For a city as associated with business and materialism where even the art world is often referred to as the art market, the arts, so important to the life of this city, inject a spiritual element that perhaps serves as a balancing agent. The concert presented by Axiom, Juilliard's premier contemporary performance ensemble, at Alice Tully Hall on February 24 was totally infused with spirituality in its many aspects. At the heart of this concert was Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel. The concert also vividly contrasted the work of Romanian/Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag with that of American composer Morton Feldman. Whereas Kurtag's music tends to be nervous,aphoristic, and synthetic of many strands of 20th-century European music, Feldman's music evokes calmness, long breaths, and an American sense of time and space.
Kurtag's Hommage a R. Sch. for clarinet, piano and viola almost seems to channel Robert Schumann's spirit into the late twentieth century. On the surface, references to Johannes Kreisler, Florestan, Eusebius and Meister Raro place this work in Schumann's world. Kapellmeister Kreisler's nervous, grandiloquent persona was quickly revealed in the extremely brief first movement (the title, "merkwurdige Pirouetten des Kappellmeisters Johannes Kreisler," takes almost as much time to say as the movement is to perform). Contemplative, introspective Eusebius make a brief appearance in the second movement ("E.: der begrenzte Kreis") in a work that curiously blends the sparse texture of Webern with triadic figurations in the piano. Florestan bursts into the room with the highly expressionistic "...und wider zuckt es schmerzen F. um die Lippen..." Sudden mood shifts mark the next movement "Felho valek, mar sut a nap..." which moves directly into a bizarre reflection on Schumann's "In der Nacht." After all of these brief manic/depressive episodes, Meister Raro brings order and almost tranquility to the proceedings in a lengthier movement (longer than all of the others together) ("Abschied: Meister Raro entdeckt Guillaume de Machaut). The pianist calmly but relentlessly plays a Machaut-inspired isorhythmic ostinato while the clarinet an viola are asked to lay Webernesque pointillistic material. The work ends quietly with a soft beat on a drum by the clarinetist, an effect that both reminded me of a work by Gorecki that I heard in the fall and also paved the way for the Feldman piece which followed.
Rothko Chapel has been considered one of Morton Feldman's supreme achievements, but is also a major exception to his style. It is one thing to create a work that evokes an abstract atmosphere and entirely another thing to have a specific person and place as a focus. Generalized philosophies and aesthetics become less in important than honoring and remembering an individual. Mark Rothko's large canvasses are known for their spiritual, metaphysical and religious aspirations. It seems more than a coincidence that John and Dominique de Menil funded a meditation chapel in Houston, Texas that would include 14 paintings conceived by Rothko and that Rothko, suffering from depression, committed suicide. Mr. Feldman attended the opening of the chapel in 1971 where is was named to honor the visual artist. The de Menils commissioned Feldman to compose a work that would be performed in the chapel. The result was Rothko Chapel.
I will not say that an unprepared listener would necessarily receive any sort of spiritual message in this work but I would say that no attentive listener in the hall this evening could escape the pull of this music. At the center of the work is very poignant writing for the viola. Throughout the four sections that comprise this work (which Feldman likened "to a procession of friezes on Greek temples"), the violist plays lines that amount to cantillations, the final melody being one the Feldman composed when he was fifteen. The choral writing reminds one of a ribbon of sound with inner voices undulating so as to create a sense of rippling in a breeze. Soprano and alto solo lines also evoke the sense of a distant cantillation. The percussion parts create a background that provides subtle counterpoint to the soloists. Rothko Chapel will never and should never become a staple of the repertoire. For one thing, the unique instrumentation with the demands placed on each portion thereof, and for another, the work's continuous meditative quality are qualities that should be reserved for special and infrequent times. This is what non-commercial music is all about.
The lightness (in the spiritual sense of that word) of the first part of the concert was balanced by the darkness of the second part. Feldman's Bass Clarinet and Percussion continued the meditative tone of the previous work but with a decidedly more pessimistic bent, at least to my ears and heart. The clarinetist has to channel all of his energy into isolated tones that must speak quietly but confidently. A mezzo-forte becomes a scream. What struck me particularly about the percussion writing was the use of tympani with hard sticks. The tympanist plays an incessant ostinato which evokes a distant sense of a somber military parade. The entire work creates a sense of distance with the clarinet more often in the foreground but sometimes receding into the background and the percussion always creating very subdued resonances. This it the kind of work where applause really seems inappropriate except to acknowledge and praise the excellent work by the performers.
To continue and even augment the sense of pessimism of the second half of the concert. Kurtag's Messages of the Late R. V. Troussova, Op. 27. Although a rather lengthy work taken as a whole, it is comprised of 21 brief (sometimes very brief) songs with occasional instrumental interludes. The series of "messages" related by the fictional (?) R. V. Troussova are texts developed by the Russian/Hungarian writer Rimma Dalos. There are frequent uses of texts by such writers as Anna Akhmatova, Goethe, and Alexander Blok ("dearly loved poet of the deceased"). Through these "messages" Mdm. Troussova "speaks her innermost thoughts" which are mostly ones of loss, yearning and heartbreak with only glimmers of hope at points. The program notes point to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire as a model for this work and it is not hard to find many points of correspondence. For me, the most heart wrenching moment in the cycle is where the voice, in poignant duet with the clarinet, sings "You took my heart on the palm of your hand, which you then carefully turned upside down." The extremely demanding vocal part was stunningly performed by soprano Lauren Snouffer, currently in her final year of the master of music degree program at The Juilliard School. As is often the case, even with more mature and seasoned voices, the balance between the singer and orchestra left something to be desired. Nonetheless, the singer could be heard even when she could not be heard.
This was a demanding program from all perspectives, but it is a tribute to the performers and to a very attentive audience (I do believe there is a collective effect of an audience on the individual listener) that these works were presented and received to perhaps their fullest potential. The nearly full house was most appreciative.
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