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Lust in New Brunswick
Unfortunately 'topless'
Friday, October 3, 2003
By Meredith Hoffmann-Thomson

Teatro Lirico d'Europa. Mozart: Don Giovanni. State Theatre New Brunswick.

It is always enlightening to see a full house of local opera goers, and no opera deserves a full house more than Don Giovanni. The audience enjoyed it very much, which for this day and age really is quite an accomplishment.

The title character, played by Vytantas Juopzapaitis, was the highlight of the evening. He was cast perfectly, exhibiting polished vocal technique and a wonderful feeling of abandon as the Don. Mr. Juopzapaitis balanced this epic character dangerously between sinister and playful, which are qualities that are not easy to portray.

The interplay between Mr. Juopzapaitis and Steffano de Peppo as Leporello was executed delightfully, their acting natural and free. At times, however, Mr. de Peppo seemed to struggle with his top notes, particularly in the famous 'Catologue Aria'. Soprano Vesselina Vassileva's Zerlina had a lovely voice with control and ease in her character. Bass Viacheslav Pochapsky's Commendatore set the Act 2 finale on fire with his powerful voice, whose timbre suited itself wonderfully to the role. Similarly Su-Jin Lee's Donna Elvira and Hristo Sarafov's Masetto were both convincing.

Ludmila Vernerova was miscast for the role of Donna Anna. She neither acted nor sang as a Donna Anna should. She was rarely involved with the actions on stage, and in ensembles (singing the top lines) her voice was not audible. Her *coloratura in 'Non mi dir', the Act 2 aria, was absolutely flawless but that only slightly made up for the rest of her performance. The sets and costumes for the production were simple yet appropriate, stylistic but not overstated. Conductor Metodi Matakiev and the orchestra, however, were not very impressive, with sloppy and passionless playing. Much of the excitement lacking in the production was due to weak *dynamics and unambitious *tempi. With a work as well known as Don Giovanni it is difficult to get away with such mistakes unnoticed.

However, at the end of the evening one was still left with a sense of wonder and awe toward Mozart. That he was a genius is obvious, even when all the performers are not up to snuff.

Rutgers University Orchestra, Kynan Johns, (conductor), Susan Starr, (piano). R. Strauss: Don Juan; Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 25; Sculthorpe: Sun Music III; Respighi: The Pines of Rome. Nicholas Music Center, New Brunswick.

The evening was billed as the gala opening concert for the 2003-2004 season. Any one of the featured works could have served as the evening's focal point. In addition, the fabulous pianist Susan Starr, a faculty member, would solo with the orchestra for the first time in Mendelssohn Concerto No. 1.

A glance around the audience showed faculty members and university dignitaries in abundance with an air of expectancy and excitement evident. Actually, the expectancy was due mostly to the debut of the orchestra's new conductor, Kynan Johns. Not to bring up the past, but the administration was placing a lot of hope on Mr. Johns. An Australian, Johns is still in his twenties and comes with an impressive resume. Winner of the Mitropoulos International Conducting Competition and finalist in the Maazel, he has conducted over 60 orchestras throughout the world. Expectations ran high.

They were met.

Johns chose Don Juan as his debut piece. I'm sure nerves played a part in the coarseness of the opening. Playing seemed tentative. Textures were thick rather than lush, the music seeming out of focus. However, the performance improved as it went along. Mr. Johns clearly has the experience to know how to handle problems. His beat became firm, clear and economical without rhetorical gesture, although, some tempi did seem unusually slow. The orchestra gained confidence.

The improvement became evident quickly when Susan Starr joined the orchestra for the concerto. Simply put, she and Mr. Johns collaborated in a performance that was magic. This concerto is one of those popular works that nobody seems to program anymore. We are at a loss for its absence. Here, the orchestra played with a remarkable refinement, and Mr. Johns revealed himself as a fine accompanist. The second movement was ravishing; it simply floated. The smile on Ms. Starr's face said it all and her playing of Mendelssohnian filigree in the last movement was incredible. The audience cheered and bravos rang out.

Then something interesting happened, as Starr left the stage after one of her recalls, Mr. Johns turned to the audience and playfully signaled to continue the applause. The audience laughed, and a beaming Starr had the final bow. At that point it became obvious that the conductor had made the transition from new conductor to a member of the Rutgers family. He made an emotional connection. He had the audience with him.

Looking around during the intermission one couldn't help but notice that the dignitaries and faculty members exhibited more smiles than a Colgate commercial. They could sense the success, and their joy was palpable.

Mr. Johns addressed the audience after intermission introducing Sun Music III by his compatriot, *Peter Sculthorpe. The work was written in upper New York State in 1967. Not used to the New York winter, the composer sought to conjure up a landscape depicting the stifling heat of the Australian outback. Balinese melodies are heard as are exotic percussion effects. It is an example of masterly landscape composing. It is modern sounding without being off-putting. I would love to hear more from this source, both from the country and this composer. I hope Johns plans to share more with us. The Pines of Rome is, of course, another example of landscape playing. Often criticized for being movie music, or damned for other non-musical considerations, Pines is an effective and sure concert closer. To his credit, Johns did not allow the work to make its impact by sheer bombast.

Indeed, a sense of refinement marked the interpretation. As the nightingale recording in the third movement seemed to float somewhere above the orchestra, I thought that it was not that many years ago that a member of the battery was required to play DJ and drop a needle on a spinning 78 for the part. Today, I'm sure the nightingale has been digitalized and a virtual holographic nightingale hovering above the players lies in our future.

The conductor did allow a bit of showmanship at the end when Respighi calls for six off-stage Buccine (these are ancient Roman brass instruments. Has anyone ever used them in this piece?) The players of the usual modern instrument stand-ins were arrayed in the balconies left and right. I was impressed that even here, with multiple brass, tam-tams, and organ, I could hear the strings, and that's rare. It was a great artistic stroke.

In Mr. Johns I think we have a winner.

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Marco Parisotto (cond.), Stewart Goodyear (piano). Mackey: Lost and Found; Mozart: Piano Concerto no. 24 in C minor, K. 491; Stravinsky: Petrouchka (1947 version). Count Basie Theater, Red Bank (also performed in New Brunswick and Newark).

The nominal star of the evening was, of course, pianist Stewart Goodyear. But without taking anything away from him, the brightest light in the pianistic firmament was the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra's own Peggy D'Armond. In playing the extended piano solos within Stravinsky's Petrouchka ('Little Peter') she gave a flawlessly virtuosic and sensitively musical performance to music which is considerably more difficult than any Mozart piano concerto.

She was part of a performance of the famed ballet which was proof positive that live performance is preferable to recorded. I can't even begin to count the number of recordings of the work I've heard, but nothing came even close to the transparency and vivid coloration of conductor Marco Parisotto's and the orchestra's collaboration. Tiny and telling details emerged in ways which were enhanced by actually seeing them executed. Things that one off-handedly learns to take for granted on a recording came alive. One memorable moment was a passage in which the timpani and the bass drum play loud strokes at the same time. Oh how easy it would be for a person simply listening on a CD to say that precision was gained by a clear conductor being watched like a hawk by the two players; but in this performance, since no sane conductor would change the beat in that passage, it was the chamber music-style eye contact between Randall Hicks and Jonathan Haas that provided such a high level of exactness.

Parisotto seemed from the audience perspective to be on top of the piece, knowing when to urge the players on and when to simply let them use their own instincts. Certainly flutist Katherine Nester and trumpeter Garth Greenup were turned loose and their individualism was shown in the sense of abandon which emerged from what were actually disciplined solo turns by each.

With no engineering to alter balances, it was refreshing to hear the snarls in the cellos, especially the nasty little passage on the *bridge, which in all the past 50 years had never stood out for me. They were so right that I can't imagine why they were submerged by other conductors and recordists. Detail after detail could be enumerated which enlivened the performance, but one advantage I had was the companionship of a Russian woman. Unless we are Russian or know the culture well we cannot hear Petrouchka fully. For Ekatarina the 'Shrovetide Fair' scenes were practically invitations to sing along, so filled are they with folk song quotes. I raise this issue because no one accuses Stravinsky of being corny when 'the big tune' arrives and it is a folk-song - certainly not Russians who find its use to be perfect for drawing the picture of the fair. But American critics and audiences have suggested that Walter Piston in using a barn dance style for the trio of a scherzo in one of his symphonies, or a circus march in The Incredible Flutist, is being silly and dropping down to a non-serious level of composing. It's a double standard which allows Tchaikovsky to quote folk material in his well-loved Symphony no. 4, while suggesting that it is cheap when our own composers 'stoop' to quoting folk or even folk-like material.

Mr. Goodyear certainly showed why he is considered one of the top Mozarteans. His energetic lines, which never confuse limpid with limp, made sense of the structure in this odd Mozart concerto. There is a conflict between orchestra and piano which drives the first movement. While the *tutti is filled with *Sturm und Drang emotion, the piano's passages are calm and refined, often little dashes of elegant *arabesques. Further, the piano is not really all that busy when compared to the orchestra. There is much about it which reminds one of the same contrasts as elevated by Beethoven in the slow movement of his Piano Concerto no. 4. But where Beethoven creates a drama which has a mystical journey with a resolution, Mozart keeps the two elements in tension without resolution.

This is where Mr. Goodyear's ability and subsequent penchant for improvising his own *cadenzas paid off, at least in Saturday's performance (he prides himself - and his press agent will not let anyone forget it - on improvising up a new cadenza for each performance). After beginning with lyrical statements typical of the piano's material, Goodyear took himself on a journey into the stormy orchestral material and thus to the same as an orchestral conclusion. It was well-conceived and brilliantly executed. It was also the most difficult technical playing in the whole concerto. The slow movement was marked by Goodyear's sweet legato, to be sure. But even more notable was the elegant and musical playing of clarinetists Karl Herman and Andrew Lamy, and hornists Lucinda-Lewis and Andrea Menousek. In the finale Goodyear's improvisation at the *fermata became an engaging transition from 2/4 to the galloping 6/8 ending.

The concert began with Princeton composer Steven Mackey's Lost and Found. The enigmatic title set the mind to trying to discover its meaning in the context of the piece, but it ultimately seemed to be self-canceling: since nothing seemed to be lost, then nothing was findable.

Musically the piece uses an accessible language which makes it easy to understand statements. When the strings are playing something fairly innocuous and the winds interrupt rather viciously, there is no sense that Mackey is exploring an artistic polarity (like the Mozart concerto), the destruction of beauty (like Schnittke), or the compromise of innocence (like Britten). The violence is all illusion; Mackey's just knocking over his own sandcastles. When the very engaging central section burbles along in a fun *toccata, that is exactly and only what it is about, burbling fun - essentially harmless music using a large, Petrouchka-sized orchestra.

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Nicholas McGegan (conductor), Dana Bhatnagar (soprano), Geeta Bhatnagar (mezzo-soprano), Claire Bloom (narrator), Women of the Pro Arte Chorale. Weber: Oberon Overture; Chilcot: Orpheus with His Lute; Arne: Three Shakespeare Songs; Sullivan: Suite from The Merchant of Venice; Mendelssohn: Incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, Op. 21 and 61. Patriots Theater, War Memorial, Trenton.

The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra gave a theme concert without it being part of a festival. And what a fine theme its was: 'Much Ado About Shakespeare.' Needless to say, the evening concluded with Mendelssohn's incomparable incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, (how could it have not?) but the other music on the program was quite edifying and set the mind spinning into other areas.

Most outré was Arthur Sullivan's (as in Gilbert and S) incidental music to The Merchant of Venice. It reminded me of Shostakovich's music for Hamlet, but without the depth. One must understand that the Hamlet music is some of Shostakovich's most outrageous circus music, all goofy and spikey, and exactly the opposite of what one would expect for a great tragedy. But it was done that way to get around Soviet era censorship which did not approve of the original Hamlet, leaving those who wanted to hear the immortal words spoken no choice but to place them in a slap-stick setting. So those in the know hear in the nuttiness as a necessary mask.

Sullivan, however, had no such excuse - except that he was living in the Victorian era, excuse enough one supposes. For them a scene of great intensity had to find relief in an interpolated non-Shakespearian 'Venetian Ball'. So Sullivan's music is just crazy: party music, comic pseudo-Spanish, and a big dance for the cellos and basses alone (so much funnier than Saint-Saëns' bass solo in Carnival of the Animals). Robert Wagner's bassoon *cadenza was well played and its comic essence pervasive. There is a French waltz which could have been written by Offenbach. It was not difficult to hear the same musical imagination that supplied The Gondoliers - Venice, you know.

Conductor Nicholas McGegan, best-known as a baroque specialist, certainly made a case for his ability to reach well-beyond that era. As a Brit he knew every comic Victorian nuance in the score and drew it from the players. He also drew some laughter from the audience as he dipped into topical humor. In noting that some of the listed sections were to be omitted (they needed singers and actors) he said, 'We'll leave out the Omelodrama'; such things are best left to California politics.' Big laugh.

The 18th century English composer Thomas Chilcot (ca. 1700-1766) composed an exquisite setting of 'Orpheus with His Lute' (Henry VIII, III: i). The lute is imitated by *pizzicato strings (the violinists played their instruments as if they were mandolins), and there is a delightful flute obbligato, all supporting a soprano. Dana Bhatnagar proved to have a flexible and very pleasing voice. Her diction was excellent, as soprano diction goes, conveying the elegance of the text. NJSO flutist Kathleen Nester kept her sound quite baroque and was, of course, quite musical in phrasing. Thomas (Rule Britannia) Arne's three songs were equally affecting and elegant. Certainly the final 'When Daisy's Pied' (Love's Labour's Lost) left all impressed with Dana's acrobatic skill and her ability to produce the 'cuckoo' sound to match Ms. Nester's flute.

But it was Dana's sister, mezzo-soprano Geeta Bhatnagar, who showed off a dramatic sound and stage presence in 'Fear no more the heat 'o the sun' (Cymbeline). Hers was not a particularly baroque delivery, but her sheer intensity overcame a purist's objections. The presence of two horns in the orchestra for that song lent nobility and sonic depth to the music.

Having presented the little-known, it was refreshing (though hardly unusual) to hear what is usually called Mendelssohn's *'complete' incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Here McGegan's penchant for bringing out details created a performance of clarity and, when appropriate, humor. The Scherzo (Puck's music) skittered along and the magic of the færie music in the Overture and elsewhere was gossamer.

The same lightness of touch was also present as the women of the Pro Arte Chorale and the Bhatnagar sisters sang the fairy's 'You Spotted Snakes' (II:ii).

Interspersed through the musical numbers were portions of the play spoken by the eminent actress Clair Bloom. She was amplified, which removed the high parts of her voice and thus left us hearing a dusky version without much consonantal definition. Had I not already known the excerpts of the play which she spoke, I'm not sure it would have been effective. She is a well-trained actress who I assume is not amplified in Stratford. I'm sure that she could have projected quite well without aid, but there must have been fear in 'Strad-ford' (as we must call the NJSO nowadays) that she would not be heard. So she was heard, just not understood. Perhaps a solution would have been to have her deliver the lines a bit slower. But trying to put the brakes on a modern Shakespearian actor is probably a fruitless task, anyway.

Yet, for those who love the Bard, there was no escaping his language and its power. The conflation of Oberon's and Puck's play-ending speeches into one certainly worked ('Now, until the break of day, Through this house each fairy stray S' went directly into 'If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended; That you have but slumber'd here While these visions did appear S').

In this music, longer and deeper than the previous parts of the program, the humor and comedy are balanced, as in Shakespeare, by passages of depth reaching far beyond the surface tale. The Act III Entr'acte is pensive, even somber, coming across like source material for Wagner's Prelude to Act III of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - 'Madness, madness, everywhere madness.' One also heard precursors to Meistersinger in the famed 'Wedding March', but also in such places as the 'Dance of the Rustics' and certain transition passages from one scene to another.

The concert began with the overture to Oberon by Carl Maria 'von' Weber (the 'von' was inserted by his pretentious father and is not really part of the name). It is related only distantly to Shakespeare, sharing its roots with the same 13th century *chanson de geste which was the source for The Bard.

The playing was stylish and crisp. Karl Herman's clarinet solo was the epitome of German romanticism, especially from a composer who favored the instrument so often with solo works. The horn solo was fine, but Lucinda-Lewis had her evening's triumph in Mendelssohn's 'Nocturne'.

Conductor McGegen was clear and personally engaging throughout, and the orchestra seemed to appreciate him. Smiles were the norm on stage, and at the conclusion applause came from the players as well as from the audience. In spite of the projected reminder to turn off the dratted things, a cell-phone went off during the concert. But even that was overshadowed by the incessant buzzing of the speaker above the stage. It is incomprehensible to me that no one on staff heard it and acted. Instead, after the whole of Weber and already into Chilcot with an unintended B-flat pedal point, I had to get up and point out the problem to an usher. It was dealt with very quickly, and thanks for that. But why was it left to me (or any patron for that matter) to go trotting up and down aisles during a performance when staff members with functioning ears should have picked up the hum?

I Musici de Montréal, Yuli Turovsky (conductor, cellist). Dvorák: Nocturne for Strings in B major, op. 40; Aulis Sallinen: Nocturnal Dances for Don Juan Quixote, op. 58; Weber: Adagio and Rondo for Cello and Orchestra; Shostakovich: Chamber Symphony for Strings in C minor, op. 110a (Barshai transcription); Mozart: Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525. Koslowski Hall, Seton Hall University, South Orange.

The concert by I Musici de Montréal at Seton Hall was a very mixed bag, but instructively so. One had a demonstration of what makes effective and ineffective conducting. Yuli Turovsky stood on the floor with the string players in a long-lined semi-circle around him. In front of him was a music stand. Turovsky is of medium height, far from Bernstein's shortness or Skrowaczewski's height. He had the music stand upon which he placed his scores standing above waist-level.

The result was that when Turovsky's hands were at about chest to shoulder level, the ensemble of the players was excellent. But when, as too often happened, his arms dropped to waist level, the beat and all other gestures disappeared from the players' views. Since they had been trained with a conductor as the focus, the frequent invisibility of his direction became a major problem.

Had Turovsky taken a straight-forward view of Mozart's famed Eine kleine Nachtmusik the players could have gotten by without caring whether they could see his hands or not. But he delivered a highly inflected version with little *ritards at the ends of phrases and other moments of *rubato. Making all this work while his directions were a mystery was impossible and thus we heard very sloppy playing.

The players seemed to know what Turovsky wanted in the Shostakovich Chamber Symphony in C minor - Rudolf Barshai's oft-used and effective transcription of the String Quartet no. 8 - far better than they did in the Mozart. Here the musical effect of the KGB knocking on the door was scarily precise, conveying that the police knew only too well how to make a midnight arrest. The non-vibrato passages for solo violin lost none of their eeriness. The final keening lament for solo cello was as heartbreaking as it always is in a deeply felt performance. The quote of the spectral dancing from his Piano Trio no. 2 in E minor had the same elegiac sensibility that it has in the original Trio and in the string quartet. This was the strongest performance of the evening.

The concert opened with a little-known Nocturne for Strings by Dvorák. Its opening strange tunes and harmonies did not sound much like that composer's writing, but then it settled into more familiar Dvorákian territory. The piece ended with a star-lit sky of high strings. Turovsky's penchant for a low beat allowed too many parts of the opening to seem insecure.

Not only did Turovsky conduct, he also played the cello. He has a flair for the theatrical which carried him past a few technical deficiencies. In the Rondo by Weber, for instance, his *thumb position playing was not always accurate, but he took such a blistering *tempo that one barely had time to notice his misses. One did have to wonder, however, if he would have missed so much had he gone a tad slower.

The other cello piece was 68-year-old Aulis Sallinen's Nocturnal Dances of Don JuanQuixote. The composer imagines the two Dons in a nightly juxtaposition of lust and chivalric amour. The use of a solo cello reminds one of Strauss's soloist in his Don Quixote. The piece is a montage of swing, Baltic spiritualism, ice cold *tone clusters, jazz 'solos', pop-tune style, and tango a la Piazzolla. While the amazing mix of styles proved to be interesting in the manner of a kaleidoscope, the actual thematic glue holding the piece together was obscure, possibly because it likely appeared in such different guises. In any case, for all its quirky interest, it was too long by quite a bit, unable to sustain structural coherence without a more readily hearable plan at work.

Turovsky certainly played it well, here suffering no technical problems at all. But it was all too obvious that his occasionally flicking hands between solo phrases were not enough to keep the musicians from sloppy attacks and releases. Even after playing the work many times, this is a piece which takes a podium presence different from the soloist.

There was an encore: four preludes by Shostakovich. They were brief, witty, and zippy. The players whipped them off with a security one wished they had been able to exhibit for 100% of the concert.

NJPAC Underground Performance Series. Amy Hamilton-Soto (violin), Jennifer Gravenstine (cello), Vincent Avella (piano). Avella: Short Stories. Theater at the Lucent Technologies Center for Arts Education, Newark.

Hoffmann/Goldstein Duo: Paul Hoffmann (piano), Tom Goldstein (percussion). Elliott Schwartz: Crystal: A Cycle of Names and Memories (premiere); Aneliese Weibel: Still for J. S. B. (2002); Goldstein: Nothing New Under the Sun 2 (1999); James Romig: Islands That Never Were (premiere); Dick Higgins: Haydn in the Forest (1979), Sparks (1979), Touch #1 (1973); Robert Morris: Struck Sound (2002). Nicholas Music Center, New Brunswick.

It must be a sailor's view in which the only view which counts is from the boat you're on: I am the center of my own tastes as are you of yours. In matters of art (and religion and politics) even the most generous soul amongst us must finally be the arbiter who counts. So in the matter of exploring the wide expanse of the current compositional field, I must reside at the center of the world, I can't help it, and neither can you.

Within one fifty-hour period I heard such extremes of current music that I could only think like a pilot to deal with the experience, even though both concerts were filled with musical idioms familiar to me.

Within 50 hours my senses spanned the vast space between Vincent Avella's filmic Short Stories, heard as part of the intimate new series NJPAC Underground in Newark, and the conceptual and *aleatoric vectors represented by the Hoffmann/Goldstein Duo at Rutgers' Nicholas Music Center in New Brunswick. This distance is surely a 20th-21st century phenomenon. There is no musical lingua franca in today's world. A visit to the Plainfield Music Store beneath the Classical New Jersey Society's offices features a book on Arab music displayed as prominently as the Beethoven Piano Sonatas. It's not Never Never Land, but Everywhere Everywhere Land.

What Vincent Avella composed in Short Stories is a *piano trio based on a waltz which went unused as part of a film score. It most often sounded like 'Michael (The Piano) Nyman meets Yanni.' Often relying on simple *triad *arpeggios for piano accompaniment, the writing for violin and cello was idiomatic and very well played by violinist Amy Hamilton-Soto and cellist Jennifer Gravenstine. Avella's use of violin *harmonics and cello *thumb position was effective within the context of a piece which depended too much on cliché for the piano and therefore the composition. Pure arpeggios right out of exercise books flowed along nicely but were hardly the stuff of exciting and crafty composing.

The second movement proved to be sort of an evocation of Hungarian passion and mood as accompanied by Jerry Lee (Great Balls of Fire!) Lewis, the great '50s rock'n'roller. It was filled with energy and worked the best of the three movements; there was an audible 'oooh' from some in the audience at its conclusion. But again the demands of the piano were so far beneath that of the violin and cello that it was apparent that the imbalance affected the composition.

For me the piece left so many compositional and technical matters unexplored that I found myself dissatisfied even as it was being played. Yet this audience, which quite evidently had come for the ballet and jazz which shared the program, enjoyed the work considerably. Its easy accessibility and broad tunefulness won the day.

The issue was that the music was so populist, as it were, that it was about as demanding as a comic book. Now compare that experience with Saturday night in New Brunswick, where the musical air was impregnated with the Gallic spirit of centering on the 'now', in which goals - if present at all - were secondary. Several works included strongly aleatoric writing, and those which did not were more intent on creating sonic landscapes in a post-impressionist blurring of points of sound. In not one piece did I have a feeling of 'Aha! What an interesting turn of events.' Things just happened without cause or effect. In short, it was an esoteric program of 'objective' music, relishing gesture and eschewing denouement.

Within that world, some of the music was effective. The concert began with the premiere of Crystal: A Cycle of Names and Memories by Elliott Schwartz, Robert K. Beckwith Professor of music at Bowdoin College in Maine, who was present. The work began in darkness as pianist Paul Hoffmann thumped low tones on a *hand-stopped string inside the piano. Percussionist Tom Goldstein also played on the piano's strings using mallets of some sort (it was dark, so they could not be identified). Finally the two lit flashlights, and after a while the full stage lights came up.

The music of the first and last movements was energetic with disparate rhythms which surprised on the occasions when they suddenly became synchronous. Because of the variety of percussion instruments and the pianist's need to play both on the keys and inside, to say nothing of the lighting effects, this was a theater work. One of the two predictable elements of the work was that it would end with the opening lighting design
in reverse.

The most effective movement for pure listening was the ethereal second. Its slow tempo was the other predictable thing, once we discovered that the piece was multi-movemented (the program supplied no clue). Here the piano blended with the vibraharp, both instruments with their sustaining pedals depressed. Quotes from other musical Pauls and Toms (the program notes mentioned Hindemith and McCartney, Arne and Tallis) glistened even as they were only vaguely recognizable.

The same meditative mood held sway in Anneliese Weibel's vibraharp solo Still for J. S. B., which is to say Mr. Bach. Though purporting to be based on elements of his writing, the relationship was essentially unhearable yet not unattractive on its own. Again we heard points of sound allowed to pile up into glowing stacks of light. The pedal was released, then a new stack was built.

James Romig's Islands That Never Were, a premiere, was yet another work which depended on slow, disjunct tones, distant spatially and rhythmically. There was the occasional increase in speed as he invoked the musical equivalent of fractal geometry (his analogy). But finally the piece was not about increase. It was, instead, like a Japanese stone garden: discreet pitches laid out to be heard independently and as a whole, but none more important than any other. The penultimate bass tone in the piano was followed by a pitch a couple of octaves and a major third higher, thus giving the illusion, but only the illusion, of a tonal ending.

These three pieces are music which would be, for me, unlistenable in recording. They depend so much on the ambience and on the visual aspect of watching the musicians create the 'dots' of sound, that hearing them purely out of a speaker robs them of their life while emphasizing the great difficulties in actually hearing the underlying motives or even general principles of the music.

The same must be said of the pieces by Tom Goldstein and Dick Higgins but for different reasons. Indeed, Goldstein's Nothing New Under the Sun 2 is an amusing bit of post-Dada performance art which one supposes is meant to promote attendance at live music. After all, it is an amusing exaggeration of the visual aspects of performance: taking an entrance bow, shlepping out the music stands, tuning up, giving head-cues for good ensemble (the duo had their ensemble at an incredibly high level all evening), and final bows. The head cue-bit was the most clever and subtle (the others verged on slapstick), as the duo gave legitimate nods to each other resulting in perfectly matched attacks of a tone. But they gradually left the music behind, leaving the two nodding at each other with no subsequent sounds. There were places where the two froze in place like bizarre photos. It was all fun, and might have gotten a bigger laugh had the performance space better matched the audience size: a mid-40s head count in Nicholas simply didn't work. It would have been far more effective (and realistic for a concert of new music on the first night of a Yankees World Series) if the concert had been presented in one of the more intimate rehearsal halls. The NJPAC Underground venue would have been perfect.

The Higgins pieces were all piano solos in which Hoffmann interpreted printed graphic designs as gestures on the piano keyboard. The score of Haydn in the Forest was projected on a screen so we could follow along: a standard piano score, presumably of some Haydn, with the shapes of bare branches superimposed in silhouette. Those sweeping overlays became hand swipes across the keyboard. Sparks was of the same 'follow-the-shapes' variety but with flashing colored lights as a visual interest.

Touch was the most fun, sort of a non-video video game. Goldstein held two flashlights which he used to indicate where Hoffmann should play on the keys. Again the predictability lay in the fast-slow-fast design, and in the registers used: the first movement was all bass, the second all treble, and the finale (duh) more or less in the middle. So it was rather like a puppet-master at work while the puppet exerts free-will within the confines of the light. We hope there was nothing theological intended here, just cleverness and wit.

The concert concluded with a piece by Robert Morris, head of the Eastman School of Music composition department. Struck Sound asked more questions than it answered, for it proved to be an oxymoronic or paradoxical piece bringing to a climax, as it were, the goal-lessness of all the pieces in the concert. Further, it asked for a definition of 'virtuosity'. It is a piece which is quite evidently difficult, yet it has nothing which could be described as audience-grabbing technical display. So often does it consist of short gestures or moments of interaction that it gives the illusion that most musically literate folks in the audience could have played it. While there were certainly passages which challenged both excellent players, there was never the sense that Hoffmann and Goldstein were transcending anything in order to play it.

I have a hunch that we audience members do want to be amazed, to watch soloists do what we can't do, and have it presented in such a way that we know darn well we couldn't do it! And that was utterly lacking from both concerts. As comfortingly familiar as Avella's emotional bath was to many, it also gave the illusion that anyone with a modicum of talent could do the same. After all, the harmonic progressions were largely the stock-in-trade of most high school would-be composers. It failed to amaze, even when the strings executed difficult passages. And the Rutgers concert failed to amaze because of the segmented, gestural nature of the music which left no room for sustained passages upon which amazement could be built. Amazement is, after all, drama, and drama must be transcendent and have perceivable goals.

So my musical world is, as it should be, a vast sea. Both concerts were of music which rests on the outer reaches of my Ptolemeic horizon, though each was a hemisphere apart from the other in materials and purposes. Neither represents anything I care to chart as a destination of choice, though Rutgers was certainly more interesting if ultimately equally unsatisfying. These concerts appeared like islands outside the main currents of the vast sea of Western Culture. Within that sea is a stream within whose strong main current I most fully live, especially when it comes to new music.

The apex of Mozart
The nadir of Archangelo Corelli
Saturday, October 18, 2003
By John Hammel

Colonial Symphony, George Marriner Maull (conductor), Edward Brewer, (harpsichord). Handel: Alla Hornpipe from "Water Music" Suite No. 2; Bach: Concerto No. 1 in D Minor for Harpsichord, BWV 1052; Arcangelo Corelli: Concerto Grosso in D Major, op. 6, no. 4; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551 ("Jupiter"). Community Theatre, Morristown.

Mozart's Symphony no. 41 in C major is a masterpiece of thematic and melodic invention, the fruition of all the immense gifts that Mozart possessed. His seeming effortlessness combined with elegance, poise, musical dignity, and clarity of purpose and execution are so in abundance that by the *recapitulation and *coda at the end of the fourth movement you become almost overwhelmed by the fecundity of musical ideas and how they have been developed and so divinely tied up. The first movement's *sonata form offers contrasting thematic material of darkness/heaviness against light that are beautifully balanced. Conductor George Marriner Maull provided that balance in the most satisfying performance of the evening with the Colonial's forces ably navigating the sharply contrasting waters of the main themes, spinning out the inner and outer voices and harmonies in a suitably tuneful and elegantly phrased manner.

As Martin Bookspan, in his superbly rendered analysis before the concert, so rightly pointed out, the first movement's juxtaposition of masculine and feminine material is central to this symphony and to its success throughout. Mr. Maull and the Colonial captured that contrast fully. Maestro Maull kept his outer beat large and descriptive, the better to delineate the overall structure, and provided quick little subdivided beats to detail the inner rhythms. This afforded him the ability to propel the shape of the musical phrases in the direction he wished them to go. The movement was phrased and pushed to a rigorously strong finale.

The second movement is more about reflection and a *cantabile feel is required. It begins with another simply gorgeous melodic passage that further explores the grand design of darkness/light. Mr. Maull and the Colonial kept the pulse steady and moving throughout, with all the themes and sub-themes developed and sculpted with a sure hand. The coruscating downward *scalar runs were expertly maneuvered.

Near the conclusion of the movement the oboe line was breathtaking in its beauty both as music and in Richard Foley's execution. The wealth of melodic invention continued apace in the Menuetto, with Maull eliciting a nice lilt from the orchestra and delineating the *contrapuntal lines to overall good effect. From the very beginning, the orchestra caught its sense of urgency and excitement. Mr. Maull's beat grew more taut as he drove the work to the finish line, navigating the shifts in mood and tempo as all the previous thematic materials tumbled over and around each other. It was in this work that Maull seemed most in his element as a forceful figure on the podium, with surety of purpose and carefully crafted drama.

Alas that the first half of the concert was not as proficient as Mozart's 'Jupiter'. Baroque music does not seem to be the Colonial's forte. A characterful, strongly delineated, pure toned delivery is the essence, but hardly what one got. Balances between orchestra sections and between orchestra and harpsichord were neat and appropriate, but that seemed to be all we were going to get.

The most successful performance was the shortest, Handel's 'Alla Hornpipe' from his Water Music Suite. There was just the right balance, allowing textures to solidify, most especially the crystalline quality of the harpsichord's translucent filigrees. Here the violins had the best intonation of the three works featured in the first half, and Mr. Maull led with good dynamics and phrasing. It served as a false harbinger of enjoyable things to unfold.

The problems manifested themselves first in the Bach Concerto for Clavier and Orchestra. There is great contrapuntal density in this work, and it offers challenges not only for the soloist but the entire orchestra as well. Precision is the order of the day, and balance is integral as the harpsichord's dynamic range is so limited in scope. The contrapuntal lines must always have a sense of forward momentum, as if being propelled from the inside out. There must be a sense of pulse among all the sections flowing within and without of each other. Articulations must be cleanly executed giving a feeling of either springtime or autumnal crispness.

But the Colonials just had too many wrong notes and smudgy spots throughout the score to bring Bach's ideas fully to the fore. The balance exacted by Mr. Maull between the orchestra and soloist was the best quality of the performance. Otherwise tempos seemed to lag, most noticeably in the *Adagio, causing the movements to drag.

Harpsichord soloist Edward Brewer for his part seemed to have all of the qualities in hand that the ensemble as a whole was lacking. He exhibited agile dexterity, with a good, clean, articulate tone. He delineated the counter melodies beautifully with expert trills, arpeggios, and phrasings and rhythms quite different in each hand. The most impressive characteristic of Mr. Brewer's work was his unfaltering energy in producing the relentlessly nonstop technical requirements that Bach laid out for the soloist. The Italian master Arcangelo Corelli, was a strong influence on his contemporaries. Born a full generation before both Bach and Handel, he was firmly established in the musical firmament before they were even conceived. Due to his achievements and widespread fame, he easily found support from a series of patrons. He was honored in his lifetime and was known by later generations as the father of the modern violin and the *concerto grosso. One could also add 'teacher' to his resume, as just one of his many students was the violinist Geminiani, not to mention Vivaldi. Although he did not officially invent the concerto grosso, he was the master who most realized and fulfilled its musical potential, composing the first great music for its form.

The op. 6 is the masterpiece upon which Corelli labored the most diligently. There are twelve works within it of which the Colonial Symphony performed no. 4. This is a stylishly vigorous work requiring very strong intonation as the sections vie with one another in a "*call and response" mode. Alas and alack, this was the work suffering the most from lack of precision and above all, dreadful intonation. The work eventually pulled itself together for a more or less coherent finale, but there were so many wrong and outright missed notes! In the opening Adagio-Allegro, the solo violins were so out of tune with themselves and the orchestra as to be acidic. I couldn't understand how the conductor couldn't have made the necessary corrections in rehearsal; it certainly wasn't possible as late as the performance. But it quickly became evident that the principal violinist wasn't able to execute the music even close to properly. It unfortunately left a queasy feeling at the close of the first half of the concert.

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Sonic ambience
What an organ! What brass!
Sunday, October 19, 2003
By A. Michael Noll

The Cathedral Brass & Percussion Ensemble: Garth Greenup (trumpet), Charles Sommer (trumpet), Christian Wilhjelm (horn), Vernon Post (trombone), Scott Mendoker (tuba), James Musto (percussion), John J. Miller and Jennifer Pascual (organists). Gigout: Grand choeur dialogué; Widor: Salvum fac populum tuum, op. 84; Bach: Gigue Fugue in G major, BWV 577; Dupré: Poème héroïque, op. 33; Fauré: Siciliène, op. 78; Hertel: Trumpet Concerto no. 2; Phillips: Suite for Organ, Brass Quintet and Percussion. Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Newark.

The grand acoustics of the Sacred Heart Cathedral were perfectly suited to this sonic spectacular for brass, organ, and percussion commemorating the 49th anniversary of the consecration of the Cathedral.

While most of the composers and pieces represented in the concert were familiar, Johann Wilhelm Hertel (1727-1799) and Craig Phillips (b. 1961) were new to me. It is always a revelation, and frequently a pleasant surprise, as it was at this concert, to be exposed to less familiar composers and works. The Hertel Trumpet Concerto was brilliantly played by Garth Greenup accompanied by Mr. Miller on the organ. The sonic space of the Cathedral was amply filled with the bright tones of the trumpet in this short but tuneful piece, with numerous opportunities for virtuoso trumpet playing by Mr. Greenup.

Vernon Post played a trombone arrangement of the Siciliène by Fauré accompanied by Mr. Miller on the organ. The beautiful tones of the trombone filled the Cathedral in perfect sonic balance with the organ.

The concert ended with a Suite by Craig Phillips. Mr. Miller, who had played the organ in all the preceding pieces, now conducted with Dr. Pascual on the organ. Craig Phillips studied at the Eastman School of Music, and the influence of both Bernstein and Dello Joio were quite clear in this very accessible and enjoyable piece.

Earlier in the concert, Bach's Gigue Fugue was played by Mr. Miller with the perfect sense of dance-like bounce that can so greatly illuminate the fun and genius of Bach. As the Director of Music Ministries for the Cathedral, Mr. Miller knows expertly from experience how to tame the tremendous power of the organ there. The organ could have easily overpowered the brass, but Mr. Miller kept the forces musically well balanced and the organ well under his control.