“You’re here to review THIS?” (Or was it, “You’re here to REVIEW this?”) Well why not? This is the music of our future and theirs. In all fairness, however, this concert was the end result of the “Piece-a-Day Project” assigned to the six Composition Fellows by one of the two Resident Artist Composition Faculty members, Michael Gandolfi. The six were required to write one musical work each day for three consecutive days. As Gandolfi wrote in the program sheet, “[W]orking under such tight constraints necessitates a trust in the mining of raw, musical ideas, which, among other virtues, reveals an insight into an aspect of the creative process that is often quite exhilarating, instructive, and reassuring.” And such was the case here.

The six composers are Shawn Brogan Allison, Lembit Beecher, Ruby Fulton, Eric Nathan, Osnat Netzer, and Nicholas Vines, who is the eldest (born in 1976); the youngest was born in 1983. Some are still finishing their doctoral degrees; others live in New York or Boston. Vines is teaching at Harvard and M.I.T., and one of his works was performed by the Callithumpians at the Gardner Museum in January (reviewed here).  All had an opportunity to coach the performers, as did Gandolfi and John Harbison. And probably all will have (or have had) a “real” work performed at Tanglewood this season. I hope that, even though the Project pieces were “just” an assignment, these composers will hang on to and develop the germs of musical ideas generated here. I felt privileged to experience this stage of their blossoming.

We heard 18 pieces in three groups of six, each group presenting the composers in a different order. Each group was performed by two different Tanglewood Fellows. The first group comprised Ryan Yung (clarinet) and Pei-Ling Lin (viola). The compositional problem here is writing for two instruments from different families (wind, string), whose rich mellow sounds lie roughly in the same range. Perhaps because my ear was fresh, I warmed most to these solutions. Fulton’s amped made use of vigorous fortissimo double stops in the viola to provide an even richer texture, topped by short melodies in the clarinet that began and returned to the same pitch. Nathan’s Dreamcatcher focused on unisons, which with only two instruments, and two of such different color, is both difficult and fascinating; there were long phrases in the clarinet of pianississimo that were ravishing. Vines’ Parnell’s Gloom was based on a similar idea, except that the unisons deliberately fell off by quarter-tones, or blue notes, surely performed. Beecher’s Sarabande assigned melodic phrases to the clarinet with various forms of string accompaniment, including pizzicato. Allison entitled all three of his pieces Invention; this one, numbered as the second in the series, was rambling. Yung and Lin gave top-notch performances, and made the difficulties seem easy.

The second “day’s” music was for violin (Joseph Maile) and double bass (Bebo Shiu), both string instruments, but at the highest and lowest ends of the scale. Fulton investigated the possibilities of counterpoint with slowly moving sustained notes in her sensation of wait. Beecher also introduced his Minuet and Barn Dance with imitative entries. Netzer’s Not Shy explored various string techniques in a fragmentary manner. Vines’ O’Connell’s Pig was almost descriptive: gentle rollicking, punctuated by percussive pig sounds in the double bass. Allison’s Invention III, was again rambling, while Nathan’s Fragment made heavy use of harmonics and pizzicato in both instruments. Maile had a tough time making his highest harmonics audible in this last piece, but otherwise both performers solved their various challenges brilliantly.

The third group featured two instruments of two different families (wind and string again), but in the penultimate ranges of each: flute (Marie Tachouet) and cello (Kathryn Bates Williams). Both of these fine performers are among this season’s seven New Fromm Players, as are the violinist, Joseph Maile and the violist Pei-Ling Lin. Here the composers seemed to have been less interested in exploring the instruments themselves, but rather in solving the compositional problems of form: beginnings and endings, generating impulse and continuity. Their titles were quite descriptive of their solutions: Shifts (Nathan); slow suicide (Fulton); Obsessive Folksing (Netzer); Twitch (Beecher); and Jury’s Din (Vines). Allison’s Invention I made much use of matching pitches and pitch classes, including some use of the cello’s harmonics.

So watch for these composers and performers to come your way. They have a strong voice, and know how to achieve its expression.

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

This evening opened with a vigorously dramatic airing of Beethoven’s Sonata No.3 in A major for violoncello and piano, op. 69 (score), performed by the young Israeli cellist Amit Peled, on the faculty of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. His colleague at the piano was Russian-born Dina Vainshtein,  a collaborative pianist at both New England Conservatory and Walnut Hill School. Both performers have stunning technical ability, which earned loud raves from most of the audience save this one and a small boy (a budding cellist) sitting next to me — the wisdom of the old and the young? — who said he “didn’t like it at all.” Peled, in addition to being very tall (6’5,”) and striking looking, especially with his long, curly, dark hair and handsome features, plays his oversized, sweet, resonant Guarneri (1689) with exaggerated facial expressions and sweeping arm movements, often throwing back his head with eyes closed, cheeks puffing visibly. Vainshtein was note-perfect and played lickety-split (in spite of the fact that the first movement is marked Allegro, ma non troppo), with probably the most beautiful tones available on the fine Yamaha grand — when there was time for them. But the two seemed to be working at cross purposes, pulling against each other, and often not even together in spite of frequent gestural nodding of heads to suggest precise attacks or releases.

The “comic relief” was provided by A Cellist’s Variations on “Home on the Range by Tom Flaherty, who teaches at Pomona College. This six-minute piece, written in 1990 for cello quartet, was performed, as Peled put it on stage, by “a Russian, a Norwegian, an Argentinian, and a Jew”: Dmitry Volkov, Hans Goldstein, Marcelo Montes, all of whom appeared to be students, and Peled. They strode down the aisle, which was the mode of entrance for all on stage, in dress pants, black tops, red kerchiefs tied around their necks, and straw cowboy hats. All were stifling giggles on stage and played “the Range” for every inch of humor. Some of the variations included recognizable bits from the cello repertory (Schubert, &c.). Enough said. The affable audience loved it.

The last work, by Schubert, was titled on the program simply Quintet in C Major for Two Cellos (score, warning: 7.4 MB). That would be his only string quintet, the last chamber work that he wrote, probably in September, 1828, and not published until 1853 as op. posth. 163 (D. 956). It was played by violinists Daniel Phillips and James Buswell, violist Robert Vernon, and cellists Steven Doane and Rosemary Elliott. One challenge of the piece is to balance the added weight of the lower sonic range with the delicacy of the upper, when each comprises only two instruments. There were beautiful solutions, possible only because of all the performers’ constant sensitivity to each other. These are all mature musicians of the highest rank with rich experience in both concertizing and teaching, who were obviously relishing this unique opportunity to make music for an audience. The fact that they had not previously performed together, and probably would not again, added to the excitement they projected. Phillips is a founding member of the Orion String Quartet; Buswell, all smiles, is well known to Boston audiences; Vernon is principal violist with the Cleveland Orchestra; Doane and Elliott, both on the faculty of the Eastman School, also share the relationship of man and wife. (They reported that this was only the second time they had performed together in concert, which added to the excitement for them and us.) The work is a long one — most recordings are timed at a few minutes under an hour — but this audience was absolutely quiet, hanging on every phrase in palpable appreciation, long after the last note ended. This one work was every bit worth the trip.

One wonders: It is rather odd, in a summer institute bent on teaching musical communication to students, that the program notes, like those of concerts at most musical conservatories, omit any discussion of the music itself. Instead, compilers simply download performers’ plaudits from the Internet. There is a lost opportunity here to teach written as well as verbal and musical expression about music to students who will need it later. O well.

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

Reflecting Artemesia’s mobile life, the program was divided into five parts: Rome (1593-1614), Florence (1614-1620), Venice (1626-1630), Naples (1630-1638), England (1638-1642), and finally, Tutta L’Italia (1642-1656), altogether a splendid array of multi-faceted music, ordered to provide both continuity and contrast. Rome opened sedately, but ended with a Villanelle Suite on “L’Onda che limpada,” by Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, incorporating a lively Ballo, Gagliarda, and Corrente that almost made you want to get up and dance. The voice of the versatile Nel Snaidas was introduced by Vergilio Mazzocchi’s solo cantata, Sdegno campion audace (with continuo only). After an initial Sinfonia by Marco da Gagliano, Florence dwelled on the other two sopranos, and then all three via Francesca Caccini’s love songs, Lasciatemi qui soli, Io mi distruggio, and Che desia di saper (presumably in the versions edited by Savino and published by Indiana University Press in 2004). Here Jennifer Ellis Kampani’s light-voiced but dramatic singing began to shine as clearly so idiomatic in this music.

The highpoint, as in many concerts, was reached just before intermission. Venice revealed Savino’s solo musical excellence by a lively guitar solo, a Ciaconna by Domenico Pellegrini. This was followed by Monteverdi’s oft-recorded Zefiro torna, from his sixth book of Madrigals, sung by Snaidas and Ellis Kampani. From the opening “Return O Zephyr” to the final line, “As my Fate wills it, now I weep, now I sing,” the singers warmed to the poignancy of the text, and to the splendid richness of this music. This was followed by Monteverdi’s happier, Come dolce hoggi l’auretta (How sweet the breeze today), sung by all three. Their well matched voices and clear enthusiasm for part-singing enlivened these works to pure pleasure.

Not that it was all downhill from there by any means. From Naples came Falconieri’s vigorous Folia pecha me  señora Doña Tarolilla, unlike any Folia I have ever heard — if this is supposed to be variations on same, the ground bass was impossible to detect. Rather it presented continuo player Laura Jeppesen with an opportunity for an expert romp on her viola da gamba, which she performed with great energy and a wry smile. From England we heard two dances from a suite by William Lawes, and a song and a duet by Nicholas Lanier: the first, a long “No More Shall Meads be Deck’d with Flow’rs” sung with clear diction and musical emphasis by Ellis Kampani, and the second, “Though I am Young,” by Rentz-Moore and Snaidas, whose voices are so closely aligned, even though their range varies, that we were hanging on every note of such musical just-rightness.

The final Tutta L’Italia brought forth Luzzasco Luzzaschi’s solo madrigal, Aura soave (Gentle breeze), sung by Ms. Rentz-Moore, who soared sublimely throughout her wide range, the lowest notes providing quietly spectacular added drama to the poignant text. Harpsichordist Michael Sponseller finally got his soloistic due with an almost too difficult and dense Passemezzo by Giovanni Picchi. The concert closed with two “battle” pieces: a Battaglia by Marco Uccellini, and the Fan Battaglia by Luigi Rossi, the latter a cantata for the three voices and instrumental ensemble. The projections for these were three paintings on the same subject (“Judith Slaying Holofernes”): one by Caravaggio, and two by Artemesia, namely the Naples version of ca. 1613, and the Uffiizi version of 1620, the latter hidden by the owning Medici family and considered too gory to reveal to the public until 2002 in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence. Art historians discuss a possible autobiographical significance of this painting; nevertheless there were groans from the audience at repeated close-ups of the most brutal details. Looking away, the music was, however, glorious.

The Aston Magna Festivals were founded in 1972 by the late harpsichordist Albert Fuller (1926-2007). Daniel Stepner, who this past season concluded nearly a quarter century as concert master of the Handel & Haydn Society, has more than risen to the challenge of maintaining the high standards thus established, and has this year expanded the concert venues to include some performances at Brandeis University in Waltham. Critic Michael Steinberg once said (something like), “Anything done over a long period of time is done well.” That has certainly proven to be the case in this instance.

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

The program comprised romantic, virtuosic works, large and small, by Berg, Liszt, Debussy, and Hamelin himself, with an encore by Leopold Godowsky (“The Gardens of Buitenzorg” from his Java Suite). The program notes by Sandra Hyslop were excellent. All this against a backdrop of the early evening light over Rockport harbor, with gulls diving and soaring above.

To put it colloquially, Hamelin has technique to burn, but that skill is always in the service of a deep musical instinct that creates magical moments of creative expression. He has at his command a broad range of touches, with elegant attention to both attacks and releases, from the tender to the thundering, but always breathing and singing. Each note (and each phrase, also) connects organically to the previous one because he is so in tune with their musical beats.

Hamelin opened with a stunning performance of Alban Berg’s one-movement Piano Sonata, op. 1 (1907/8), written near the end of his studies with Arnold Schönberg but still within the “Romantic” idiom. (Click here to see a Russian edition of the score.) The work reaches its climax in both density and decibels right at the mid-point of its length and slowly spins out to a gentle close, “always expressive,” as Berg directs. Hamelin brought out the complex counterpoint, clearly delineating the rich relationships between the voices, following Berg’s mandate to a T.

Next Hamelin presented the major work of the evening: Franz Liszt’s Piano Sonata in b minor (1853), also in one movement. (Click here to see a first edition of the score.) At 30 minutes, it is twice as long as the Berg, but I don’t think anyone noticed: the packed audience was spellbound. Hamelin gave his first performance of this extremely difficult work in Boston at the Harvard Musical Association in February, 2009, remarking beforehand that he was glad critics would not be in attendance. It certainly was ready for critics in Rockport, and he will be performing it next season in Montréal, Munich, and Frankfurt. (You may read a brief review of, and download his performance at the WGBH studios on April 14th here.) Even so, when he sat down, there seemed to be a significant pause and a deep breath before he brought his hands to the piano to play the first notes: a single G in staccato octaves down from the G below middle C — a strange beginning for a piece in b minor. The G functions as a poignant appoggiatura to F# (the dominant), but the tonic resolution (B) never quite arrives until near the end, after a long, strongly articulated fugue ostensibly in G-flat major, although the ear can’t tell the difference between a piano’s G-flat and F#: the piece cadences in a dense, extended B major (6/4) chord built above F#. Liszt thus withholds the root until the very end, in the form of a single soft staccato low B, a transformation of the opening, and an incredibly simple resolution. Hamelin was clearly aware of this long shape, and provided quiet momentum through the many pauses, elaborate recitativos, changes in color, density, form, and sounds, to create a meaningful whole, not an easy accomplishment even beyond the technical difficulties.

Hamelin must have known that no more intensity at this level could follow after intermission. By immediate contrast he presented three of Claude Debussy’s Preludes from Book II (1911-1913), nos. 4, 11, and 12, respectively: “Les fées sont exquisses danseuses (The fairies are exquisite dancers),” “Les tierces alternées (Alternate thirds),” and “Feu d’artifice (Fireworks).” The fairies danced as lightly and fast as possible, just as Debussy directs in the score; the thirds pummeled each other playfully up and down the keyboard (“moderately animated,” just as Debussy says), and the fireworks ranged from sparklers to huge glissandos, and back again to individual notes dying away in the night over a low rumble of resonance. Hamelin performed them at the same time brilliantly, delightfully, and respectfully.

Debussy’s Preludes themselves provided a kind of precursor to well-chosen selections from Hamelin’s own Twelve Études in All the Minor Keys (1984-2009): in performance order, no. 8, “Erkönig (after Goethe )”; no. 3, “D’après Paginini-Liszt (La Campanella)”; no. 7, “Étude after Tchaikovsky (Lullaby, op. 16, no. 1) for the Left Hand”; no. 11, “Tango”; and no. 12, “Prélude and fugue.” (All will be published this fall in a score edition by C. F. Peters and a recorded performance by Hyperion.) They are indeed studies, and involve huge technical hurdles simply because Hamelin is capable of them, as for example when he sets up competing rhythmic and melodic material within the same phrases. The last is the longest and most difficult. But difficulty is not the point as in some others’ études; rather Hamelin is studying isolated works of the composers named in the sense of capturing, or releasing their spirits. Indeed, Hamelin’s exhilarating powers do speak to the potential of the human spirit in all of us.

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

These three relatively short works were performed without intermission, beginning with Sahaf , a seven-minute piece, written in 2008, performed without conductor by Callithumpians Derek Beckvold (baritone and sopranino saxophones), Maarten Stragier (E-guitar), Yukiko Takagi (piano), and Nick Tolle (percussion: timpano, marimba, 2 plastic triangle liners, bamboo wind chime, ratchet, and snare drum). By good fortune I was sitting next to a SICPP student pianist from Vancouver who had a marked score (to perform in class the next day), and she was willing to share. I was fascinated by the relationship between the notation and the sounds: both are spare, with sporadic brief activity, sometimes pointillist, sometimes extended, most often pianissimo, with quiet crescendi. Although I found it difficult to see how a performer could accomplish the beautiful sounds I was hearing from the notation I was seeing, the student assured me that it was perfectly possible because Czernowin’s directions in the score (which I could not read that fast) are so precise and suggestive. Her imagination is rich with new sounds (e.g. very quiet clusters, deliberate extended unisons between only two instruments of different timbres thus yielding exposed alternating consonances and dissonances; gentle percussion), and she gives them time to register and settle into your ear. Silence is also an “instrument” in her music, playing a significant anticipatory role, as well as one of resolution, physically and psychologically.

Drury then conducted a slightly longer work, Afatsim. This Hebrew word is not easily translatable, and refers to the bark on the branch of a tree, disfigured by mutation with a wasp-enzyme residue used to make a sefer Torah browner in color. Afatsim (1996) is a nonet for bass flute (Jessi Risinski), oboe (Mary Cicconetti), bass clarinet (Rane Moore), percussion: gong, 2 cymbals, marimba (Jeffrey Means), piano (Yukiko Takagi), violin (Gabriela Diaz), viola (Ethan Wood), cello (Benjamin Schwartz), and double bass (David Goodchild). The seating arrangement, whether designed by the composer or the conductor, was unusual: the piano was stage right, and the percussion stage center, both slightly behind a semi-circle reading (stage right to left): cello, bass clarinet, violin, double bass, oboe, viola, and bass flute. With one hand, Drury conducted four square beats (presumably just to help the musicians stay together, for surely the piece was not in 4), and with the other gave gestural cues with his expressive hands, his body leaning into the music. This all yielded breath-taking results in players’ sensitivity to each other’s sounds and incredible merging timbres.

The last work was the longest (19 minutes). Dam sheon hachol was written in 1999 for string sextet, in this case Gabriela Diaz and Ethan Wood, violins; Ashleigh Gordon and Stephen Upshaw, violas; Benjamin Schwartz, cello; David Goodchild, bass. Also conducted by Drury, it seemed to be about sustained notes turning into slides downward, simultaneous vibrato and vibrato-less sounds, extreme pianissimos shading into, or generated from long silences. But there was much more of spell-binding interest.

On the liner notes for a recording of the last two works (by Mode Records, 1999), Czernowin wrote that she was “searching for an alternative to a linear dramatic temporal experience.” Stephen Drury has written, “Listening to Czernowin’s music is like watching a mystery unfold into a bigger mystery. . . . [She] uses the instruments in strange and wonderful combinations, where two or more players seem to combine into some kind of hyper-instrument capable of producing unimagined noises and sounds.” There is indeed a new voice in town, and I for one can’t wait to hear more!

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

The music of Pierre Jalbert (b. 1967) is new to me, but based on this performance of his Visual Abstract (2002), I would certainly like to hear more. (You may listen to a different performance of this piece in a high-quality stream, by members of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, online here. This complex cultural project was initiated in association with WGBH, but that is another story.) Visual Abstracts comprises three contrasting movements (“Bells—Forwards and Backwards,” “Dome of Heaven,” and “Dance,” for flute (Deborah Boldin), clarinet (Kelli O’Connor), violin (Katherine Winterstein), cello (Rafael Popper-Keizer), piano (Vivian Chang-Freiheit), and percussion (Brian Vogel). Jalbert makes good use of the diverse properties of these instruments in these three “portraits.” Percussion in the first consists only of marimba and one chime, while the composer explores the theoretical palindrome of a tolling bell: “A loud attack followed by a decay—and its sound backwards—a large crescendo followed by an accented note.” Bells do more than begin and end, of course, and much of this movement conveys other flickering sounds resonating in the air. The “Dome of Heaven” is all about mostly quiet spatial effects evoked by sustained, resonating dissonances, so constructed that they seem utterly consonant. “Dance” is a fast piece full of rhythmic dissonance, thanks to the interplay of the drums, piano, and darting winds; even the strings are percussive with their short up/down bows. The whole was superbly performed by these core Chameleons.

I wish I could say the same for Gabriel Fauré’s long song cycle, La Chanson d’Ève, op. 95 (1906-1910), based on his selection and editing of poems published under the same title in 1904 by the Belgian symbolist poet, Charles van Lerberghe (1861 – 1907). The 10 poems begin with Paradis, celebrating the hazy first morning of creation, and continue through various experiences of first delights (words, roses, God and her god in shining light, spring water, twilight, and death). Ève was sung by soprano Sabrina Learman, who has a large, beautiful voice, almost Wagnerian in breadth and depth of pitch. The able pianist for this difficult part was Vivian Chang-Freiheit. But unfortunately the two never captured the delicate shimmering quality that escalates to joyous expression of this magical cycle, nor were most of the words intelligible in spite of the full texts and translations provided.

Gareth Farr’s Taheke (the Maori word for waterfalls) was a stunning virtuosic display on the part of the Chameleon’s Artistic Director and flutist Deborah Boldin and harpist Anna Reinersman. Although the movements are marked Allegro, Andante, and Presto, they are each about a different waterfall in New Zealand, where Gareth is a well-known composer, and thus all are intended to suggest the activity and form of water in different but repeated and changing patterns. As Deborah said afterwards, this is what makes the pieces so difficult — that is, like the music of Steve Reich, you have to be absolutely sure you know where you are all of the time. The form and nature of the pieces can be derived from Gareth’s program note describing each waterfall. But the sheer brilliance and rightness of sound simply must be heard, as they almost defy description.

For the last work, the only one following intermission, the Chameleon’s string players, violinists Joanna Kurkowicz and Katherine Winterstein, violist Scott Woolweaver, and cellist Rafael Popper-Keizer, were joined by violist Marcus Thompson and cellist Joshua Gordon for a rousing performance of Tchaikovsky’s string sextet, Souvenir de Florence, his last chamber work. The long first movement (769 measures), Allegro conspirito went by quickly with its rollicking 3/4 tempo, hammering its 3|1, 3|1, 3|1, over and over again. The Adagio cantabile con moto has some beautiful solo violin passages while the low strings refrain from overpowering them. The Allegretto moderato begins with a plaintive melody that is immediately broken up, passed around, varied, and buried under massive double-stops, before something like it returns. The final Allegro vivace feels like a Russian folk dance that becomes truly boisterous. The score for this work is densely populated with notes that bathe us in heavy string sound, and give the performers a real workout, although several were seen smiling during various passages. Thus a sunny ending to our “portraits in sound.“

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

Given the title, the primary interest for this concert was in the well-chosen poetry. The settings of the introductory liturgical texts were by Bobby McFerrin (“23rd Psalm,” dedicated to his mother —  with changes in gender of pronouns), Francis Poulenc (“Ave Maria,” from Dialogues des Carmelites), Maurice Duruflé (“Tota pulcra es,” the second of his Quatre motets), and Gabriel Fauré (“Ave Maria”).  The other poems were by Francisco X. Alarcón, Rachel Barenblat, Rudyard Kipling, Isabel MacMeekin, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, and Ann Kikelly. The composers setting these were Roger Bourland (excerpts from his Alarcón Matrigals, Michael J. Veloso (Letters to Little Bean), Eric Whitacre (“The Seal Lullaby”), Irving Fine (“Caroline Million,” from The Choral New Yorker), Gwyneth Walker (Mother Earth — Songs of a Strong Woman), and Zae Munn (“Grandma’s Alleluia,” and “The Stove”). Complete texts, with translations as needed, were provided, as were excellent program notes by Ms. Martin. As she wrote, “Today’s program will acknowledge both the transcendent aspect of motherhood and the occasionally uncomfortable day-to-day truths.” A large audience comprising mostly women resonated warmly to the point as the concert proceeded.

In many ways the loveliest was the first: Bobby McFerrin’s. The singers entered the room by surrounding the audience. The Psalm setting was in the manner of Anglican chant, in that each verse was broken into two segments of harmonic change with melodic movement only at the end of each to settle into the cadence. The close harmonies were “easy listening” (this piece appeared on his Medicine Man recording in 1990) and rang beautifully among the audience in this “surround sound” setting.

Cantilena has worked closely with Roger Bourland over the years; this time their choice was two lyrical but angular works about grandmothers. The centerpiece was a commissioned work by Boston composer Michael J. Veloso setting two poems from a cycle of eight poems, Letters to Little Bean, written by Rachel Barenblat during her first successful pregnancy. The first poem, written early on, expresses fear of miscarriage; the second, written near the end, “blends anticipation and excitement with self-doubt.” Both Veloso and Barenblat are close friends of the conductor, probably from their alma mater, Williams College, and the chorus had met “Little Bean” (a.k.a. Drew) the day before (according to the poet’s blog), so there was definitely a feeling that this was a family affair.

Irving Fine’s “Caroline Million” (Isabelle MacMeekin), with piano accompaniment, was certainly the liveliest of the lot. “Caroline Million is 100 years old – She feels pretty fine but her feet are cold.” The rollicking rhyme pervades the musical texture. Similarly Granma’s Alleluia by Zae Munn (Ann Kilkelly), a long poem about a grandma who insists on taking a long train ride alone, is constructed over a constant rhythmic ostinato, “the train, the train, the train,” &c. Finally, “The Stove,” by the same creators, though not lively musically, conjures up a vigorous visual image as a mother pounds her stove to bits with a sledgehammer. Again, much is made of the rhythmic repetition, “into bits.” Perhaps the most moving was Gwyneth Walker’s “Mother to Son,” set to the poem by Langston Hughes from The Weary Blues (1926).

In spite of this inventive programming, there was a sameness about the music that is hard to explain. Some of it “goes with the territory” of a concert for all women’s (or men’s) voices — that is, the sameness of tessitura. The chorus seemed well-rehearsed, animated, focused on the conductor, and well disciplined. They always sang in tune, and their diction was good (although the printed texts were certainly necessary). Allegra Martin is young, no more than four years past her studies at Westminster Choir College with the eminent Joseph Flummerfelt. Her conducting style is calm, with movement only in her hands, arms, and facial expression, and a telling flick of the wrist. I wish her well as she bravely makes her way in Boston. Clearly she has a great deal of musical intelligence going for her.

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

The tripartite program opened with a group of arias written for an Orpheus character by three Italian composers of the early 17th century: Carlo Milanuzzi (“Tien del mio cor” from his ninth and last book of arias, 1643); Claudio Monteverdi (“Vi ricorda’o boschi ombrosi,” and “Tu se morta,” both from his L’Orfeo;) and Sigismondo d’Índia (“Piangono ad pianger mio,” from his first book of Le Musiche, Milan, 1609—neither the program notes nor the lovely poem, by Ottavio Rinuccini, make the Orfeo connection clear, but no matter). Here the ensemble’s well-practiced dramatic flair was at its best. Ms. Sanford began by giving a dramatic reading the English text of the Milanuzzi aria, which led immediately into the first hearing of her clear, vibrato-less, emphatic voice, full of Baroque affekt, sighing, laughing, bemoaning, enjoying. Her appoggiaturas approached from below were sung as deliberate loud dissonances, tuning up only at the last possible instant, thus increasing the drama of the moment. Her trills, slow and fast, either on the note, or as she ramped up or down the scale, were spectacularly appropriate. After the Milanuzzi, there was a narration, “The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice” (uncredited), read in turn by Ms. Liddell and Mr. Wissick. Ms. Sanford then continued to present (dramatically) an English translation of the texts for the Monteverdi and d’India works preceding each aria.

The centerpiece was a setting by James Blachly (b. 1980) of one of his two Rilke Songs for Soprano: “O komm und geh,” from Rainier Maria Rilje’s Orpheus Sonnets, II, 28. This one was commissioned by Ms. Sanford and the Ensemble in 2005, and premiered in March, 2009; the Athenaeum’s was its first performance in Massachusetts. In this case both the text and Ms. Sanford’s literal translation were fortunately printed in the program notes, because it is a difficult work to comprehend on first hearing: textually (in spite of Ms. Sanford’s excellent diction) and musically, because of the extreme leaps and dissonances.

The third portion comprised songs of Henry Purcell, preceded by another narration, this time from Hesiod. The three songs, “’Tis Nature’s Voice” (from Orpheus Britannicus), the familiar, “Music for a While,” and “If Music Be the Food of Love” (3rd version), did not have much to do with Orpheus, but gave Ms. Sanford a final chance to demonstrate her strong ability as a Baroque singer and voice teacher with her long-practiced skills. Her colleagues were more than equal to the task, performing on 20th-century replica’s of 17th-century instruments..

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

For starters, kudos to Wakao’s seemingly boundless energy, amply exhibited throughout this concert. His core group comprises colleagues in the BSO, on this occasion Richard Sebring, horn; Richard Ranti, bassoon; the Russian Alexander Velinzon and the Chinese Yuncong Zhang, violins; Canadian Rebecca Gitter, viola; and Romanian Mihal Jojiatu, violoncello. For this all-Mozart concert they were joined by Polish Emanuel Ax, piano, and Japanese Masaharu Yamamoto, clarinet. All except Yamamoto now live in the U. S.

The first work was Mozart’s Quintet for Piano, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, and Bassoon in E-flat major, K. 452, in three movements, written in Vienna at the beginning of his most fertile and mature period (1784). All the instruments play a substantive role in the contrapuntal texture, either handing lines back and forth to each other, or, as in the case of the “Cadenza in tempo” at the end of the Rondo, teasing each other with slightly varied imitative entries. Unfortunately the tempo and dynamics of all three movements were the same, and a bit plodding. A possible (but not probable) fault in this vaulted space lay with the acoustics of the new piano, on this occasion dedicated to parishioner Suzy Westcott, who was present and assisting with the concert. For this reason, Ax performed a surprise Chopin (Ballade?) in her honor. Ax is much beloved in Boston, and he was brought back many times with applause.

During the long intermission – over a half hour, Wakao walked among the audience, greeted friends, and worked with his reeds, placing them on the piano to be convenient to his peregrinations. Thus Wakao’s intentions for this series are clearly informal and cordial. There were many enthusiastic Japanese people among the audience.

Mozart’s Quartet in F major, K. 370, for oboe and string trio (Velinzon, Gitter, and Jojatu), followed.  Written in Munich in 1781, this is a lovely concerted showcase for the oboe in three movements, and Wakao certainly rose to the occasion. He performs with great dramatic flair, yet always in close touch with his companions. His ability to perform sweetly at a high pianissimo enables astonishing performances of long upward runs at a sweeping decrescendo. His colleagues were no slouches either; freed of their burden of the piano and the heavier winds, they made true chamber music in playfulness (thanks to the music itself), freedom of movement, and quality of sound, while maintaining a tight-knit unit. At the end, Wakao bade his colleagues adieu by cradling his little daughter in his arms as he acknowledged applause, and then taking her back to sit in the audience.

The final work, Mozart’s Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in A major, K. 581 (1789), also in three movements, brought back guest clarinetist Masaharu Yamamoto, who is currently professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts. The string players added a second violin (Yuncong Zhang, who joined the BSO just this year), and they were all off and running on a really beautiful performance of this all-too-familiar work. Yamamoto was no commanding soloist here: rather he played gently, with great sensitivity to both the structure of the music and the sounds of his companions, often indistinguishable from them. Perhaps his style even inspired them, because they were clearly far more engaged even than in the previous work. The Minuet and Trio were a bit breathless, but in the final Allegretto con Variationi they had us in the palm of their hand. These particular string players, especially the Russian violinist Alexander Velinzon, are a fine group, and I hope to have the opportunity to hear more of them.

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

I suppose everybody in the audience was supposed to know all about the Wellesley organ, op. 72 (1981) from Charles B. Fisk’s shop, because nothing about it was said in the program notes. A full illustration, history, description, and stop-list is here. This was the last organ that Fisk himself finish-voiced before his death in 1983. The stops includes a Zimbelstern (“cymbal-star”), the twirling many-pointed musical decoration visible in front of the pipes, which was engaged near the end of the last work as a festive, superimposed coda. The organ is tuned in 1/4 comma mean-tone, which means that the thirds, fifths, and octaves are tuned in a smaller ratio than the current (“just intonation”) norm. This obviously has implications for the overtones, which can jangle under certain circumstances (to be avoided). Music written after the time of Jan Pieterzoon Swelinck (1562–1621) can sound pretty terrible on this organ unless carefully selected. Tuning of the reeds was still underway as the audience arrived.

“The Golden Age of the Organ from Venice to North Germany,” included works by Julio Segni, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, Claudio Merulo, Heinrich Scheidemann, and Melchior Schildt, in geographic as well as chronological order. The earliest, a Ricercare by Segni (1498-1561), from the anthology, Musica Nova (Venice, 1540, RISM²²), wisely appeared second in the program after our ears were opened to the organ and could listen more closely to this music of more limited means, cadences in open fifths, many points of imitation, and delicate scalar runs. The opening Toccata avanti la Messa della Domenica, by Andrea Gabrieli, is indeed a prelude, as the title suggests: short, for full organ, and replete with ornamental runs. This was followed by two more of his works, a Ricercare terzo, and Canzon francese, Je n’en dirai mot, bergère, the latter a free transcription of a chanson, and both full of seemingly improvisatory ornamentation and rich counterpoint. Merulo’s florid Conzon la Bovia, was one of the first of this genre to be written independently of a vocal model, and his Toccata del duodecimo toni is a free ranging romp, if you will, for full organ.

In sharp contrast next appeared Giovanni Gabrieli’s Canzon la Spritata, almost a showpiece for the organ’s upper registers, followed by his Fantasia del sesto tono featuring the more mellow eight-foot stops. Scheidemann’s Canzona fell to a substitution, one of his six D-minor Preludes, an amazing contrapuntal work with sequential chromaticism that one thought surely would have been improbable on this organ. On the contrary, the brightness of the sound made the piece all the more thrilling. The final work comprised all five versi of the Magnificat primi toni, by the Hanoverian pupil of Swelinck, Melchoir Schildt (1592-3–1667). Three of the five are based on chorale tunes, in either the tenor or the soprano; the other two are free form (Fantasia and Ricercare cromatico). The whole work, considered the composer’s most significant, is a demonstration of the many formal devices common to the North German organ composers of the period: chorale variation, canonic counterpoint, antiphonal sections — phrase by phrase, and chord by chord — and long, exploratory passages that unfold in wonder and amazement.

Francesco Cera is a most gifted and informed interpreter of this music, starting with his choices for, and order of the program. But those factors would be merely academic without his artistry, his fluency of ornamentation, and his extraordinary ability to shape the music itself through clear articulations and registrations, where every inner voice is heard as part of its own contrapuntal line. I certainly hope he will be part of the announced 30th anniversary celebration of this instrument next spring.

I was saddened that not one of Wellesley’s Music Department faculty members was at this free concert (if I am not mistaken), nor were there more than a small handful of students (counting the four ushers). On the other hand, I was delighted to see the presence of Professor emeritus Owen Jander, to whose sole foresight, energy, and persistence, beginning in the late 1970s this organ owes its existence. He was clearly delighted with Cera’s performance and made his way up to the organ loft after the concert to tell him so in spite of his own current difficulty in walking. As always, generous in spirit and in deed.

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area. Full disclosure: she was Music Librarian at Wellesley during the time this organ was commissioned and built.