Oberon's Glade

Tag: Augusta Read Thomas

  • 2024 Chelsea Music Festival ~ Opening Night

    Lili

    ~ Author: Lili Tobias

    Friday June 21st, 2024 – The opening night concert of the 2024 Chelsea Music Festival was held in by far the most surprising venue I’ve ever been to. It took place in Genesis House, which is a restaurant/car showroom/performance venue associated with the luxury car brand, Genesis. In fact, the audience walked into the building through the showroom, so we were surrounded by new cars as the event staff offered glasses of wine. We then descended down a flight of stairs, through a lounge area, to the performance space. 

     

    The stage floor was actually a large screen itself, as were the back wall and the ceiling. This concert featured not only music but visual art completely surrounding the musicians as they played. While I thought the visuals were beautiful and intriguing, I didn’t quite see how they were connected to each specific piece. I think both the music and the visual art could have stood on their own just as well as together!

     

    The concert opened with two pieces by Augusta Read Thomas: Bebop Riddle V and Dancing Stars. Both were very joyful and bouncy! I particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of staccato and legato moments in Dancing Stars. This piece was primarily staccato throughout, but there were brief moments when more legato phrases rose up and then dissipated. These moments got more expansive as the piece progressed, and culminated in one bright pluck, followed by its echo in the resonance of the piano strings.

     

    Wooden Bodies, by Tebogo Monnakgotla, was next on the program, performed by the Aizuri Quartet. Beginning with a slow melody in the lowest register of the viola, this motif was then explored by the other instruments in turn. In general, this piece was very fugue-like with all the motifs that got passed around within the quartet. My favorite moment was when the two violins traded off short, choppy phrases, creating a sort of panning effect between them. As a nice contrast to the explorative nature of the previous piece, Augusta Read Thomas’s next piece, Clara’s Ascent, felt calmer and more relaxed. The music stayed slow and legato for most of the time, punctuated by a fun pizzicato solo for the cello near the very end.

     

    Next was a beautiful string quartet arrangement of Clara Schumann’s song, Die stille lotosblume. Having played the original piano and voice version myself, I really appreciated the liberties Miho Saegusa took in adapting the music for strings. First of all, the vocal melody is traded between string instruments which creates fun contrasts within one performance of the piece. And second, Saegusa added some delicate arpeggios which don’t exist in the piano part. These added interesting variety to the texture which the piano part just doesn’t have, and the half cadence ending left me wanting more!

     

    To end the first half of the program was the world premiere of Nicky Sohn’s wind quintet, A Night at Birdland. Despite being accompanied by images of birds, this piece has nothing to do with birds, but rather is inspired by Charlie Parker, who is known as “Bird.” It was a really wonderful piece, and WindSync performed it so well. The music traversed many different musical textures, often featuring a consistent bouncy rhythm and really lush chords.

     

    Beginning the second half of the program were two solo piano pieces, first the theme from the 2022 movie, The Fabelmans, composed by John Williams. Melinda Lee Masur, one of the artistic directors of the festival, performed this piece herself. It was a beautiful progression of a melody through different accompanying textures. Next was Against Time, written and performed by 2024 composer-in-residence Ania Vu. Starting with a single barely-there note, the music evolved into an exploration of different piano textures and techniques: full chords vs single notes, clusters vs octaves, steady pulses vs filigree. I’d love to try out playing this one myself!

     

    The concert ended with Poulenc’s Sextuor (1931-32, performed impeccably by WindSync and pianist Andrea Lam. After the music, the audience was invited back upstairs to the Genesis House Restaurant for more drinks and canapés. This opening night concert featured such a wide variety of artistic ideas, and I’m sure the rest of the festival will live up to that as there’s a full week of performances ahead—from Bach to jazz to Brazilian forró. Congratulations to the Chelsea Music Festival on their 15th season!

     

    ~ Lili Tobias

  • Fantastic Finckel

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    It’s during the months of High Summer that I find time to listen to music at home. The rest of the year is taken up with live music, and with writing (and reading!) about it. But on these long, hot August afternoons, I am in my cool cavern of a room with CDs playing.

    I have a huge stack of music yet to be listened to – and even larger stacks of un-read books – but one disc that I’d been really looking to hearing was my focus yesterday: a recording by cellist David Finckel of Antonín Dvořák’s cello concerto, paired with Augusta Read Thomas’s 1999 work, Ritual Incantations, and featuring the Taipei Symphony Orchestra conducted by Felix Chiu-Sen Chen. The disc – on the Artist Led label – may be purchased here.

    The familiar Dvořák is – needless to say – beautifully played, and the concerto sounded wonderfully fresh to me. It’s the Thomas that I am savouring now, being of a type of music that is particularly appealing to me. David Finckel premiered Ritual Incantations at Aspen in 1999.

    In March 2015, Augusta Read Thomas was the subject of one of The Miller Theatre’s Composer Portraits. My friend Monica and I were drawn into Ms. Thomas’s musical world, as well as much taken with her as a personality.

    Ritual Incantations opens with solo cello in a fanfare-like summons, followed by a mystical, plaintive passage which Mr. Finckel plays gorgeously. Bells of varying textures are heard in an animated section before the cello takes up a soulful solo; incantatory chimes summon us as to prayer, and the harp lends a feeling of enchantment. Wind voices and cello converse, taking Mr. Finckel’s voice to the depths.

    The music turns lively, urgent and emphatic. There are jabs and sudden bursts from various instruments, and then again the cello sings longingly, rising upwards. A glassy shimmer ends the work abruptly. The other-worldly aspects of the music evoke uncharted distances whilst the passionate beauty of the cello writing wraps itself around the soul. I can’t stop listening to it.