Early Music America Fall 2013 - (Page 44)
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Young Performers Festival Bodes Well
A Report by Jacob Street
With help from the National Endowment for the
Arts and generous individual donors, EMA’s
Young Performers Festival was held at First
Church in Boston the week of June 10-14 during
the Boston Early Music Festival. An annual tradition since 2011, the event was administered by
EMA executive director Ann Felter and board
member Debra Nagy with the local assistance of
Kathy Fay and Carla Chrisfield of BEMF. During
the week, the Handel and Haydn Society hosted
a reception for the Young Performers Festival participants, whose 10 performances, six presented
with the help of an EMA College-level Ensemble
Travel Grant, were a superb showcase of passionate, energetic, thoroughly musical playing, and
an excellent preview of the kind of talent destined to be the future of the early music field.
Leading the festivities was a combined group:
the early music ensembles of Tufts and Brandeis
University, with Jane Hershey and Sarah Mead
as their respective directors. It was largely a late16th and early-17th century jamboree, with Byrd,
Dowland, Tomkins, Castello, and Schütz represented, among others. There were dances,
sonatas, canzonas, and spectacular divisions.
Under strong leadership, particularly the virtuosic
recorder stylings of Julia Bolsinger, the group’s
solid grasp of early music fundamentals was
impressive. This music can be really wild and fun,
and with a bit more spirit of risk-taking and individual leadership within the ensemble, the
strong, expressive fundamentals of this
combined group could really shine.
For any addicts of the Landini cadence, the
Longy School of Music of Bard College offered
a generous helping in its tripartite program. The
viols of Jane Hershey’s Lassus Consort provided
rich, warm support for the shapely vocal counterpoint in songs like “Paisible demaine.” In the
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Fall 2013 Early Music America
Dufay portion, coached by Laurie Monahan, the
superb text painting of Laura Pincus, Elijah Hopkin, and James Williamson guided the phrasing
of this difficult repertoire, even when the rhythmic displacement was at its most challenging.
Ornamental figures were never overwhelming,
while eye contact and body language revealed an
ensemble whose members can truly communicate with one another. Bach’s cantata “Christ lag
in Todesbanden,” as spiritedly conducted by
Dana Maiben, seemed at times a bit quick for the
thick polyphony, but a strong bass line and compelling solo performances kept the performance
grounded.
As for the Juilliard415 ensemble, it was, in
their words, “continuo players gone wild.” The
concert was largely a hodgepodge: there was
Vivaldi, Dalla Casa, Lully, and Geminiani to start,
as well as a pair of quite trite Bach arrangements
as bookends. The four bass line devotees seemed
at ease with each other in their witty banter during the concert and in their playing. Every member grasped the fundamental harmony at play
and their own relative importance at each
moment. Like every flavor of roll employed by the
harpsichord and theorbo, the two cellists showed
a wide range of color. Their decisions could be
counterintuitive, but were performed so well
and with such gusto that such inflections were
immediately effective.
How the University of North Texas shipped
about 25 singers, a 30-piece orchestra, and
directors Paul Leenhouts and Richard Sparks to
Boston was never made clear, but their program
of Czech Baroque music was all the more impressive for its enormous scope. From the vaguely
Viennese Jan Tolar to the garishly Galant František Benda, the orchestra grasped dynamic
shape, understood metrical and affectual contrast, and knew how to make sure those in the
back row were awake. The formidable brass sec-
tion and Leenhouts’ timpani helped immeasurably in the latter effort. The choir had a fine
grasp of phrasing and a well-controlled, consistently pleasant sound, particularly in Zelenka’s
massive Miserere. Though diction was excellent,
hearing inner voices was complicated by the
positioning of the tenors and altos behind the
orchestra. Soprano soloist Angela Bou Kheir
sported both purple hair and a fine, silvery coloratura that nicely maneuvered Zelenka’s usual
harmonic trickery.
Florida State University’s Early Music
Ensemble, under Jeffery Kite-Powell, offered a
beautiful program—their printed book was the
nicest of the week—and their playing only surpassed it in quality. Titled “Music from Seventeenth-Century Germany,” yet proudly sporting
excerpts by the enigmatic “Johannes Lüllie” (normally Lully), the program was not afraid to have
a bit of fun with composers like Praetorius, Fischer, and Speer. With players and singers this good,
it was easy to appreciate. The oboes and bassoons of the “B’roq’n Reed Consort” would
instantly lock into their tunings, revealing just
how closely they were listening to one another,
and the six-piece sackbut choir employed a musically sensitive bass line and a remarkable palette
of color. In their Schütz cantatas, particularly
“Der Engel sprach,” the singers’ diction was
superb, their phrasing intelligent and shapely.
Even without the surprise doo-wop finale, made
all the more hilarious by the performers’ utterly
deadpan expressions, this concert would have
pleased the audience with its totally rewarding
musicianship.
The semi-staged, fully-strange “La Pellegrina”
was the selection for the eight singers and eight
players of the University of Southern California-Thornton School of Music Baroque Sinfonia,
under director Adam Knight Gilbert. These intermedi by various late-16th century Italian composers, described as “music for a magnificent
Florentine wedding,” sounded exceedingly difficult, with elaborate Italianate figurations and
relentless ornaments. The singers showed no sign
of strain, though, often singing from memory
and employing both Baroque gesture and a fair
amount of acting. Though the costumes and
alternatingly elegant or grotesque motions about
the stage may not have been necessary for the
music to succeed, they did reinforce the intense
fealty to the text already apparent in the singers’
excellent diction and phrasing. Everyone was fully
engaged; the playing was lovely, the vocal blend
impeccable, the style fully in command.
Top, the CWRU Collegium Musicum performs
for a full house. Bottom, from left to right,
students from Longy School of Music of Bard
College, University of Southern California,
and the University of North Texas.
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