UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO NEW MUSIC ENSEMBLE
at Orchestra Hall
The major turning point in the recognition of Ives as a major composer came in a now-famous concert in December 1939, by pianist John Kirkpatrick. The 50th anniversary of that concert was recently celebrated by the University of Chicago’s New Music Ensemble with an all-Ives program, an unusual event, even today. The centerpiece work on the 1939 and U. of C. programs was the Second Piano Sonata from 1919, subtitled by the composer: Concord, Mass., 1840-60.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Graduate student Gordon Marsh did an absolutely spectacular job with the Concord Sonata, bringing it off as effectively as I have heard it in performance or on record (Kirkpatrick’s own recording included). Marsh was not only up to the most fiendish technical demands of the piece (it is a monster), but also managed to reveal the subtlety, poetry, and riotous humor that are so often lacking. Concord performances tend to be stiff and serious, and are almost always overdone.
The “Alcotts” section presents the Beethoven Fifth motif in a slightly more traditional guise before the texture becomes dense again. The entire movement has the effect of a short, more Romantic interlude between the insanity of the other movements. The finale, “Thoreau,” is a more introspective study of quiet atonality, with a flute given the final “fate” motif, alternating with low and high chimelike piano. All in all, a memorable performance of a work that seldom gets its due. I’m sure we’ll be hearing Gordon Marsh’s name after he graduates.
This was the same Stravinsky who so redefined new music in the early part of the century that he caused fistfights and riots in as artistically liberal a city as Paris. But “The Owl and the Pussycat” was the product of, as we used to say, the “senile” Stravinsky, that is, the Stravinsky after the death of Arnold Schoenberg in the mid-50s. It seems that Stravinsky, already being celebrated by himself and the world as the greatest composer of the century, bar none, had an identity crisis after the death of the 12-tone master. Having been Schoenberg’s arch rival throughout the century, Stravinsky embraced serialism with a vengeance after his death and remained more or less a serialist until his own death in 1971.
The Requiem Canticles is one of Stravinsky’s last large pieces, and makes use of the Schoenberg device of sprechstimme (speech set to rhythm, in this case with a chorus), the principal interest of the piece. In one of the few literalisms to be found in late Stravinsky, trumpets can be heard in the “Tuba mirum,” which was nicely sung by bass Richard Cohn. Compare this work with the nonliteral and much more meaningful finale of Stravinsky’s beautiful Symphony of Psalms, a setting of the 150th psalm in which God is praised through various musical instruments. The poetry, grandeur, and beauty of this work is nowhere to be found in the Requiem Canticles. As for the performance, the other soloists were adequate, and things were kept tightly together by Slatkin, whose tempi and dynamic levels were appropriate to the music.
