In performance: music of Nicholas Maw
Web-only review:
More Maw, in memoriam
by Charles T. Downey
The 21st Century Consort opened its season of concerts at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on Saturday with a tribute to the British-born composer Nicholas Maw, who died last May. The group celebrated its long relationship with Maw, who lived in Takoma Park for more than two decades (and whose "Sophie's Choice" was staged by the Washington National Opera in 2006), by performing some of his most accomplished music for chamber ensemble.
(read more after the jump)
A rainbow of iridescent instrumental colors was featured in "La Vita Nuova," including a bucolic opening horn solo, trilling avian woodwinds and amorous violin sighs. Soprano Lucy Shelton sang the Italian poetry with a mostly crystalline tone, but the down side of a veteran's experience was the raggedness of her top notes. That deficiency was less exposed in the local premiere of "The Head of Orpheus," in which twin clarinet parts in yearning, fluttering accompaniment revealed Maw's mastery of the instrument that he studied as a performer. No one begrudged Shelton a spontaneous encore, happy to hear this enigmatic work, with its harmonic references to Berg's "Wozzeck," a second time.
Baritone William Sharp took greater advantage of Maw's natural, text-sensitive writing for the voice in a mellifluous rendition of "Roman Canticle," a love song to the Italian countryside through the words of Robert Browning.
The strongest performance came with "Ghost Dances," an imaginary ballet ranging from elfin scherzos of Mendelssohnian delicacy to a demonic bacchanal. Eerie whispers from another world were manifested by non-traditional instruments assigned to each of the five players: a film-score flexatone, chiming Pakistani finger cymbals, conductor Christopher Kendall's kazoo, and the African finger piano played by pianist Lisa Emenheiser, like a phone call from the mother ship.
--Charles T. Downey
By
Anne Midgette
|
October 26, 2009; 6:00 AM ET
| Category:
local reviews
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