It seems I can never make it to all of the worthwhile classical music events hereabouts – but I make a special effort to get to as much of the College of Charleston’s fabulous Charleston Music Fest series as I can. The pet project of star musicians and C of C professors Lee-Chin Siow (violin) and Natalia Khoma (cello), the Fest offers world-class chamber music in Charleston year-round.
Saturday evening’s concert at the Simons Center consisted of works for piano trio, with pianist Volodymyr Vynnytsky doing the honors along with Siow and Khoma. The program led off with Ludwig van Beethoven’s very first published work, the Piano Trio in E-Flat, Op. 1 No. 1. Much of Beethoven’s early efforts are unjustly neglected, as he hadn’t yet broken completely free of the Classical era’s fetters and found his mature voice. This delightful piece often smacks of his predecessors Mozart and Haydn (his teacher) – especially in the graceful Adagio movement: delicious music that our players brought to life with glowing lyrical intensity.
But Beethoven – the unruly, rebellious imp – gets unleashed in the other movements: especially the sprightly scherzo and the slapdash finale. Have you ever heard Beethoven giggle … or laugh out loud? If not, give this number a listen sometime.Critics rarely give him credit for his rollicking sense of humor. Our ensemble played the final presto faster than I’ve ever heard it before – and with astonishing clarity and precision, to boot.
After halftime, violist Kathryn Dey joined her colleagues for Robert Schumann’s Op. 47 Piano Quartet in E Flat — one of the glittering jewels of the chamber repertoire. It’s one of the most irrepressibly sunny, joyful things this mercurial composer ever wrote. The slow movement – a gorgeous love-song for his wife Clara – is full of passion and tender longing.
Remember, two of these musicians (Khoma and Vynnytsky) grew up with the emotional intensity of the Russian school. And their big-boned, over-the-top sentiments apparently rubbed off on their colleagues. This was a searing, heartfelt performance that dug deep into my gut and left me limp afterwards.
As I’ve said before, this wonderful series needn’t take a back seat to any other chamber music we get to hear hereabouts … not even Spoleto’s vaunted and venerable series.
After the final Tender Land curtain call (previous post), I hot-footed it next door to the College of Charleston’s Simmons Center recital hall, where the Spring edition of the annual Young Composers’ Forum was already well under way. C of C professors Edward Hart and Trevor Weston run the school’s well-respected composition program – and they show off their new students every year in a fall program, with their advanced students heard in the spring. Performance quality can be variable – as the newly composed pieces are performed by a mixed bag of student musicians, faculty members and other local players – usually after very little rehearsal time.
I got there in time to hear part of Michael Hanf’s thorny Piano Duo I, followed by selected movements from his Piano Sonata I. Mike is a terrific jazz musician (vibes) as well as a promising composer. His music was absorbing, though a bit disturbing: its mostly calm surface was often roiled by angry, vaguely neurotic undercurrents. And, as he told me afterwards, that’s exactly what he wanted us to feel. I was disappointed to have missed his earlier piece for string quartet.
Then we heard Andrew Walker’s Wind Chimes, for piano – an evocative number exploring the random and unpredictable beauty of the title instrument. K.C. M. Walker’s contribution was Piece for Piano and Sound Sources – an interesting (but slightly confusing) study in contrasting sounds drawn from every part of the piano, with (if I got it right) others recorded and played back on-the-spot … all on top of a live radio broadcast. The performer spent part of the piece UNDER the piano!
The concert wound down with gifted jazz pianist Sam Sfirri’s Une Expérience, a well-made number for string quartet that offered distinct moods and nicely layered sonic textures. The final piece was Evan Rosenzweig’s Harboring Dawn, a haunting piece for oboe and string quartet that captured a radiant bit of the Jewish soul.
Apologies to the budding composers whose pieces I was too late for … I’m told I missed some very good ones. But I enjoyed what I heard – it’s always a joy to sample the creations of fertile and well-trained young musical minds.
Friday evening was one of those impossible evenings, if you happen to be a critic – I struggled to juggle two overlapping events, and one of them (next post) gets short shrift as a result.
Hey, I couldn’t just walk out of the Charleston Symphony’s semi-staged concert performance of The Tender Land, Aaron Copland’s only opera (if you don’t count an early student effort). I’ve heard it on CD, but this was the first time I’d ever seen it …and besides, it turned out to be quite a decent performance.
Like most of his best-known stuff, Tender Land is about as American as music gets. Its rural, depression-era Midwestern setting is adroitly mirrored in Copland’s evocative and well-crafted score. Conductor Scott Terrell and his players rendered it beautifully – they were almost (but not quite) the stars of the show.
Star laurels must go instead to soprano Courtenay Budd, whom I’ve been joyfully listening to (and reviewing) for some time now – mostly in Spoleto’s fabled chamber music series (Charles Wadsworth sure knows how to pick ‘em). I’ve also plugged her ravishing CD of lullabies in last year’s festival blog – read my review (and others) right HERE. She was an ideal Laurie: the restless adolescent heroine. This lovable young lady – as usual – sang straight from the heart, and her soaring high notes were enough to melt the frostiest soul. To boot, her diction was superb: she was the only singer whose every word I could understand. Her singing has a conversational quality to it … in places, I almost forgot it was opera I was hearing.
The remaining roles were pretty well-filled, too. Jessie Hinkle, as Ma Moss, used her sonorous mezzo voice to good advantage – though she was hard to hear at times against the onstage orchestra. Bass-Baritone Matthew Burns made for a booming Grandpa Moss, though minimal costuming and makeup left him looking too young for the part. Michael Mayes’ gutsy baritone and macho stage swagger made him a convincing Top: one of the plot’s pair of drifters who show up at the Moss farm.
Martin – his more sensitive sidekick (and Laurie’s sudden love interest) – was nicely portrayed by tenor Jeffery Picón, whose attractive lyric tenor mostly filled the bill. But he had some trouble sustaining a couple of his high notes, and suffered a brief pitch problem or two. Local vocal standouts Martin Nusspaumer (Mr. Splinters) and Mary Hubbell (Beth) did very well in their smaller roles, as did several bit-part singers from the CSO Chamber Choir. Oh – and the chorus sounded great in its brief “party” appearance.
My only other gripes concern the sonic balances and certain aspects of the staging. The (darkened) presence of the orchestra onstage produced higher instrumental volume than we would’ve heard from the pit – and their often rich sound nearly drowned out several of the singers in places. That could’ve been the fault of the Sottile’s dry acoustics – that remain somewhat unfriendly to vocal sound, even after their recent renovation.
The semi-staged production – the work of Ryan Taylor – generally worked well, using simple props and basic lighting on top of the limited costumes and makeup I already mentioned. But a concert performance of any opera means that the singers don’t necessarily have to memorize their roles: they’re allowed to carry scores onstage, and several of the singers did just that (Budd and Mayes didn’t need them). Unfortunately, even limited stage action can get awkward if you’re lugging your score around. Among other spots, the love scene was a bit disconcerting … as Martin embraced Laurie with a thick, red-bound book dangling from one hand.
Still, Tender Land was well worth attending … I enjoyed it, and it offered a fitting close to yet another engaging and accomplished Backstage Pass season.
Check out my next post for a telling sampling of music from the College of Charleston’s excellent composition department … heard the same evening.
I’ve been looking forward all year to the return appearance of Cuban virtuoso Jorge Luis Prats in the College of Charleston’s dependable International Piano Series – in a busy and remarkable local concert season, to boot. And I’m not the only one who marked his calendar way ahead for this one: Prats’ many local fans (including bunches of young people) made for a very respectable crowd at the Sottile last Tuesday evening. We all got our money’s worth, and much more.
Prats is a true keyboard showman: his unique blend of deep musicality, prodigious technique and big personality make his every appearance an affair to remember. His robust and passionate playing engages immediately, sweeping the helpless listener straight to the heart of the music. And that heart was a Latino one here, as Prats dished up an all-Hispanic program of rarely-heard treats.
For starters, we heard Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachiana Brasiliera No. 4 – the first time I’ve ever heard it in its original piano version (there’s a later arrangement for piano & orchestra). Largely self-taught, Villa-Lobos learned his craft by studying the great composers, and his reverence for Bach led to the nine Bachianas Brasilieras: his effort to meld the spirit of his homeland with the old master’s forms and contrapuntal wizardry. Prats delivered its four movements with skill and infectious style, emphasizing the music’s pungent, often quirky harmonies.
Prats then moved on to the music of Ernesto Lecuona: perhaps Cuba’s greatest composer. A keyboard master himself, Lecuona knew how to write for the piano … and we got to revel in five of his spiciest and most colorful examples. Highlights included Ante el Escorial – a marvel of passionate intensity that Prats rendered in the grand, romantic manner. He brought out the saucy carnival atmosphere of Minstrels, and wowed us with some fearsome octave passages in La 32. He took us to intermission with Altagrazia, a delicious tango-fantasia by Carlos Fariñas, another accomplished Cuban composer.
Filling out the evening’s second half were five of the knuckle-busting pieces that make up Spanish composer Enrique Granados’ Goyescas – his masterpiece. Inspired by the work of the great Spanish painter Francisco Goya, these spectacular and achingly beautiful numbers are seldom heard in concert … largely because few pianists dare to risk so much beastly difficult music in public. Called by some “The Spanish Chopin,” Granados crafted quite a bit of gorgeous piano music that recalls the Polish master’s sense of musical poetry as well as his technical sophistication. All of it was amazing – but the heart of the work was El Amor y la Muerte (Love and Death) – a particularly intense number that echoes the epic grandeur of Chopin’s famous Ballades. The final El Pelele was a tour-de-force of “caliente” spirit and passionate virtuosity – and Prats brought the house down with it.
Our raucous standing O inspired a pair of delightful encores, both by Lecuona. First, Prats left us open-mouthed with his traversal of the perky (and nearly impossible) Glissando Mazurka. You get piano glissandos by sliding your finger-tops or thumbnail rapidly up or down the white keys … but this number calls for parallel glissandi – like in thirds or sevenths – and done with one hand, to boot. Series host (and fellow distinguished pianist) Enrique Graf later joked that he’d probably break his fingers if he tried it. Prats then sent us off with a searing rendition of Malagueña, the only piece that most people would recognize.
Prats confessed to me afterwards that he felt he took quite a risk by offering mostly little-known music of a single cultural genre in this recital. But he needn’t have worried: he had a savvy Charleston audience that was up to the challenge – and open to something different. Besides, like he said, this is music that’s very close to his heart – and music, after all else is said and done, boils down to a heart-to-heart kind of thing. Please come back soon, Señor Prats.
Citadel Square Baptist Church rang last Thursday evening to the ravishing sounds of Chanticleer : America’s most successful professional choir. Many of us (like me) know this amazing 12-voice men’s ensemble only via their many excellent CDs – so the Charleston Concert Association did me (along with Chucktown’s small army of choral fans) a huge favor by including us in their current tour itinerary. Fabulous though their recordings may be, nothing can beat a live performance.
It’s a very special tour, too – being part of Chanticleer’s 30th anniversary celebrations. Thus their touring program – entitled “My Spirit Sang all Day” – sports a broad array of music selected to show off the group’s hallmark sonic glory and stylistic diversity. And – with an active repertoire stretching from Gregorian chant to music written for them just last year – diversity is one of their many strong suits.
They lost no time in taking us straight to heaven with a set of the Renaissance era’s finest sacred pieces – the sort of stuff that first made Chanticleer’s fame back in the 1970’s. Plush tribute to early English master William Byrd came with two of his best motets: Sing Joyfully – an exuberant song of praise – gave way to Ave Verum Corpus, an incredibly lovely and limpid bit of choral magic that I got to sing with my choir in church just last month. Then came the flowing, eight-part polyphony of Italian master Giovanni de Palestrina’s Ave Regina Coelorum. Their antiphonal interplay was something special: you could hear every part … and their trio of stunning male sopranos delivered the upper lines with searing beauty of tone.
Then it was on to some secular gems from the same general period, beginning with El Grillo, a funny little rapid-fire number by Josquin des Pres that he apparently wrote to remind a stingy royal patron to pay his court musicians. The same composer’s Mille Regretz followed – a marvel of exquisite homophonic-polyphonic contrasts. The set ended with a pair of charming madrigals by Andrea Gabrieli: A le Guancie di Rose is a masterly eight-part number for double choir about the vagaries of love, and La Battaglia reflects the fad back then of glorifying warfare in music, using nonsense syllables to mimic the sounds of battle.
Leading up to intermission, our singers fast-forwarded a few centuries to the work of contemporary American composer Steven Stucky: his engaging set of three Cradle Songs that set lullaby texts from Brazil, Poland and Tobago. The final Caribbean-flavored Buy Baby Ribbon was a particular treat. Next came Samuel Barber’s rich and intensely spiritual Heaven-Haven (a Nun Takes the Veil), followed by the opulent, layered harmonies of Gustav Mahler’s Ich bin der Welt Abhanden Gekommen (now there was a piece to wallow in).
The singers returned after halftime to deliver I Have Had Singing: an engaging contemporary plum by American tunesmith Steven Sametz. Moving on, we got Four Little Prayers of St. Francis of Assisi – a winsome foursome of small sacred gems that can’t fail to stir the soul when sung by the likes of these gents. The evening ended – all too soon – with the group’s customary bracing finale, with signature numbers from the folk, jazz and gospel genres. We tapped toes to Michael McGlynn’s smash-hit Dulaman (you can find it onYouTube HERE) and English folk-settings by Vaughan Williams and Rutter, before indulging in the sweet nostalgia of American folk numbers like Wayfaring Stranger. Things came to a sonorous and soulful close with a medley of choice, gospel-tinged spirituals (another Chanticleer specialty) … plus one more as an encore.
As anybody who helped pack the Citadel Square Church for this event can attest, this was choral music at its beautiful, soul-soothing best. Here’s hoping that Chanticleer’s next thirty years will see their unique brand of musical joy spread even further.
So far, it’s been a terrific season for great piano music – thanks to the College of Charleston’s reliable International Piano Series: the pet project of Artist-in-Residence Enrique Graf. The overall excellence of the artists he’s brought us over the years has spoiled us rotten, often attracting bigger crowds at the Sottile Theatre than most comparable big-city piano recitals can claim.
Last Tuesday’s event treated us to the artistry of Paolo André Gualdi, one of Graf’s own former students. This young virtuoso has racked up an enviable record of international competition wins – and his performance here (in an incredibly demanding program) showed us why.
He got going with one of the real plums among Ludwig van Beethoven’s lofty cycle of thirty-two piano sonatas: the “Waldstein.” Named for (and dedicated to) one of Beethoven’s aristocratic patrons, it’s one of the composer’s noblest and most memorable keyboard numbers – and it takes an exceptional pianist to do it justice.
Gualdi offered a more lyrical approach to this marvelous piece than we usually hear, especially in the first movement – downplaying some of the inherent tension and drama that many pianists exploit to the fullest. Still, it was a refreshing change, providing nuances of tone and touch that most of us hadn’t heard before. Aside from a few minor descending arpeggio flaws in the first movement, his flying fingers coped beautifully with the work’s considerable technical demands.
Then we got a slam-bang rendition of Hungarian Master Bela Bartok’s thorny Sonata – a fearfully difficult piece that the composer (also a famous pianist) wrote for his own concert use. It’s full of the bumptious, often manic folk-themes that Bartok himself collected early in life – and its polytonal harmonics often make for profuse dissonance. Gualdi pounded it out with astounding skill and energy. It may not have been the evening’s hit, but the modern music fans among us were truly thrilled to hear it.
After intermission came a poetic and often dizzying account of the second of Hungarian virtuoso Franz Liszt’s Two Legends for piano: St. Francis of Paola walking on the waters. This amazing piece recounts the tale of the saint using his cloak and staff as a makeshift sailing device to cross a stretch of open water, arriving at the far shore ahead of the ferry he couldn’t afford passage on. A rippling motif recalled restless waves, soon growing into heavy seas that threaten disaster. I wonder if I’ve ever heard smoother, more assured octave work as the going got rough.
Pianists shy away in droves from Maurice Ravel’s impressionist masterpiece Gaspard de la Nuit: a staggeringly difficult item that redefined the limits of modern piano virtuosity. But Gualdi nailed it, bearing out Graf’s reputation as a teacher who can work wonders with any emerging young pianist’s technique.
Be sure to catch the series’ final installment this season, starring Jorge Luis Prats – perhaps Cuba’s finest pianist. He’s played here before, and I’m here to tell you he’ll be worth the ticket.
After hearing super-cellist Robert deMaine in Friday’s Charleston Music Fest event at the College, I was doubly determined to make it to Saturday evening’s Charleston Symphony concert at the Gaillard (the latest in the Masterworks series) – where deMaine showed us what he could do with orchestral backup.
But first, we heard some stirring sounds by Bedrich Smetana, Czechoslovakia’s pioneering nationalist composer. Sarka is a dramatic tone poem; one of the six pieces comprising his patriotic collection known as Ma Vlast (My Country). It was a refreshing change to hear this rip-snortin’ number instead of The Moldau – Smetana’s overplayed warhorse from the same cycle. Resident Conductor Scott Terrell led a gutsy account of this musical war epic, including some moments of real majesty for the brasses. The crowd loved it, and Charles Messersmith earned a solo bow for his pensive clarinet work.
Then came the cello magic, courtesy of Mr. deMaine and Joseph Haydn, whose second cello concerto provides ample opportunity for virtuosic display. Our soloist brought the sunny score to vibrant life, with amazing dexterity and gobs of lush tone – and he got graceful, considerate support from Terrell and company. They never let up on Papa Haydn’s ebullient spirit, save for the slow movement’s idyllic poetry, where deMaine’s warm and singing sonorities were a particular treat. Our noisy standing O led to a glittering encore: William H. Squire’s finger-twisting Tarantella. I found that out during my mad backstage dash during intermission, where deMaine also confirmed that he had written his own remarkable cadenzas (they didn’t sound much like Haydn).
The evening’s final pleasure was Symphony No. 5 by Jean Sibelius, Finland’s greatest tunesmith. While Sibelius’ music presents real challenges to orchestras and conductors alike, the superb quality and spirit of the CSO’s performance hardly surprised me. The CSO has been sounding especially glorious lately, and – in case I haven’t told you before – they are truly blessed to have a conductor of Terrell’s caliber to keep them in top form when Maestro Stahl is out of town. Scott knows exactly what he wants from his players, and how to joyfully coax it out of them. In turn, they play their hearts out for him.
The rarefied result this night was a reading of uncommon subtlety and power, building expertly from shimmering pianissimo textures to the unbridled grandeur of Sibelius’ brass-bound climaxes. Aside from a rhythmic rough spot or two in the first movement, I had absolutely no complaints. Interpretively, Terrell was dead-on – imparting just the right touch of Nordic chill to one of the master’s warmer symphonic efforts.
Chalk up another real winner for the hometown band.
Remember me? Some ugly vagaries of life (and a heavy paying gig) got in the way of blogging over the holidays – but they’re over, and great music is again busting out all over around Chucktown, so I’m BAAACK!
Ukrainian pianist Volodymyr Vynnytsky first showed up in Charleston around two years ago, about the same time mega-cellist Natalia Khoma took up her teaching gig at the College of Charleston. No wonder, as he is her pianist-of-choice for chamber music – and, until now, that’s just about all we’ve heard from him hereabouts. Having admired his chamber artistry on several occasions, I was overjoyed to hear that he would be offering his first local solo recital under the auspices of the College’s vaunted International Piano Series. In fact, that’s where I was last Tuesday, at the Sottile Theatre, with bells on – and I wasn’t disappointed.
Vynnytsky got things going with the metaphysical musings of Beethoven’s Op. 101 piano sonata – one of Ludwig’s mystical late works that musicologists have been trying to figure out for nearly two centuries. Our artist made as good a case for it as I’ve heard lately, taking a fresh and spontaneous approach – and making very difficult music sound almost easy.
Then it was on to the Russian music that’s in his very bones. Lev Revutsky’s Prelude in D flat – a mournful little gem in the heart-on-sleeve mold of Rachmaninoff – was a delightful discovery. Also new to me was Myroslav Skoryk’s (more about him later) Burlesque: a much more modern-sounding number – yet it was quite charming, with deft touches of folksy humor and whimsy. Vynnytsky wrapped up his trio of Russian items with a brilliant traversal of Rachmaninoff’s knuckle-busting Etude Tableaux in D that brought the well-filled house down.
After halftime, Volodymyr moved on to more familiar (and beloved) territory: two of Frederic Chopin’s most poetic pieces. He gave the beloved Fantasy in F Minor a sensitive and luminous reading, with potent emotion and sparkling passagework. In the Op. 58 Sonata in B Minor, he gave us everything from airy delicacy to raw power. His rubato-laced traversal of the haunting slow movement was the most exquisite I can recall hearing, avoiding the syrupy sentiment many pianists indulge in.
Yet again, the IPS’s lofty standards have been upheld. And more’s the luck, because we get to enjoy this keyboard whiz several times a year around here. Watch for him in the College’s upcoming Music Fest chamber series, and I expect him to appear again during Piccolo Spoleto, as we have for the past two festivals.
As a matter of fact, we’ll get to hear him next week (8:00 p.m., on Friday the 25th, at the Simons Center for the Arts – free admission), in a special tribute to Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk (see above), one of his nation’s most distinguished and influential musicians. The composer himself will appear as a performer, along with Vynnytsky, Khoma, and several other top C of C professors and their best student musicians. If his above-mentioned Burlesque was any indication, you’re in for an appealing evening.
Kindly pardon my week-long absence – even bloggers appreciate occasional holidays (and many of us have other things to do for a living). But I still feel obliged to tell you about Jan Rautio, the brilliant and versatile young Russian pianist who graced the College of Charleston’s latest International Piano Series recital at the Sottile Theatre two weeks ago (November 13). During the seven years I’ve been attending this reliable series, I’ve heard maybe one or two pianists who failed to leave a positive impression. And remember, this is the series that’s brought some real keyboard gods to Chucktown: masters like Earl Wild, Abbey Simon, and – most recently – Leon Fleisher (one of this year’s Kennedy Center honorees). Series founder and host Enrique Graf knows how to pick them. Check out this year’s distinguished lineup HERE.
After early studies at the renowned Gnesin School of Music in Moscow, Rautio got his advanced training at places like London’s Royal Academy of Music. His busy career is centered in England these days, but his international calendar is filling up quickly as audiences all over Europe sample his work. Based on what I heard two Tuesdays ago, this pianist is definitely one to watch.
I can’t think of any country that has produced more truly great pianists than Russia: Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Richter, Gilels, Cherkassky … and that’s just the top of the all-star list; I could fill up a fair paragraph with the rest, past and present. Their playing tends to be big-boned, audacious, technically brilliant, and often full of the kind of heart-on-sleeve passion and pain that the Russians seem to have a patent on. And Mr. Rautio could call up all of these qualities at will. But his playing also revealed the kind of subtle refinement that probably comes from his English training.
He began with an exquisitely studied, yet spontaneous account of Robert Schumann’s beloved Scenes from Childhood – a perennial recital favorite. He brought Schumann’s impulsive, manic-depressive range of expression and emotion to convincing life. He followed that up with an elegant and charming account of Mozart’s K. 333 Sonata in B Flat. Then a different side of his interpretive range emerged with a fiery rendition of Frederic Chopin’s famous (and beastly difficult) “Heroic” Polonaise in A-Flat. My left hand ached in sympathy during the pile-driving middle section that I practiced endlessly many years ago (and I never did get it quite right). While he didn’t give the piece the kind of cheeky swagger that I’ve heard from some, his reading glittered, with power and passion to burn.
After intermission, Rautio treated us to a brainy, dramatic go at Johannes Brahms’ four late Piano Pieces, Op. 119. It’s easy to sound clattery and overly solemn in some of these numbers. Jan never crossed that line, choosing to explore the composer’s lyrical side instead. Only in the final two pieces did his ancestral heritage shine through. And who better to bring out the tortured Russian in you than Sergei Rachmaninoff? Rautio gave him his due and more in the heart-rending Elegie, Op. 3, before finishing off with Polichinelle – a flurry of finger-twisting fireworks. Even though he avoided the kind of overblown sentiment I’ve heard from many of his countrymen, you knew a Russian soul was at work.
The respectable Sottile crowd tried in vain to get an encore from him (three curtain calls and a standing O) – but we already had much to be grateful for on this special night. Watch for news of the next in this series after Christmas – when you’ll get to hear Volodymyr Vynnytsky: a rather different breed of Russian pianist who’s already known to local chamber music fans.
Last Friday’s Charleston Symphony “Backstage Pass” concert at the Sottile Theatre capped the series’ early emphasis on the huge (and little-known) body of engaging music from south of the border – and by that I mean not only Mexico, but south all the way into South America.
The program’s title came from the first work, “hot” Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra’s brightly hued and rhythmically vital Fandangos. Written in 2001, it’s based on the Spanish dance-form of the same name: one of those sensual, almost hypnotically repetitive dances that needs an imaginative composer to keep it interesting. And Sierra’s version filled the bill very nicely, with complex and absorbing interludes throughout to keep monotony at bay. Resident Conductor Scott Terrell and his accomplished players made a real toe-tapper of it.
Then we got a well-established classic from Darius Milhaud, a 20th-Century French composer who had soft spots for both Hispanic music and jazz … and both influences are heard in his well-known Bull on the Roof, named after a popular Brazilian tune of the early 1900’s. It’s a smart and sassy number that never loses its headlong drive and earthy folk-flavor, in spite of some really sophisticated musical tricks. The CSO’s deft reading made for pure musical fun.
The incredibly colorful and rhythmically intense music of the tortured Mexican genius Silvestre Revueltas (he drank himself to death by age 40) is slowly gaining the attention it deserves, thanks to adventurous orchestras like the CSO. Unbelievably colorful and almost painfully intense, he’s been described as “Stravinsky on mescal” – and musicologists are beginning to think of him as Mexico’s greatest composer. His Eight on the Radio is a short chamber work for eight instruments that mimics somebody twiddling the station dial on his radio (Mexican stations, of course). A gaggle of the CSO’s gifted first-chair players made the piece sizzle, with irresistible Mariachi flavors.
The final piece was the only one from a real European Hispanic: the first of Spanish master Manuel De Falla’s two suites adapted from his full-length ballet, The Three-Cornered Hat. The work reeks of true Spanish themes and spirit – but his early studies in Paris enabled him to draw upon the methods of composers like Debussy and Stravinsky: influences that give his music both dreamy sensuality and a rich instrumental palette – qualities that our hometown band had no trouble realizing.
If you want to experience an entirely different approach to classical music (no elevated pinkies, stuffy attitudes, or dressing up), be sure to catch the next three programs in this innovative series after the New Year. Go to their website, right HERE, to find out more about them. Not only do Scott’s laid-back intros to each work bring them down to earth, but you can rub elbows with the musicians afterwards at Yo Burrito (two blocks away on Wentworth) to dissect the concert over margaritas (BIG ones). How could you possibly make great music more accessible and public than this? The younger crowds that are showing up for these dependable concerts tells me that the CSO’s quest for fresh audiences is beginning to get real results.
Home-Grown Composers (some good ones, too!)
After the final Tender Land curtain call (previous post), I hot-footed it next door to the College of Charleston’s Simmons Center recital hall, where the Spring edition of the annual Young Composers’ Forum was already well under way. C of C professors Edward Hart and Trevor Weston run the school’s well-respected composition program – and they show off their new students every year in a fall program, with their advanced students heard in the spring. Performance quality can be variable – as the newly composed pieces are performed by a mixed bag of student musicians, faculty members and other local players – usually after very little rehearsal time.
I got there in time to hear part of Michael Hanf’s thorny Piano Duo I, followed by selected movements from his Piano Sonata I. Mike is a terrific jazz musician (vibes) as well as a promising composer. His music was absorbing, though a bit disturbing: its mostly calm surface was often roiled by angry, vaguely neurotic undercurrents. And, as he told me afterwards, that’s exactly what he wanted us to feel. I was disappointed to have missed his earlier piece for string quartet.
Then we heard Andrew Walker’s Wind Chimes, for piano – an evocative number exploring the random and unpredictable beauty of the title instrument. K.C. M. Walker’s contribution was Piece for Piano and Sound Sources – an interesting (but slightly confusing) study in contrasting sounds drawn from every part of the piano, with (if I got it right) others recorded and played back on-the-spot … all on top of a live radio broadcast. The performer spent part of the piece UNDER the piano!
The concert wound down with gifted jazz pianist Sam Sfirri’s Une Expérience, a well-made number for string quartet that offered distinct moods and nicely layered sonic textures. The final piece was Evan Rosenzweig’s Harboring Dawn, a haunting piece for oboe and string quartet that captured a radiant bit of the Jewish soul.
Apologies to the budding composers whose pieces I was too late for … I’m told I missed some very good ones. But I enjoyed what I heard – it’s always a joy to sample the creations of fertile and well-trained young musical minds.