Fiesta! Bach Sinfonia at Montgomery College’s Cultural Arts Center in Silver Spring, May 5, 2013

On Cinco de Mayo, the always-enterprising Bach Sinfonia was the only source in town for Mexican classical music, presented as part of a fun program spanning Ye Olde Latin America and titled “¡Nuevo Mundo Barocco!”

It turns out that not only did Latin Americans write a lot of music during the colonial period, much of it has gone undiscovered until quite recently. Intrepid scholars have plumbed the archives of the churches and abbeys established throughout the Spanish New World, and they’ve come up with some gems that mix the musical language of the old church with (as one might expect from a group of proselytizers) the vernacular forms and rhythms of the locals.

Under conductor and artistic director Daniel Abraham, the Bach Sinfonia always has a sure feel for rhythm: how it underpins a slow melodic line, organizes a fast allegro, establishes a kind of loom on which fantastic counterpoint can be woven. In this music, where such an understanding is even more important than in the European Baroque, that ability made for some really fun performances, where difficult rhythms came off with flair and difficult singing always felt exuberant.

The latter virtue shone in the first pieces the program, two pieces by Francisco López Capillas in a high-Renaissance style but with just the slightest hint of additional rhythmic impetus, sounding silky as sung by the eight-voice choir. They kept the fine sound in “Vayan unas especies,” a piece by Cuban composer Esteban Salas, whose rowdy rhythms made a joyful noise unto the newborn Christ. Abraham sounded taken with Salas, saying the Sinfonia was ready to read through his other works, and no wonder; Salas seemed to find new ways to make melodies within the Baroque context, and his harmonic invention matched his rhythmic drive. He’s a find.

Guest guitarist Richard Savino normally rolls with (among others) his own Latin America-focused chamber group, El Mundo. On Sunday he joined the stalwart Sinfonia continuo — Joseph Gascho, harpsichord; Douglas Poplin, ‘cello; and Robbie Link, violone — and added color and depth with his several strings, plus a deep understanding of this repertoire. (Not for nothing did he participate with Abraham in the pre-concert discussion!) He also played a couple pieces in the improvisatory tradition to begin the second half of the program, demonstrating the range of color his guitar could produce when solo.

Richard Savino, looking like a million bucks with Joyce DiDonato. Obviously this was the best picture of him on the Internet.

Unlike Savino, soprano soloist Jennifer Ellis Kampani‘s contributions were front and center whenenver she was on stage. I am on record with my admiration for her singing, which combines thrilling sustained notes, pure and accurate, with vocal agility all the way up and down the scale and admirable diction. Here she got to be a little more demonstrative than in (say) a Bach cantata, and she enjoyed the opportunity, tweaking the chorus of Juan de Araujo’s “Los coflades de la estleya” subtly each time she sang it to wring out a new dimension of excitement and joy, or snapping her neck back and forth to emphasize the rhythms of Antonio de Salazar’s “Tarara tarara qui yo soy Antonyio.”

Jennifer Ellis Kampani, from her website. By Kenny Trice.

You always get the sense that Kampani has a tremendous amount of fun when she sings, and never was that impression stronger than the finale of this concert, when we got another Christmas song, this one by Mexican composer Juan García de Zespedes and packed with ecstatic exclamations and hard-driving rhythms. Michelle Humphreys, who did excellent work all afternoon on percussion, played a commanding solo with every resource available to her (including bells strapped to her ankle), Kampani and the chorus threw themselves into all the “Ay!”s, and the instrumentalists matched them in exuberance and precision. Let’s hope scholars can give the Bach Sinfonia lots more of this stuff to perform, even if they have to do it on a day other than May 5th.

A THING I LIKED AND A THING I DIDN’T LIKE

Liked: As someone who has attended (for example) a concert of Estonian choral music on St. Patrick’s Day, I found it refreshing that this concert, although it featured music around 300 years old, actually referred to something happening in the world today.

Didn’t Like: The translations of these texts in the program made me wonder why they bothered to have translations at all. Here’s one stanza from Salas’ piece:

If that is the tinted Carnation
that gives new giving magic:
ours is to make disciplined a
foreign offence.

It’s like someone put the texts into Google Translate and cut and pasted the results directly into the program.

“How Many of You Have Seen an Opera With the Word ‘Penis’ Before?” UrbanArias at the Mansion at Strathmore, March 22, 2013

First of all, I apologize to the world for posting this review nine days after the actual concert took place. Immediately after the concert, I got sucked into the maw of planning for my upcoming nuptials, which are the reason there’s not going to be anything else on this blog until May. But I had to pull myself out of the morass of table assignments and vendor contacts to review the UrbanArias concert from the Friday Night Eclectic series at the Mansion at Strathmore two Friday nights ago, because the world needs to know that it was that rarest of things for a classical music concert: An absolute riot.

Yes, opera can be actually funny, and not “funny for opera” funny! Observe, for example, Melissa Wimbish as Eve in “Adam and Eve,” written in 2008 by Patrick Soluri with a text by Quincy Long. Wimbish had a ball alternately scolding and leering at the somewhat inarticulate Adam (Joshua Baumgardner) and challenging her therapist, Dr. Solomon, all to prevent Adam from eating the apple of knowledge and preserve her enabling fiction in an anonymous mental institution. (In the service of healing, Dr. Solomon, played with appropriate smiling earnestness by Ethan Watermeier, helpfully points out that the apple is actually a Jonathan.)

Melissa Wimbish.

Or check out “At the Statue of Venus,” a monologue written by Terrence McNally (yes, that playwright) and Jake Heggie (music) and sung last Friday by Arianna Zukerman. McNally and Heggie tackle here a totally genius subject for an opera: the inner thoughts of a woman waiting to meet a blind date, ranging from wardrobe second-guessing to doubts about whether this is a good idea anyway to hopes and fears that this random unpaired guy approaching the titular statue is actually the blind date in question. Heggie found a musical language that, among other things, enhances the humor of these shifting thoughts, and Zukerman milked it for all it was worth. In my favorite moment, Zukerman’s unnamed character worried about the fact that her friends who suggested the date had mentioned that they both liked ballet. After trying to reassure herself that lots of straight men enjoyed the ballet, Zukerman stopped pacing the stage, stood ramrod straight, looked at the audience, and in high operatic dudgeon reprimanded herself and the world: “Name oooooooooooone!”

Neither of these operas was perfect — the mental institution setting of “Adam and Eve” seems played out at this point in history, and some of the later reveries in “At the Statue of Venus” seemed to exhaust their ideas before they ended. But they engaged with contemporary life and gave the listener a sense that opera can still be a vivid and immediate form, a sense I often lack after my rare forays to opera houses.

Of course, little could be more immediate that improvised opera, a post-intermission lark in which UrbanArias founder Robert Wood handled the piano accompaniment duties otherwise fulfilled last Friday by the skilled, sympathetic R. Timothy McReynolds. Having studied improv comedy myself, I can tell you that improvising an actual musical structure in addition to jokes is pretty difficult, and the modest success that these distinguished classical musicians enjoyed is actually pretty impressive, especially with the handicap of the lame suggestions from the Strathmore audience. (Pretty sure we’ve had enough jokes about George W. Bush and Sarah Palin at this point in history, folks.) Before the festivities began, Wood asked the question that forms the title of this review and received few positive responses, thus showing that UrbanArias is determined to advance the art.

They saved the funniest for last: Gabriel Kahane‘s “Craigslistlieder,” settings of texts that reminded me of the riches to be found in the newspaper-killing website’s “best-of-craigslist” category. Besides coming up with the absolute best name for this work — you can just see “Craigslistlieder” sitting alongside “Schicksalslied” and “Kindertotenlieder” in the Tower Records of my bygone youth — Kahane also sets these texts with close attention to the meaning of each individual word and phrase and with the keenest sense of comic timing since one of those old operamongers who I don’t actually think are particularly funny.

All four of the singers took a turn, and each had a highlight: Baumgartner’s richly unapologetic apology in “I’m Sorry,” Zukerman’s lascivious “Today I Met,” Watermeier’s perfect embodiment of the unrealistic personal-ad aspirations of “Neurotic and Lonely,” and especially Wimbish’s “Hello Potential Roommates.” This last alternately advertises for and warns about a cheap room that comes with several conditions, and Kahane’s setting and Wimbish’s performance made a funny text even funner, with several intervals in which I thought I would not stop laughing.

Opera (and UrbanArias) can do lots of things, but making people laugh is just as demanding and worthy a business as making them cry, and it was wonderful to be reminded of that. If there are any composers looking for topics for contemporary comedies, may I suggest wedding planning? I can give you lots and lots of texts…

From the Shores of Bohemia, ‘Cross the Shining Big Sea Water: The PostClassical Ensemble, “Dvorak in America,” Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, March 1, 2013

On the night of March the first
At the big Clarice Smith Center
The PostClassical Ensemble
Gave us a new “Hiawatha.”

Yes, the entire review is going to go like this. Photo of conductor Angel Gil-Ordonez by Tom Wolff.

Based on research by Beckerman
(First name Michael, studies music)
They determined that Dvořák,
Antonin if you’re his buddy,
Had a mighty burning passion
For this poem of Longfellow
(Henry Wadsworth, dontcha reckon)
Depicting the love and wedding
And of course the tribulations
Of th’ eponymous Hiawatha.
With no operatic outlet
(The libretto was a failure)
They say Antonin Dvořák,
Czech composer in America,
Put some intriguing parallels
To the tale of Hiawatha
In his New World Symphony,
No. 9, in dark E minor.
Come now Joseph Horowitz,
PCE’s artistic honcho,
Who had earlier arranged
A “Hiawatha” melodrama—
But that one was just nine minutes.
This new one that was premiered
On the night of March the First
At the big Clarice Smith Center
In the hall of Dekelboum
Took a sturdy half an hour
And set many episodes
From “The Song of Hiawatha”
To the music of Dvořák.
Kevin Deas read the poem,
Baritone, with voice of thunder,
While the PCE orchestra
Led by Angel Gil-Ordonez
Played the excerpts so arranged
By bright Horowitz and Beckman,
Cunning users of the music
Of this Antonin Dvořák.
The arrangement was effective,
And at times exhilirating—
It turns out that the last movement
Of the New World Symphony,
So beloved and adored
By the nation that inspired it,
Indeed parallels quite closely
The slaying of Pau-Puk-Keewis
With only just a little
Sleight of hand from the arranger.
And Dvořák’s other music
From his great New World Symphony
Effectively dramatizes
Many tales of Hiawatha,
Mostly the second and third movements
(The first doesn’t get much airtime).
The symphony got some assistance
From other Dvořák pieces,
Notably the Sonatina
For the violin and piano
And the American Suite,
Which was performed with style and gusto
Before the program’s intermission
(Along with the early Serenade;
For strings only it was written).
Here, the two principal lessons
I obtained from Friday’s program:
Though the PCE did well with
Hiawatha’s melodrama,
I’m not sure I really ever
Will desire to re-hear it,
Since it mostly made me want to
Hear the Ninth of Dvořák,
Which I will play on my stereo
When this review has been completed.
Secondly, after I listened
To “The Song of Hiawatha”
Its insistent, catchy meter
Kind of invaded my headspace
And made me think that all my writings
Should be set forth in its image.
That notion’s probably not correct,
But I have ne’ertheless explored it,
And so I present to you
My review of “Hiawatha,”
As developed and performed
By the PostClassical Ensemble
On the night of March the First
In the big Clarice Smith Center.
Peace.

Other People’s Perspectives: Stephen Brookes. 

I AM GOING TO TALK NORMALLY NOW

Like all PostClassical Ensemble concerts, this one was preceded by other activities, in this case a bunch of cool concerts I wish I had been able to go to except that I have wedding planning and work and it’s just hard to do. But as always I commend them for providing an immersive experience to those who can take advantage of it. It’s been too long since I heard the “American” quartet live, and it’ll have to be a little longer.

Kevin Deas also did an amazing job singing “Goin’ Home,” the spiritual formed from the melody of the slow movement of the “New World” Symphony. For some reason I didn’t think I could fit that into the “poem” above.

Return of the Bach: Jennifer Koh, “Bach and Beyond Part 2,” Mansion at Strathmore, February 28, 2013

Jennifer Koh‘s second “Bach and Beyond” concert of solo violin music this season at the Mansion at Strathmore on Thursday night featured performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonata no. 1 in G minor and Partita no. 1 that beat out any other performances of those works I’ve heard live. From the opening Adagio of the sonata, Koh gave her lines breath and gravity, shaping the melody with aching intensity yet never losing touch with the rhythm. The next movement, a fast fugue, featured some insanely treacherous multiple stops that Koh made into part of the overall thrust of the music. Her low notes, resonant and woody, anchored the counterpoint and seemed to expand to fill the intimate Mansion at Strathmore; the fugal theme first felt like a whisper and then a scream as the emotional intensity built to a shattering climax. A sweet slow Siciliana got ambushed by a Presto finale that came so fast you could barely hold onto the melody, yet sounded perfectly controlled; the effect was like taking a corner at high speed in a race car, except for several minutes consecutively.

If this concert sounds intriguing, you should check out the CD! Or “MP3 download” for those of you born after 1985 or so

Koh’s Partita no. 1 might have been even better. The opening Allemanda came flowing from her bow in a gentle stream, and she seemed to let the last note hang in the air for just a second and then catch and transform it to start the subsequent Double variation, which sounded just as facile with twice the notes. The Double of the Corrente again had that race-car feeling of perfectly controlled speed, and the Sarabande sounded perfectly balanced, never too slow yet always intense. The big thwacking chords of the “Tempo di Borea” finale here are my favorite part of this partita, and Koh gave them a satisfying bite while maintaining the dance rhythm, which is hard to do. With Koh’s overall feeling for rhythm unifying the disparate dances, the partita became greater than the sum of its parts, and those parts were pretty fine themselves.

But Koh enriches the “Bach and Beyond” concerts by going, well, beyond, to more recent solo works. Koh even commissioned Phil Kline’s partita, “Dead Reckoning,” which separated the two Bach words on the first half of Thursday’s program. “Dead Reckoning”’s position helped to cleanse the palate and prevent Bach from sounding too familiar; Kline’s work echoed Bach in certain ways, like the motoric rhythms in some of the faster sections, and differed entirely in others, like how the harmonies stayed relatively static or moved by half-steps rather than round and round the circle of fifths. Koh’s conviction and sense of narrative gave shape to what could well sound like an episodic work, with its various tentative stabs, lyrical swerves, and essays at speed eventually collapsing and yielding to an exhausted kind of grace at the end.

In her previous B&B concert at Strathmore, the non-Bachiana was all contemporary, but she had a ringer in store for the second half: Béla Bartók, with his Sonata for solo violin, written for Yehudi Menhuin almost 70 years ago. For me, this work is to Bach’s solo sonatas as Dmitri Shostakovich’s Op. 78 preludes and fugues for piano are to Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier: a modern master taking a perfected form and daring to make it his own.

Bartók marked the first movement “Tempo di ciaccona,” leading me to wonder: What is the tempo of a chaconne, anyway? It begins with commanding rhetoric that soon finds itself refracted in folk-inflected harmonies. The subject of the ensuring fugue is more a loud rhythmic pattern that beats up the tentative attempts at counterpoint. Things get a bit more serious in the Melodia third movement, which provides the promised melody in a kaleidoscopic array of registers and tone qualities: high harmonics, whispered muted tones, full-on fortes. Koh made it spellbinding after delivering the rough jokes of the fugue. Though Bartók’s Presto finale was not quite as blistering as the same-tempo finale of the Bach sonata and featured frequent switches to place the mute on and off the bridge, Koh dazzled here anyway. (The Mansion’s music room is small enough that you could actually hear the mute being placed as Koh’s left hand pizzicatoed some cover material.)

Deliberately constructing a program to place newer material in the context of older classics so that each is further illuminated is challenging enough that not a lot of people do it and rewarding enough that I wish everyone would do it. Here’s to Koh for both making the attempt and succeeding in a spectacular way.

MARGINALIA, INCLUDING RANKING THE ALL-TIME CLASSICS

Some folks applauded a bit after the Presto Double in the partita. They were right to do so! It’s a spontaneous expression of admiration at that point. It wasn’t a lot of clapping, just you had to do something to get the energy out.

This concert was great in part because it had two of my favorite of the six unaccompanied solo violin sonatas and partitas. The previous concert only had one. Here is the ranked list:

• Partita no. 3. This has the best dance feel of all of them, and I cannot get over the middle two movement, the Gavotte en Rondeau and the Menuets. The Menuets sound like a beam of sunlight coming through a cloud to me, every time I hear them.
• Sonata no. 1. The fugue! It’s the best one.
• Partita no. 1. The way Bach makes everything have twice as many notes is so slick. It’s like how you go to Five Guys and they give you two patties as the default option. Bach gives it to you and then he gives it to you double.
• Partita no. 2. I realize this has the most famous single movement in the six works in question, but the Chaconne always works better extracted from the partita for me. The other partitas are better as balanced suites of works; this one is all back-heavy. The first few movements feel like something you’re rushing through to get to Big Bad Quarter-Hour Chaconne. Maybe this is just me. Probably.
• Sonata no. 3. Mostly for the first movement.
• Sonata no. 2. Of these six universally acclaimed masterworks, this is my least favorite. I realize that it is better than almost everything anyone else ever composed. I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em.

Those Are Some Small Worlds After All: Brian Ganz at the Music Center at Strathmore, January 19, 2013

Brian Ganz talks about Frederic Chopin’s music as well as he plays it, and that’s saying something. On Saturday night, in the third concert in his National Philharmonic-sponsored effort to present all of Chopin’s piano music, he once again showed how to use a microphone to reach out to a full Music Center at Strathmore and connect with every member of the audience, by telling stories, offering theories, and getting into the details of how to play this music. Classical concerts often sound like a wash of abstraction, where nothing feels particularly different than anything else; Ganz gave the audience some guidance on how to find its way through the program.

Brian Ganz, looking as sincere as his playing.

He also gave the audience playing worth listening to. Ganz titled this recital “Small Worlds,” reflecting its focus on Chopin’s miniatures, and his careful attention to the shifts and shades of this music shone in the program-opening Op. 7 set of five mazurkas. When a few bars of content music suddenly yielded to darker currents, Ganz managed the transition deftly, keeping both moods in the same world. When the music sang more straightforwardly, Ganz calibrated his articulation, saving his most sparkle for the twittering finale, where, as Ganz told us, Chopin indicates the dance music spins on indefinitely. (He presented three practical solutions pianists have proposed for this problem, including his own – a generous touch.)

Presenting a couple of Chopin’s ballades for program balance, Ganz demonstrated his command of these larger-form works as well; harmonic incidents evolved into longer passages, and, just as he did in the miniatures, Ganz took pauses and hesitated or rushed forward in seemingly spontaneous ways that also contributed to the overall narrative feeling. Ganz told a story (also recounted in Anne Midgette’s excellent preview of this concert) about his experience listening to a recording of the first ballade, in G minor, as a young man and wondering “How can this be so beautiful that it hurts?” His rendition ran the gamut, with the final chords returning to G minor and ringing out from the bottom of the keyboard like cannon fire, shattering the tenuous peace that had obtained earlier. This inspired a standing O from the audience – common enough at the end of a program, or even at intermission, but less so when there’s still music to be played, and a testament to both Ganz’s discussion and his performance.

After intermission came the Op. 28 Preludes, the summa of Chopin’s miniature art, presented as one continuous string of 24 pieces, with no pauses for applause. Before sitting to play, Ganz spoke about the challenges and possibilities concision presented to Chopin – editing his fertile imagination to gestures and thoughts that provide a glimpse of a world, leaving the mind to contemplate what’s left unsaid. Ganz’s playing captured that sense of wonder: I got images of a limpid brook rippling, but faintly disturbed; a storm sweeping by at a distance; a sunny field; a cool marble temple, quiet and implacable. But Chopin’s careful counterbalancing of the preludes, with contrasts propelling the sequence, gave an extra dimension; Ganz wove the overall tapestry of Op. 28 with just as much attention to the overall sweep of the music as he did the individual preludes. A world made of small worlds can have a large impact indeed, and it did on Saturday night. I’m already saving February 22, 2014, for the next installment.

Other People’s Perspectives: Grace Jean.

I TOTALLY SAW BRIAN GANZ AT THE SILVER DINER AFTER THIS CONCERT

Well, not really; my fiancée had to point him out to me. I cannot recognize anyone. But in case you are wondering where to get your paparazzi photos after next year’s concert, I’d try Silver Diner. Rockville Pike baby! How many high-school nights I idled away at that business’ previous location on Mid-Pike Plaza. Of course, now their menu is so high-falutin’ that high-school me could never have afforded to eat there, but such is the ever-downward march of gustatory luxury. What were we talking about again?

I don’t know how many classical concerts I’m going to get to review over the upcoming months, given my impending nuptials and various job-related things. But I’m glad I got to go to this one.

The Underserved Viola: Victoria Chiang, Nurit Bar-Josef, and the National Philharmonic at the Music Center at Strathmore, January 5, 2013

On a good day, the National Philharmonic, Montgomery County’s most aspirationally named symphony orchestra, can sound worthy of the National Symphony-esque prices it charges for its concerts in the Music Center at Strathmore. On a bad day, the Nat Phil sounds like it did on Saturday, in its “Voice of the Viola” concert.

Under Music Director Piotr Gajewski, the Philharmonians sounded best in Felix Mendelssohn’s String Symphony No. 9 (the “Swiss,” although it does not sound particularly neutral or watch-like). This work dates from the composer’s  prodigy years, and, like many young people throughout history, the teenager overestimated the interest of certain elements of his material, particularly in the far-too-lengthy finale. Yet mostly this is a tune machine that never stops producing, and Mendelssohn treats those tunes inventively to boot. Here the National Philharmonic’s strings had a glossy, rich tone and showed a clear enthusiasm for the material, though the performance overall lacked the zippy quality that comes with more precise ensemble.

Victoria Chiang, viola master. From her website. 2012 by Rachel Boer Photography.

The Mendelssohn showed its devotion to the viola mainly through having two viola desks. (Much credit to Gajewski for explaining the furniture rearranging before it happened so the audience would know why everything sounded different.) Victoria Chiang, coordinator of the viola department at the Peabody School, served as the soloist in two concerti that bookended the Mendelssohn. She played the concert opener, Georg Philip Telemann’s Concerto in G major (famous from classical drive-time morning radio), with elan and imagination. The orchestra behind her sounded plodding, lacking her sharp attack and burdened by pedestrian continuo work.

Nurit Bar-Josef, concertmaster of the National Symphony and a last-minute replacement for the ailing violinist Stefan Jackiw, joined Chiang for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante. Throughout, Bar-Josef and Chiang balanced their intertwining lines, playing with sweet tone and Classical grace; among many high points, their closing passage in the second movement was a particular treat, as it could hardly fail to be in such sensitive hands. Meanwhile, the orchestra bleated out most of what it was doing. The contrast was stark, and the result was unsatisfying.

Christmastime is Somewhere Around Here: Folger Consort, December 15, 2012

Oddly, the Folger Consort‘s latest program, “Florence: Christmas Music of the Trecento,” which I attended at the Folger Theatre on Saturday night, features relatively little Christmas music. It does feature 24 pieces, mostly without a known author, that collectively paint a picture of music of the 13th century in the title town. Whether in sacred pieces or the vernacular religious tunes known as “laude,” melodies soared and fell in ecstasies of notes, yet kept resolving on the same harmonies, and returning to the same refrains. The program itself, organized mostly in tercets of two vocal pieces surrounding an interlude for virtuoso instruments, seemed to mirror the feeling of action circling around a center.

Nevertheless, of the 24 pieces, nine show off the manifold skills of consort program director Robert Eisenstein and guest instrumentalists Christa Patton, Mark Rimple, and Mary Springfels, without making any reference to Christmas. (The title of the tune “Ave maris stella,” another instrumental jam, seems close enough to be counted as Christmassy.) The vocal pieces provide no fewer than five settings of parts of the Latin Mass, which are dependent upon the occurrence of Christmas but not specific to it. Another five praise Mary, who I grant is also essential to Christmas’ eventual occurrence (and whose impregnation is described in various dodgy euphemisms by the songs) but whose story, in these songs, occurs before we go away in a manger on a silent night with herald angels singing joy to the world. So we have five total pieces that clearly evoke the spirit of the season.

Florentine Xmas 4-Ever. Photo by Jeff Malet.

Not that the music wasn’t evocative in general! It all started with Trio Eos, consisting of sopranos Jessica Beebe and Michele Kennedy and mezzo-soprano Maren Montalbano, who handled the vocalizing and showed beauty of tone and precision that made even the most tricky melodies feel balanced and unearthly. In “Da ciel venne messo novello” and “Nova stella apparita,” their readings of the rhapsodic verses ached with awe at Mary’s blessing in the former and exploded with joy at the arrival of the Christ child in the latter; the unison refrains, in which the trio attractively blended their distinct voices, felt like a refuge from the intense emotion of the verses.

Eisenstein and his crew made sure that the instrumental pieces and accompaniment were just as distinctive and intense. The program note explained that many of the instrumental pieces were basically just melodic lines for virtuosos to play on, with no arrangements or harmonies indicated, meaning much of what the Folger Consort is presenting is a result of their own choices. They chose well; “Ave maris stella” sounded like a constellation looks with Rimple and Patton plucking a psaltery and harp, respectively, and Eisenstein frequently showed commanding virtuosity on his medieval fiddle. Pretty much every time Patton picked up her over-the-shoulder medieval bagpipe was a highlight, especially when she got to lead the melody in “Benedicamus,” the line buzzing and darting about in a most diverting way. Occasionally, the musicians enjoyed the repetitions of the melodies a bit more than I did, but I understand the exuberance that comes with playing something challenging that you really enjoy. Trio Eos also pitched in on percussion a few times, with everyone shaking or pounding something for the finale, “Gloria in cielo e pace in terra,” a satisfying Christmas-related song in which the trio just barely managed to sing over the exuberant clamor of the instruments.

As you may have guessed, this is not one of those early-music Christmas concerts where you’ll hear a tune or two whose descendants have made it into modern hymnals, especially given that only 21 percent of the tunes played at the concert have anything to do with the holiday. Nonetheless, as an imaginative look back at the spirit of instrumental playing and vernacular religious music, this program is well worth a detour from your last-minute shopping.

The program will be repeated Wednesday through Sunday (with two shows on Saturday!). Ticket info and purchasing here.

Other People’s Perspectives: Joan Reinthaler, Charles T. Downey.

We’re Going Bach…to the Future: Jennifer Koh at the Mansion at Strathmore, November 14, 2012

Jennifer Koh stumbled a bit at the beginning of her concert Wednesday night at the Mansion at Strathmore, playing Bach’s Partita no. 3 for solo violin. Some repeated notes in the opening “Preludio” lacked focus, and the quick-paced counterpoint felt careful rather than nimble. Her sound in high notes was uncomfortably piercing in the small room. The overall sweep of the music occasionally receded under the weight of the myriad details to which Koh had to attend.

That kind of performance is the last thing one would expect from Koh. Her appearances with local orchestras have revealed a player who imagines each note, measure, and melody intensely to create a series of dramatic moments and to link them into a story.

Photo by Fran Kaufman, borrowed from Koh’s Facebook page.

On Thursday, Koh’s storytelling ambition extended to the whole evening. In her “Bach and Beyond” programs, Koh returns to the lodestones of the solo violin repertory, Bach’s three sonatas and three partitas, but also connects them to other works, some of which she has effectively championed before (see this CD for evidence thereof). Later in the concert, Koh said that she had built the program as a journey from light to darkness and, eventually, back into light.

Fortunately, her journey through the third partita got back onto the right path quickly. Given a chance to let a melodic line breathe in the second movement, Koh’s tone became warmer, and her imaginative phrasing and concentration came to the fore. The apex came in the Minuet, where the music seemed to be aloft, particularly when she sustained a double-stop as a tender murmur of sound, a measured but distinct pulse ushering the melody along.

After the bubbly Gigue that closes the partita, Koh began replaying the Preludio, just to hear it again. No, wait – that was actually the beginning of Eugene Ysaye’s sonata for solo violin, Op. 27 No. 2, as I was reminded when the Preludio shattered into a huge dissonance from which emerged everyone’s favorite Romantic obsession, the plainchant Dies Irae. The attacca sequence produced some confusion among the audience, though I think we all eventually figured out that this was not some recently discovered Bach appendix. The constant invocation of the Dies Irae in this sonata, along with the completely relentless minor mode, makes it a major broodfest, but Koh’s ability to make music sound like it’s being created on the spot made for gripping psychological drama even within the grim confines.

The Ysaye, quite forward-looking in its harmonic language, made for a natural transition into three modern pieces. Kaija Saariaho put more kinetic and sensory experiences in her “Nocturne,” in memory of the Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, than she did melodic ones, and Koh marshaled the swoops and scrapes into a narrative of exploration, at first tentative, then bolder. Elliott Carter’s “Fantasy — Remembering Roger,” written regarding the composer whose last name was Sessions, was a good way to remember the recently deceased Elliott, a complex, dynamic web of textures and rhythms interrupted occasionally by quiet moments of plain feeling. In “Lachen verlent” (“Laughing Unlearned,” a phrase from Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire”), Esa-Pekka Salonen takes an angular ground bass and works up a passionate chaconne; Koh gave a powerful sense of the music itself finding a connection, with the feeling overflowing in the final variations before a tentative coda called into question the earlier resolution.

The chaconne form echoed the last movement of the last piece on the program, the return to Bach in the form of his second partita. Here Koh’s playing was clean and commanding throughout, with the Sarabande flowing like a stream before a fierce Gigue led to the famous Chaconne finale. The Chaconne’s turn toward the light, the unexpected, seemingly miraculous move into the major mode, had to compete on Thursday with a helicopter that kept circling Strathmore as if it was looking for someone who had managed to escape Georgetown Prep just up 355.

Koh appeared unfazed. When the initial tentative major variations turned into something blazing with strength, she showed she had kept some power in reserve for just this moment, and made it a culmination of the program. The final turn back to D minor, normally so cruel, here felt cleansing, a resolution of tension. Only someone with the forethought to design and play an entire program with a journey in mind could have pulled that off, and Jennifer Koh is such a musician. She brings part 2 of “Bach and Beyond” to the Mansion next February 28; put it in your calendars now.

Updated to add Other People’s Perspectives: Joan Reinthaler and Noah Mlotek.

Filling in the Silence: Hesperus at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Washington Early Music Festival, June 30, 2012

What better way to score a silent film about goings-on in medieval France than with medieval music? Even when the film in question, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,“ était fabriqué aux Étas-Unis from a source novel written with no obvious concern for historical fact other than that there was a big church named Notre-Dame in Paris at the time.

Hesperus, a powerhouse on the local and national early-music scene, played a medieval soundtrack for the film on Saturday night to close out this year’s Washington Early Music Festival, and their performance — colorful, concentrated, and spontaneous — made it nearly impossible to actually take the movie seriously. The silent-film aesthetic is an acquired one, and Saturday night reminded me that I have not acquired it. The limitiations of the medium lead in Wallace Worsley’s “Hunchback” to exaggeration along every possible axis, from facial expressions to body language to emotions in general. Also, the audiences of the past apparently had a limitless tolerance for watching Lon Chaney as the Hunchback grabbing a rope and ringing a bell. I get that he has great enthusiasm for this task, which is why it could have been filmed from more than one angle, rather than simply replaying the same footage every time.

The movie was not as entertaining as this poster, which must have disappointed many people in 1923. From Wikipedia, saver of souls.

Such artifice made a striking contrast with the music Chancey, Priscilla Smith, and Rosa Lamoreaux sang and played. They effortlessly conjured serenity, rambunctiousness, tension, officiousness, and even (especially) romance. Only a few times, for fractions of a second, did the music and images not match; normally, the music was so well-chosen to seem an integral part of the scene, like a dancing tune to lead a festival of peasants, or a crusty woodwind proclamation to usher in a nobleperson.

The movie gets better when it begins rushing towards its surprisingly intense climax, but here it was difficult to separate the pathos of the Hunchback as he enjoys a glimmer of sympathetic human contact from the pathos generated by this trio of musicians, especially when the texture thinned out and Chancey was left alone to limn a few final notes as the priest (SPOILER ALERT) laid the Hunchback to rest.

The trio kept it up for 100 straight minutes, too — no intermissions here. Smith handled 99 percent of the wind-instrument work, with a full set of recorders as well as a shawm, early bagpipe, and crumhorn, and I saw her shaking her right hand out a few times towards the end of the film, trying to keep it from going stiff. Her playing showed no signs of fatigue, and she expertly matched the timbres of her instruments to the onscreen action, varying her sound and approach. Smith even sang soprano in a few two-voice pieces and didn’t sound totally out of her league next to her fellow soprano Lamoreaux, who is pretty much the early-music singin’ queen of the DMV.

Lamoreaux handled the lead vocals, obviously, and her pure, even voice blended so well with Smith’s recorders that sometimes it was hard to tell which line was which. Lamoreaux also had the lead on percussion, and particularly the difficult job of syncing her bells with the carillioneurship on screen. Chancey played not only the vielle but also several other stringed instruments, also varying her instrumentation to keep the sound lively and using effects to make the movie come alive. (If you’re intrigued, Chancey, Lamoreaux, and two other people will be doing the medieval-scoring thing to “Robin Hood” in B-more at An Die Musik on Friday.)

As noted, the concert closed this year’s Washington Early Music Festival, and during the (enthusiastic) applause, Chancey asked that we direct some of our approbation to Constance Whiteside, the festival’s artistic director and prime mover. Saturday’s concert drew the biggest crowd of the three concerts I attended; fittingly, it took place at St. Mark’s, the church that has been the center of the festival since it began in 2004. While Hesperus had a unique contribution, their concert sat squarely in the larger WEMF tradition of presenting little-known music with enthusiastic, committed performers at reasonable prices. The WEMF is a summertime oasis from the fall-to-summer run of the standard rep played by the standard people. I hope it keeps going strong in the years to come.

Other People’s Perspectives: Anne Midgette. I swear I was not stalking Anne this past weekend.

45-Minute Workout: National Orchestral Institute and Festival’s “New Lights” Chamber Concert, University of Maryland, June 28, 2012

On Thursday, the National Orchestral Institute‘s New Lights chamber concert started before the music itself did. Just as the student-musicians on stage had finished tuning, other young folk (later revealed to be fellow NOIers) streamed into the Gildenhorn Recital Hall, sorting themselves into pairs that each clapped in a different rhythm and encouraged the audience to join in. The program revealed that these rhythms came from Bach’s second Brandenburg Concerto, the first movement of which we were about to hear, but even with foreknowledge the clapping struck a spark: Yes, this is really happening at a classical music concert.

The New Lights concerts have always sought to surprise, with modern repertoire played with committment and skill and presented in ways that are unusual but perhaps shouldn’t be. On Thursday, we heard music without pause for three-quarters of an hour, textures and idioms varied widely around a focal point, Paul Moravec‘s Brandenburg Gate, a chamber concerto commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as a response to the very same Brandenburg No. 2 of Johann Sebastian.

Paul Moravec watched the whole concert from a box and said at the end that this concert was “one of the coolest things I’ve ever been involved in.” Photo from his website.

From a vigorous performance of the Baroque selection, the concert slid — literally, via glissando — into a movement from a John Cage string quartet, played by students in the upstairs box seats, with the lights dimmed. Cage’s strategically noncommittal scrapes, extra-tentative here, yielded to the similarly spare but more expressive “Spiegel im Spiegel” (“Mirror in Mirror”) of Arvo Pärt, where those musicians still on the stage traded off with those in the boxes. A piano in a box close to the stage played relentless triadic arpeggios in the Pärtian bell-like style and served as a kind of fulcrum between the two groups.

Everyone got to join in on a chanting improvisation, which started with a NOIers singing whatever notes they wanted. The program encouraged us to chime in with whatever tones sounded good to us and hold them until you felt like dropping them. I sang at a low voice so I could hear the outlines of the massive chord shift and pulse, which was totally fascinating. I would do this again in virtually any group I could get to to do it. (Staff meeting ahoy!)

The cloud of sound started breaking when the NOIers began playing motives from the Moravec, eventually launching into its onrushing, clarifying energy and relentless minor seconds (in the form of “B-A-C-H”). The ripenio group of flute Mark Huskey, clarinet Jen Augello, trumpet Anthony DiMauro, and violin Kenneth Liao commanded attention at the center, playing with assurance and brio. The orchestra played a dense score with remarkably unanimity of expression, earning post-concert plaudits from the composer himself.

The Cage and Pärt performances didn’t quite get to that level, and while the program traced a clear path from piece to piece, it remains unclear to me exactly what the non-Bach works actually had to do with the Moravec. (Also still baffling is the program’s description of the substitution of a vibraphone for the trumpet in the Bach as “clever,” when clearly a trumpet was available and when the orchestra frequently had to drop its volume so the vibraphone could be, you know, heard. In general, another read-through on the program would have been a good idea.) But the format of the program kept the sense of adventure alive throughout — never a slack moment in which quotidian thoughts could intrude — and the modest length left me hungry for more.

The University of Maryland brings all these young people to the NOI because it’s just fun to have talented youths hanging out with each other, but also to help them shape their careers, meaning that they may just represent the Future of Music. If it means more concerts where musicians actively engage the audience, think of novel ways to present music, and tread boldly into modern repertoire with instant appeal, bring on the future.

Other People’s Perspectives: Anne Midgette. (No, the concert did not take place at Strathmore. Blasted headline writers. I still cringe when remembering this doozy.) Updated to add: Charles T. Downey.