The Berkshire Eagle

The Berkshire Eagle (August 2, 2006) -- The Berkshire Eagle (August 2, 2006) -- Berkshire Eagle, The (Pittsfield, MA)



Andrew L. Pincus, Special to The Eagle
Wednesday, August 02 LENOX

"....There are echoes of Stravinsky here, and of Copland's "Quiet City" in trumpet solos. Four students stepped out of the ranks to deliver extended solos: flutist Clint Foreman, trombonist Kathryn Curran and trumpeters Ethan Bensdorf and Michael Martin. Turnage was on hand to take part in a preconcert discussion and join in the bows. At the back of the stage, a high drum rack towered like a gallows.

At Sunday night's penultimate concert, played and conducted by TMC students, Pittsfield violinist Yevgeny Kutik won the virtuoso award (had there been one) for his razzle-dazzle solo performance in Ron Ford's "Versus," a TMC commission receiving its premiere.

The one-movement concerto is unusual, if nothing else. Ford, a 1994 TMC graduate now living in Holland, hit upon the idea of having the soloist play an all but independent line over an ensemble of 10 winds and four double basses. Somewhere around the middle, the wind players switch to a panoply of tuned water glasses.

In the first part, the ensemble plays a grinding, obsessive pattern that suggests a car-crushing machine run amok. In the placid second part, the water glasses' shimmer merges with a double-bass drone to produce a spooky effect. What the two parts had to do with each other was a bit of a mystery, but Kutik, conductor Kazem Abdullah and the ensemble went at them with gusto. The composer took a bow.

The evening's most substantial work was "Psalmodies," a 1989 suite for solo guitar and nine instruments by Poul Ruders, a Dane. David Starobin, a guest artist for whom the piece was written, played the lightly amplified solo part.
The writing offers an intriguing mix of old and new elements with a devotional air, which the title suggests and the performance lovingly conveyed. A processional and recessional for solo guitar flank nine movements with such apt titles as "A March of Light and Darkness" (oboe solo over low-instrument growls) and "A Prayer with Halo" (guitar and chimes). Tomasz Golka conducted.

The program opened with a brief tribute to Boston composer Donald Martino: about a minute of a TMC-commissioned violin concertino that he completed (or nearly completed) before his death last December. The energetic opening suggested an important work in the making.

Milton Babbitt's 1981 "Don," for piano four-hands, was slow, 12-tone and cryptic. Johannes Maria Staud's 1999 "vielleicht zunaechst wirklich nur" ("perhaps for now only truly"), for soprano and ensemble, went nowhere very much because of the lack of a text for the German poem that it set apparently about the babbling of a young woman who early drowns at sea. Kathryn Whyte was the soloist, Eva Ollikainen the conductor.

The 2000 Piano Concerto by Hans Abrahamsen, another Dane, alternated between static and frenetic states. It was hard to find the thread, but pianist David Kaplan, conductor Nicolas Fink and the ensemble gave it their all. "

(c) 2006 The Berkshire Eagle. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Media NewsGroup, Inc. by NewsBank, Inc.