Maine Sunday Telegram
September 1, 2002
Concert review of Friday, August 30, 2002 concert

Humpback whale song magically transmuted
George Crumb’s “Vox Balanae,” performed Friday at the Salt Bay Chamberfest at Damariscotta’s Round Top Center for the Arts, just goes to show what a whale could do with a Julliard education.

Flippancy aside, Crumb has done for these natural musicians, the humpback whales, what Bartok did for central European folk music, Brahms for a Handel air, or Mozart for “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” He has learned the tradition inside out and made it his own to the extent that he is able to think musically in terms of a whale’s repertoire of sounds. He may not have improved on the original, but he has added to it and made it more accessible to other species, such a homo sapiens. He has also written one of the masterpieces of late 20th century music.

“The Voice of the Whale,” composed in 1971, was inspired by a 1969 recording of a whale song. It is scored for cello, played by Wilhelmina Smith, flute and voice by Joshua Smith, with piano by Pedja Muzijevic. In one of the variations, both cellist and flutist are called upon to whistle—which they do admirably—and to play the crotales, an ancient instrument comprising a set of high-pitched cymbals. All of the traditional instruments are electronically amplified, but so unobtrusively that one is not aware of the microphones until high volume is called for. Paradoxically, the amplification makes the music score “authentic” since it mimics the qualities of the hydrophones used to record the original tapes.

The result was a thing of unearthly beauty, in which questions of dissonance or tonality became irrelevant. There were sections as harmonically simple as “Amazing Grace” and others that could have come from another galaxy. The rhythms are those of the sea and its creatures. I would lobby for this work to be played at least once a year in Maine. At the very least, it belongs in every CD library, if there is as good a performance as the Chamberfest’s out there somewhere.

What was even more surprising on Friday was that a work of this depth and difficulty could be combined with two others without loss of focus or musicality. The first item on the program was Earl Kim’s deceptively simple setting of lines by Samuel Becket, entitled “Earthlight.”

“Vox Balanae” was followed after intermission by one of the most sparkling and musical renditions of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet that I have heard in recent years. The Salt Bay musicians rallied around guest cellist Yessum Kim, who plays with the Bormomeo Quartet, giving her, and a large audience, a memorable end to a memorable evening.

Christopher Hyde’s Classical Beat Column appears in the Maine Sunday Telegram.