerpt from the central portion of a projected trilogy setting this poet’s work. Expertly treading the fuzzy line between consonant and dissonant sonic universes, it’s loaded with lyric, lush writing for voice and piano that never cloys. The biggest sin of Donald Jamison’s Three Threshold Songs for soprano, clarinet, and cello was to run in impossibly fast company. It’s a reflective, heartfelt collection, written in response to September 11th’s terrorist tragedy, that regrettably doesn’t plumb the depths of feeling exhibited by the Boykan, Crawford Seeger, or Doncaster collections. Its unabashedly triadic writing draws heavily from 19th century traditions tinged with earlier modal stylings. Portraits and an Etude proved to be four of Virgil Thomson’s solo piano Portraits and a tango-inflected study in parallel octaves. At their best, these tonally-based, ethnic-hued miniatures are affable and sweet, at their worst corny and insubstantial—a mixed offering, to say the least.
Girasol by Ursula Mamlok, a sextet for Pierrot grouping plus viola was the highlight in a Saturday evening concert loaded with worthy items. This work’s wide ranging, multi-hued textures are neatly harnessed within a carefully gauged variation procedure. And despite employing a spiky serial manner of speech, it’s airy and uncluttered, never turgid. Range of Light, a trio for cello, piano, and percussion by Erica Muhl, is attractive to hear. Simultaneously furtive and variegated, it handles its non-triadic verticals with careful confidence and makes smart use of extended techniques. Marjorie Merryman’s setting of Baudelaire poems entitled La Musique provided a strong contrast to these entries. Scored for mezzo-soprano, viola, and piano, its three movements are dusky-hued and crisply spoken, striking a persuasive midpoint between romantic luxuriance and a more contemporary harmonic ethos. The remaining program items shared the same piano trio scoring but otherwise differed greatly. Charles Fussell’s enjoyable selection for this ensemble consists of six character studies with subtitles such as “Aria” and “Dirge,” all cast in a fairly gritty, yet tonally focused language. These span the range from neoclassic verve to crepuscular introspection. By contrast, Edward Cohen’s entry is almost unrelentingly serious minded, full of chunky, earnest serial counterpoint and darkly brooding moods. Both give its individual players ample opportunities to shine in exposed solo passages.
A pair of string trios held sway at the July 14th afternoon finale. Samuel Headrick’s Fall Suite 2001 makes capable use of movement contrast, framing its sizable elegiac centerpiece (yet another lament regarding September 11th) with shorter divertimento style partners. The whole sounds nearest to Copland, though thickened with added discords. The pricklier String Trio of Mario Davidovsky deals with a more foreground oriented sense of contraposition, though expressed on more levels—alternating sections of ferocious vim with hushed stillness. It’s a first-rate piece. A threesome of a different sort (flute, clarinet, and bassoon) is called for in William Pfaff’s Trio. This clangorous, granitic selection performs the neat trick of cobbling together lots of fractious doodads into an intelligently cogent and satisfying whole during its relatively brief duration—no mean feat. Its two halves are respectively perky and pensive. Elegy by Verne Reynolds gives its horn soloist a doleful yet fluent melody to sing, interspersing tiny recurrent motives throughout its length. These serve to give the composition depth and grounding—it’s not just another plaintive tune. Canzone e Tarantella sul nome Petrassi, a clarinet/cello duo, shows composer Donald Martino in a light, puckish mood reminiscent of his other birthday card pieces like B,A,B,B,IT,T—and like the latter, it too employs soggetto cavatto. Its canzona is gossamer and lovable, its tarantella bouncy and engaging, floating in and out of a showcase Verdi quote with deceptive ease.
As is always the case at this festival, performances were at a uniformly high level. Note should be made of the forthright, energetic virtuoso presentation of the Davidovsky, Fine, and Headrick by the Concordia String Trio (Marcia Henry—violin, Leslie Perna—viola, Darry Dolezal—cello); the top-shelf singing (featuring a huge, expressive soprano range projecting wonderfully from top to bottom and able diction) in the Crawford Seeger, Doncaster, and Jamison cycles by Lisa Jablow; the inspired violin playing that made exquisite linear sense of Chang’s fractured writing style by Sarah Thornblade; the wonderfully showy cello performances of Rafael Popper-Keiser (aided in excellent fashion by percussionist Robert Schulz in the Anderson and by Schulz and pianist Hugh Hinton in the Muhl); the splendid mezzo-soprano vocalizations (sporting a rich low range and solid enunciation) in the Boykan and Merryman by Paula Dellal; the first-rate, sensitive accompanying by pianists Donald Berman and Paula Ennis, cellist Bonnie Thurber-Klimoswki, and clarinetist Steven Klimowski in the afternoon’s vocal selections; the richly toned and expressive horn playing in the Reynolds by Whitacre Hill; the excellently balanced sound heard in the wind threesome of Matthew Doherty (flute), Mark Margolies (clarinet), and Janet Underhill (bassoon) in the Pfaff; the delightful presentation of the Ruehr by Klimowski and Paul Orgel (piano); the able trio performances of the Cohen and Fussell by Heidi Braun-Hill (violin), Mark Simcox (cello), and Shuann Chai (piano); the sturdy solo turns by Doherty (in the Leese) and Chai (in the Thomson); and the adept, colorful presentation, expertly conducted by Paul Brust, of Mamlok’s entry. The various performance venues provided good acoustics, though a bit of outside noise intruded in Friday’s presentation at Irasburg Town Hall and Saturday’s voice recital at Goodrich Memorial Library. Pianos heard at all locations proved a bit less than optimal, though all keyboard players did their best to get decent sound from these instruments.
With music-making this good, we’ll forego the bucolic rural pleasures of Vermont for the concert hall any day. Bravos all around.
--David Cleary