CHICAGO STRING ENSEMBLE
Two premieres highlighted the ensemble’s latest concert. Robert Lombardo’s Aria variata, written for the CSE, is a sensuous, lyrical ode to a painful, faded love. The text–a poem by the composer’s wife, Kathleen Lombardo–is full of bird images: a wren that stands for the woman singer and imposing predatory birds–an Asian bird, a halcyon, an eagle–that are specters from a relationship the narrator must come to terms with. The music is built on contrasting material that underscores a state of mind that shifts from bittersweet memory to desperation to regret to indignation to serenity. It ends on a lingering note of quiet exultation. Lombardo’s idiom is pleasantly atonal. But I was reminded of the vocal writings of David Del Tredici and of Ned Rorem, and found the work rather derivative. Its merit lies in skillful imitation and in the fairly opulent central theme. Soprano Rebecca Patterson sang touchingly and with enough bite to avoid bathos. But the string players sounded a bit under-rehearsed; in some passages the contrapuntal lines were blurred and ungainly.
