Reviews

Stephen Coxe Faculty Recital
Chandler Hall, February 8, 2018
Review by John Campbell

In some sense the aura of John Cage shadowed this program, though the beginning was much more conventional but with some French macarons along the way. Stephen Coxe at the piano played Vier Klavierstücke, Op. 119 (Four Piano Pieces) with a yummy, gentle opening. By this time Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) had moved beyond the grand drama of his “make the piano sound as much as possible like an orchestra” to this intimate and inviting music. Brahms' life-long friend, the renowned concert pianist Clara Schumann, gave the premier performance in London, January, 1893. Dr. Coxe played with a clear communication of the varying mood of each piece. There is longing in the first, nostalgic remembrance (perhaps of a love affair) in the second, dancing lyricism after its opening gusto in the third and bombastic joy in the fourth. All very satisfying!

With Coxe at a prepared piano, the talented young soprano Anna Feucht offered Songs for Five O'Clock, composed by Dr. Coxe, settings of poems by Jessica Hornik from 2012. In 1938 John Cage began playing pieces for prepared piano emphasizing that a piano is indeed a percussion instrument. The rhyming couplets by the poet clearly articulated by Ms. Feucht were sparingly enhanced by faint peeling bell tones in the piano. The words end but the bell tones continue until they gently die away.

The second text, Now I See It, written as blank verse, musically explored the idea of mist. The gentle chiming sound of a far off clock expressed metaphorical scenes from nature as the mist rolled in. The poem ends with these words: “the deer bounding soundlessly into the speckled edge of the woods.”

The closing song is Postscript: The Harebell (a harebell is a blue woods hyacinth) which rules the winter garden, surrounded by evergreens in snow. Strummed strings inside the piano offered an “otherworldly” gloss between verses. The ominous feeling of the threat “of what they know is in store for me” was enhanced by spare piano tones.

Francis Poulenc's Sonata for Flute and Piano, with Wayla J. Chambo on flute, was in three movements. The opening is sweetly sad, followed by a dreamy cantilena movement. The last is a skittish tune filled with relaxed good humour. Lines begun by the flute are completed by the piano. The playing offered sparkling vigor that prompted me to want to dance.

After intermission we heard an early sonata by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). He was 22 when Sonate posthume was first performed by the composer and perhaps Georges Enesco. Our violinist, Jeanne Detamore DeDominick, is a graduate of the Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati and has been a local public school music educator for some 35 years. This early work by Ravel has a single movement. In it we hear the musical language of a young genius from his student years. The violin blended well with the piano.

Music by Erik Satie (1866-1925) and John Cage (1912-1992) made up the rest of the recital. Here is how it unfolded. Lent, the first song of Satie's Trois Gnossiennes (1890) for solo piano had lots of accidentals. Soon, from the corner of my eye, on the right I saw movement. A dancer in black was moving gracefully down the aisle toward the stage, almost as if she were mesmerized by the evocative piano. She slithered onto the stage, stood. During delicate parts of Avec étonnement (With astonishment) Joni Petre-Scholz's dancing on point seemed perfectly natural. She soon returned with several others who brought a love seat, four chairs, throws, floor cushions and lamps—all the props you need for Living Room Music (1940) by rebel composer John Cage, who believed that music includes sounds of ordinary events in real time. As Satie's Lent (same title as his first piece, different music) was played, the people on stage began a card game. Deborah Thorpe made no less than eight trips in the direction of the piano but never arrived there. Students came in and shared hugs and then left, leaving behind a teddy bear with a big body topped by a small head.

A knock on the door and percussionist David Walker and his students Christian Madsen, and Jonathan Wudijono arrived. At the coffee table covered by paper, cardboard mailers, flatware, oatmeal cartons and all sorts of brick-a-brac, they sat and read the papers, rattling them loudly in the process and the percussion of John Cage's (1912-1992) Living Room Music had begun. Mr. Walker fell asleep but a little bell played near his ear roused him and as the drumming of spoons on the oatmeal box, table top, etc. accompanied, he recited in a continuous rhythm repeated fragments of Story with a text by the eccentric writer Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), who in her own works tried to apply theories of the cubist painters. The experience called to mind Ms. Stein's comment: “Sometimes I wonder how anyone can read my work. When I look at it after a time it seems quite meaningless to me.”

The third movement of Living Room Music, Melody, had Coxe playing a toy piano with its gamelan-like sound. Ms. Chambo was offered a toy flute but declined and all the while the casual drumming continued on various surfaces. David Walker has said of Living Room Music: "Cage does his typical compositional technique of juxtaposing very complex rhythms over top simple rhythms, requiring intense concentration for the players. Which given the comical nature of the piece is quite ironic. One would expect the parts to be 'easy', but they are not." The final movement, End, was just that. I was mightily charmed but many of the audience seemed baffled.

What a lovely experience, then off to the reception of fruit-filled macarons and a delectable strawberry cake, topped by a six-inch chocolate grand piano.