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Portland Press Herald
August 23, 2007
Concert Review of Tuesday, August 21, 2007
'Groundswell' premieres,
opens door on excellence
Salt Bay Chamberfest off and running.
A capacity audience crowded Darrrows Barn at the Round Top
Center for the Arts on Tuesday night to hear the Salt Bay
Chamberfest's Maine premiere of Steven Mackey's "Groundswell"
(2007). The work had its first performance at Aspen, Colo., in
July, with the composer conducting the same orchestra of oboe,
clarinet, horn, piano, two violins, two violas and cello. The
seven-part suite features the phenomenal violist Hsin-Yun
Huang.
"Groundswell" is a musical tour -- with the viola as
guide -- of a
climb from sea level to the highest peak and down again. The
music is atmospheric rather than literal in its depiction of
various altitudes, although there are echoes of Strauss's "Alpine"
Symphony at the highest level, and Benjamin Britten in the sea
interludes, "Approach by Sea," and "Sailing Away,"
that begin and
end the piece.
The sea-level sections are the most appealing, at least on first
hearing. The approach is evocative, but the "Sailing Away"
movement is richest in texture and melodic invention, as if the
visitors had acquired some spiritual wisdom on the heights. The
parts depicting rarified atmospheres are, perhaps deliberately,
sparser. At one point the violist, having exhausted all the sul
ponte trickery available, resorts to a few bars of harmonica
playing, humorous but out of place. It reminded one of Oscar
Wilde's comment to a Shakespearean actor: "Mr. Tree, your
'Hamlet' was... (pause) funny without being vulgar."
The chamber orchestra accompanying the viola, and
representing the tourists, sometimes seems to have too little
to
do, which is a waste of considerable talent.
The abilities of the ensemble, or at least most of it, were more
evident in the work that followed, the Bach Canata "Ich habe
genug" (BWV 82), which was superb. The oboe part, played
by
Kathryn Greenbank, was appropriately heavenly, while baritone
Stanford Sylvan sang the extremely difficult vocal line just as
Bach must have meant it to be, without any of the strain and
ornamental stumbling that ordinarily characterize this role. Petja
Muzijevic's harpsichord continuo, on an instrument by Rod
Regier of Freeport, was both balanced and audible in the back
of
the hall.
Just when one thought it couldn't get any better came the
Brentano Quartet in a performance of the Beethoven String
Quartet in E-flat Major (Opus 127) that blew everyone away. I
have not been as appreciative as I should be of the late
Beethoven quartets, but that may be because I have never heard
them played like this. I was scribbling notes such as "apt
vibration" in an attempt to describe what was happening,
but
suffice it to say that there was not a hint of the thinness of
sound that so often mars string quartet playing, that every part
was perfectly realized, and that the whole was greater than the
sum of the parts. It received a well-deserved standing ovation.
Mr. Mackey was in very good company on Tuesday.
Christopher Hyde’s Classical Beat Column appears
in the Maine Sunday Telegram
Copyright © 2007 Blethen Maine Newspapers
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