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Another musical evening to remember was curated by Dr. Stephen Coxe and included a once-in-a-lifetime live song cycle performance of Arnold Schoenberg's (1874-1951) The Book of the Hanging Gardens (Das Buch der hängenden Gärten) Op. 15 (1909), sung by mezzo-soprano Adrienne Kerr with Coxe at the piano. Text and translations were furnished for the fifteen-part sung narrative with a calm opening that moved quietly to dramatic intensity. This full range of emotional expressiveness constantly changed as Ms. Kerr brought this drama to life while Dr. Coxe's piano met the composers great demands. As the last two movements of his String Quartet No. 2 two, Schoenberg set two poems by Stefan George (1868-1933). Schoenberg remained enthralled with George's hyper-Romantic poetry through the fall of 1908 when he completed a song cycle on the poet's Book of the Hanging Gardens. According to critic Alex Ross “The otherworldly serenity persists, together with vestiges of tonality. Then something snapped and Schoenberg let out his pent-up rage.” The art song expert Carol Kimball says it differently: “After the Book of the Hanging Gardens, Schoenberg's interest in works for voice and piano waned. That cycle was so concentrated, with such complex musical, emotional and psychological structure Schoenberg had 'said it all.' He had created a work that needed no follow-up.'” Our performers gave a brilliant, riveting performance of this very challenging music that will never be widely popular. Dr. Coxe opened the program with six short pieces for solo piano that spanned 200 years of musical history in twenty-five minutes. The first and last pieces were Beethoven's Bagatelle, Op. 126, No.1 and No. 5 (1825). The Beethoven No. 1 offered a warm, pleasing tune with variations and attractive flutter notes. Meredith Monk (b.1942), who is best known for her “extended vocal technique,” was represented by Railroad (Travel Song) (1981) for solo piano. It was a total contrast to the Beethoven with shifts of octaves and many repeated notes. From the same time period (1979) we heard Örökmozgo talált tárgy (Perpetual Motion [found object]) by György Kurtág (b.1926) with runs up and down the keyboard, piling one on another, creating the sound of a small orchestra. It was exciting to see Coxe's hands move on the keyboard. Several abrupt, angry notes bought the drama to a halt. With György Ligeti (1923-2006) Étude 5 Arc-en-Ciel (1985) [Study no.5 Rainbow] we were back in more familiar territory. Here the form offered the arc of a rainbow in a jazz-ballade in 6 beats per bar with 3x2 beats in the right hand against 2x3 in the left. Later the length of the phrases in the right hand is varied freely. (Described in the CD booklet of “Ligeti Complete Piano Music played by Fredrik Ullén on BIS). Engaging and so well played!. Some seventy-five years before the Ligeti piece was written, Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) composed Prelude in D-flat Major (1911), at age 18. With the present interest in women composers, she is finally gaining an audience. Here Debussy-influenced piano work had a drama all its own. The closing Beethoven was less familiar with its hymn-like melody. Quite a tour-de-force Dr. Coxe! One of two sonatas by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) followed. Bassoonist Tyler Austin, director of bands at ODU, joined Stephen Coxe for Sonata for Bassoon and Piano (1938). In 1938 Hindemith uprooted his family from Hitler's madness and eventually settled in the United States. The second of two movements contains three inner movements, all of this within a ten minute piece. The opening is a bassoon dance that sounds a bit clumsy at times in duet with the piano from the start. In the second movement the bassoon has a pastoral energy with a lyrical, gentle piano. This gives way to a lively march that mellows until the piano marches alone. Then back to a dialogue between the two players with an even deeper pastoral feeling that winds down peacefully. After intermission Bianca Hall, soprano and David Walker, marimba performed Stephen Coxe's Wanting the Moon (2003), a setting of three songs on poems of Denise Levertov (1923-1997). The ethereal voice and mellow marimba carried us into a timeless realm. A riverbank where flood waters drag “a whole tree by its hair,” the barn, a bridge and the moon reflected as flowers. Other images and a bird call float through the story line of night with a feeling of sorrow, but “I dance to it on my riverbank.” The second, brief song's title was Not to have ... and the text continues “but to be to become the belovéd as the world ends, to enter the last note of its music.” The third song is Wanting the Moon (II) with images that are remote instead of fresh and immediate as in Wanting the Moon (I), evoking a bronze head and granite torso weathered for 10,000 years as a distraction from the dream image of a young man's hair the color of mahogany. Certainly I would like to hear these a second time. The songs left me opened-up emotionally but without catharsis. Turning once again to music by Hindemith, virtuoso flutist and flute teacher Patti Watters joined Coxe at the piano in Sonata for Flute and Piano. Hindemith was still living in Germany in 1936 when he composed this three-movement upbeat piece with some darker undercurrents, perhaps reflecting the turmoil in Germany at the time. The moderately paced opening offered a stately theme by the flute that spawned delightful variations while the piano offered some unsettled harmonies. The second movement, slow and dreamy but lonely, was represented by shrill passages. Then once again a darker mood appeared in the piano. The third opened with a playful, joyous theme by the flute over driving piano rhythms. They touch notes and rush onward as the playing intensifies midway through until it came to a halt, seemingly on the verge of collapse. The lively opening returned and it ended happily, concluding a grand, fulfilling evening of music. ODU Faculty Recital The announcement was innocent enough, a faculty recital, but my oh my, what an evening of late 20th and early 21st century music it was. Challenging both performers and listeners with sounds from familiar instruments that stretched boundaries, it was exciting, demanding and greatly pleasurable. Dr. Stephen Coxe teaches music theory and composition at Old Dominion University but tonight his determination to present, play and compose was on full display. His ability to entice many of the area's finest instrumentalists and singers to help bring his dream to fruition still amazes a sizable local audience that included many ODU students and mature knowledgeable aficionados. The opening set had Coxe at the piano with world class flutist and Virginia Symphony player Rachel Ordaz playing both flute and piccolo in music by French composer Lilli Boulanger (1893-1918), who in her short life of twenty-five years wrote some 500 pieces. We heard Nocturne (1914). The setting offered great beauty, crystallized over and over again and at times with great intensity created by increasing tempos. By contrast the music that followed was by a Russian composer who was born in 1931 and is still alive, Sofia Gubaidulina. She was told by her teacher Shostakovich "I want you to continue along on your mistaken path," which was a warmer attitude than he showed to some. Her first piece, Allegro rustico (1963) has birdlike singing passages in a duet of a steady, busy flow of notes. Her second composition Klänge des Waldes (Sounds of the Forest) (1978) offered an oriental flavor in marches and edgy flute notes outside of the instrument's usual sound in an amazing variety of combinations with the pianist in this four-minute piece. It was breathtakingly exciting. Gubaidulina, like Olivier Massaen (1908-1992), whose Le merle noir (The blackbird) (1952) followed, sees writing music as a sacred act she calls "Transfigurations," moments of radiant clarity. With Ms. Ordaz on piccolo, this mysterious music evoked the warbling of shrill bird calls, high and sharp above Coxe's deep, rumbling piano chords. It was a brilliant set exploring the possibilities of these instruments. The set of songs that followed by Dr. Coxe on poems by Emily Dickinson was sung by the fabulous soprano Kathryn Kelly. Ms. Kelly premiered the songs in 2024 with Coxe at the piano then as well as now. There are five Dickinson Songs: 1. A Bird came down the walk, 2. "Hope"is the thing with feathers, 3. There's a certain Slant of Light, 4. Much Madness is divinest Sense, 5. If I can stop one heart from breaking. The texts chosen give a vision of the depth of Emily Dickinson's intellect and emotion that has only recently become public knowledge. The sweet spinster of the edited version of my youth gives way to a fully expressive, passionate modern woman and I welcome these superbly presented new settings. The third set was Fratres (Brothers) (1977) by the Estonian, "spiritual minimalist" composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) who turned to religious subjects at the end of the sixties, defying the official atheism of the Soviet Union. Paul Sanho Kim was violinist with Coxe at the piano. The music was at times lyrical, at others acerbic. Simple repetitions on violin - an independent prelude at the beginning with two measure piano chords in the work's six-measure theme are repeated nine times, coming in often a minor or major third lower. Sometimes there was a two-measure piano ostinato. A quote from the CD booklet (ECM 1275) Pärt Tabula Rasa: "The schematic of this composition, its numerical relationships and its easily discernible syntax give the effect of a semi-transparent screen. One can easily enter into it, but in doing so the work does not begin to give itself away." (Wolfgang Sandner). Throughout the first half the only lighting in the hall had been the stage lights. Now as we returned from catching up with friends during intermission we noticed that the only illumination was from the lights on the Camerata Choristers' twenty music stands at the back of the stage. Rebecca Willett was at the celeste on the left of the stage, Emily Ondracek-Peterson, viola was in the center and an array of percussion instruments on the right was manned by David Walker. Stephen Coxe conducted. Opening with Hildegard von Bingen (1098 - 1179), soprano Bianca Hall, without vibrato, sang a capella O virtus Sapientiae from the mysterious darkness on stage. No applause followed and Dr. Coxe continued with Morton Feldman (1926 - 1987) Rothko Chapel (1971), named for painter Mark Rothko (1905-1970), a Latvian born American expressionist painter who arrived in the U.S. from a Jewish shtetl at age 10. Feldman's parents were Jewish immigrants from Kiev, Ukraine living in New York City. The concert date was also International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Composer Feldman was reluctant to verbally tie his music to the Holocaust, but it is one of his most personal, affecting compositions. There are voices but no words. Rothko was a close, personal friend of Feldman who died by suicide the year before. This piece begins with a long, melodic viola solo defined at both ends by quiet timpani rolls. A second section introduces a wordless chorus intoning beautiful chords passed gently by chimes and some rattling percussion. The viola enters again with its long, plaintive melody and with a slow continuous pulse on two tympani notes that underline the music. The chorus begins to sustain a very long unbroken chord passed by chimes. The third section is created by an angelic solo soprano voice with viola alternately bowed and pizzicato and gentle tympani rolls. It ends with a chorus, a "quasi-Hebraic" melody and unchanging simple rhythmic pattern on vibraphone. Source: All Music Guide to Classical Music, "Blue Gene" Tyranny. Live performances of Feldman's music are rare but there are over 100 CDs of his music available, including Rothko Chapel. According to New Yorker Magazine critic Alex Ross, audiences at concerts of Feldman works are often bored and make noise. Thankfully our audience was quiet, even spellbound. |