Classical New Jersey Society - Reviews & Opinions

Modernity was once the whole point of art. When court musicians used old works, they went to pieces at most a generation old but mostly to those much more recent. In the other arts it was the same. A new style of painting developed adherents quickly, and new plays were always welcome. Newness was the currency of conversation and debate.

While the artists themselves often knew the work of older masters very well, the paying public - noble or middle class - clamored for the new. Mozart and Beethoven knew some of the music of J. S. Bach and were deeply influenced by it. But the listeners of their time were far more interested in music which came from the pens of his sons, and even they were beginning to pale though their influence continued.

There was a time when new music was the stuff of politics. Revolution was barely hidden in the notes of Chopin as well as Wagner and Liszt. Even Mendelssohn, a mega-star of his time, carried a radical message of pan-Europeanism in his cosmopolitan career which reduced national borders to mere rest stops.

There was a time a century ago when in the fine- and performing-art world "modernism" set intellectuals afire with "-isms" galore and manifestos to go with them. Cubism, expressionism, primitivism, Dadaism and the fictional and theatrical works by existentialists produced exhibits and stage performances which became notorious in their time, even when history has shown that they feel dated.

It was about this time that music left the public fold to a degree unmatched by most other arts. There came a time when Schoenberg's music ceased to be understood as the decadent last gasps of romanticism. The shift into incomprehensible aural conundrums proved to be ineffective as a means of communication to a listening audience. Bartók went into *dissonant realms which left the average listener bemused (although he is now popular and those dissonances accepted), and even the crisp and clean modernity of Stravinsky left many wondering what he was doing and why. At the same time Picasso, Stravinsky's fine arts counterpart, was gaining popularity and understanding among the wider public.

It is common, thanks to Nicholas Slonimsky's amusing and provocative Lexicon of Musical Invective, to point out the nasty reviews leveled against all the great composers of the past. It is a book largely engendered by its compiler's advocacy of modern music, his way of demonstrating that cries of anguish over new music are nothing new. But any commonly accepted "list of great composers" is filled with men who became famous either late in their lives or perhaps only a decade thereafter (J. S. Bach and Schubert
having perhaps the longest waits).

This is not the way of things now. Only in the last few years have I noted average audiences cheering after a trip through the Bartók Fourth String Quartet. This happened most recently at a Mostly Music concert featuring the Orion String Quartet. While one can hardly hide the astringent qualities of the music, the players aimed to connect emotionally leaving the strong intellectual content to act as support. The *"Prestissimo" was scarily mysterious, not merely because of the "with mutes" special effects as balance to the *pizzicato movement. The central *"night music" movement was intended as evocation, not merely an intellectual catalog of string colors. This was rhapsody as romantic as Tchaikovsky. One woman left the hall not long into the aggressive opening movement, but just why was not apparent.

Another resuscitation of a "difficult" work was effectively accomplished by Bernhard Klee as he led the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in Schoenberg's Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene, op. 34. Here, as in his Five Pieces for Orchestra, there is a programmatic intent. It may be the last gasp of romanticism, but it is still alive in both works and can only be grasped fully if put in that context. For decades the extra-musical content of these works by Schoenberg was suppressed, falling victim to those idealists who worshipped the structure alone. But Cinematographic Scene has an emotional trajectory which is vivid and ultimately achieves its final painting of "catastrophe" not in crashing Hollywood terms but through a desolate *flutter tongued flute.

It is perhaps the unyielding negativity of some of the "modernist" works which has erected the wall which grew between composer and audience. Death and doom are unmitigated in Schoenberg's tone poems and such subject matter as one finds in some Bartók ranges from the eerie to the violent.

Sometimes the means of presentation has everything to do with audience acceptance. It was Klee's effective idea to segue the Cinematographic Scene without pause into Richard Strauss's Death and Transfiguration, thus, as it were, redeeming the catastrophe, refusing to allow negativity to rule.

Audiences are beginning to appreciate modernity again. And part of this is that there is little unredeemed negativity in the writing. In fact, much that I have heard recently is affirmative, even playful. A clear example of this is James Grant's Entr'Acte, premiered by the Bay-Atlantic Symphony on its March 20 and 21 concerts. It is energetic and fun to hear, though it is not a "pops" piece at all. It contains busy music, which was described by conductor Jed Gaylin as "traffic." It also has a memorable tune which comes close to being Broadway but takes a quirky turn of phrase which even Mr. Sondheim would be unlikely to take. These two elements alternate and interact for about eleven minutes. With Mr. Grant not in attendance the audience felt no necessity to applaud just to be polite, so their applause was honestly appreciative.

Two other premieres were even more recently presented to New Jersey listeners, both by Trent Johnson of Scotch Plains. On March 21 his Poem for viola and orchestra was performed with NJSO violist Brett Deubner as the soloist. This work is quite serious in nature with a long-lined lyricism which fit the soloist's temperament like a glove. The score is filled with *polytonal or at least *polychordal passages arising from but not imitating
the soundscapes of William Schuman and Walter Piston. It was interesting to note that when placed against woodwinds the viola's sound was swallowed up in middle and low registers, yet when placed against horns it unexpectedly soared. Perhaps a little thinning in the woodwinds would help. The orchestra was large and excellent, and they applauded performer and composer along with the audience. The Poem is to be the central movement of a viola concerto Johnson is composing for Deubner.

Wearing another musical face, as it were, Johnson's Petite Suite was premiered by the Colonial Symphony on April 3 with Yehuda Gilad conducting. This proved to be a much more fun-filled work with bouncing rhythms and much use of Johnson's fine ear for orchestral color. The middle of the three movements was "night music" but not as eerie or menacing as Mahler or Bartók. This was a night in which the moon rose (Johnson's suggestion) bringing light not fright. The finale was practically Haydnesque in its good humor, while it also re-emphasized the Schuman connection in its use of *doubly-inflected thirds and some other added tones. Depending on where one sat the final B-flat chord with added C and G widely spaced sounded colorful or a touch hokey. I heard it as the former, but those closer missed the blend of sound.

On Wednesday evening yet another work was premiered by the Montclair State University Orchestra. In this case it was Dean Drummond's Phil Harmonic, not to be confused with the similarly titled children's introduction to the orchestra by Montclair's David Rimelis. Drummond's intent was to write a piece which was a "friend of harmony." Of course for Drummond this has some added meanings: he is the director of the Partch Ensemble at MSU and is therefore immersed in *micro-tonal music. Most striking was his use of the pure overtones in the trumpets: we heard the harmonic series stack up with all the pitches in natural state rather than as we now tune them so they fit into modern *equal temperament. For instance, the sixth harmonic (if we start on B-flat) is actually somewhere between A and A-flat, and this "out-of-tune" pitch was intended by Drummond to be right. Such ear-expanding music is just what is needed for university students. In the hands of pros, if they were to buy into the micro-tonal premise, the intentionality of the effect would be even more apparent.

The biggest concert of music by living composers, Kean University's "Ars Vitalis," this year presented only one world premiere, and that by accident, as well as older music by the others, all of whom were present.

The most effective was Lowell Lieberman's unabashedly neo-romantic Violin Sonata from about a decade ago. As played by Naumberg finalist, violinist Sharon Roffman, who is an affiliate artist at Kean, and pianist Jon Klibonoff, the brilliance of technique and the expressivity of the music were matched in a piece which always had goals in sight. Each movement moved toward a moment when the listener could say "aha, there's the crux of the matter." It was no surprise to learn during the pre-concert interviews in front of the audience that Lieberman is the only one of the five who makes his living solely as a composer.

Three scenes from Robert Aldridge's opera Elmer Gantry, as yet incompletely orchestrated, were quite effective. On this occasion they were brilliantly accompanied by pianist Allison Brewster Franzetti. The story is set in the "Bible Belt," so the music hints at Appalachian folk music without ever dropping completely into the idiom. Much is owed to Carlisle Floyd's Susannah in the technique of merging natural diction with flowing music. The first of the scenes, in which we hear Gantry going into religious revival mode only to discover that he's actually selling farm equipment, approached the level of a comic *patter song but with a much more serious satiric payoff. The other two scenes, both quite lyric, were affecting. We heard nothing of how Aldridge will handle the grittier scenes, and the very pianistic accompaniment must find its orchestral voice, so the jury is still out. A full performance scheduled for Nashville in 2006 will be well worth hearing.

The sole premiere was a work for piano by Gary Eskow which he had finished only two weeks before. An ailing soprano forced the cancellation of some of his songs, so pianist Ron Levy stepped in on about a day's notice and gave as good a reading as one could expect on such short notice. Perhaps some of the jazz nuances weren't quite bluesey enough, or perhaps what sounded to my ears like references to jazz great Lenny Tristano came out sounding a tad more baroque than Eskow might have wanted. But Levy's straight ahead approach revealed that the composer's virtue of sounding free and spontaneous also carries with it the drawback of too often needing to be reined in to achieve a greater formal clarity.

John Sichel's Three Pieces for Guitar features massive amounts of *harmonics. Soloist Christopher Kenniff, whose technique seems to become even more flawless with every outing, allowed those bell-like tones to resound through the dead hall by using a slight amplified boost. Of course that gave even less room for error. Sichel's music proved to be both unselfconsciously angular and quite intentionally lyric. Especially for guitarists who are quite secure with their harmonics, these are three delicate works worth taking up.

The Composer in Residence at Kean is Matthew Halper, who organizes the annual concert and always has a piece of his own played. On this occasion he brought out an old string quartet which sounded too often like a student piece in need of revision. While Halper's undoubted skill at Bartók-influenced compositional techniques was clearly already in place when he wrote it, the Quartet seemed to lack any climactic moments when we finally got to a predetermined goal. The performance itself seemed top-notch, as Ms. Roffman brought along three friends from Marlboro who dug right in and, as Mr. Levy had already done, revealed the work's virtues and flaws as only the finest playing can. Yet one has to wonder if the lack of climax was Halper's or the performers' fault.

Recently we heard Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Montclair State University give a performance of Edgar Meyer's Concerto for Double Bass. Here is a ten-year-old work with the same roots Aldridge was mining in his Appalachian hints. Of course, with Meyer the "hints" are mighty broad. The characteristic slides into some pitches were frequent, though he knew quite well when not to include them. The piece harks back to the old days when virtuosos wrote music for their own performance, usually something that no one else could possibly play. And so it was that the legendary Meyer himself came on stage without a tux jacket, with his suspenders evident, and with his sleeves rolled up almost to the elbow. And in true virtuoso fashion he became the piece. This was not a matter of watching and listening to flying fingers and bow; this was performance art in which we saw a stage character created both visually and musically. Meyer's virtue is that he has the ability to improvise but also the discipline to not allow his larger compositions to fly off on flights of ungrounded fancy.

So what is modernity? For one thing, at least in America it has returned to an emotional expressivity which is not all dark. Every piece mentioned in this article was notable for its positive outlook. Of them all, Halper's Quartet was the most aggressive, yet the affable composer simply is not an angst-ridden soul in the way Bartók was, and it shows. Aldridge is equally friendly and outgoing, so some question whether he has the ability to really find the full measure of the drama he has taken on (they haven't taken into account his background in a milieu where a Gantry-style preacher was and is common currency). In any case, every work reviewed above, while not stupidly "happy face," affirmed life in very positive ways - a far cry from the brutality of The Miraculous Mandarin or Wozzeck or the ivory-tower elitism of the most hard-core academic post-Webernists.

Another felicitous development is the reliance on American roots. Models are now Walter Piston (whose Sinfonietta was on the Orpheus program), William Schuman, Carlisle Floyd, and, in Drummond's piece, Harry Partch. Folk and jazz roots are now deeper in the soul of the music than the merely facile evocations of an earlier day, even in Eskow's clearly jazz-influenced piano work.

Each piece sounds "American" in its own way, rooted in our sometimes idiosyncratic musical history which is finally coming to matter to American composers. Gone is thralldom to the European "international style" and the academic "elite." While some musicians and listeners are intrigued by the "American Mavericks," and I among them, there is great comfort in knowing that there is also a steady flow of music being produced by composers whose aims are craft, elegance, and emotional substance. A composer no longer must feel the peer-pressure necessity to be a solitary voice crying out in a wilderness of his or her own making.

Music without borders
A genial gathering
Sunday, April 4, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

Tremblay Ensemble: Allison Kiger (flute), Christopher Johnson (piano), Brennan Sweet, Tristan Lemieux (violins), Pemi Paull (viola), Christine Sweet (cello). Mozart: Flute Quartet in D major, K. 285; Beethoven: Piano Sonata, op. 27, no. 2 (“Moonlight”); Kreisler: Præludium and Allegro (in the style of Pugnani); Ginastera: Impressiones de la Puna; Dvorák: Finale from String Quartet in F major, op. 96 (“American”). Community Theatre, Morristown.

The Tremblay Ensemble presented a Sunday afternoon concert that was truly a family concert. Many families attended, yet no one seemed dissatisfied that there was no big “kiddie show.” Each piece in the varied program was preceded by a few brief words from a performer, just enough to bring the uninitiated on board without turning it into a lecture/recital. And just enough to still let the music speak for itself to those of all ages.

Of course, an important feature of any concert is the quality of playing, and here the Tremblay Ensemble left no question. This mix of New Jersey and Quebec artists includes first-rate musicians from both areas.

The most striking work was Alberto Ginastera’s Impressiones de la Puna for flute and string quartet. Allison Kiger led the way through three dance movements. The first two were sultry slow dances, with the third a driving rhythmic folk-dance evocation. The quartet supported the soloist with precision, allowing the spicy dissonances to sparkle in the light of excellent intonation. This piece should be a part of the standard flute repertoire.

The other striking performance was Christopher Johnson’s when he played the good old “Moonlight” Sonata. The final two movements were just what one would expect - a well conceived dance and a blistering finale. It was, however, in the over-famous first movement that Johnson elevated some *inner voice repeated tones to an importance which provided a rhythmic drive to the otherwise placid reflections. It was quite compelling.

Violinist Brennan Sweet played the famous Kreisler Præludium and Allegro with panache and technique. Ms. Kiger brought energy and a sense of gallant style to the Mozart Flute Quartet in D. And the well played finale to Dvorák’s “American” Quartet left this listener wishing the whole work had been played.

The only element needing work was that everyone concluded their little talk with “I hope you enjoy it.” Pretty lame, as if the alternative were a viable possibility. How about beginning with “I want you to enjoy this, so let me tell you about it,” and ending with “Now let’s listen.” The Tremblay are hardly the only folks who fall into this trap when they have spoken about the music before they play, so everyone who performs and talks beforehand should consider this.

Halcyon Trio in L.A.
Zipper a winner
Tuesday, April 6, 2004
By A. Michael Noll

Halcyon Trio: Andrew Lamy (clarinet), Brett Duebner (viola), Gary Kirkpatrick (piano). Alfred Uhl: Kleines Konzert; Gary Pratt (arr. Trent Johnson): Film Music from Pasture Songs; Jean Francaix: Trio; Laura Carnibucci: The Blue Marlin; George Gershwin: Preludes for Piano; Trent Johnson: Trio for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano. Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School of the Performing Arts, Los Angeles, CA.

New Jersey’s Halcyon Trio was on tour in Southern California during early April, and we heard their performance at the Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles. As we have come to expect, their performance was flawless with considerably expressive musicianship.

Before getting to the music, a few comments are needed though about the Zipper Hall, particularly after my negative review of the hall across the street, the new Walt Disney Concert Hall and its “ill-acoustic.” The Colburn School of Performing Arts is a private preparatory music school for about 1300 young people that has just expanded to offer an undergraduate program. The Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School seats 416 and has fine acoustics. The sound quality is warm yet clear, with strong lower frequencies and tunable reverberation using moveable drapes along the upper sidewalls. The sound quality of the Zipper Hall was especially effective for the mellow sounds of the Halcyon Trio, and Lamy’s clarinet playing resonated perfectly with the acoustics of the hall. This is a hall with a transparent sound that allows one to concentrate on listening to the music, not to the hall.

Many of the pieces on the program would be familiar to New Jersey audiences. The darkly foreboding slow movement of the Uhl has almost become a signature piece for the Halcyon, as if written uniquely for them. The arrangement by Johnson of Pratt’s film score is an East/West Coast collaboration of a New Jersey composer with a California composer of film music, which is such an essential component for the film industry based here in Southern California. This hauntingly soulful music clearly has a Copland influence but is uniquely powerful in its own right, particularly when played so dramatically by the Halcyon Trio. They “own” not only the Uhl, but this piece too.

Deubner and Lamy took a short rest while Kirkpatrick played solo for the
Gershwin Preludes for Piano.

The warmth with which the Halcyon Trio played the slow movements of the Françaix and Johnson Trios and the slower portions of the earlier Uhl and Pratt pieces (marked *”Largo”, *”Andante”, *”Grave”, and *”Adagio”) have a powerful emotional quality. A collection of just these slower movements and works might make a successful CD with crossover potential at a time when so many of us are seeking solace. There is something unique about the sound of the Halcyon Trio’s three instruments that resonantly soars with a feeling of gentle tranquility.

The day after their concert at the Zipper Hall, the Halcyon Trio performed or the Music at Noon series at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, to (we were told) a very enthusiastic audience. Classical music in Southern California rivals any other locale, with an impressive number of superb soloists, composers, chamber groups, pipe organs in nearly every church, orchestras, and music schools - all of world-class quality. The next time you are visiting California to see its scenic beauty, I encourage you to visit Southern California to hear its musical beauty.

[Dr. Noll is a professor at the Annenberg School of Communication, teaching half the year at Columbia University, which brings him to New Jersey, and the other half at USC, which brings him to Los Angeles, from which he occasionally sends a report to the Society.]

Second thoughts by others
Good ol’ Bruch tags along
Thursday, April 15, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Gilbert Varga, (conductor), Sarah Chang (violin). Bach/Webern: Ricercar from the Musical Offering; Bruch: Violin Concerto no. 2 in G minor; Brahms/Schoenberg: Piano Quartet in G minor. Prudential Hall, Newark.

The concert was all about music looked at a second time. Most satisfying was Anton Webern’s elucidation of the six-voiced *ricercar from Bach’s Musikalisches Opfer (Musical Offering). Webern is well-known for his *”pointillist” music in which the various instruments participate in a (*relatively) large structure with “points of color” rather than longer lines. The idea is that the whole will be more than the sum of the individual contributions.

Webern used this idea to create a misty yet didactic version of the famed *contrapuntal work. The piece becomes a paradox: no longer contrapuntal as Bach would have thought of the term, it reveals every motivic detail existing within the counterpoint. The result inevitably progresses in herky-jerky fashion, no matter how smoothly the various instruments flow from one to another. Indeed, this X-ray isolation of each idea is the whole point of the arrangement.

Varga and the orchestra made it work by letting it flow quietly along so the shift in colors became an exercise in pastels. Attacks were underplayed so that two or three notes when played emerged rather than punched. It left one wishing that at least for this performance the airy reflecting sculpture had been lowered from the ceiling of Prudential Hall with the spotlight playing on it, for that is how the music worked. It was Bach reflected and refracted through another fine musical mind.

The other extreme - and extreme is the right word - was Schoenberg’s orchestration of the Brahms Piano Quartet in G minor. Here we have the colorizing” of a work which doesn’t need it any more than Casablanca or Citizen Kane. Brahms quite often takes a stance of some distance, writing music about something else. This Piano Quintet contains an example which will make the idea clear. He writes brass fanfare music, but it is, of course, for piano and strings. So it ceases to be a brass fanfare and becomes a description of a brass fanfare - non-brass instruments “talking about” brass. There is within this distant stance something of the impressionist in art. Brahms provides an impression of a brass fanfare while holding back the real thing.

Schoenberg takes this vision of hints and subtlety and turns it into a photograph. Fanfares now have the brass booming them out. Even the Brahms orchestra is enlarged as Schoenberg writes in bold color what Brahms had written in sepia-tones.

Part of the spectacle is the introduction of a percussion battery filled with non-Brahmsian instruments: bass drum, tambourine, glockenspiel, snare drum, and xylophone make colorful visits into the score. Only the timpani and triangle are authentic Brahms. At least Mr. Varga and the percussionist agreed to play the xylophone with a softer mallet; I’ve heard it done with a hard mallet that reduced the piece in its xylophone passages to cartoon music.

Even with all those tripled woodwinds, the intonation was impeccable with special mention given to the clarinets. The NJSO string sound continued to settle into something distinctive in the otherwise cookie-cutter orchestral world. When Schoenberg gives a bow to the original’s three strings by giving the concertmaster, principal violist, and cellist a solo trio, Eric Wyrick, Frank Foerster, and Carole Whitney rose to the occasion. Indeed, we’d love to hear them do the original.

The piece ends in slam-bang fashion in either the original recipe or this extra-crispy version, so Varga let fly with the rousing “gypsy” coda and rightfully received the cheers of the audience.

While it is possible to connect the Max Bruch Violin Concerto to the “second look” theme, it is far more tenuous and was probably not even considered when the concert was designed. The connection: the main theme of the slow movement is the same as one of the main themes used later by Richard Strauss in his Alpine Symphony.

Yet one has to wonder how it was that such an interesting “second look” theme was dispensed with for the concerto. There are two choices which would have made sense, and one of them far more than the other: the concert cried out for the Berg Violin Concerto. Not only would that have included the composer’s treatment of a Bach chorale, but it would have filled out the *Second Viennese trio with a towering masterpiece of the twentieth century. But, just as certainly as it was the best thematic choice to make, there was no way the NJSO was going to program it. The last time they programmed the Berg they received more complaints than for any other piece ever. On that occasion Midori gave the most scarily intense performance I’ve ever heard, so one can understand a degree of audience upset. Of course, such a strong reaction means that the performance was successful. But dangerous art is not what arts marketers like to sell.

The other possibility to fall within the concert theme would have been Beethoven looking at his own music. Surely it would have been effective to have programmed his piano version of the Violin Concerto, the so-called Sixth Piano Concerto. And that wouldn’t have even had marketing problems.

But Bruch it was. And Sarah Chang came on to do it. Heaven knows she can play it, probably in her sleep. Sure it was all there - the spiffy technique, the neat phrases, the big “wasn’t that great?” smile at the end, and the kiss on the conductor’s cheek. As much as I like the Bruch concerto, and I do, I could not help but think that the aforementioned Midori’s Berg had been accomplished when she was younger than Ms. Chang, or that Chang’s contemporary Hilary Hahn expands her repertoire including the Edgar Meyer Violin Concerto written for her, and that Leila Josefowicz, another contemporary, already played the Adams concerto with the NJSO. Surely with some thought something more on topic could have been devised than what is now considered a student concerto and which provided her with no artistic chances to take and a concomitant lack of memorable excitement. Chang is a young woman who has taken chances. Her insistence that her recording of the Dvorák Violin Concerto not be paired with another concerto was gutsy for someone of her years. She wanted and got it paired with the Dvorák Piano Quintet, committing what would seem to be some horrible recoding industry sin of mixing symphonic and chamber music. More power to her! We wonder what kind of choice she might have made for this concert, given the opportunity.

Choral communication
Full house for Carmina
Friday, April 16, 2004
By Taylor Wolf

Crescent Choral Society, Madison Presbyterian Church Choir, Apprentice Chorus of the Newark Boys Chorus School, Meredith Hoffman-Thomson (soprano), Bruce Rameker (baritone and counter tenor), New Jersey Youth Symphony, Paul Hostetter (conductor). Carl Orff: Carmina Burana. Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church, Plainfield.

The performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana drew an extremely large crowd of classical music lovers to The Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church in Plainfield. Parking was at a premium even a half hour before the concert, and the auditorium and balcony were packed with many eager listeners. The whole church was filled with suspense. From the first strike of the drum, the audience was captivated and remained in awe during the entire performance.

Paul Hostetter, the conductor of the New Jersey Youth Symphony (NJYS), directed all three choruses and orchestra with immense enthusiasm. The communication that constantly flowed between Mr. Hostetter and the full ensemble was always precise and accurate.

The Crescent Choral Society combined with the Madison Presbyterian Church Choir, creating a solid tone. There were a few rough spots here and there, but in each voice, the energy still remained, masking any noticeable mistakes. Unfortunately, at times the chorus’ singing was enveloped by the cavernous room in which sounds linger and often muddle the most exciting moments.

Executing each solo with passion, baritone and counter-tenor Bruce Rameker showed his wide vocal range, thoroughly conveying the text not only in the varying intensities of his voice, but also through the many expressions of his face and body. While singing softly, Mr. Rameker’s voice was sometimes difficult to hear. This was partly because of the over-resonant surroundings, and also because he neglected to open his mouth widely enough to aim his voice towards the back row.

Soprano Meredith Hoffman-Thomson (who is an alumna of the NJYS) sang with confidence and versatility, projecting her voice to the very back of the church. She certainly dressed appropriately for her solo “Stetit Puella,” a song about a girl in a red tunic. In “Tempus est iocundum” Ms. Hoffman-Thomson’s voice blended beautifully with The Apprentice Chorus of the Newark Boys Chorus School and created an outstanding combined timbre. Whenever the boys sang their diction was impeccable, and their young voices were pure and appropriately innocent.

For the most part, Mr. Hostetter’s symphony of young musicians performed Carmina Burana with skill and agility. Each player’s zeal swept throughout all the performers reaching into the audience. During the orchestral “Tanz,” concertmaster Sara Kim and her assistant played their violin duet with unity and great expressivity. The percussionists also did a fantastic job in faithfully bringing the symphony, chorus and soloist through many difficult passages of varying tempi. However, during “Veris leta facies,” the trumpeter’s ability to sustain prolonged notes was greatly in need of assistance. The bassoonist had a bit too much fun while playing the roasted swan sequence. It sounded as though he was having difficulty in producing a mature sound.

When the powerful and fatalistic reprise of “O Fortuna” began, the whole room seemed as if it would explode with excitement.

Fire and revolution …
… and impish wit
Friday, April 16, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

Juana Zayas (piano). Mozart: Rondo in A minor, K. 511; Prokofiev: Visions fugitives, op. 22; Chopin: Four Ballades opp. 23, 38, 47, and 52. Unitarian Society of Ridgewood.

Juana Zayas’ back-to-back performances of the four Chopin Ballades was the monumental event of her recital. But the evening’s journey to that tumultuous mix of nationalism and revolution was just as engrossing: all twenty of Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives, the epitome of 20th century miniatures, took their rounded course preceded by Mozart’s prefiguring of Chopin in his fairly late Rondo in A minor.

Least well-known to most listeners was this meditative Mozart work using a form more often associated with rollicking finales. But here the composer creates a long line and sets it in a highly *chromatic language which is a clear antecedent to Chopin’s instrumental *bel canto style. Even the ¾ meter reminds one of Chopin yet to come.

Ms. Zayas obviously wanted to create a link to Chopin and made as much as she could of the similarities. Her secure technique, never challenged in Mozart, produced an appropriately *romantic ethos.

Other aspects of pianism which were to serve her well in Chopin first surfaced in the Prokofiev performance: her deft way with *third hand effect, the wide range of her pianistic colors and touches, her flawlessly dazzling virtuosity in the mad swaths of keyboard covering technical passages. The grotesquerie found in only in Prokofiev during this recital revealed her ability to fall in line with his wit.

But finally it all came down to the Ballades. Fiery passages were played with blisteringly emotional speed which left the audience marveling after the initial impact at the immaculate accuracy. Though on general principal a few missed notes can be counted on, if there were any on this occasion they went unnoticed. It was, indeed, Zayas’ intense accuracy of not only pitch but of attack and rhythm which allowed the fire to become so intense. There was nothing approximate or fudged by the pedal. When Ms. Zayas was calm, as at the beginning of the final F minor Ballade, her intensity bristled with kinetic energy. So when the piece finally erupted in her hands it was a call to arms, an evocation of political revolution with Chopin as general.

The artist was clearly drained at the end of such a recital. But she graciously provided three encores: some Bach/Busoni and a Scarlatti sonata bon-bon.

Clowns at work
Singers provide smiles, too
Sunday, April 25, 2004
By Paul M. Somers

Boheme Opera of New Jersey, Joseph R. Pucciatti (conductor), Edward Crafts (director). Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. Figaro: Constantinos Yiannoudes; Count: John Easterlin; Dr. Bartolo: Matthew Lau; Rosina: Mika Shigematsu; Basilio: Ashley Howard Wilkinson; Berta: Sara C. Blann; Fiorello/Ambrogio: Kevin V. Grace; and male chorus. Patriots Theater, Trenton.

In spite of the fine performance of Rossini’s masterpiece Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), it is the clowns which stay in the memory the most for all the nonsense they went through in getting the curtain open for each scene. That they also showed up as (for instance) the police in Act I, ii (in this production Act II) was just fine. After all, the comedy of the production stepped outside the boundaries of time and place. When Count Almaviva (John Easterlin) was about to sing his Act I serenade, the prompter handed the music up to him. It turned out to be Rogers and Hammerstein’s “Some Enchanted Evening” and was handed back. Then the correct song was handed up.

Easterlin’s singing was well up to the “Serenade” and to everything else which came his way. Except of course when he had to put on a comic character voice, he was clear and tasteful. When the character allowed he was even elegant, thus reminding us that, in spite of everything we see him do, he is a count, outranking everyone else in sight.

Constantantinos Yiannoudes’ Figaro carried off his signature entrance aria as well as everything else and was appropriately take-charge. The Dr. Bartolo of Matthew Lau was as officious as ever and provided excellent character singing.

Rosina was sung by mezzo-soprano Mika Shigematsu. She was a charmer: sprightly and agile of both voice and body. All the vital *fioritura was sparklingly in place. There was one drawback (for those who know the opera it loomed large, but for the average listener hardly at all): she couldn’t reach the high Cs in the finale to the production’s Act II. This meant that the most electrifying ensemble singing of the finale was cut, as well as some of the most clever harmonic manipulation in Rossini’s output.

Don Basilio’s big “Calunna” aria was sung with fine characterization by Ashley Howard Wilkinson. His exit as an “ill” person was handled well. Mezzo-soprano Sara C. Blann was convincing in her one aria and held up her end quite well in the ensembles.

In the pit conductor Joseph Pucciatti had the orchestra playing in first-rate fashion. Both the well-known overture with its *Rossini crescendo and the storm interlude were very well paced. But the tough parts are the *recitatives in which the conductor and orchestra have to follow the *parlando of the soloists. Pucciatti had it all worked out, and it came off flawlessly.

Costumes and sets were effective, though it is a fact of life at Patriots Theater that there is no easy mechanism for changing scenes (thus the three acts).

The stage direction of Edward Crafts was uneven. While early scenes like the serenade or Bartolo/Basilio were handled well, when the comedy really got under way he relied too much on actions which did not grow out of the plot. What has Fiorello wandering around with a rifle have to do with anything? It was sheer lack of imagination to insert something that had nothing to do with what was going on in the drama. And there was a reliance on things which are so far outside what would be normal human behavior that they weren’t funny. The old-fashioned bit of spinning a person around to befuddle them - used twice in this production, both times on Dr. Bartolo - is so out of touch with human reactions (who would be that passive in the face of such abuse?) that it lacks the comedy of the unexpected and certainly has nothing to do with wit. There were no laughs from the audience. In the big scenes, which should build the comedy on stage as organically as Rossini has crafted the music, with one laugh flowing out of the previous one, what we got was a string of unrelated bits with little connection to the actual plot.

Down Under in
Up Over
Kynan Johns conducts at Rutgers
By Elaine Strauss
This article originally appeared in US1

For Kynan Johns, Rutgers’ newly-imported Australian conductor, conducting is choreography - not the arm-flapping, torso-twisting movement that makes a viewer seasick, but the controlled, precise gestures that tell both performers and audience what a piece is about. Since arriving at the Mason Gross School of the Arts in September, 2003, the 29-year-old Assistant Professor has re-shaped instrumental conducting at Rutgers, guiding the university orchestra into strong and stylish performances, and teaching conducting classes.

Johns led the orchestra in a concert, the centerpiece of which was Sergei Prokofieff’s demanding Symphony No. 5. The program also included Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin, and Schwandtner’s Percussion Concerto.

Interviewed at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Johns explains how he overcame his doubts about programming the Prokofieff piece. “I was advised against doing this symphony as being too difficult by my teacher, [internationally sought conductor David Porcelijn]. But my wife said I should do it. I was reticent because I was uncertain what the orchestra was
like.”

“After the second or third rehearsal of the Strauss (Don Juan) for the first program [of the orchestra in October],” Johns says, “I was convinced that the Prokofieff would not be a problem. I asked the orchestra. They were enthusiastic. Prokofieff is the master of 20th century melody. All orchestras like to play his Fifth Symphony because it’s so much fun. It’s fun to be in the audience, too. Every movement finishes with a bang.”

“I’m impressed with their attitudes,” he says of the Rutgers instrumentalists. “The Prokofieff is a difficult, challenging piece. There are so many tricky spots. But the kids are eating it up. They don’t want to leave rehearsals. I’m sure my teacher would be amazed.”

“The morale of the orchestra is at a very high level,” Johns continues. “I can see that by the smiles on their faces when they play the Prokofieff. They’re all on the edge of their seats at the sound coming out. Everyone wants to play well and wants to work hard because the music’s coming together.” It seems that Johns has cast a spell on the instrumentalists.

Born in 1975 in Adelaide, Australia, Johns comes from a traditional family. His father is an auditor for the Australian federal government. “My mom’s a mom,” he says. She works at a rest home and taught sewing at a technical school. The oldest of three siblings, Johns has a younger brother, Darian, who is an opera singer and lives in Brisbane, Australia. Their sister Taryn is studying occupational therapy at the University of Sydney.

“There is an adage,” Johns says, “that conductors are not made but born. That’s not true. No one chooses to be a conductor. You fall into it and realize that you’re good at it.” Johns fell into conducting at an early age. He attributes his start to a six-month stay in Texas at age 12. “I was a good boy soprano,” he says. “The Texas Boys’ Choir in Fort Worth had planned an Australian tour, and someone thought it would be a good idea to have six Australians join the group.” Johns succeeded in the Australia-wide auditions. Michael Shannon, conductor of the choir, noticed him and helped plan his studies after the return home.

Accepted to the University of Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium, Johns earned a Bachelor’s degree in composition. During his second year he was asked to conduct one of the University choirs. “I was more interested in composition, but it was a paying job and I took it on and started enjoying it. I built up the choir and was invited to conduct the Adelaide town choir. In Australia cities have town choirs. We performed choral-orchestral works. Then I took the option of a post-University honors year in conducting. After finishing the program, I realized that I knew nothing. I was 21.

“By chance, a master’s program in orchestral conducting was established in Sydney that year. David Porcelijn was the leader of the program. He taught conducting the Dutch way. You had to conduct in silence, to memorize, and to write out scores from memory. We had lessons from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. He never gave compliments: he had an international career and had no time to waste on compliments. ‘What I don’t comment on is good,’ he said.

“Porcelijn gave me concerts with [Australian] orchestras where he was the chief conductor. He ‘put his hands in the fire to give me concerts,’ was how he phrased it. Orchestras liked me, so I got more concerts. There’s enormous democracy in Australian orchestras. The Instrumentalists fill out conductor-evaluation forms at each concert. I was named “Young Conductor of the Year” by the Australian Broadcasting Company, and I didn’t finish my master’s degree because I was conducting so much.” Eventually, Johns got the degree.

After winning the Nelly Apt prize, which fosters Australian-Israeli relations, Kynan Johns went to Israel in 1997 to study for a year with Noam Sheriff, who was Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Israeli Symphony Orchestra from 1989 to 1995. During that time Johns met his wife, Israeli cellist Yana Levin, whom he married in 2001.

“In Australia studying conducting was very academic,” says Johns. “You had to read the right books and justify what you were doing. In Israel, the teacher was interested in what’s in the ear; it didn’t matter what you read. So you developed passions, and looked at music as a phenomenon. You took a philosophical view about how music exists in time and space, not how it exists on the page. Conducting was art, not science.”

“In Israel it was okay to question the composer’s score. Pieces were not franchised. It wasn’t the same Big Mac; it wasn’t the same Brahms. The conductor was seen as a creator. He was not scared to find new things.” The upbeat Israeli approach to conducting did not, however, immunize Johns against the inevitable problems of a conductor at the outset of his career. “You’re giving orders to people old enough to be your parents,” he says. “You’re young and inexperienced. You’re not paid much. Typically, you’re freelance, and there’s a long time between gigs. You have no guidance. A tennis player has his coach at each match. A conductor has to find his own way. The path is long, arduous, and not very clear. The first 20 years of a conductor’s career are very difficult.” Johns is now seven years down that road.

After one year working with opera companies and orchestras in Australia, Johns returned to Israel for three years. He calls the year 2002 “a turning point” because of his success in two major conducting competitions. One of eight finalists in the Maazel/Vilars competition, which drew 400 entrants worldwide, Johns’ prize was a Carnegie Hall debut with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. “I didn’t win,” he says, “but Maazel asked me to assist him when his opera 1984, based on the Orwell book, premieres at Covent Garden in 2006.” A month after the Maazel competition Johns won second prize in Athens’ Mitropoulos competition.

Relocating to New Jersey in late August 2003, Johns encountered no transition problems. “For me the three years in Israel were cultural shock. Moving to the United States was like moving closer to home.”

At Rutgers Johns has scheduled a major Shostakovich festival set for 2006, the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth and has reached out to prominent musicians for the celebration. Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, violist Yuri Bashmet, and conductor Rudolf Barshai have expressed their interest. Johns hopes also to attract members of the Shostakovich family to the complex of concerts and symposia.

Johns is nonplussed by the unstable personnel of an orchestra where instrumentalists arrive, move on, and leave. “You know who you’re losing, but there’s a certain amount of stability. You have to adapt the repertoire to the people available.”

Johns foresees definite directions as he adapts the repertoire to the Rutgers Orchestra. “In the last five years the orchestra played one Haydn piece, no Mozart, and two Beethoven Symphonies. I want to program more Viennese classics, and include one in each program. They’re the most difficult music because they’re the most transparent. But a conductor shouldn’t shy away from difficult things. You can learn from the difficult.”

To ensure that instrumentalists are ready for the demands even of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, Johns has instituted what he calls “part tests” for orchestral players. “Everybody has to play for me one-on-one. It’s extra work. The players can’t hide in their section. But everyone is enjoying the results.”

Besides working effectively behind the scenes, Johns knows what he must do publicly as a conductor. “The conductor is the medium through which the audience trusts their ears,” he says. “Conducting is a visual matter. If a conductor is not moving con brio’ (with spirit) the audience doesn’t believe it. Conducting is a performance. A conductor has to find the tools to make his instrumentalists want to give their best. If he has to say, ‘I’m the boss, so do it my way,’ then he has failed. That’s true of any leader. Movement is important, especially for younger orchestras or university orchestras.”

Johns demonstrates the inner workings of his art in a conducting class devoted to the slow introduction to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. In turn, each of the dozen students conducts from a podium facing the non-conducting students. The proceedings are videotaped. Students conduct silently, from memory. Wearing a black turtle neck and wide-wale corduroy jeans, Johns paces comfortably but never takes his eyes off the student on the podium. He advises about the spacing of the hands, the level of gestures and their size. He tells students exactly where they should look to engage the imagined players of a phantom orchestra. Briefly, he stands behind one student and moves her hands.

In the noiseless classroom, he aims for the minimum movement required to convey information and insists on its accuracy. “Why do you give a bigger upbeat than downbeat?” he asks. “Don’t speed up,” he warns. “If you can conduct in silence, you can conduct an orchestra,” he says. “The silence is to make sure that you lead the orchestra and don’t follow it.”

At one point the student on the podium says, “It feels like I’m not moving.” Johns replies, “Then it’s right.”

Mutual Admiration
Exciting warhorses
Sunday, April 25, 2004
By Mary Morse

Princeton Symphony Orchestra, Mark Laycock (conductor), Vladimir Ovchinnikov (piano). Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto no. 2; Dvorák: Symphony no. 2 in E minor. Richardson Auditorium, Princeton.

The Princeton Symphony Orchestra (PSO) ended its season with two crowd-pleasers: Vladimir Ovchinnikov's performance of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto no. 2 in C Minor, op. 18 and Dvorak's Symphony no. 9 ("From the New World”). Despite the "warhorse" familiarity of both pieces, the PSO rendered them fresh and vigorous.

An obvious mutual admiration between soloist and orchestra infused the Rachmaninoff with passion and grace. The first pounding chords reaffirmed the audience's anticipation that Ovchinnikov, who had played the third Rachmaninoff concerto with the PSO in the 2002-03 season, would create another extraordinary musical memory. The sell-out crowd was not disappointed. Seen from the back, Ovchinnikov's fingers seemed to float above the piano, yet we heard carefully articulated key contact, even at the softest moments. His solos, especially when eloquently echoed by an impossibly sweet clarinet, seamlessly wove themselves into shimmering musical moments. Even though we knew this piece well, we found ourselves listening as if it were the first time. The only small flaw was the far-too-brief pause between the adagio and the cherzando; we barely had time to breathe before Ovchinnikov whirled into the frenzied cadenza and triumphant C major coda finale. At the conclusion the audience's awed silence followed by thunderous applause and a standing ovation said it all.

It seemed unnecessarily demanding to expect that the PSO had much left over for Dvorak's 1893 "New World Symphony.” But again, we discovered that the PSO seems to thrive on intensity < even when playing a 45-minute work. English horn principal James Button imbued the celebrated largo theme with the plaintive hope of an American spiritual. The winds and strings followed his lead, casting the Bohemian dance strains into an American mold. The horns blurted a bit when trying for the pianissimo ending but they smoothed out quickly enough to sustain the pensive mood.

Music director Mark Laycock pulled out all the stops for the final movement, with its clamoring brass and thematic reprises. But he didn't let the musicians’ and his own enthusiasm carry the movement. Instead, the PSO carefully delineated the numerous *dynamic changes, effortlessly shifting from full throttle sound to liquid softness. If the concert had ended there, it would have been fitting.

But not wanting to stop yet, Laycock donned a sombrero and led the PSO in a sprightly mariachi encore by Blas Galindo Dimas, one of Mexico's foremost twentieth-century composers. It seemed quite a feat to replicate the mariachi sound with a full orchestra, but the PSO had a rollicking good time. The piccolo-tuba duet was especially diverting.