At its Calderwood Hall debut, Yarn/Wire wowed the audience with precision playing and sensitive musicianship. Over three ensemble-commissioned works, including a world premiere of a song cycle based on the writings of Isabella Stewart Gardener, Yarn/Wire maintains its position on the cutting edge of new music.
Founded in 2005, the unique combination of pianists Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer, and percussionists Sae Hashimoto and Russel Greenberg, has inspired continual new commissions; this Sunday’s program speaks to the depth and breadth of the foursome’s musical experimentation.
Steve Reich’s Quartet—the only work in the program not commissioned by the ensemble—began the concert with rock-reminiscent basslines, expansive harmonic progressions, and nail-biting metric changes. Composed for two pianos and two vibraphones, the piece’s three continuous movements (Fast, Slow Fast) create a ternary form, forming a cohesive and satisfying structural architecture.
The first movement begins with punchy piano and vibraphone chords, alternating between staccato and sustained, a continual feature of this movement. In perfectly executing these off-kilter, syncopated chords, the ensemble fully locked into the groove from beginning to end. In typical Reich fashion, lines that are at first played unison begin to phase outwards, overlapping, creating a contrapuntal dialogue among the instruments. Hashimoto and Greenberg’s vibraphone playing especially shined in this movement, their expressive playing emphasizing their interplaying lines, before snapping back into those unison, syncopated chords.
Expansive chords and expressive melodic fragments dominate in the second movement, while adventurous harmonic colors permeate the texture. Barger and Boer’s pianistic delicacy came to the forefront, evoking nuanced dynamic colors.
The third movement begins with a recapitulation of the opening of the first movement before taking on a more continuous and contrapuntal texture that marches motorically towards the end. A constant, rhythmic bassline in the pianos takes hold of the texture, before dropping out strikingly in the final stretch. The ensemble then climbed in register before ending on a unison chord that rang out triumphantly into the hall.
Yarn/Wire commissioned Misato Mochizuki Le Monde des ronds et des carré in 2015 and debuted it on the 100th anniversary of the end of World War II. According to a brief speech by Laura Barger, Mochizuki took inspiration from the question: “What drives human beings to destroy each other?” Especially striking were the theatrical elements of this work, which effectively elevated the drama. Beginning offstage with singing bowls and crotales in hand, the two percussionists slowly circle the room, ringing out a single note at regular intervals, creating an air of ceremonial procession. The pianists, motionless at their instruments, begin to animate with slews of minor seconds, building to a cacophony of low-register chromatic runs while the percussionists echo them on glockenspiel, tubular bells, and crotales. The music suddenly cuts out, leaving Hashimoto alone at a drum set. Beginning by striking the rim of the snare drum, she slowly begins to crescendo. Then Greenberg walks over to the drum set and begins playing the hi-hat. These two players continually gain momentum and volume, before the pianists suddenly rise from their seats and begin polyrhythmically hitting the ride and crash cymbals as if striking down an enemy. Once the noise reaches a near-deafening level, the ensemble mutes its cymbals, and the room goes dark to end the piece. While dissonant and often noisy, I felt that this performance was extremely effective in evoking Mochizuki’s desired effect. Yarn/Wire evoked a range of emotions from meditative, to overwhelming, to tragic.
The ensemble returned from the intermission with Music for Ensemble and Pitch-Shifter Delay by Tyondai Braxton, a commission from 2012. Using a unique real-time electronic processing technique, each pitch that is played is recorded, moved a 16th-note later, and shifted in register. The effect of this creates continual scalar motion out of, say, the arpeggiated D major chord that begins the work. A, F sharp, D played by the keyboard, becomes A, G, F sharp, E, D, C with the processing. Overall, I enjoyed the texture of this work. The arpeggiation and continual scalar movement atop an expansive chord progression reminded me of Phillip Glass. However, I would be interested to see how this processing technique could be further applied. How would it sound in a slow, lyrical mode or a more contrapuntal application? While I enjoyed this work, I would be interested to see a more varied and nuanced compositional approach applied to this novel method of electronic processing.
The world premiere of Phil Kline’s song cycle ghost story closed the concert, with luminous soprano joining the ensemble. Consisting of six songs about Isabella Stewart Gardener, Kline collected the texts during a brief residency at the museum. He compiled painting descriptions, poems by Wilfred Owen and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, gossip magazines, funereal directions, and private correspondences to paint a nuanced picture of Mrs. Gardener. I greatly admire Kline’s compilation, and editing these texts. Each effectively introduces a new facet of Isabella.
In not really rising to the powerful texts, Kline failed to fully exploit the virtuosic musical forces at his disposal. The decision to mic Berry was puzzling, as her clear soprano, well-equipped to overpower an opera orchestra, could have easily filled the 150-seat Calderwood Hall without amplification and processing. Also, the orchestration, mostly bowed vibraphone drones over repetitive piano accompaniment throughout, could have reacted more imaginatively and colorfully to the storytelling of the melodic lines, reinforcing the drama rather than simply underscoring it. Overall, the text setting disappointed me, though the audience seemed to react positively to the unfolding cycle.
The fourth song, Talk of the Town, adapted from a gossip column about Gardener’s attire at a Boston Symphony performance, stood out. The words describe how she shocked the public by wearing a sash that declared “OH, YOU RED SOX.” Berry’s effective characterization of the indignant gossip writer was a high point of the afternoon, echoing the lively spirit of the lady and her Museum.
A standing ovation proved that Yarn/Wire’s adventurous commissioning projects continue to resonate with audiences. I look forward to seeing what challenge they will take on next, and I be sure to attend their next concert in Boston.