The Tanglewood 2024 Festival of New Music continued on Friday afternoon at Ozawa Hall with the first of three 2:30 PM mid-day concerts. Once again introduced by the director team of composers Tania Leon and Steven Mackey, alongside TMC Director Ed Gazouleas, TMC Fellows and New Fromm Player TMC alumni admirably navigated a wide variety, short and long in length, of living composers’ music all themed around the idea of telling stories, both abstract and concrete.
Mackey described the origins of his piano piece Sneaky March. He performed a short improvisation while holding his then-infant son Jasper in his arm, leading to the foundational chord of the miniature. Mackey then completed it for a children’s concert lead by pianist Orli Shaham. The march, clocking in at two minutes, definitely fit the target audience of children. Not extremely complicated in its construction but entertaining this little thin, in the hands of Joseph Vasconi, made a cheeky concert opener.
Three Immigrant Songs by Lembit Beecher followed, adding an unusual pairing of horn and cello to the standard art song pair of voice and piano. Each movement took poetry and musical inspiration from a culture United States, Greek, Chinese, and Estonian immigrants to the US. The ‘songs’ felt intimate and personal in the beautiful rendering from the quartet of mezzo Madelin Morales, hornist Jake Nowell, cellist Luis Parra (who performed solo on the previous concert), and pianist Rachel Sohn. Beecher blended the pairing of the cello and horn effectively, taking the uncommon instrumentation pair and making it extremely viable, especially in the skilled hands of Nowell and Parra; Nowell played a solo of note in the second movement, soaring over the ensemble with ease. Sohn maintained her supportive accompaniment role to the highest level, not getting in the way of the other instruments and voice. Morales, however, was the star; her interpretation was revealing and extremely personal.
Vijay Iyer ended the first half with his piano quartet The Law of Returns, reflecting on the symbiotic relationship between the composer/performers and the audience. A Stravinskyian kaleidoscope of form resulted, echoing of all pieces the Symphonies of Wind Instruments in its stratification, at least in this reviewer’s understanding. Sections came and disappeared, morphing and layering over time to become new ideas, coming from familiar yet different territories. The quartet, comprising Jeongmin An on violin, Anna Mann on viola, Lillian Yim on cello, and Amber Ginmi Scherer on piano, led us through these strata with clear focus and intent. While the quartet’s ensemble playing was top notch, the two solos that the strings received, going from Mann to An respectively, showed each player’s distinctive take. Mann played with brightness that overcame the relative thinness of the viola’s upper strings while An shrunk down, compact and personal in her solo interpretation. Scherer also deserves note, leading many section changes and also being willing to dig into the piano in sections that seemed to take inspiration from rag.
Niloufar Nourbakhsh brought the concert back from intermission with her Pierrot ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, sometimes percussion) Aid for Sex. Of all the storytelling pieces, this piece seemed the most overt, taking direct inspiration from the horrible actions humanitarian workers perpetrated during the Syrian civil war, such conditioning aid to young ladies for “services.” The sextet consisted of Aram Mun on flute, Taig Egan on clarinet, Emmalena Huning on violin, Sebastian Berofsky on cello, Charles Renneker on percussion (primarily playing drum set but also curiously enough frame drum), and Zhaoyuan Qin on piano, conducted by Na’Zir McFadden and joined by electronics operator Maya Miro Johnson. Much of it emanated from the piano, Qin casting material out into the woodwinds and strings or having complicated solo passages while being accompanied by the other members of the core quintet (percussion being an addition and not original to Schoenberg’s originating masterpiece Pierrot Lunaire). As mentioned above, the curious addition of the frame drum proved extremely welcome, fitting in nicely with the live electronics which Renneker managed with care. Mun also shone in some independent moments: punchy flute solos chock full of flutter tongue and Aeolian technique interspersed in the ensemble.
Festival director Leon concluded the show with her Spanish-English bilingual song cycle In the Field (text by Carlos Pintado). Interestingly, two vocalists split duties for the six-song cycle; soprano Sophie Thompson took movements I-III and VI, and soprano Rachel Doehring Jackson did IV and V; the two soloists were joined by violinists Yunjung Ko and Connor Chaikowski, violist John Harry Clark, cellist Claire Druffner, pianist William Shi, and conductor McFadden once again. The cycle progressively morphed from Ravel-inspired Romanticism through to cabaret song and what could be best described as “new music recitative.” Leon showed the breadth of her composing chops across the entire song cycle. This reviewer would opt to call it a middle ground between a song cycle and pocket opera, yet several of the songs felt more akin to recitative and some came across as arias instead of approachable art song; perhaps this is why she employed two vocalists were needed. Thompson and Jackson soared above the ensemble, as Leon allowed them to utilize more traditional operatic sound production rather than the straight tone that most new music composers prefer. Compared to other song cycles of the afternoon, this change of technique was incredibly refreshing. Big highlights included Shi taking crisp and clean extended solos in the fourth movement “Las manos de Betsy Ross,” the entirety of the fifth movement “La Campana,” the lush Ravelian string writing in the first movement rendered expertly by Ko, Chaikowski, Clark, and Druffner, and the jazzy qualities of the last movement. Along with the previous piece, conductor McFadden eschewed obvious ego, merely cueing and keeping time, letting the interpretation come from the players.
The Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music 2024 is nearing its midway point. Four concerts remain (one of them being a pre-Shed concert string quartet event by the talented New Fromm Players). Seriously consider attending if you are able. See what America if offering musically.