Reviews

CLEVELAND CHAMBER SYMPHONY
Timothy Hankewich, guest conductor Laura Martin, violin,
Mark George, piano

There is no way to know exactly what the Cleveland Chamber Symphony has up its sleeve, even if you look closely at the program.

A concert often contains world premieres of several scores that the musicians themselves haven’t seen until days before the performance.

For its program Monday at Cleveland State University’s Drinko Recital Hall, the Chamber Symphony was predictably unpredictable. Brand-new scores by Erica Muhl and David Taddie served as the meat between slices of recently surveyed repertoire by Arthur Berger and Howie Smith.

The results, as always, were variable but intriguing.

Muhl’s Consolation proved extremely affecting. Written after Sept. 11, the piece wasn’t designed as a direct response to the tragedy, though its juxtaposition of dramatic and soothing ideas could qualify the music as a rush of compassion. From unison gestures, the score opens up to embrace undulating passages, forceful chords and bright textures.

The principal materials are entrusted to solo violin and piano, who contribute silken and rippling lines that interact deftly with ensemble detail. Led surely by guest conductor Timothy Hankewich, the 11-minute piece wove a warm, fervent spell, with violinist Laura Martin and pianist Mark George especially vivid in the solo roles.

 RANGE OF LIGHT

A SATURDAY EVENING CONCERT
LOADED WITH WORTHY ITEMS
David Cleary, Music Critic, LIVING MUSIC

WAREBROOK CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FESTIVAL, NEWPORT, VT
Rafael Popper-Keiser, cello, Hugh Hinton, piano, Robert Schulz, percussion

The weekend of July 13-14, 2002 was picture perfect in the northeastern part of the Green Mountain State, warm and not the least bit humid. Under these circumstances, it takes something really special to coax a visitor to the area to spend the weekend indoors. Sara Doncaster has of course known this for years. As director of the Warebrook Contemporary Music Festival, she has been putting on a terrific mid-July weekend of concerts in Northeastern Vermont for eleven years now. This was no exception.

Range of Light, a trio for cello, piano, and percussion by Erica Muhl, is attractive to hear. Simultaneously furtive and variegated, it handles its non-triadic verticals with careful confidence and makes smart use of extended techniques. As is always the case at this festival, performances were at a uniformly high level. Note should be made of the wonderfully showy cello performance of Rafael Popper-Keiser (aided in excellent fashion by percussionist Robert Schulz and pianist Hugh Hinton).

With music making this good, we’ll forego the rural pleasures of Vermont for the concert hall any day.

 TRUCCO

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS, 1999 Award Citation

Trucco for string quartet is striking in its unfolding landscape of dramatic colors and rhythms.

 VARIATIONS FOR PIANO

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS, 1999 Award Citation

The Variations are taut, intricate, and fascinating in their harmonic/motivicconstructions.

 VARIATIONS FOR ORCHESTRA

A COLONIAL CELEBRATION
Paul Somers, Music Critic, THE STAR LEDGER

COLONIAL SYMPHONY, MORRISTOWN, NJ, Yehuda Gilad

As the Colonial Symphony ended its season, music director Yehuda Gilad fulfilled one of the most important duties of a conductor. He brought forth new musical life. Erica Muhl’s Variations, composed to celebrate the orchestra’s 45th anniversary season, proved to be an eclectic mix ranging from mysterious, transparent tone clusters, slam-bang Latin rhythms, sonority combinations from Benjamin Britten, to the open spaciousness of Aaron Copland.

Muhl described the four-note motive, which is the basis for the work, to Martin Bookspan during the pre-concert interview. Once that easy-to-grasp idea was in the listener’s ear, the richness of her inventions and variations transcended the enumeration of her debts.

While the variations are discrete sections, they flow from one to the next, giving the work a symphonic feel. After a lyrical episode, the work turns to the rhythms, though not the melodic language of jazz. Certainly most arresting was a snappy Latin section filled with sudden silences. So integral were these gaps to the structure that Muhl achieved the effect of having the listener continue the rhythms mentally when the music stopped. Of course it also gave away Haydn as another source upon which she built.

COLONIAL SYMPHONY OFFERS MASTERFUL PERFORMANCE
Robert W. Butts, Contributing Writer,
THE RECORDER PUBLISHING COMPANY

As has been the case throughout the orchestra’s 45th celebration season, [Friday’s] concert under Maestro Yehuda Gilad featured music old and new, sounds familiar, unfamiliar, and previously unheard. Opening with the most recent, Gilad led the players in an invigorating premiere of Erica Muhl’s Variations, composedespecially for this anniversary year. Her percussive rhythms, Coplandesque lines, and juxtaposition of impressionistically thick sound masses and hannotically progressive chords created a set of varied moods as well as of varied themes and motives.

 WHAT IS THE SOUND OF AN ANGEL’S VOICE…

ALICE WALKER TEXT FINDS A HOME
WITH PHILHARMONIC
Paul Hertelendy, Music Writer, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

WOMEN’S PHILHARMONIC, SAN FRANCISCO
Gisele Ben-Dor, guest conductor

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, whose work has recently been chucked out of a statewide English test after attacks by the Orange County-based Traditional Values Coalition is getting support from unlikely places.
Walker was one of three writers featured in a literary-symphonic tribute over the weekend via Erica Muhl’s world premiere composition for the Women’s Philharmonic.

The state Board of Education banned Walker’s short stories “Roselily,” which deals with a Christian woman’s doubts about marrying a man who is Muslim, and “Am I Blue?” which contains a symbolic statement on animal rights.

There were no pickets or disruptive forces at Saturday night’s concert at the Yerba Buena Gardens Theater, where the sell-out crowd sat in rapt attention.

The Walker text inspiring Muhl’s music consisted of silent poetry from “Horses Make a Landscape More Beautiful.” The lines reprinted in the program offer a particularly apt refrain: “Rest in peace.”

Muhl’s composition What is the sound of an angel’s voice… was a ravishingly beautiful piece, also citing writers Annie Dillard (another whose writing was banned from the test) and Maya Angelou. It’s a contemporary foray into impressionism, mysticism, veiled allure and the shimmering colors of a concert orchestra.

A Los Angeles-born assistant professor at the University of Southern California, composer Muhl has a fine ear and an iridescent palette that emerged in these three connected pieces.