The chamber recital this weekend by The Fine Art Music Company
demonstrated just how fruitful thematic programming can be. Take a simple concept
― in this case, “A Musical Ode to Earth” ― and in a little while, pieces that
otherwise might never share the same hour begin to present themselves. As the
performances rolled by yesterday at the Ethical Society of Philadelphia, I
could almost taste the excitement the Rollin Wilber and company must have felt
in making their selections.
It was an eclectic list, certainly, though grounded firmly
in the 20th and 21st centuries. The first half began with
Henry Cowell’s “Tides of Manaunan,” one of the composer’s early experiments in
tone clustering (written in 1914 when he was, incredibly, just 17), and ended with
George Crumb’s exquisite Vox Balaenae, performed, as the score requests, in
deep blue light with the performers wearing masks. It was an inspired
juxtaposition, since Cowell pioneered the expansion of piano technique that Crumb
later used to much more expressive effect. The low lighting and Lone Ranger-style
facial gear must have interfered with the musicians’ ability to follow the
score, but flutist Elivi Varga, cellist Julia Morelli, and pianist Katarzyna
Marzec-Salwinski brought it off flawlessly. The finale achieved a genuine feeling
of timelessness and otherworldliness, despite the intrusion of a police siren
outside.
The other highlight of the first half, for me, was Katarzyna’s
crisp rendition of Debussy’s prelude “The Terrace of Moonlight Audiences.” In the second half, too, Rollin was as good as
I’ve ever heard him in Ernest Bloch’s “Poems of the Sea” for piano.
The brief afternoon ended with the famous video of Carl
Sagan speaking about the “pale blue dot” of Earth as photographed from the far
reaches of the solar system by the Voyager spacecraft, followed by the music it
inspired, David Ludwig’s Pale Blue Dot for string quartet. For me, the Ludwig
was not as evocative as the Crumb, but I loved the soft, haunting way it ended,
with the players tapping on their strings with small stones.
The program also included a pair of short works by the tragically
short-lived Lili Boulanger, and, as a short break from the afternoon’s theme,
Jacques Ibert’s Two Interludes for piano, violin and voice.