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Tag: Chelsea Music Festival

  • 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

  • A Report from the Chelsea Music Festival

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    Above: the players of the Verona Quartet; photo credit ~ Joseph Ong/Brittany Florenz

    Author: Scoresby

    Friday June 16th, 2017 – On a hot sticky night, I went to the penultimate set of events for the Chelsea Music Festival. Hosted in St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church was a lecture by the neuroscientist Dr. Michael Shadlen and a performance by the Verona Quartet. For those who do not know, the Chelsea Music Festival is much more than the name would suggest. Rather than just a few concerts, it brings it together all of the different senses by having food, art, lectures, music and other events focused on one theme hosted in different venues in Chelsea in a whirlwind of eight days. For each of these various disciplines, the festival has a residency – thus no night is the same, and it is a true intellectually stimulating week.

    Unfortunately, due to illness, I only ended up attending the second to last evening. This year’s theme focuses on keeping time. Dr. Shadlen’s lecture was about how humans perceive and anticipate time. His accessible talk first discussed the idea that time grounds the mind. It seems to Dr. Shadlen, time and anticipation help breed consciousness.

    More interestingly, he then gave different demonstrations of sight experiments in chimps. Dr. Shadlen was able to show anticipation thru graphs (and audio) of the various neurons of a chimp reacting. Right before each anticipated event would happen, you could see a crescendo of neural activity until the event took place. The longer it was from the expected time, the more activity. As he put it, this is where “the neuroscience of cognition and aesthetics meet.” Because the brain is constantly anticipating and timing, music stimulates this part of the brain – constantly being thrown off by the various changes in what is anticipated. The implications of his lecture set up a classical performance perfectly.

    While all of the other performances during the week are curated by the festival, here the Verona Quartet (this year’s Ensemble-in-Residence) was playing a program of their own choosing. The opener of the program was Ravel String Quartet in F Major. This young Quartet sounded fantastic throughout the Ravel, the lower strings delivering a beautiful blend of dark colors. The Quartet took a rather tight structural approach, keeping the tension high through the entire first movement. In their hands the piece seemed unstable and nervous, constantly bursting with energy through each phrase. This led to a dramatic outbursts that felt restrained almost right away and I couldn’t help but smile after the lecture about anticipation. The purplish lighting on stage and humid venue made the air seem to be saturated with energy.

    During the pizzicato-ridden second movement, the players made a full use of Ravel’s sound effects. One of my favorite sections was the muted trio during the movement. The Quartet took on a much warmer tone, contrasting the more aggressive tone from earlier. I only wish they had slowed the trio section down a little more; it still felt as structured and nervous as the opening movement. They did a great job of building dynamic range transitioning back into the scherzo. During the third and fourth movements, the group seemed to change sound to thicker, rougher textures. While technically precise, instead of the smooth edges that some groups produce in this piece, the Veronas had a tense edgy sound. It would be great to hear this group play Janacek.

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    The other part of the first half was a world premiere by the Composer-in-Residence (and well-known composer) Sebastian Currier (above). His music had been played all week during the festival, and this commission was the capstone event of sorts. The new piece is part of a project of creating six etudes and six lullabies for six different string quartets, this set of two being the second entry of the project. In keeping with the festival theme, the piece is titled Etude: Interactions and Lullaby: Pulsing.

    Through the etude, the quartet plays a theme that seems to keep developing. It is a fast-paced piece that reminded me some of John Adams’s writing, though more tonally adventurous and colorful. As each player’s theme gets offset and displaced, the chords gradually became more dissonant. The music is skittering and spider-like, and the Verona Quartet played it with verve, managing to capture all of the intricate accents. Because of the driving sections in this piece, there is very little silence. At times it sounded like Mr. Currier was making use of a Shepard Tone as everything falls out of sync. Finally, the difficult etude opened up into a muted chorale of sorts that brings the piece to a close, really the restlessness finally settling.

    The lullaby to me felt like a ship that was rocking back and forth, with chords that slowly crescendo and decrescendo, each played by the whole quartet. This contrasted the etude well. As the piece evolves and moves forward, melodies start to emerge as instruments drop out of these larger chords to take on their own sound. Here Mr. Currier is employing a microtonal language so that each chord has completely different texture, timbre, and feeling. The piece builds to a beautiful E-flat chord that ends the piece, sounding much lighter than all the material preceding it. These pieces are great miniatures in the quartet repertoire, and I look forward to hearing the other five sets.

    The lengthy program concluded with the very difficult Beethoven String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131. This seven-movement piece, played with no breaks, is a great way to conclude a program about measuring time. The first movement opens with an extended fugue, played here with attention and clarity. Similar to in the Ravel, the Quartet seemed be intent on the structure of the piece, infusing it with energy. While it was effective, it felt at times that some of the more delicate sections of this movement were overlooked. Nonetheless, they brought out the counter-melodies clearly. During the second movement, the group had a more folksy sound. They did best in the energetic rhythmic sections. While well-played, the third and fourth movements seemed to lack the structure that they had brought elsewhere. The music here seemed more about the individual movement rather than moving the piece forward.

    Luckily, in the penultimate movement they seemed to regain their focus creating a beautifully sorrowful adagio; particularly lovely were the downward runs near the end of the movement. Throughout, they seemed to use a sweeping dynamic range that paved the way into the dramatic finale. During the last movement, the Quartet did a good job of bringing out the intense counterpoint while still managing to sound lyrical. Watching a quartet coordinate this is always a treat, and here the players seemed to be able to navigate the intricate voicing and virtuosity well, leading to an exciting conclusion. I look forward to hearing this young quartet in the future and seeing how their sound develops, they are certainly formidable performers.

    While an overwhelming evening in many ways I am so glad that the Chelsea Music Festival provides such a diverse and vibrant set of events. It really is a quintessential New York celebration of culture and I look forward to attending again next year.

    ~ Scoresby