Oberon's Glade

Tag: Matthias Pintscher

  • CMS: New Music @ The Rose Studio

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    Above: composer Matthias Pintscher

    ~ Author: Brad S. Ross

    Thursday March 21st, 2019 – Thursday was a unique night of sounds with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in the organization’s cozy and intimate Daniel & Joanna S. Rose Studio.  The all-contemporary music program, featuring four works written between 1983 and 2013, ran the gamut of cutting-edge of sonorities, offering its refreshingly engaged audience a small cornucopia of contemporary classical music.  It was also a heavily American program, featuring only a single piece by a European composer—something that can seldom be said of most music programmed at Carnegie Hall or the New York Philharmonic.  Performing that night of the CMS players were the pianist Micheal Brown, violinist Bella Hristova, violist Richard O’Neill, and cellist Mihai Marica.  Their playing was at such a high level of proficiency that one could be forgiven for scarily noticing the ease with which they navigated such technically demanding music.

    The evening began with some academic and mercifully brief opening remarks by the CMS Director of Artistic Planning and Administration Elizabeth Helgeson about the composition of the first two pieces.  Once finished, the players wasted no time diving into the first work of the evening:  Alexandra du Bois’s L’apothéose d’un rêve for Piano, Violin, and Cello.  L’apothéose d’un rêve, translated in English as “The Apotheosis of a Dream,” was originally commissioned by the pianist Menahem Pressler for the Beaux Arts Trio for the trio’s semicentennial in 2005.  The work is cast in five movements played without pause and features a musical voice much befitting its decidedly ambiguous title.

    Its tone is often longing and somber, lingering and dramatic—a stark contrast to the ferocity for which so many contemporary compositions have been known.  Light on extended technique, but rife with developed thematic material, du Bois achieved an almost tragic beauty in L’apothéose d’un rêve, evoking the dreamlike imagery of its name.  The third movement Molto vivo, with its arpeggiating piano lines, seemed almost to harken the swells of some discontented ocean.  The closing movement Misterioso ended with haunting and almost funereal bell tones on the piano as the strings suspended an eternal minor third above them.  Its beauty set a lofty standard for the works to come.

    Next was the revered octogenarian Charles Wuorinen’s Trio for Piano Violin, and Cello.  Composed in the summer of 1983, the piece was originally commissioned and performed by the Arden Trio.  It is cast in a single movement over approximately ten minutes, making it handily the most concise work of the evening.  Compared with the previous piece by du Bois, Wuorinen’s Trio was volatile and ferocious—rich with exquisite colors and textures that brought the most out of the ensemble.  The players had their best work out here and effortlessly demonstrated their expert musicianship on its numerous intricate runs, tightly dissonant intervals, and relentless difficult counterpoint.  It all culminated in an unsettling and richly dramatic ending that, in the best possible sense, left me wanting more.

    Helgeson returned to the stage for a few more brief words about the program and the performers soon launched into the third work of the evening: Matthias Pintscher’s Janusgesicht for Viola and Cello.  The German-born Pintscher, the sole aforementioned non-American on the program, composed Janusgesicht in 2001.  Its title refers to the god of Roman mythology Janus, whose two faces stair simultaneously in opposing directions.  Janusgesicht, as the composer writes, is “less about correspondence or communication among the two voices, but about the dissolution of one’s voice into the other.”  For this piece, the players thus faced away from each other as the lights in the hall were near-completely darkened, minus some ambient blue lighting cast upon the back wall.  Gimmicky as this setup may seem (I indeed had my doubts), it turned out to be one of the more interesting performances of the evening.

    Janusgesicht was understandably the most dissonant and atonal work of the night—no tone center was to be found amidst its eerie scratchings and unholy strikes as these two string players weathered some of the most discordant sonorities of the evening.  The work is characterized by myriad unnerving atmospheres, haunting silences, and arresting sonic textures, none of which ever outstayed their welcome.  Following a lugubrious and tantalizing final decrescendo, the performers froze in place for what must’ve been half a minute before finally lowering their bows to receive a well-earned applause.  Though it required patience and a mind considerably open to challenging music, Janusgesicht was well-worth the effort—the audience knew it, too.

    The fourth and final piece of the night was David Serkin Ludwig’s Aria Fantasy for Piano, Violin, Viola, and Cello.  Written in 2013, this quartet was the most recent composition of the program, though its roots stretched the furthest back of all. It was inspired, as the program indicated, by the opening and closing arias of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations from 1741, but was pleasantly light on direct quotations.  Ludwig, who was present for the night’s proceedings, was humorously short-winded in a pre-performance talk about the work, quipping that “a composer should never speak for longer than the duration of the piece.”  What unfolded over the next sixteen minutes turned out to be a wild and adventurous combination of musical idea.

    Aria Fantasy began on a lullaby-like piano line accompanied by almost science fiction-like glissandi in the strings.  This unusual combination of pleasantly tonal melodies contrasted with obstinately discordant harmonies and modern musical techniques played like a dream that was equal parts pleasant and frightening.  After this eerie opening came a dramatic and eventful middle section (andante–adagio), followed by a growing momentum that built to a grand final section (con moto).  When the final diminuendo played the piece to its close (tempo di aria), the audience—including yours truly—was left wanting it to continue long after the piano’s final harmonic resolution.

    This was a resounding finale to a night of superb contemporary music—music that should be performed as often and as widely as anything by the late masters.  Other ensembles would do well to take their example and program more works by living composers.  If Thursday night’s enthusiasm was any indication, audiences are itching to hear it.

    ~ Brad S. Ross  

  • Stravinsky’s FIREBIRD @ The NY Philharmonic

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    Above: composer and conductor Matthias Pintscher

    ~ Author: Brad S. Ross

    Thursday February 21st, 2019 – It was an evening of exquisite sounds Thursday night at David Geffen Hall as the guest conductor Matthias Pintscher led the New York Philharmonic in music by two early 20th-century greats sandwiching one of his own, composed almost exactly a century years later.  Pintscher, a German-born composer and conductor now residing in New York City, has quickly built a reputation as one of the finest younger composer–conductors of recent memory to emerge on the world stage.  On this night, he brought with him a much-welcomed performance of his recent violin concerto, featuring the talents of the renowned French violinist Renaud Capuçon.

    The evening began with Maurice Ravel’s “Alborada del gracioso” (“Dawn Song of the Jester”) from his 1905 piano suite Miroirs, which he had transcribed for orchestra in 1918.  Ravel, a master of orchestration above all, peppered this score with myriad and most enjoyable colors, including numerous pizzicato phrases, muted brass, and varied percussive bursts.  Pintscher brought the best out of the Philharmonic, which performed here with precision and grace.  It made for a lively and dynamic opening piece.

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    Above: Renaud Capuçon

    Next up was Pintscher’s own mar’eh, a concerto for violin and orchestra composed in 2011 on a commission from the Lucerne Festival, Alte Opera Frankfurt, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which was here receiving its New York premiere.  Its title comes from a Hebrew word meaning “face sign” or, as the composer’s note indicates, “the aura of a face, a beautiful vision, something wonderful which suddenly appears before you.”  Why he chose to write it in lower case is as mystifying to me as any other inexplicably ungrammatical contemporary music title.

    The piece began quite eerily on a single suspended note played high on Capuçon’s violin, joined only by an ominous rumble in the percussion.  A languid melody soon entered, trading between Capuçon and various brass soloists, as dark colors began to emerge throughout the orchestra.  Following this menacingly silent introduction, a series of tantalizing full-ensemble swells seemed to indicate a change of direction for mar’eh before the work fell back into another series of quietly shifting timbres.  This carried on for some time until the same solitary high note and percussive rumble returned to bookend the concerto.

    Extended technique abounded throughout mar’eh and the players, including Capuçon, were at their absolute finest, but it was nevertheless hard to shake a sense of dissatisfaction when it was all over.  What the piece lacked was a sense of direction—momentum.  Its tempo always leaned toward the adagio, if that, and its dynamics, aside from the occasional fortissimo burst, rarely seemed to escape mezzopiano.  For a duration of roughly 23 minutes, this made for a hard-going listening experience.  The audience was politely receptive to it, however, even if their enthusiasm seemed more directed at its soloist than the composer.

    After intermission was the third and final piece of the night: Igor Stravinsky’s mighty Firebird.  Written in 1910, The Firebird marked the first of the composer’s many fruitful collaborations with the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev—a relationship that would also produce the likes of Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.  Premiering only eight days after his 28th birthday, it was also Stravinsky’s breakout piece and one that placed him on the world stage as one of the finest composers of his time and beyond.

    The audience knew it was in for a treat from the moment it began, as those memorable and ominous opening bars in the cello and bass harbingered the danger ahead.  The First Tableau was equal parts beautiful and menacing leading up to its volatile climax (the unforgettable “Infernal Dance of All Koschei’s Subjects”) and the haunting lullaby that follows.  The Second Tableau redeemed this carnage and misery with its exuberant and triumphant finale—one of the grandest in all classical music.

    The experience of hearing these magnificent bars played live by an orchestra as fine as the New York Philharmonic is one I wish every person on Earth could experience for himself.  The ethnomusicologist John Blacking once defined music as “humanly organized sounds…” if this be so, then these are no doubt some of the finest sonorities ever compiled by a single person.

    The crowd was quick to its feat upon conclusion with many shouts of “Bravo!”  This was easily one of the most animated displays of approval I’ve witnessed all season.  Pintscher and company received several curtain calls and every section of the ensemble was given a chance to take their bows.  The adulation was much-deserved for Pintscher and this stupendous orchestra, the gem of New York City.  Bravo, indeed.

    ~ Brad S. Ross