Reviews
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.
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