The Callithumpian Consort’s performance in Jordan Hall on January 25th featured an interesting mix of improvised and non-improvised performance. The composers represented on the program, Debussy, Nicholas Vines, Zorn, Murail, and Ikue Mori, represented a refreshingly wide array of styles and aesthetics.

Being the only pre-21^st-century piece on the program, Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp was perhaps the most familiar work of the program. It is more harmonically conservative than most of his late works but has all of the textural and figurative appeal that makes Debussy’s music so unique. Karina Fox, Jessi Rosinski, and Franziska Huhn’s playing was crisp and animated: qualities that played particularly well to the Finale. While the placement of the Debussy seemed a bit odd on a program otherwise consisting entirely of pieces composed in the last eight years, some link between Debussy and Murail’s Lachryme, after intermission, appeared to be the motivation for such programming.

Nicholas Vines’s Economy of Wax, a setting of an excerpt from Darwin’s The Origin of Species for soprano, flute, viola, and harp, features a peculiarly scientific description (in prose) of an experiment involving bees constructing and maintaining their hive. The piece had some nice moments of lyricism between soprano and piccolo and exhibited a masterful control of contrapuntal texture. Since the text hardly has an ounce of expressive potential, Vines chose to focus more on vocal acrobatics than clarity of text. The writing contained itself to a single contrapuntal consistency, wonderfully evocative of the relentless swarming of Darwin’s bees, but ultimately it came across as rather stagnant and undermotivated. The piece was handled excellently by the performers, though balance was an issue at times.

John Zorn’s Orphée offered an interesting balance of notated music and improvised material. The piece opens with a noisy clash of dissonant and punctuated sonorities separated by awkward and immediate non-transitions: a block-structured caricature of modernism. The piece suddenly shifts into a very distant Minimalist territory, thorny stabs of dissonance now replaced with triadic, predictable bliss. Zorn thrives in the territory of these postmodern musical decisions and makes them appear much less arbitrary than many of his counterparts. Admittedly, the piece becomes “about” these stylistic shifts instead of the inner workings — which have the potential to be far more interesting. Nonetheless, the juxtaposition of idioms was quite convincing, comical as they were.

Tristan Murail’s Lachrymae, composed for the Callithumpian Consort last summer at Sick Puppy (Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice), returned us to a meticulously controlled form of musical expression. While I have a deep admiration of Murail as a composer, a gripe I often have with his music is its tendency to marinate in its textures (gorgeous as they may be) with little concern for sustaining a sense of continuity through the narrative of the piece. Lachrymae seemed to go in the complete opposite direction, borrowing ubiquitously Classical tactics to organize constantly developing and profoundly moving materials while remaining “Spectralist” in its treatment of texture and harmony. The Callithumpians clearly invest a sense of ownership in this piece, resulting in the most convincing (by far) performance of the evening.

Ikue Mori, who performed live electronics on the Zorn earlier in the program, was again featured in her own composition, Confucius Becomes Popular, for large improvisational ensemble and animated video. It was more or less a collage of miniature narratives summarizing traditional Chinese parables, undoubtedly selected for their particular relevance to contemporary American politics. Musically, the piece seemed to relinquish almost all of its control to the performers’ collective intuition. Mori, in particular, had an unusually convincing grasp of her electronic setup, inventing her own meta-instrument that had both identity and expressive breadth. Her interactions with percussionist Nick Tolle at times were quite intriguing.

Much of the rest of the ensemble was less convincing; apparently they were more concerned with their own stage theatrics than with meaningful dialogue. This improvisational model worked better with the smaller group at the end of the performance, likely due to the presence of pianist Anthony Coleman, a true luminary in the world of free improvisation. Joined by Artistic Director Stephen Drury on piano, the improv session was quite engaging; the focus was purely on the intuitive interactions of the musicians, without any other visual guide. Had I left with much of the audience before this post-program improv session, I would have sorely lost out!

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The performances for the vast majority of the program were overwhelmingly positive. The first two pieces, both collections of songs, Du (1951) and Mehr ‘Du’ (1991), seem to highlight a general theme of the program by outlining the expressive disparity between the composer’s early, meticulously controlled compositions and the later ones, which, although still meticulously controlled, have a certain poetic quality to them. The earlier pieces, in my opinion, are attractive only in their structural elegance on the page—an aesthetic quality that is not transmitted in its intended form to even the most receptive ears. That said, the performance of Du by Sarah Bach and Rodney Lister was so well-executed that it generated a certain appeal on a separate plane than that of the structural organization—a phenomenon not uncommon to Babbitt’s music. Ceceilia Allwein highlighted the more expressive nature of Mehr ‘Du’ with candid feeling, which sometimes felt at odds with the more deliberate approach of the instrumentalists. I much appreciated D’Anna Fortunato’s presence at the concert. Her performance of the Feldeinsamkeit was simply gorgeous. Babbitt’s Composition for One Instrument (2000), performed on celesta by Lister, existed in a strangely engaging place between the eerie and playful, whereas the program’s closing piece Composition for Viola and Piano (1950) seemed cold and sterile.

Perhaps the most interesting contributions were from the NEC Preparatory School students. Pianists Hannah Ryu and Niklas Kniesche showed technical ability and musicianship far beyond their years, as did violinists Tristan Flores and Yuki Beppu in their duet performance of Arrivals and Departures. Daniel Kim, who seemed to be the oldest of the student performers, showed true prowess in the tongue-in-cheek It Takes Twelve to Tango, but really shone with an exquisite performance of Schoenberg’s Piano Piece, Op. 11 No. 1, which is simply amazing.

The focus of the guest speakers in general was on Babbitt’s warm personality, yet there seemed to be an uncomfortable subtext about the “at large” musical community’s attitude towards Milton Babbitt.  The exception was Marty Boykan’s explanation of Babbitt’s historical importance, with praise for the moment-to-moment aspects of Babbitt’s music.  I daresay even Boykan would have difficulty appreciating the narrative qualities of the more rigid, earlier works for which Babbitt is most known. Granted, some of these trying questions would have seemed out of place at a memorial concert, but I do not doubt they were on many minds: what precisely is at the root of such a large portion of the musical community’s rejection of Babbitt’s music? Why have the vast majority of living composers found Babbitt’s compositional system to be a creative dead-end? Listeners’ preconceptions and prejudices are largely to blame, no doubt. The famous essay by Babbit from High Fidelity magazine in February of 1958 entitled, Who Cares if You Listen?, is usually misunderstood by readers who are unable to derive the optimistic subtext of the argument (the title was changed by editors from “The Composer as Specialist” probably to make the article more polemical).  But despite the stalwart performances by the musicians throughout these performances, I still couldn’t help but find the lingering contrast between the cold, calculated nature of the music and the amiable nature of the man a bit mystifying.

So how do we reconcile the counterpoint between Milton Babbitt’s music and his personality?  The reality is that our recollection of his warm, personable nature­—his love of Broadway, beer, and football—and the tales of his interactions with his students will eventually fade from our cultural memory.  Even his significant contributions to electronic music and academia’s role as a patronage system for composers will shift with the ever-changing artistic landscape of contemporary music in the United States. What will remain, however, is his body of work.  And if the entirety of Babbitt’s character is to live on past the anecdotes of those close to him, the performance practice of his music will have to incorporate a more subjectivist approach.  In many cases (particularly with his earlier serial compositions), this will mean re-conceiving the musical interpretation of his work, most likely in a way that is at odds with the principles inherent in the composition of these pieces.  Perhaps a freer interpretative approach to the performance of Babbitt’s music is the best way to communicate his artistic intentions.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

A concert featuring two well known Romantic masterpieces and a Baroque chamber music charmer interspersed with three new works makes for odd programming indeed. The concert opened with Schumann’s lovely Three Romances, Op. 94, performed by violinist Miranda Cuckson and the estimable pianist Christopher Oldfather. Why, with the great oboist Peggy Pearson on the premises, this was performed on violin I don’t attempt to understand. It is much better on oboe, its intended instrument.

Convergence by Benjamin Irwin is a composition for nineteen players. In his program notes, Irwin explained, “the layering and convergence strategies used in this piece were inspired by the tihai concept used in Indian classical music. A tihai involves a musical pattern that repeats three times at the end of a section (or piece)…. Convergence is characterized by the layering and alternation of contrasting musical structures that are (at least) periodic; these structures converge at ‘meeting points’ that end large sections of the piece.” This is a lot of information to synthesize before hearing the piece. Lots of brass, lots of jazziness and string glisses. People seemed to like this work, as the composer took his bows on stage (in a light brown T-shirt). I think it may be one of those pieces that benefits from a second hearing, right after the first, or after intermission, to take in his ideas properly.

Concert Royal in G Major by François Couperin received a lovely performance by Peggy Pearson, oboe, Alex Woods, violin, Edward Burns, bassoon, Chris Gross, cello and Christopher Oldfather, harpsichord. Individual and ensemble playing was superb here; it was, oddly, tried-and-true chamber music hit of the evening, for this listener at least.

Seven Rants by Peter Van Zandt Lane for piano and woodwind quintet received an excellent performance, starting with pianist Catharine O’Rourke. Seven Rants is a series of charming miniatures for these wind instruments, each getting a mini-concerto in a movement or “rant” surrounded by a first and last movement that are palindromes, both rhythmically and pitch-wise. The flutist, Carol Vater, moved over to stroke the piano’s inner strings (in one direction) during the bassoon and horn solo. She did such a nice job that for once, I didn’t find this an obnoxious cliché. The clarinet solo from Lori Mondragon was charmingly jazzy. All in all, a lovely, accessible piece.

Jorge Sad Levi’s piece, Dissolution of the Salt Stone, set out to transpose the notion of filtering, “or subtractive synthesis” to instrumental writing, applying it to the evolution of pitch and rhythm. There was more inside-the-piano strumming, screechy sounds that would let up to allow a solo oboe or violin to sound, briefly. Scored for most of the same players as “Convergence,” this piece looked more intriguing on the page than it sounded on the stage. On the other hand, maybe there are people out there who enjoy a good ear-splitting violin.

It’s hard to imagine an audience not at a festival like this who would appreciate fully the juxtaposition of Brahms with the previous piece, but the great Quintet for Piano and Strings came next. Most people who love chamber music have their favorite (professional) groups — and pianists — playing this piece in their memories (or their IPods). So it’s hard for a young pick-up group to make an impression. Blair McMillen, pianist shared the stage with Owen Dalby and Sarah Crocker, violin, Liuh-Wen Ting, Viola, and Chris Gross, cello. The first movement moved at a very fast clip, as did the third movement, which was equally lively and exciting. The performance overall worked; there was not a dull moment. The player who left a deep impression was extroverted violinist Dalby, who played brilliantly and chops-wise, seemed to have all but left the other players in the dust. I’ll be curious where he — and the three composers — go after this. Stay tuned.

 Susan Miron is a book critic, essayist, and harpist. Her last two CDs featured her transcriptions of keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti.

The two-week-long session at Wellesley, which runs through August 7, involves ten composition fellows who come from across the US and abroad and are chosen from 90 to 100 applicants through a call for scores. Mostly graduate students and young academics, they are mentored by Davidovsky and one guest composer each week; this year’s guests are Yu-Hui Chang of Brandeis University and Harold Meltzer of Vassar College. Their music is rehearsed and performed by expert freelancers from the Boston and New York City areas; Davidovsky describes one of the conference’s practical goals as aiding young composers in the advancement of their careers by providing them with high-quality recordings to showcase their work. A less tangible but equally valuable result of the conference is the interaction with the group of amateur chamber musicians that form the other half of the seminar, the Chamber Music Center. These players, coached every morning by the resident professional musicians, perform selections of their own choosing from the standard repertoire as well as pieces by the composition fellows. Davidovsky describes them as “non-professional performers — academics, businesspeople, etc. — who play chamber music with friends during the year, many returning [to Wellesley] every year to create almost a family of people that look forward to spending a week or two in the summer playing chamber music with friends and also participating in the activities of composers on the side.”

In a professional world whose participants often seem strictly assigned to one of three categories — composers, performers who have devoted their careers to new music, and a small circle of critics and connoisseurs — Lane (who is an early-on BMInt reviewer) finds the opportunity to work with enthusiastic musicians from different walks of life invaluable. “They’re extremely knowledgeable and offer pretty unfiltered opinions about the contemporary music they’re exposed to at the conference,” he says of the community at Wellesley. “It’s a utopian audience; we can count on everyone considering themselves a music lover.” When I asked Lane how he, as a fellow in 2010, was selected to return as the commissioned composer this year, I expected a bestowal of favor from the reigning academic powers. I was wrong: he was voted back by the musicians of the Chamber Music Center, who also requested his commission to be orchestrated for wind quintet and piano. Now he is working with two separate groups on the resulting piece and could not be more pleased with the process. He works with each group for an hour every day for six days, conducting, coaching, and receiving feedback. “It’s extremely collaborative, more so than at Brandeis [his home during the year] where we have our compositions played by really fantastic professionals, but get maybe an hour total of time to work with them on a piece before the performance.”

Both Lane and Davidovsky emphasize the further level of collaboration that comes from living on the Wellesley campus together, rehearsing, attending colloquia, and (not to be underestimated) eating and drinking together at meals and at the end of the day. Davidovsky insists that a true sense of the place cannot be gained by anything less than spending a full day there to truly appreciate “the sense of industry and dedication of the artist.” From Lane’s perspective, the concentrated community offers composers “a chance to interact for an extended period of time with the people who will be their audience.”

The fellows, performers, and guest composers are also happy to interact with members of the public who wish to attend one of the evening presentations or concerts. On Wednesdays and Saturdays the conference presents chamber concerts by the members of the Chamber Music Center, who perform programs that Davidovsky describes as nicely balanced in style and instrumentation, including familiar favorites and the new music of the fellows. On Tuesdays the fellows get a chance to talk to the audience about “life, their studies, why they decided to become composers,… then they get a chance, to the best of their ability, to describe their piece and hold a question and answer session.” Each Thursday offers a similar session with the guest composer of the week, who talks to the audience about different aspects of musicmaking, playing samples of their work to illustrate. Today will feature guest composer Yu-Hui Chang, who Davidovsky describes as a “fantastic musician, fantastic composer, very good conductor, very popular and beloved teacher, able to offer sharp and perceptive criticism and advice.” One job shared this week by Davidovsky and Chang is leading the morning seminars with the composition fellows, which take the form of extended, lively discussions, the content of which may always remain a bit of a mystery to the uninitiated. “We talk about aesthetics, technique, theory; everything and anything that comes up” says Lane. In addition to responding to samples of the fellows’ music, Davidovsky says larger philosophical issues figure prominently: “we might talk about stylistic possibilities that contemporary music offers, also issues having to do with contemporary music and society.”

Those curious as to the outcome of all this talk and hard work are heartily encouraged by Davidovsky and Lane to come see for themselves what the conference is all about. All concerts and presentations are free; a detailed schedule can be found here.

Zoe Kemmerling is a recent graduate of the Boston Conservatory and a freelance violist, baroque violinist, writer, and string instructor.

The four movements of David Cutler’s Weekend Traveler were spread throughout the program, which made it difficult to note any particular large-scale continuity within the piece as a whole. Nonetheless, I’ll share my views on the piece as a whole. The concept of the piece included asking each of the ensemble’s players to choose a style from somewhere around the globe, which was then composed as a movement featuring that player’s instrument. Beads, Bourbon, & Binoculars featured the baritone sax in an off-axis, quirky tribute to early New Orleans jazz. The movement quickly verified Hays as a formidable addition to the ensemble’s permanent roster. The second movement, No Patios en Los Patios was the most interesting number of the evening. While the opening clapping of the hallmark Cuban son clave rhythm may have seemed gimmicky at first, the development of familiar Afro-Cuban rhythms into dense, interesting polyrhythmic composition was exceptionally compelling. As alto sax player Chris Hemingway topped of the movement with a spectacular breakneck cadenza, it became clear Cutler was taking full advantage of the virtuosic capabilities of his ensemble. The movement ended with an interesting commentary on its derived style; the clapping returned, but this time in son clave montuno form (a sort of backwards son clave, which was vastly important to the development of salsa). Any Cuban music purist will say that the two fundamental rhythms are incompatible in the same piece – it’s either one or the other – so Cutler did his duty as a contemporary composer in combining the two.

Tenor saxophonist Stephen Pollock’s movement, En Route to Edinburgh­ – Trapped at Carousel C, featured a sensitively interpreted Scottish tune with some jazzy ornamentation, while Wedding Crasher, the final movement featuring some heavy virtuosity on soprano saxophonist Michael Stephenson’s part, deconstructed Bulgarian wedding music into an eccentric joyride. Most of Cutler’s music heard in this piece relied heavily on repetitive bass lines and “looping” of rhythmic figures, which may have limited the pieces expressive potential at times. But for the most part the composer managed to develop these ideas into really interesting and eclectic musical narratives. Cutler and NCSQ have surely contributed a worthy and addition to the growing repertoire of new music for sax quartets.

Other notable performances included Piazzolla’s Bordel 1900 from L’Histoire du Tango, which featured some smart use of key clicks in the arrangement. A Paul Harvey arrangement of a suite of set poems by Robert Burns had its moments. Stephenson played an impassioned melody over My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose, and the ensemble provided an uncanny mimicry of bagpipes in Bannocks O’Bearsmeal.  There were a number of arrangements of folk-inspired tunes arranged by Glenn Haynes spread throughout the program. Though some of them were quite beautiful (in particular My Lord, What a Morning), the tended to homogenize the program in the direction of tiresome folk music arrangements.

The ensemble’s final piece on the program was a well-arranged rendition of Shostakovich’s Folk Dances, which the group played from memory. Though not among the composer’s masterpieces, the work (originally the third movement of the Native Leningrad suite) has become popular among wind ensembles and orchestras in the U.S.  New Century’s performance of the piece was energetic and impressively tight. The group returned for an encore of a jazz/gospel tune that featured more of Hemingway’s consummate jazz chops.

The quality of performance by NCSQ could hardly be drawn into question, yet the overall programming may be another issue. In an interview published on Gloucester’s Wicked Local site, Pollock noted that “this concert might be lighter in nature, but we definitely don’t think it’s trite.” But with the Cutler premiere broken up throughout the concert, the rest of the program was ultimately filled up with rather short crowd-pleasers – many of which fit comfortably into the category of ultra-conservative arrangements of folk tunes. Add that to the general excess of comic rituals throughout, and it might be safe to say that the ensemble underestimated the audience’s ability to appreciate a wider range of musical styles. The want for some more adventurous programming aside, the quartet provided an evening of performances that was engaging, nuanced, and relentlessly entertaining.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The four pieces performed offered a good snapshot of Ziporyn’s compositional style, which although heavily influenced by Minimalism, tend to favor constant development in the context of block structures, driving rhythms, and definitely virtuosic demands of the performers. Hive, In Bounds, and Typical Music (the last three pieces on the program) all shared this unique mix of Post-Minimalist and Totalist (a response to minimalism) leanings, and received the kind of spot-on performances you can only get with abundant collaboration time spent with the composer.

The opening performance, Tsmindao Gmerto (for solo bass clarinet) stood out stylistically from the others. After a congenial introduction by the composer, he described the piece as an attempt to mimic the sounds of a large group of men singing Georgian chant with a single bass clarinet. The music that followed was a string of flowing, chant-like phrases composed of multi-phonics and trills, jittering on the surface, but moving slowly through evocative pre-tonal harmonies. I had the opportunity to hear the piece performed a few years ago in a large, stone chapel in Miami, and must say the piece benefits from a large, reverberant space to help blend together the sounds of the performer vocalizing while playing (one of a few methods of achieving multi-phonics on the clarinet). In this performance space, the inner parts were more in the foreground, which (based on my observations of nearby listeners) appeared to be too discordant for some to enjoy. Personally, I find the piece’s arching phrases of dense and varying timbres to be quite beautiful.

Pianist Vicky Chow completely won over the audience with her vigorous and animated performance of In Bounds. She danced playfully through the piece, despite its severe difficulty; one only had to see the subtle fear in the page-turner’s eyes as he worked to keep up with the myriad of notes and pages that flew by as the Chow’s hands moved at an unfathomable pace.

Hive, for four clarinets (two B-flat and two bass) quartet featured Ziporyn on bass clarinet, joined by fellow clarinetists Rane Moore, Eran Egozy, and Alicia Lee. Some of the pieces materials are derived from Tsmindao Gmerto, but as part of a much more eclectic array of other styles. The narrative of the piece, as Ziporyn explained, was inspired by his observations of bees (he recently has taken on the hobby of beekeeping).  Rapidly moving lines bounce back and fourth between the players, who effectively made clear the interactive and often antiphonal nature of the piece. The closing piece, Typical Music for piano trio, takes some of the stylistic eclecticism of Hive and truly runs away with it. Chow returned, joined by violinist Todd Reynolds and Ashley Bathgate for a riveting performance. Overall the piece made a positive impact, though I must admit I found some of the moments where the players drifted into jazz/blues material to be rather dry.  The final movement contained some very exciting ideas. Included in this movement was a very exposed moment of paradiddle rhythms, which I couldn’t help but think was a shout out to the composer’s long-time friend and colleague, Steve Reich (referencing Different Trains).

The Rockport Chamber Music Festival undoubtedly deserves commendation for programming an entire concert dedicated to a living composer. While most of the programming this summer at the Shalin Liu falls into the ultra-traditional category, hopefully programs like these will prove popular among their subscribers and rouse more programming of contemporary music in the future.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The big question for organizations such as these is what direction they will take under new leadership and what loyalties will remain. Does new leadership for each mean a change either in the mission or the support?

Bolle’s legacy is a highly regarded southern New Hampshire cultural institution;  Peter Van Zandt Lane, one of Boston Musical Intelligencer’s reviewers, wrote in 2009, “Monadnock Music is at the top of the music festivals in the Northeast.”

Yet for Monadnock Music, any transition is difficult, acknowledged William Chapman, who began his duties as executive director almost two months ago. “Even with James Bolle’s support, it is delicate.” However, he added, “We have a new board president, Michael Petrovic, an avid music lover who is based in Francestown [and new co-Artistic Directors, flautist, Laura Gilbert and violist, Jonathan Bagg].”

Chapman himself has a long association with the community. He and his partner bought a second home in Peterborough in July, 1985, and went to their first Monadnock concert that August.

“We would have gone in July,” Chapman added, “if we hadn’t gone immediately to Europe on vacation.”

His familiarity is an asset, according to Boston attorney Ernest Klein, a supporter of many years of Monadnock Music who has a home in the area.

“Will Chapman is just the man for the job,” he noted, “because he is familiar with what it is like to live in New Hampshire year-round. And he is efficient, knowledgeable, and a good guy.”

“Community,” specifically, the several communities in the Mount Monadnock area, is one of the big strengths of Monadnock Music.  The popular site for summer homes for many Boston and Cambridge families for over a century provided a built-in audience for classical music; but there is a second “community” peculiar to Monadnock Music, one that has been important from its genesis.

Many free concerts are still offered through the summer in the region’s picturesque town centers — at Walpole Unitarian Church, Harrisville Community Church, Wilton Center Community Church, Hancock Community Church, Francestown Old Meeting House, Deering Community Church, Milford Town Hall, Ahavas Achim Synagogue in Keene, Washington Congregational Church, and Franklin Pierce University in Rindge. In fact, village concerts were the genesis of Monadnock Music.

This appealing list of venues for those who wish to explore old New England villages is an added bonus to the concerts for those who drive up from the Boston area, but it has the very appealing primary value of attracting each village’s residents.

Chapman notes of any concert, “Half the village is there. When I first started coming up, I’d see the volunteer fireman, people working at the recycling center…”  Sometimes the locals go to concerts in other towns, but at the same time, “they are very loyal to their towns, there’s a lot of local cultural pride.”

The goal still is, he emphasized, to make music accessible to everyone in a rural area, and to do that “without falling back on safe and defensive programs.”

This season’s offerings bear that out.  A number of regular performers are returning, as they have for several years: Tawnya Popoff , Curtis Macomber, Jesse Mills and Rieko Aizawa, Ilana Davidson, Gabriela Diaz, Eric Pritchard, Rafael Popper-Keizer, Randall Hodgkinson, Stacey Shames, Krista River, Curtis Macomber, Adela Pena,  Greg Hesselink, Dan Lippel.

Bolle, as a conductor, often had an full orchestra— missing in this year’s lineup. But Chapman says the possibility of guest orchestral conductors will be brought up at the retreat scheduled for the board and staff at the end of the season.

There will be a chamber ensemble conducted by Hugh Keelan on August 6 for Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, arranged by Keelan, with soprano Jenna Rae and tenor James Anderson.

The concerts are as varied and full of contemporary composers’ works as they were in former years. Melinda Wagner is composer-in-residence for the summer; her Four Settings for soprano and ensemble will be heard in a program of “Emily Dickinson’s poetry in music and dance,” on July 23 at Peterborough.

On the following weekend, July 30-31, “Vox Americana” presents music of William Billings, Robert Beaser, and Dvorák, then Amy Beach, Aaron Copland, Gordon Getty, and Marion Bauer, in “Emily and New England.”

Other composers, many contemporary, whose works will be heard in various programs include Charles Koechlin and John Tavener, Amy Beach and Max Reger, Kaija Saariaho and Toru Takemitsu, André Previn and Eric Moe, Pierre Jalbert, Andrew Earle Simpson, Dahl, Schnittke, William Grant Still, Alberto Ginastera and Yu-Hui Chang, Bryan Christian, Daniel Brewbaker, and Thomas Àdes.

Ticketed concerts are held most commonly at the Peterboro Town House and the Jaffrey Center Meetinghouse.

The season opens on July 7 with the Choir of St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge, in English Renaissance music at Jaffrey Center, where Nicholas Kitchen will play Bach on July 10 and the Chiara Quartet, “Chamber Masterpieces” on July 24. The full Borromeo String Quartet, a favorite of many Boston concert-goers, is giving several concerts, on July 13, 15, and 16 in Hancock, Francestown, and Peterborough.

One concert theme is Emily Dickinson, another, Americana. Quite a selection. Quite a testament to the Bolle’s legacy for Monadnock Music. Truth be told, it is difficult to single out attractive programs. Readers are advised to check it out in BMInt’s “Upcoming Events” or by going to Mondanock Music’s website.

Steven Drury at last year's SICPP (Andrew Hurbut photo)

New England Conservatory’s Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP, aka Sick Puppy) has established itself as one of the most prolific contemporary music festivals the East Coast has to offer. Running from June 18-25, the festival offers a multifaceted program for composers, instrumentalists, and vocalists through participant ensembles, master classes, and workshops in electronic music and performance. Artistic Director Stephen Drury has assembled a notable faculty of distinguished composers and performers, making participation in this festival a coveted experience for enthusiastic contemporary performers and emerging composers alike.

But the big perk for the rest of us music lovers is an action-packed week of performances by Drury’s Callithumpian Consort and the festival musicians. Starting on Monday, June 20, Jordan Hall and Brown Hall will host a concert every evening, featuring faculty composers and performers. The unique daily concerts will include premieres of works by Tristan Murail (the festival’s composer-in-residence), John Luther Adams, and Nicholas Vines, and a diverse array of works by Fredereic Rzewski, John Corigliano, Joshua Fineberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tamar Diesendruck, Lei Liang, Charles Wuorinen, John Zorn, and more.

The concerts on Monday and Wednesday both feature performances by the Callithumpian Consort. Drury himself will perform Zorn’s fay ce que vouldras. But perhaps one of the most anticipated evenings of the series will be Wednesday’s concert, at which the ensemble features resident composer Tristan Murail. He is one of the world’s most celebrated living composers, known primarily as one of the innovators behind the compositional practice, Spectralism. In addition to a performance of Le Lac will be the world premiere of Lachrymae, composed for the Callithumpians. Also on the program is the virtuosic Territoires de l’oubil, to be performed by William Fried; Okanagon by Giacinto Scelsi, who had a profound influence on Murail’s unique style; and Counterfactual by Boston’s own Joshua Fineberg, protégé of Murail

On Tuesday evening, pianist Ursula Oppens, a bona fide contemporary music legend, will be performing Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated, for which she received one of her three Grammy nominations, as well as Corigliano’s Etude Fantasy and Wuorinen’s Oros, both of which were commissioned and premiered by Oppens in the last couple of years.

Thursday’s performance includes a performance of Stockhausen’s Kontakte, with Drury at the piano and percussionist Stuart Gerber; Gerber’s ties with the composer are sure to guarantee a stalwart performance. Also on the program is the Boston premiere of Four Thousand Holes by John Luther Adams, who has recently been in town as a visiting lecturer at Harvard.

Friday’s performance features musicians Corey Hamm, Yukiko Takagi, Jessi Rosinski, Stuart Gerber, Karina Fox, and Martin Stragier in a program featuring the faculty musicians as soloists.

The festival culminates on Saturday, June 25, with the SICPP Iditarod, a six-hour-plus marathon concert. In addition to performances of works by the festival’s composition fellows, they also will perform works by Saariaho, Stockhausen, Carter, Schnittke, Hurel, Grisey, Xenakis, Cage, Wolff, Foss, Crumb, Kurtag, and Scelsi, as well as more music by Murail, and Steve Reich’s masterwork Music for Eighteen Musicians. The Iditarod will also feature the premiere performance of New England Drift, commissioned by Callithumpian Consort and SICPP composed by 2009 SICPP fellow Lee Weisert.

All these concerts are free and open to the public. And with such a broad and inclusive collection of contemporary milestones, Sick Puppy’s upcoming concert series is one not to be missed.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

Nikola Tesla with Chorus of Bees (Keith Collier photo)

Juventas New Music Ensemble gave the opening performance of their 2011 Opera Project, Light and Power, on Thursday evening, May 19, at the Cambridge YMCA Theater in Cambridge. The full length, two-act opera takes an interesting spin on the story of Nikola Tesla and his interactions with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and George Westinghouse. What makes the narrative really effective is how the story, told in reverie as Tesla’s lab is burning down, shifts between his own interpretations of his contemporaries and a bizarre, science-fiction-esque internal dialog with Nova, a “cyborgian hive queen” (as described by librettist Jillian Burcar and presumably meaning a merger of human and technology).  One of the really refreshing elements about this production was that, unlike what seems to be the norm of many modern operas, the breaking of time and the shifting between reality and abstraction was handled with a careful sense of clarity. The collaboration between Burcar and composer Isaac Schankler was very evident; one got the sense that the entire production was bound to a unified vision. This is no easy feat for operas that have been produced hundreds of times, let alone a world premiere.

Schankler’s music is extraordinarily eclectic – where traditional operatic roles may have themes or motifs associated with characters, Schenkler attached entire musical idioms to them. The mystical Nova character (Christine Teeters, soprano) is given some spectralist qualities to her music, while the idiom for Edison (Davron Monroe, tenor) leaped into ragtime. All of the music was masterfully composed. The divergences of styles were effectively informed by both the tradition of opera and the tradition of the American musical. The use of electronics, varied and sensitive, was always complementary to the musical drama. There were also more than a few musical surprises: interesting uses of musical shifting between disarray and uniformity, as well as “phasing” in the chorus parts. Other highlights (which may also have been under the influence of Steve Reich) were scenes where the instruments mimicked the actors’ speech patterns. It was very effective with Barratt Park’s presidential speech, less so with Henry Ford’s character later in the act.

Chelsea Beatty as Nikola Tesla (Keith Collier photo)

The performances of Chelsea Beatty and Christine Teeters played off each other extremely well. Beatty’s performance was a well-rounded package – her quality vocal performance was enhanced by a captivating stage presence and convincing body language – whereas Teeters’s enrapturing, powerful voice alone was simply a show stealer: as much of a spectacle as were her and her Chorus of Bees’s outlandish costumes. Monroe portrayed Edison with wry charisma, complemented by the contrastingly shy character of Ford, played by Rachel Selan. The chorus and the pit, under the direction of Lidiya Yankovskaya, also deserve special commendation.

What is perhaps most impressive about this entire production is the scope. While there were not any substantial set changes in the opera and the staging was confined to a relatively limited space, the costumes, set, lighting, and stage direction were all quite elaborate. With the recent emergence of a handful of low-budget, grassroots-based opera companies in the area, one can justifiably question the ability of a contemporary music chamber ensemble to successfully take on such a monumental project. Juventas’s success is undoubtedly by virtue of the dozens of production staff members, many who volunteer, that have a passion about what they are doing. It is comforting to know that there are not only outlets for the premiering of new operatic works, but that there’s a receptive and enthusiastic base of supporters to bring these works to life with quality and authenticity. Light and Power will be running at the Cambridge YMCA Theater all weekend.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

John Harbison’s Songs America Loves to Sing, co-commissioned by the ensemble in 2004, sets ten well-known traditional songs (senza singer) for pierrot ensemble —flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. The piece is inspired by the (perhaps lost) family ritual of singing traditional songs around the piano. In a similar sentimental way, the piece engages a large amount of the American musical canon. The opening number, a setting of Amazing Grace, embellishes the familiar tune in the flute, played with sensitivity by Christina Smith. Toying with the tonality of the original tune, the song meditates on the overtone series with lifting piano lines and cello harmonics. Much of the cycle operates on the fringe of tonality reminiscent of Charles Ives, shifting within a wide and beautifully nebulous spectrum between consonance and dissonance. Some of the songs, such as Canon: St. Louis Blues dive head first into the gospel/blues idiom, albeit with a good deal of added complexity. The musicians, especially pianist Paula Peace, were able to step successfully out of the typical rigidity of chamber playing to portray convincingly the movements that were a bit more c aricaturish in nature. Clarinetist Laura Ardan’s playing in the cadenza-like Solo: Poor Butterfly was a particularly revealing moment of exceptional writing married with captivating performance. Anniversary Song ends the set with the instrumentalists all playing harmonicas, repeating the melancholy tune with a certain unexpected quirkiness.

The ensemble then treated us to the Boston premiere of Michael Gandolfi’s Canzona Nova: Fractured Fairy Tale, which was commissioned just this season by the Atlanta Chamber Players. The piece (scored for oboe, string trio, and piano) is a fast-paced amalgam of rapidly moving inner-parts and broad lyricism. The piece is saturated with imitation, building off of the sixteenth-century instrumental canzona with surface motion and narrative style; in a brief intro to the performance, Gandolfi described his work as a “pre-sonata piece in a post-sonata world.” While harmonically conservative, Conzona Nova is quite adventurous in its layering of complex rhythms. The piece opens with a visceral energy that remains throughout. Gandolfi cites jazz/rock influences, which were particularly evident as musical themes characterized by expressive, falling triads in the strings were repeated, transposed up a whole-step (a trait more conversant with popular music forms). In one of the most absorbing new pieces I’ve heard lately, the music eventually dissipates into the motoric clockwork of the cello and piano – a truly compelling ending. The musicians, Elizabeth Koch, Justin Bruns, Catherine Lynn, Brad Ritchie, and Paula Peace deserve special note for a meticulous performance. The ensemble skillfully balanced the mechanical precision the piece calls for, while highlighting the piece’s larger gestures and inherent musicality.

Arthur Foote is known for being one of very few late nineteenth-/ early twentieth-century composers to receive his musical training exclusively in America. That said, there seems to be nothing of his style that differentiates it from his European counterparts; he is just as much a product of the European tradition as Brahms or Fuchs. Nonetheless, Piano Quartet in C Major, Opus 23 is an exemplary and sophisticated artifact of late Romanticism. The Scherzo stirred with excited energy, and the Adagio was part to a beguiling interpretation by violinist Justin Bruns. The ensemble gave an inspired performance, and deserves the highest praise for not only championing the music of living composers, but the music of composers whose music they feel is undeservingly disregarded by concert programmers at large.

The program credits support from the National Endowment for the Arts American Masterworks Program, which helps many groups like ACF disseminate their wonderful interpretation of American Composers’ works to audiences around the country. Hopefully we will find that this (and the rest of NEA’s) programs have survived the cuts when the new federal budget is made public.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

Jaime Fatás’s Flamenco sin Limites for solo saxophone opened with a lyrical fantasy, wittily reinforcing the piece’s inner tension between idiomatic Flamenco elements with more free-improvisational style. The first, most abrupt exclamation of this comes as unexpected foot-stomping to interrupt an otherwise timeless and flowing musical surface. The piece was short and sweet, but in its limited duration featured evocative use of timbral trills, short micro-tonal colorations, alongside some more typical harmonies reminiscent of Spanish/Romani styles.

Two pieces for alto sax and cello by the youngest composer on the program, Juan Ruiz, followed Fatás’s solo piece. The more interesting and successful of the two, Avenida la Playa, opened with acrobatic percussive use of the cello, effectively executed by Diana Flores. The sax joined in for a brief, syncopated rhythmic dance that was the entirety of the piece. It seemed restrained, as if more energy was on the page than on the stage, and might have benefited by a more up-tempo performance.

The following piece, Lejanias, opened with an thick, consonant lament ripe with some adept and sensitive use of dynamic contrast but soon transgressed into a series of rather unremarkable pseudo-tonal sequences. Both pieces seemed to inspire (or be inspired by) original poems by the composer included in lieu of program notes, both of which were beautiful pieces of literary art in their own rights.

In Radnofsky’s notes, he professed a recently found affinity for early-twentieth-century Spanish composer Joaquin Turina’s Trio, Op. 35. The piece, originally scored for piano trio, worked well as edited by Radnofsky for flute, sax, and piano. Flutist Marcos Granados and pianist/composer John McDonald joined for the performance. The adapted instrumentation seemed to aid the Prelude and Fugue during duet passages between the flute and saxophone. The color of the wind instruments provided a deeper level of intrigue than the typical homogenous sounds of violin and cello for which the piece was originally scored. Despite its attractive moments and exceptional performance this evening, the majority of the piece is painfully uninventive and falls into timeworn maxims and nearly exhaustive levels of predictability at every barline. In my ear, the piece does little to integrate late-nineteenth-century Spanish popular music into a post-Romantic style, but rather uses popular music’s influence as an excuse for half-baked musical ideas and poorly executed formal structures.

The second half of the concert opened with a far more satisfying exhibition of elegant simplicity. Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileras No. 1 (originally for orchestra and solo cello) received a wonderfully sensitive performance. Set for string quartet and alto sax by Jorge Hoyo and featuring a string section of members of A Far Cry and Discovery Ensemble, this arrangement seemed to be tailored for Radnofsky’s whispery thin, delicate tone. The blend between the quartet and saxophone provided an interesting new perspective in this lush, beautiful piece.

John McDonald’s Reunion in Solos and Duets, five miniatures alternating between solos and duets, were written in celebration of the composer’s chance to again play with Radnofsky (on  flute) and Marcos Granados (as pianist on the Turina and closing pieces by Cristian Yufra); McDonald became acquainted with the other performers in his high-school and college years. The pieces intelligently mingled the two instruments using very limited — but decidedly not limiting! — material from the slow movement of Bach’s fifth Brandenburg Concerto. Featuring palindromic inner solo movements, the set as a whole was mostly characterized by restrained, often meditative developments. As if being suddenly awakened from a trance, the fifth miniature, “Duet: Maestoso” allowed the flute and saxophone to dance excitedly around enticing and erratic rhythms, closing playfully with a satisfying quip for the premiere performance of a truly exceptional piece.

Cristian Yufra’s longer movements, also in a set of five, were characterized by familiar modality and persistent consonance (often to the point of excess). Amancer (Dawn) opened with exuberant Lydian melodies in Radnofsky’s soprano sax. The consistent, regular rhythms of all of the movements were aided by the addition of Juan Ruiz (the multi-talented young composer heard on the first half) playing the bombo leguero, a large Argentine folk drum. The program notes, which were entirely in Spanish (and I shall not let my upbringing in Miami go to waste!) briefly describe the folk roots and inspirations of each of the movements. The playful second one, Ayelen, is dedicated to the composer’s young niece. La fresca was something of an Argentine pastorale. Most of the pieces were enjoyable and understated, if under-stimulating (and perhaps too fatiguing, judging by the unfortunate case of conspicuous snoring from the audience). The quartet of Granados, Radnosky, McDonald, and Ruiz proved a good blend, most effective in the final movement, Desesperación. It contained some of the few moments of the evening that featured the more compelling sort of rhythmic constructions one might expect from a program featuring contemporary Spanish and South American music.

The program as a whole was quite successful, as it allowed Radnofsky and the fine musicians that accompanied him to share their music with a receptive audience. My only grievance (which may, no doubt, be the source of many other audience members’ praise) is that the program offered only a narrow extreme of the spectrum of Spanish and Latin American-influenced contemporary music. I celebrate Kenneth Radnofsky’s right, especially at his level of stature, to commission and perform the types of music he prefers. But in a program boasting multiple world premieres and predominantly newly commissioned works, I would have expected to hear much more music outside of the ultra-conservative vein. Of course, it’s not every performer or concert presenter’s obligation to challenge the audience. But after the concert, I couldn’t help but feel that a the vast majority of Spanish and South-American compositional styles were severely underrepresented.

Ed note: This fine review was received “at the editor’s desk” a week ago, then was transferred to a laptop to be worked on while on-flight from San Francisco. This proved unworkable. From hence this soldier was “hors de combat” for two days and the review in limbo until reclaimed.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

As if the Boston Symphony Orchestra does not have enough problems with the withdrawal of Music Director James Levine, the orchestra now has had to replace an ailing Colin Davis, also canceling due to ongoing health problems, in concerts originally scheduled for April. The first program, scheduled for April 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12, has a new conductor, Johannes Debus, but the program remains the same: Mozart Symphony No. 32, Mozart Clarinet Concerto with soloist BSO Principal Clarinet William R. Hudgins, and Haydn Symphony No. 97.

The second, to be conducted by Stéphane Denève on April 14, 15, and 16, has been changed to Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor”;  Roussel Symphony No. 3; and Ravel La Valse. Soloist in the Beethoven is Jonathan Biss. The pre-concert talk will be given by Jan Swafford, on the composition faculty of Boston Conservatory.

BSO Managing Director Mark Volpe announced today that James Levine will step down as music director as of September 1, 2011. Unclear from the press release is what role Maestro Levine will play in the Tanglewood summer season, though the release does mention ongoing discussions of what role he will play. Assistant Conductor Marcelo Lehninger is to lead the BSO concerts in the upcoming set of concerts.

Appointed one of the two assistant conductors by BSO Music Director James Levine, Lehninger has earned a reputation as “gifted conductor” following his highly praised debut in 2007 as cover conductor for the National Symphony Orchestra’s subscription concerts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He made his debut with the BSO in a concert last October reviewed here by Peter Van Zandt Lane, who wrote, “Across the entire program, audience response was overwhelmingly positive, and Lehninger’s conducting was assured and unfaltering.”

Most of Lehninger’s major conducting venues prior to arriving in Boston were in South America; in the US he has conducted, in addition to the National Symphony, several smaller orchestras.

Lehninger is the second Brazilian to have been appointed to this BSO position. The first was his professor, Eleazar de Carvalho, who shared the position with Leonard Bernstein, under then-BSO conductor Serge Koussevitsky. BMInt reviewed his October 21st debut with the BSO here.

The Birwistle new work for violin and orchestra features Christian Tetzlaff, who will also play in the other two works on the program: the Bartok Violin Concerto No. 2 and the Mozart Rondo in C for Violin and Orchestra, K. 373. Robert Kirsinger, Assistant Director of Program Publications, Editorial, will be giving the pre-concert talks at all performances: Thursday evening, Friday afternoon, Saturday evening, and Tuesday evening.

Guest artist Yukiko Shimazaki, a young free-lance pianist, played a major role in the concert as the accompanist for all three of the works before intermission, and she and Cambridge Rindge and Latin School student Julian Drummond shared the piano in the last work on the program, by Peter Van Zandt Lane. An enthusiastic and sympathetic performer of new and difficult music, Shimazaki is note-perfect and sensitive to the collaborative effort, but perhaps because the piano lid was slightly raised, her accompaniments were generally too loud and over-pedaled, except in Lane’s larger ensemble.

The pieces by the two youngest composers, both born in 1989, came first. Elizabeth Ogonek’s Three Scarlet Moods (2006) for clarinet (Diane Heffner) and piano comprised three mellow movements with very little dissonance. “Shades of Red,” with its slow tactus, in which the clarinet continually alternated high and low pitches — with which Heffner was spot on — was sonorous, the piano accompanying the clarinet with little other interaction. The “Tango” was also slow, mostly in tango rhythm, with nice noodles from Heffner and a solo cadenza. “Redlight” suggested traffic, vignettes of stop and go. The next composition, Stephen Feigenbaum’s Tread (2009), for viola (Ann Black) and piano, a Boston première, played with repeated notes that were buried in different harmonies and jagged rhythms, yet sweetly resolving dissonances, ending in an open cadence on the fifth.  Black’s performance was, as always, superb.

Michael Djupstrom’s Walimai (2005) for clarinet and piano, also a Boston première, was inspired by a short story of that title by Isabel Allende in her collection, Cuentos de Eva Luna (published in Barcelona in 1989), about a tribesman living deep in the rainforest. It is atmospheric — beginning very softly and nebulously, rising to raging dissonances, softening at the end — and extremely difficult to perform. Heffner tapped her foot to the slow tactus and exhibited amazing dexterity and breath control, especially for the tough requirements at the end.

The second half of the program opened with another Boston première, by the oldest composer of the evening, Du Yun, who was born in 1977. She is a member of the Composition faculty at SUNY Purchase. Her morsel.eroding (2003) is a musical Haiku for bass and E-flat clarinets and tam-tam. (Geezers of a certain age refer to this instrument as “the J. Arthur Rank.”) Katherine V. Matasey and Robert Schulz were the amazing performers, seemingly effortlessly shifting among the special techniques required. In particular, Matasey’s facile sliding, not only into variable pitches but into multiple octaves, was remarkable. Schulz was not required to strike the tam-tam but rather to play on it with various brushes and wires, with which he was able to make lovely phrases. Like a haiku, the piece appeared in relatively short sections that just were — they didn’t need to “go” anywhere.

Every composer at some point is drawn toward writing music for a solo instrument, either because such a piece is requested by a colleague or a student or because the task presents a particular challenge or set of problems that the composer wants to solve. Clint Needham’s Viola Music (2004), also a Boston première, was performed with grace and confidence by Anne Black. There are three movements: “Perpetual Motion & [long] Cadenza”;  “Song,” which doesn’t sound very much like one with its wide intervals and some long silences; and “Scherzo,” full of rhythmic drive, lots of double-stops burbling like a waterfall one after the other, and a rather frantic ending.

As the last work, the program featured a world première of a work for the ensemble’s core musicians, flutist Hershman-Tcherepnin, clarinetist Matasy, percussionist Schulz, violist Black, cellist Michael Curry, and Yu-Hui Chang, Co-Artistic Director, and conductor, together with young guest performers flutist Phoebe Reuben, clarinetist Katie Armstrong, and pianists Julian Drummond and Shimazaki. Entitled Beacons, it was commissioned from composer Peter Van Zandt Lane, a doctoral student at Brandeis University who is also Dino’s general manager and a BMInt reviewer. Lane wrote in the program notes that he was fascinated with the idea of students and professionals performing side by side, and hence the instrumentation; only the percussionist and cellist have no partners. The work is divided into three movements, “Daybeacon,” “Relays,” and “Lights,” each with a different character and all having something to do with light on water — one had the sense of being in the presence of color-pictures. All three movements, Lane wrote, were “saturated with imitation,” perhaps in the tradition of Haydn’s piano duet, Il maestro e lo scolare (“the master and the student”), but certainly not as clearly enunciated. According to Lane, the students start out imitating the professionals, but the professionals end up imitating the students. In any case, Chang’s conducting gestures were clear and vigorous, which the ensemble had no trouble following. Lane has a good ear not only for instrumentation, but also for spacing that I have noticed before. This was particularly evident in the slower, more consonant third movement that simply sang as it glittered in the light.

A word about the composers’ notes on their music. All music is created as a response to something — a beautiful sunrise, a poem — the possibilities are endless. But when composers are asked much later to write notes about these pieces, they are often baffled, because they may or may not remember the original impulse, or may have moved off in another direction. Usually they are asked for notes that will help the audience “understand” the music. I try very hard not to read them before a concert, because I want to have the fresh experience of responding only to the music itself. I don’t want to be impelled to judge whether or not the composers met their own expectations, assigned after the fact. That said, I found this particular set of notes fascinating because they revealed such a wide range of germinating ideas. May these young composers go far with them.

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

Featured Composer and BMInt Reviewer, Peter Van Zandt Lane

The approach the new music ensemble Dinosaur Annex takes towards immersing curious and talented youth in contemporary performance is critical to the future vitality of new music. It is all too common for the most gifted young performers to progress through advanced instrumental training with little or no inclusion of contemporary music in their repertoires.  Early exposure to the unique challenges, thrills and rewards of collaborating with living composers is the best way to discover and begin training the new music specialists of tomorrow. So Dinosaur Annex presents an annual celebration — this is its eighth — of young composers and performers. This year’s concert, Joyful/Youthful, features new pieces by six composers, Michael Djupstrom, Stephen Feigenbaum, Peter Van Zandt Lane, Clint Needham, Elizabeth Ogonek, and Du Yun.  The concert is on Sunday, January 30, at 7:30 pm., at Goethe-Institut in Back Bay, Boston.

Co-Artistic Director, Sue-Ellen Hershman-Tcherepnin explained that each year Dinosaur Annex commissions “a special composer to write a piece just for the young composer’s concert. That piece involves young children, as well as professionals, sitting side by side, working together, playing. It’s always a very big thrill for the kids.” This year’s commission, Beacons, by Peter Lane (who is also one of BMInt’s reviewers), showcases three high school students, Katie Armstrong (clarinet), Julian Drummond (piano), and Phoebe Reuben (flute), as well as guest pianist Yukiko Shimazaki. As Lane writes in his program notes, Beacons exploits the opportunity for “dialogues between the student-professional duets that this instrumentation provided: two flutes, two clarinets, and two pianists… The piece, divided into three connected movements, is saturated with imitation within these groups… [t]he imitative writing elicits the professional leading the student early in the piece, and transforms into the student leading the professional by the end.” The inspired narrative of Lane’s piece promises an additional layer of intrigue as well as a pertinent metaphor.

Discussing the program as a whole, which features four other Boston premieres by emerging composers, Hershman-Tcherepnin added that for her, “this is always the most exciting event of our season.  It is an opportunity to hear these people who are full of enthusiasm, new ideas…you never know what they’re going to come up with! We thought maybe we knew all the weirdest ways of playing our instruments, non-traditional ways, and the next thing you know, someone’s coming up with something even more unusual.  And you’ll hear some of that at this concert!”

Preceding the concert, at 6:30 p.m., several of the composers will participate in Cross Talk, a pre-concert dialog. The talk will be moderated by Dinosaur Annex’s Co-Artistic Director, composer Yu-Hui Chang, who will also conduct Lane’s Beacons.

David Dominique is a composer living in Somerville, Massachusetts.  He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The New York-based quintet, Imani Winds, performed an eclectic array of mostly 20th- and 21st-century works at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Sunday, Nov. 7. The concert experience given by Imani Winds is without doubt linked to the group’s enormous success as a touring and recording chamber ensemble. While performing a substantial program of relentlessly difficult music, the group constantly engaged the audience in informal discussion on the pieces – thus bringing the aesthetic approach to wind music from Elliot Carter to as comparable a level of audience accessibility as Piazzolla.

The only pre-20th-century piece on the program was an arrangement of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream “Scherzo.” The arrangement still contained some modern flair, since the piece concentrates a tremendous amount of busy figuration from a larger ensemble into five instruments, with seemingly no downscaling of complexity. Flutist Valerie Coleman was hardly given a single chance to breathe in this arrangement, but lost none of her vibrancy along the way. The group displays an exciting sense of unity: a special, virtuosic kind of unity that teeters between feeling organic and mechanical, which was an unfailing virtue of the performances throughout the program.

Jason Moran’s Cane revealed some of the top-notch music that Imani Wind’s commissioning efforts are contributing to the wind quintet repertoire. The programmatic narrative of the piece followed the story of Marie Thérèse Metoyer or “Coincoin,” a freed slave who became a successful businesswoman and an icon of Créole culture in Louisiana. Moran’s connection to Coincoin goes beyond that of regional influence, as he is in fact one of her descendants. The style of the first three movements were largely characterized by shifting contrapuntal rhythmic textures underneath alluring melodies. The piece moves forward at a swift rate, having at least some grounding in post-minimalist techniques. The final movement wails in a contrasting, loose Dixieland idiom.

The two following works represented more established (though I dare say not quite as engaging) examples of the 20th-century chamber wind literature. Nielsen’s Neoclassical, pseudo-romantic Quintet for Winds has become a standard for wind quintets everywhere. The ensemble breathed color and life into the piece, and the tone of horn player Jeff Scott and bassoonist Monica Ellis fused nicely. But the variations, despite even the most extraordinary performances, are rather non-stimulating. Elliott Carter’s Quartet, a very early piece of the composer’s career, explores very limiting musical ideas over eight short etudes. The etudes sometimes feel like quirky composition exercises, but the closing movement delightfully pulls all of the materials together in a Fantasy that exhibits Carter’s colossal facility for counterpoint and convincing development.

Derek Bermel’s Wanderings integrates Jewish and Muslim influences into its first movement. West African rhythms are the root of the second movement, “Two Songs from Nandom.” There seemed to be little material that ties the two movements together, which was perhaps the motivation for the title. The first movement, “Gift of Life,” contained some interesting effects, and clarinetist Mariam Adam seemed completely comfortable with the Yiddish stylizations demanded by the piece. Interestingly, the bassoon was even asked to bend pitches in Klezmer fashion, which made for some really interesting ensemble sounds. The piece barely scratches the surface of the cultural dichotomies it claims to engage, but works quite well on a purely musical level.

Closing the concert was horn player Jeff Scott’s arrangement of Piazzolla’s Libertango. In addition to being a talented instrumentalist, Scott shows deft facility for orchestrating for the finicky medium that is the wind quintet. Coleman once again danced the off-axis tango melodies with virtuosic spectacle. Ellis’s tone and dynamic control was deserving of awe, as was the agility of oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz. Libertango was a fun, high-energy close to an exceptional performance.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The performances were supplemented by panel discussions between pieces. Panelists on Thursday included composer Alex Rehding and science historians Jimena Canales and Myles Jackson.  While each of the discussions was informative and interesting, I think most would have preferred the traditional format: panel discussions and presentations pre-concert, with uninterrupted music. Murail’s Treize couleurs du soleil couchant, a landmark composition in the establishing of the spectralist aesthetic, shifts through thirteen coloristic musical frames. The only electronic manipulation used in the piece involves adjustments in the level of amplification and slight changes to the reverberant space of individual instruments. The resulting effect, however, is wildly more electronic sounding.  In particular, there is an enormous demand on the part of the flautist. Jessi Rosinski’s level of control and musicality was quite remarkable, and brought a heightened level of cohesion to the textures masterfully orchestrated by Murail.

Kaija Saariaho’s Lonh was the most recently composed piece on the program (1996). Saariaho, who is largely influenced by the music of spectralists Murail and Grisey, explores various timbres of the soprano voice in this piece.  Jane Sheldon’s potent, forceful voice was a perfect match for this piece.  The live electronic manipulation diffused haunting timbres around the room, shifting in and out of the dense texture of the voice. Whispers bounced around the speakers, while crystalline strands of Sheldon’s immaculately controlled upper register dissipated into impossibly transforming acoustical spaces. The narrative of the piece is beautifully handled, and the performance was convincing.

Grisey’s Prologue takes a solo viola on a long-winded linear journey from a fairly simple sequence of pitches towards noise (sub-tones and bow-screeching). The program notes describe the piece as a study in the timbral limits of a single instrument, though I found the actual timbral limits of this piece to be fairly limited. The repetitive, slowly varying nature of the piece allowed for little expressive use of the instrument’s acoustic and dynamic possibilities. Instead, the repetitive music integrates microtones (derived from the harmonic series), which elicited some interesting moments. While Nathaniel Farny gave an accurate and motivated performance of the very difficult and technically demanding music, the piece was quite one-dimensional, and at times rather dull.

The Heavenly Spheres are Illuminated By Lights by Japanese composer Somei Satoh featured some fine playing by percussionist Aaron Trant and pianist Cory Smythe and some more great singing by soprano Jane Sheldon. The piece was characterized by a number of truly beautiful textures and took a very different aesthetic approach from the other pieces on the program. The piece undoubtedly has, due to its minimalist influence and generally consonant set of sound environments, a much wider appeal. Unfortunately it was a rather short period of time before I got the impression the text was simply marinating in a set of lugubrious, euphoric textures. The music did little (if anything) interesting after the exposition of these sounds. The result was an unusually long twelve minutes.

Sargasso Arts, the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard, and Firebird Ensemble deserve commendation for taking contemporary music into a new and interesting venue.  While composers like Murail and Grisey have become iconic figures in many ways, their music remains rarely programmed and even more rarely performed well.  And despite being presented in an ultra-cerebral environment, much of the music was intriguing and beautiful.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

Pinchas Zukerman with levitating Marcelo Lehninger (Stu Rosner photo)

Newly appointed Assistant Conductor Marcelo Lehninger made his BSO debut in Symphony Hall on Thursday evening, October 21, at the opening concert of a series featuring works by Barber, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky. The program featured soloist Pinchas Zukerman for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, Op. 61. Considering the current circumstances of the Orchestra, audiences have a higher-than-usual investment in the ability of the new Assistant Conductors. And Lehninger’s debut was undoubtedly met with a meticulous eye. Across the entire program, audience response was overwhelmingly positive, and Lehninger’s conducting was assured and unfaltering.

Barber’s Overture to The School for Scandal opened the program with a sort of modest brilliance that can only be found in the music of Barber. While the non-overture is far from a masterpiece, knowing that it was indeed the composer’s first work for orchestra speaks volumes to Barbers genius. The woodwinds are given a prominent role, and the playing of oboist John Ferrillo and clarinetist William R. Hudgins was particularly noteworthy. Lehninger brought out the quirky moments of the piece with charm, and navigated the swift tempo changes and juxtaposed moods with ease. The piece is a short one, and lead into the much more well-known masterpiece, Beethoveen’s Violin Concerto in D.

Despite having the stage-presence of a rock, Violinist Pinchas Zukerman is a virtuoso with a magnitude of musical sensitivity. The opening movement had some brief awkward moments, but the virtuosity displayed in the first cadenza left nothing to be wanted. The sheer power that Zukerman is able to produce in an otherwise silent hall is beyond me, and, I presume, beyond most violinists. But his real strongpoint is his lyricism, and for this, the Larghetto contained the most effective moments of the concerto. The Rondo was performed masterfully as well, opening up more acrobatic dialogues between the soloist and the orchestra. The dynamic conclusion of the violin concerto was greeted with a standing ovation.

Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 is a visceral and powerfully dynamic beast that gives any orchestra the chance to show its muscle, and is programmed often because of this. That the orchestra is able to create such an immaculately cohesive wall of sound is enough to remind even the patrons in the furthest rear corner why they bought their tickets. Lehninger showed particular care for the details – particularly in the shapely swells that gracefully close off melodic lines in the Andante cantabile. While the Valse left something to be desired in terms of the longer line and was not quite as elegant as it could have been, adrenaline was poured from every inch of the stage into the Finale.

Of course, both the Tchaikovsky and the Beethoven have a fairly ingrained performance tradition, due to their popularity. These aren’t the kind of pieces that demand a conductor re-invent the interpretive wheel. I would even argue that the best display of Lehninger’s chops was during Barber’s Overture, which is by far the least exemplary piece on the concert. Regardless, Lehninger’s work on each of the three pieces was well beyond impressive, and the audience gave him due credit. Followers of the BSO are unquestionably keeping a close and critical eye on its new conductors, and the official verdict is far from out on the newcomer. Nonetheless, it’s both comforting and exciting to see a promising new generation step up to the plate.

Lehninger, Zukerman, and the Boston Symphony repeat this program on Friday at 1:30 pm, and on Saturday and Tuesday at 8 pm.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The first few pieces on the program, representative of the very earliest forms that could be considered madrigals (and generally preceding the use of the term), gave an interesting impression of the genesis of the style. Works by Costanzo Festa, Philippe Verdelot, Cipriano de Rore, and Jaques Arcadelt each had their own unique idiosyncrasies that were strongly suggestive of their roots in the frottola and chanson. Festa’s madrigal showcased the three lower voices of the group, Paul Guttry, Jason McStoots, and Owen McIntosh, who performed the piece valiantly. Countertenor Martin Near’s potent, penetrating voice richly illuminated the melancholy tone of Verdelot’s “Con lagrime.” The opening canon between Near and Owen McIntosh in Arcadelt’s “Solo e pensoso” transpired with enchanting elegance, and a delightfully surprising moment of unison later in the piece was delivered with a sense of energetic character that really injected it with a sense of life. Most of the really gratifying moments appeared in the first four madrigals. Throughout the program the musicians displayed an uncanny ability to translate what was happening musically in to a subtle form of body language; they were really communicating with each other in an intimate way that can only be seen with really small, really skilled choirs.

The Palestrina madrigals were the first pieces in which the full quintet sang.                   Perhaps it is because Palestrina’s secular music still sounds like Palestrina, and it tends to not sound secular, that the well-crafted sense of control and consistency we get from the sacred masses permeates through these works as well. Text setting is handled with an eloquence that is unrivaled by his contemporaries, or composers from any period for that matter, but there’s much less of a sense of compositional adventure that we find in Palestrina’s predecessors. Nonetheless, it was refreshing to hear some of the less-heard pieces from the composer, pieces that elicit less internal debate on Counter-Reformational dogma. It’s clear that the lighter context of the texts used in the early madrigals had at least some effect to loosen Palestrina’s typical rigidity.

It was in the Palestrina madrigals that we really got to enjoy the texture of the full core ensemble. Despite being only five singers, they created a lush texture, with the resonance of bass-baritone Paul Guttry filling out the bottom and Ms. Canavin and Mr. Near accommodating each other’s contrasting tones in moments where they share the same register, interweaving even the most contrapuntal moments with pristine clarity. The performances of the later madrigals, which addressed more religious themes, were done nicely as well, if slightly underwhelming in comparison to some of the other madrigals on the program. Marenzio’s “Non fu mai cervo sì veloce al corso,” near the end of the program, is a rigorous test of endurance for even the most experienced early-music group. The piece, though uncommonly long by madrigal standards, has not a single dull moment. The ensemble navigated through the vocal acrobatics with resolution, and only a faint loss of perseverance was noted near the end of the performance. The final Palestrina number also was performed with a slight sense of exhaustion, but took nothing away from an otherwise excellent evening. Although this was my first concert experience with this group (despite seeing its some of its members often with Blue Heron and some contemporary music ensembles), it seems evident that Exsultemus is unquestionably in the top-tier of Renaissance vocal ensembles in the Northeast.

Exsultemus’s next performance is entitled “A Portuguese Christmas” and is set for December 17th at First Lutheran Church of Boston, showcasing the seldom-performed music from the Iberian Peninsula.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

Pianist Esther Ning Yau has a quiet sense of the dramatic, at least in these three Nocturnes, for the most part performed Lento, as written. Field’s Fifth, in B-flat major (1817), was nicely shaped and phrased, with singing tone, holding back phrase arrivals for emphasis. Barber’s “Homage to John Field,”op. 33 (1959) was thus clearly related to Field’s, with whiffs of atonality delicately played. Chopin’s op. 48, no. 1 (not his first as listed in the program) was a different story. After beginning mezza voce as marked, and after the second repetition of the theme, Yau quickly began a crescendo to fortissimo and stayed there, no doubt due to the thicker texture. Nevertheless the rest of the piece is dotted with pianissimos, and we didn’t hear them.

Barber’s Dover Beach, op. 3, is an early work (1931), an aching setting of the poem by Matthew Arnold written some eighty years earlier. It is written for medium voice, in this case the Visiting Artist and baritone Tom Meglioranza, with string quartet: Paula Majerfeld and Sara Matayoshi, violins, Andrew Eng, viola, and Mikhail Veselov, cello—a mixture of faculty and recent students. In spite of the text’s allusions to moonlight, this is a gloomy piece whose sighings were expressed richly, without being overwrought. Mr. Meglioranza’s dramatic sense reached its apex in his high “Ah,” of “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” This was a dramatic reading in a disciplined yet intense manner on the part of all, and the high point of the concert.

Turning now to Schumann, we heard his Adagio and Allegro, op. 70 (1849) for “Ventilhorn in F” and piano, performed by the BSO’s Jason Snider and the Longy School’s Dean Wayman Chin, respectively. The Adagio is a challenge for hornists because of the broad skips to, and attacks on high notes, to which Snider’s several breaks attested. The Allegro is a rondo with many repeated note patterns that felt more idiomatic. Nevertheless the duo appeared rhythmically uncertain in several phrases.

The remainder of the concert, now after intermission, comprised only the music of Schumann. I hesitate to comment on the selections from Schumann’s Zwölf Gedichte von Kerner, op. 35 (1840), performed by soprano D’Anna Fortunato and pianist Brian Moll, because Ms. Fortunato could scarcely be heard for various reasons, even from a seat relatively close to the stage. As always, however, her singing is a welcome musical experience, and her understanding of the texts deeply expressed. Robert Merfeld’s performance of nine miniatures for piano, Waldscenen, op. 82 was a puzzlement. The fourth scene, “Verrufene Stelle” (Cursed place, per the program note) is prefaced in the score by two verses from Friedrich Hebbel’s Waldbilder (Forest pictures). Merfeld took it upon himself to read that and five other poems in English before each piece, his voice projecting to the wall on stage left instead of to the audience. His performing palette was pallid and stumbling, and suffered from too many wrong notes, especially at the ends of phrases

The concert ended with a lively performance of Schumann’s Drei Gedichte von Geibel, op. 30 (1840), by Messrs. Meglioranza and Chin. Mr. Meglioranza had to strain a bit because the piano lid was fully opened, while Dean Chin was fully in the boisterous spirit of these pieces, “Der Knabe mit dem Wunderhorn,” “Der Page,” and “Der Hidalgo.” Nevertheless, Mr. Meglioranza’s diction, as always, was excellent, and both performers managed to provide an upbeat finish to an otherwise somewhat doleful concert.

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

Each of the four pieces was played in succession without pause.  Instrumentalist changes were seamlessly executed during the overlap between pieces. And between the murmur of people downstairs and in other parts of the in the museum, the general atmosphere of the Gardner’s tapestry room, and the relaxed approach to the selected music, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of nostalgia for the Downtown scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s (if it is possible to feel nostalgia for a scene that existed decades before I was born).  John Luther Adams’s Songbirdsongs meditated on lush, quiet drones and various birdcalls mimicked by various instruments.  Even with the compromises imposed this particularly quiet piece by the noise of the venue, the performance of the piece summoned an ethereal beauty, eliciting a setting of nature that only very few composers can persuasively and authentically produce.

The performance morphed into Lou Harrison’s early Suite for cello and harp, as haunting textured and birdcalls were replaced by soft, pulsing modalities and repetitive cello lines. The Suite is hardly representative of what we generally expect to hear from one of Harrison’s pieces: it uses neither alternative tuning systems nor traditional Javanese instruments. The simplicity and objectivity of the piece was immaculately captured by harpist Franzisca Huhn and cellist Benjamin Schwartz, as the cyclic piece contained itself within bookends of the poetic Chorale.

As the piece came to a close, instrumentalists from within the aisles stood, and all I could think was, Oh no, not another contrived adaptation of a piece with musicians standing around the audience. Despite what at first seemed a gimmick, the quintessence of James Tenney’s Swell Piece fit perfectly with the performance approach.  The piece is notated only as directions to the performers to play any pitches they choose in slow swells.  The surreal effect the surrounding performers had on this concept was nothing short of enrapturing, but the piece seemed to be over before it began.

Closing with the longest performance of the evening (though not nearly as long as many renditions) was the most compelling performance of Terry Riley’s In C I have yet to hear (including some widely circulated recordings by Bang on a Can and a number of other performances I’ve played in myself).  The pacing of In C is the key, and it is what differentiates true, convincing performances from underwhelming, indiscriminate ‘jam sessions’ on the piece.  Subtleties –such as how Philipp Stäudlin emerged and submerged the bright tone of the soprano sax into the texture, and how violinist Ethan Wood chose the absolute perfect time to highlight the harmonic motion of the piece (yes, there is indeed harmonic motion in In C) with an appropriate change from viola to mandolin–are what made this performance shine.

It is true that many ensembles in town will veer away from this music because it is not representative of New England’s general musical climate, or that the music is “too easy”.  But this, I think, is a clear example of what happens to conceptually simple music when a serious performance rigor is applied: powerful music that is appealing, convincing, and (despite its extremism in musical economy) consistently absorbing.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

This was a mostly enjoyable concert, so let’s get our complaints over with first. One, Killian Hall is not a very felicitous venue for several reasons, but in this program its poor sight lines made a lot of the action by dancers and musicians inaccessible to much of the audience; it is also a hot, stuffy, and airless room. Two, the concert was overlong, with eight pieces, each of which required setup time, tuning, and so forth. Three, while we are grudgingly acclimating to the inevitable welcomes and announcements that accompany concert performances these days (and which, in our view, render them a bit less professional in tone), we’re not sure why Juventas chose to have each piece introduced with commentary, when whatever was supplemental to the program notes could simply have been added to them — or is this one of those generational differences we written-word types just don’t get?

Okay, so now to the meat of the matter (sorry, sorry). The program began with Breath, by Greek composer Phivos Kollias. The idea, elaborately conveyed by his overwrought program note, was to invoke the physical connection between players and their instruments by using audible breath as an expressive element. There was also a bit about positioning sounds in space, which is basically to say that the music offers a variety of note densities, both horizontal and vertical. The music itself is fortunately better than the note would lead you to expect, heavy breathing and all. The tympani introduce an elemental figure in fourths and fifths, and the strings contrast scurrying linear patterns. This was one of the works choreographed for the occasion, and while we confess that dance is not our métier, the choreography and its execution seemed well suited to the music, both as echo and commentary. The ensemble, which was well prepared and alert to the work’s essential perkiness, consisted of Lisa Park and Sara Matayoshi, violins, Russell Wilson, viola, Rachel Arnold, cello, Peter Ferretti, bass and Brian Calhoon, percussion, ably led by Music Director Lidiya Yankovskaya, who breathed her last to conclude the work, yet miraculously lived to conduct again. The corps de ballet comprised choreographer Kate Ladenheim, Dave Glista, and Jessica Davison.

There followed one of the outliers on the program, Transverse Fractures for flute and piano by Peter Van Zandt Lane. Full disclosure: Mr. Lane is a colleague of ours here at BMInt and also at Dinosaur Annex, where he is general manager. The music for this work is, he tells us, salvaged from an earlier piece. We’re glad he took the trouble to rework it, as it is very attractive, much more so than his program note. (Unsolicited advice to composers: program notes are not your dissertation; just tell us what to look out for and maybe a little about how it’s put together.) In the event, Mr. Lane has put together a handsome ABA work, fast-slow-fast, though we suspect he has not yet found his own distinctive voice. Flutist Zachary Jay and pianist Julia Scott Carey carried it off well.

Juraj Kojs’s VIII for piano and pianist gave a whole new meaning to the word “toccata.” The pitched musical content of this essentially percussion piece (actually a series of pieces, per the title and program note, though they were all, um, played, um, attacca) is negligible — a passage from Bach (later a few notes of Beethoven), and then a series of explorations: circumambulating  the piano, touching it in a variety of ways: rapping on the keyboard lid (with and without pedal) and case, stroking the strings, brushing the keys, etc., down to the grand finale of polishing it with a rag. We can think of this charitably — and who knows, maybe even accurately — as a satirical take on the performer-instrument interface. Those of us who lived through the ’60s have seen it all before and mostly wish it would stay in its grave. Alas, those who do remember Santayana are forever condemned to repeat him. Pianist Ian Garvie kept a poker face and dignified mien throughout, and his Bach was pretty good.

The first half of the concert concluded with Brian Mark’s String Quartet No. 2, dating from 2005 and thus the oldest work on the program. It is a conventionally laid out three-movement work, with inspiration drawn from San Francisco (down to the fog) and the composer’s states of mind there — the program note describing all this is so self-referential it is a classic in deadpan humor (example: “The first movement…is energetic and agitated since at that time Brian Mark was looking forward to writing a string quartet…”). The musical development, attractive and intelligible, comes right out of the Classical-Romantic playbook; we’d love to hear it again. The last movement, “Dance,” was choreographed by Gerald Watson and danced by him and Marlee Couto, though in this case we were unsure what this added to the music. The quartet consisted of Mesd. Park and Matayoshi, violins, Mr. Wilson, viola, and Ms. Arnold, cello, who all gave a persuasive, transparent and seemingly accurate reading.

The second half began well with the local première of Panamanian-born Andres Carrizo’s Por el momento for Pierrot ensemble and percussion. Its gestures include the juxtaposition of a fierce chord and sustained note against a proto-melody in the piano. The working-out furnishes a pleasantly diverse array of sound styles. There were many “special effects,” especially for piano, but these often went unheard due to dense textures and volume in the other parts. All the individual performers were secure and effective in their parts: Mr. Jay, flute; Tun-Man Ho, clarinet; Ms. Park, violin, Mr. Wilson, viola, Ms. Arnold, cello; Ms. Carey, piano, and Mr. Calhoon, percussion. Conducting was Mr. Garvie, who kept everything together and moving, but who could have paid better attention to the sound balance.

Boston composer William Zuckerman’s Subcutaneous Salvation for two pianos (Mesd. Carey and Yankovskaya) was choreographed and danced by Giulia Pline. The agreeable music has fragrances of jazz, rock, modalism, and pentatonicism, and sometimes suggests Poulenc and other times William Schuman. We were not fully persuaded by the musical progression to the promised salvation; we were quite perplexed by the choreography, which seemed often to contradict the musical development.

Tango Variations by Israeli Noam Faingold, was arranged by the composer for cello (Ms. Arnold) and bass (Mr. Ferretti) from an original for two basses. The motivating force here is a sound one: to take a tango, disassemble and refract it. The first movement limns a tango such as “a young Webern’s Tango would sound like.” The second movement (some confusion here: the composer’s note describes three movements, the program lists only two) takes fragments and, pace the term variation, develops them. Alas, the composer, who claims South American roots, has sacrificed the elemental force of the tango’s (or even Piazzolla’s New Tango’s) rhythmic and harmonic vitality to an unnecessarily objectified and desiccated abstraction. The performers made all the right moves, but we were bemused more than moved by the output.

The finale of the program was Canadian composer Nicolas Tzortzis’s What the Wave Meant, which deals with a somber matter indeed, the death at age 27 of fellow Canadian composer Andrew Svoboda. We found it curious that this, unlike most of the works on the program, was not choreographed, though it might have benefited greatly from dance expression. The music was mostly sere and fittingly expressive of typically contradictory responses to death. The opening evokes both the chaos at the beginning of Haydn’s Creation and the keening of Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. There are passages of passion and quiet frenzy; the closing, Kubler-Ross notwithstanding, tells of anger. The composer’s technique requires considerable ugliness of string sonority, as well as slow descending glisses. The execution was all excellent, with a standout flute cadenza by Mr. Jay, with Mr. Ho on clarinet, Shaw Pong Liu, violin, Mr. Wilson, viola, Ms. Arnold, cello, and Ms. Scott, piano, all under Ms. Yankovskaya’s baton. At the end of a very long program, we were left unsure of our reaction to the piece, other than to note its obvious sincerity.

Vance R. Koven studied music at Queens College and New England Conservatory, and law at Harvard. A composer and practicing attorney, he was for many years the chairman of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble.

BMInt’s own Rebecca Marchand addressed this very issue in her eloquent and informative pre-concert lecture “Isn’t it Romantic?. . . Or is it?” that quelled any raised eyebrows that may potentially have been brought on by the 50-percent 20th-century series’ tagline, The Romantic Spirit.  A certain likeness in imagination and gesture, however, did become clear throughout the evening, and it was refreshing to hear both Schumann and Barber in a different context than their usual settings. The program began with Schumann’s Fantasiestücke Op.73, originally for cello and piano, performed brilliantly by clarinetist Michael Wayne and pianist Hugh Hinton.  Wayne’s lyricism in the “Zart und mit Ausdruck” was darkly arresting, and the “Rasch und mit Feuer” danced with animated virtuosity.

Baritone Kyle Siddons, accompanied by pianist Mark McNeill, performed Barber’s Three Songs based on James Joyce texts; Siddons sung “I Hear an Army” with the power and booming resonance necessary to deliver the text convincingly. Pianists Eda Shlyam and Ludmilla Lifson followed with Schumann’s Andante und Variationen, Op. 46. The piece was originally written for two pianos, two cellos, and horn but is more often performed in its piano-duet version. The abilities of Lifson and Shlyam really shone through in some of the fast-paced and mind-bogglingly difficult later variations, but the true apex of the piece, perhaps even the entire evening, was the delicate, elegiac coda after the following final statement of the theme.

Barber’s Cello Sonata is undoubtedly one of his most celebrated and performed works for small ensemble. It is also one that seems most reminiscent of late Romanticism, despite its somewhat mundane conformityto Classical-era forms. Mihail Jojatu’s immense talent was indisputable in his performance, though it seemed that his full-fledged, relentless intensity, despite being poignantly informed by the piece’s stylistic roots, robbed the piece of its more fragile moments and set the dynamic of the work into a shallower relief than I would have liked.

Dimitri Murrath concluded the evening with Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in D minor, Op. 121, performed on viola.  The Lento, con Energia is likely twice as impressive on viola as it is on violin, though there were unquestionable compromises when the viola was forced into an uncomfortable upper register. Throughout the performance, though, Murrath handled these compromises well, and at some of the more of delicate moments of the piece, such as the Simplice and parts of the following variation movement, the distinct color of the viola seemed even more appropriate than violin. Unfortunately, the finale began to lose steam and the pianist and violist seemed to loose their sense of solidarity. The final moments of the concert were regrettably plagued by a number of cringes, as there was no doubt that the performance quality faltered towards the end of the program. Nonetheless, with such attractive programming and consummate musicians on board, it is no wonder the concert events for the rest of Longy’s SeptemberFest are already completely sold out.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

Since 1996, oboist Peggy Pearson has been directing Winsor Music, which in addition to regularly programming chamber music performances in Brookline also commissions new chamber works by some of the most prolific American composers alive today. On Sunday evening, April 25, The Winsor Quartet (Peggy Pearson, oboe; Randy Hiller, violin; Drew Ricciardi, viola; Tony Rymer, cello) featured some refreshing interpretations of Beethoven and Bach as well as the Boston premiere of Peter Lieberson’s cycle, The Coming of Light, with some top-tier local instrumentalists and singers. Among the lists of featured musicians were tenor Frank Kelley, baritone Sumner Thomson, soprano Kasey Fahy, and the Boston Children’s Chorus led by director Anthony Trecek-King.

Beethoven’s Quintet in C major, Op. 29 represents one of the rare moments in musical history when one can actually hear a composer’s stylistic voice evolve, a sort of aesthetic hiccup, within the context of a single piece. As with many of the Classical pieces that Winsor performs, this piece was arranged to include the oboe — for the most part, replacing a violin. Not being a purist of any sort, I found the integration of the oboe into the ensemble gives a beautiful new timbral element to the piece and illuminates some of the inner-voice counterpoint with an interesting coloristic gleam. The “Allegro moderato” and the “Adagio” have more elements in common with Beethoven’s earlier period. The playing of the “Allegro” was a bit too tense and rigid, and that of the “Adagio,” though exhibiting an impressive degree of control and expression, especially in Hiller’s wonderfully emotive solo moments, lost some of its confidence towards the end of the movement.

The “Scherzo: Allegro” contains some of the first examples of a darker complexity that ultimately defines Beethoven’s second period. The ensemble danced through this movement with conviction and vivacity, featuring some rarely heard acrobatics between the two violas. The “Presto” received a dynamic performance, marked by an effective effort to blend the oboe into the string ensemble in the appropriate moments.

Peter Lieberson, who came to prominence as a composer in the Boston area before moving to the Southwest, is well known for including Buddhist themes as a philosophical element in his music. The Coming of Light was co-commissioned by Winsor Music and the Chicago Chamber Musicians for the centennial of the dedication of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple. Interestingly, the piece relies more on general humanistic ideas of impermanence and love, in response to an architectural corollary. Pearson shared some words on behalf of the composer before the piece was performed:

“…We create structures all the time to shield ourselves from impermanence – not only for shelter and comfort but also as edifices built to celebrate our stay here on earth. Architecture by its very nature is constructed out of materials that are impermanent. We make structures that we think are beautiful and interiors that are inviting, and the very fact that these edifices may point to something noble expresses a kind of sacredness about what we as human beings do. That we do these things at all is itself an opportunity to reflect on their impermanent nature, to appreciate how fleeting and precious all of life really is. And love of course is love. It’s simple to understand and be touched by the impermanence of all of that we love. So from that perspective and from my own personal experience of having been ill over the last three years, I thought about how life provides many opportunities—love returns, one’s life changes…“

The piece set two poems each by John Ashbery, Shakespeare, and Mark Strand for baritone, oboe, and string quartet. The settings, consistently oriented towards an ultra-conservative harmonic language, displayed an undeniably exceptional level of craft, sense of continuity, and at times, imagination. Sumner Thomson’s voice fit the ensemble and the composition perfectly. The most effective setting was the second Ashbery text, Forgiveness. The song grew out of unison between the strings, into elastic iterations of a serene melodic line that managed to be both emotional and cerebral. The following movements were characterized by some interesting developments to thematic material introduced in earlier movements but began to rely increasingly on constant, square pulses that became expressively restricting. The performers were constantly engaged with the music (even through the moments when the music was not engaging). Pearson’s lyricism as lines between the oboe and baritone mingled was definitely a highlight of the evening.

The closing performance of Bach Cantata 159, “Sehet, wir gehen hinauf gen Jerusalem” pulled the full forces of the evening’s performers together, with the addition of Kasey Fahy, Jazimina MacNeil, Frank Kelley, and Boston Children’s Chorus. Thompson’s enchanting and powerful voice was most enthralling when set against mezzo MacNeil’s euphoric placid tone, which meshed perfectly with the oboe in the second aria and chorale. The Boston Children’s Chorus provided wonderful depth to the closing chorale and a powerful finale to the evening.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

The Boston Chamber Music Society performed a program of Mozart, Röntgen, and Mendelssohn for a sizable and responsive audience in Sanders Theatre on Sunday, April 18. Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat major, K. 493 and Mendelssohn’s String Quintet in B-flat major, Op. 87 were likely familiar to most, though the Lyrische Gänge from the far less performed Dutch composer Julius Röntgen offered a certain rarity to the program. While this particular evening didn’t quite err on the side of risk-taking programming that new Artistic Director Marcus Thompson discussed in his interview with BMInt at the beginning of the season, it did possess a certain air of youthful energy and dramatic character. The emphasis on this element of performance practice may very well function within BCMS’s growing interest in cultivating a new audiences and “connect[ing] to the next generation,” which undoubtedly contributed to effective interpretations of the pieces (especially the Mozart). Admittedly, despite being near the end of a season of such efforts, I still found myself to be one of very few audience members under the age of 30. Nonetheless, BCMS has unquestionably sustained a top-tier performance standard and exhibited no less on Sunday evening.

Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat major is filled with compelling dialogue between piano and strings. Although the performance was not without its surface flaws, the group managed to catch effectively the expressive qualities of the work. The conversational underpinning of the piece relies heavily on a pianist who can convincingly construct a pronounced, and sometimes domineering, character. Mihae Lee carried this role with brilliance and conviction. The rest of the ensemble also displayed a strong ability to recognize comic gestures in the music. While the Allegro and Allegretto well delivered, if at times inarticulate, the Larghetto was undoubtedly the most successful movement of the three, exhibiting a near-perfect sense of pacing and expressive vitality.

Mezzo-soprano Krista River gave a stunning performance Röntgen’s Lyrische Gänge for voice, viola, and piano to poems by Friedrich Theodor Vischer.. Her resonant, rich voice had palpable substance, seeping into the walls with each lyrical line. Her dramatic pacing was dead-on for the second song, Stille, with potent and impassioned lyricism that debunks the antiquated notion that German cannot be an inherently beautifully sung language. The viola and voice often seemed disconnected, however: a symptom of some truly terrible writing for viola within this ensemble’s context, and no discredit to Thompson, who has proven himself a seasoned musician of the Boston chamber scene. Despite some truly beautiful harmonies and lush, expressive vocal writing, Lyrische Gänge is little more than bad Brahms. It seems reasonable that the composer did not feel inclined to have the work published or performed, especially since at that point in his career (late 1920s) he appeared to be more interested in progressive styles. Regardless, the performance was no doubt worthwhile, fully exploiting the talents of guest artist Krista River, and nicely contributed to the program.

Mendelssohn’s String Quintet in B-flat major provided the most consistent and polished performance of the evening. The Allegro vivace was tightly knit, filled with contrasting disposition to the Andante scherzando and convincingly portrayed by the animated performance of violinists Ida Levin and Harumi Rhodes. Cellist Astrid Schween shone beautifully in a gripping, dynamic performance of the Adagio e lento. Energetic and Vibrant, the Allegro molto vivace closed the performance with a persuasive climax. Again, this performance to emitted a new sense of vibrancy from an ensemble looking forward towards a new audience that demands a more energetic and visceral performance approach.

BCMS will return to Sanders Theatre on May 16 for a program of Haydn, Villa-Lobos, and Chausson.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

No slips, falls, crunches or other medical mishaps interfered with the presentation by the Community Music Center of Boston of its cycle of the Beethoven symphonies in piano transcriptions. The cycle, in a series of free concerts that form part of CMCB’s centennial celebration, concluded on Thursday, April 8 in CMCB’s Allen Hall, with the colossal Ninth Symphony in an arrangement by Otto singer for two pianos, soloists and chorus. The pianists were CMCB faculty members Stephen Yenger and Shoko Hino; the chorus was the CMCB’s resident adult community choir Una Voce, under the leadership of Samuel Martinborough. The other singers comprised a quartet of soloists and a quintet, both largely drawn from members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (and who are mostly also active freelancers in the region). The soloists were Pamela Wolfe, soprano, Cindy Vredeveld, mezzo, Martin Thomson, tenor, and Michael Pritchard, bass-baritone. The quintet consisted of Christine Pacheco Duquette and Susan Cavalieri, sopranos, Louse-Marie Mennier, alto, Martin Mulligan, tenor, and Tim Wilfong, baritone. The musical part of the program was preceded by a brief lecture by Mary Greer, a New York-based choral director and musicologist.

Department of full disclosure: your correspondent is a member of the CMCB’s corporation and has various personal and family ties to the organization, though none directly participating in this program. Our BMInt colleague Peter Lane contributed his observations to the following discussion, but owing to scheduling snafus was unable to hear the entire program.

We all know Beethoven’s Ninth; it has taken on nearly mythic significance in the history of music, no less for the composers who followed Beethoven as for audiences then and now. The very sound of it reverberates like a racial memory in Western society, both for its musical value and as a symbol of the highest aspirations of Western culture. We don’t have to tell you, therefore, what Beethoven’s Ninth is about or what it does. But the sound of it ringing in our ears is an orchestral sound, and so to hear it stripped to the bones is both jarring and enlightening. While Liszt made his own transcription of the Ninth, along with all the others (some of which were performed on earlier CMCB programs in this series), Yenger and Hino went with the one by Otto Singer (1833-94), a Saxon-born onetime student of Liszt’s who came to the US in 1867, and settled in as a teacher at the Cincinnati College of Music from 1873-92. The version he created generously affords both players occasions of prominence by allocating principal lines among them—something a lot harder to do with one piano four hands. By stripping out the orchestral colors and doublings, it is possible to see the unadorned architecture of Beethoven’s conception, which, apart from the historical curiosity of hearing these works as 19th and early 20th century households would have had to do, is why to bother with an enterprise such as this series. It is also interesting in this context to contemplate Beethoven’s compositional process as being shaped by his sitting at the piano, and his great prowess at the instrument.

The duo pianists in this performance were well coordinated with each other, and they plainly have the chops to get through this big piece. It’s a bit unfortunate that they didn’t take the exposition repeat in the first movement, which most orchestral performances nowadays do, and their tempo in the outer sections of the scherzo was a bit on the slow side. On the other hand(s), they were very effective in conveying and clarifying the contrapuntal play throughout the work. What one really missed, though, was the poetry of the piece: the collaborators did not come to an understanding of the expressive arc of the symphony, most vividly observable in the slow movement, whose “cantabile” heading seems to have gotten lost in translation.

The finale, of course, is what everyone wants to hear, and the vocal forces, suitably scaled to the intimate dimensions of Allen Hall, provided a crisp and highly intelligible performance. The soloists complemented one another well in coloration and tone; Mr. Thomson thrillingly scaled the notoriously perilous heights of the tenor part, and everyone’s German enunciation was admirable. One remarkable aspect of this was that, except for Ms. Wolfe, who must have trained differently, all the soloists pronounced the “y” in “Elysium” as it would be spoken, namely the same as “ü”. All the other umlauted vowels were also conveyed in the spoken, rather than in the artificially flattened conventionally sung manner. We liked it. The Una Voce ensemble was effective in filling out the larger choral sonorities. Next stop: the Symphony of a Thousand? Singer transcribed the Mahler symphonies, too!

Vance R. Koven studied music at Queens College and New England Conservatory, and law at Harvard. A composer and practicing attorney, he was for many years the chairman of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble. Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.