Concert Reviews:
Music of Mario Davidovsky
January 14, 2005
Chicago Tribune | Chicago Sun-Times
ICE eagerly follows Davidovsky's peripatetic pen
Chicago Tribune | download Word file
January 17, 2005
By Michael Cameron, Special to the Tribune
Time dulls the intensity of aesthetic feuds. Sharply etched divisions between serialists, minimalists, neo-romanticists, experimentalists (to give a brief list of -ists) have blurred, and young composers now feel free to sample from whatever models suit their fancy.
In a superbly prepared program Friday at Columbia College, the International Contemporary Ensemble gave listeners a rare chance to sample several works of Mario Davidovsky, a giant of American serialism. Has enough time passed to allow clearer heads to evaluate his music?
ICE opened Friday's program with "Synchronism No. 10" for
guitar and electronics. The work is texturally sparse and lucid, with
enough spaces to allow the
listener to absorb details. Guitarist Daniel Lippel realized the demanding
score with precision and expressivity.
The composer's fascination early in life with great violin virtuosos was given as explanation for the increased density of "Synchronism No. 9" for violin and electronics. David Bowlin was the impressive soloist, taming the most awkward double stops with ease and carefully delineating the rapid changes of character.
Conductor Cliff Colnot led a performance of "Flashbacks" for six instruments, with the composer showing a predilection for small subsets of instruments. Any gestures formed by recognizable patterns (intervals, rhythmic cells) vanished as soon as they were recognizable.
If the works stake a claim to modernity in some respects, they are quite conservative with regards to instrumental techniques, which rarely venture beyond 19th Century norms. The one exception Friday was "Festino," a work that strays from the composer's typical preference for heterogeneous combinations. Viola, cello and double bass at one point imitate the fourth instrument, the guitar, with rapid strumming. More important, there are several instances in which all four voices move together for extended periods, which for Davidovsky means a few seconds.
"Romancero" showed a different side of the composer, with a vocal line (sung with fierce intensity by Julia Bentley) set to popular Spanish poetry. Here the text forced Davidovsky to focus his rhetoric in a more direct and sustained way.
Flutist Claire Chase, clarinetist Joshua Rubin, cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman, pianist William McDaniel, percussionist David Schotzko, violist Maiya Papach and bassist Randall Zigler were the other fine members of ICE.
The enterprising music student (and there were many in attendance this night) can learn much about the intricacies of serial composition from these works. It remains to be seen if the content can ever rise sufficiently above the craft to earn the works a permanent place in concert halls.
Davidovsky offers electronic, acoustic blend
Chicago Sun-Times | original
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January 16, 2005
By Wynne Delacoma, Classical Music Critic
The weather was bitterly cold, and the music calendar crowded with attractive offerings. But a standing-room-only crowd found its way to the South Loop on Friday night for a concert of chamber music by distinguished Argentine-born composer Mario Davidovsky. The young musicians of the lively International Contemporary Ensemble were the core group of performers in Columbia College Music Center's intimate concert hall. Their guests included conductor Cliff Colnot, mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley and guitarist Daniel Lippel.
A major figure in contemporary music, Davidovsky turned 70 last year and attended Friday's concert as part of a weeklong residency at Columbia.
A Pulitzer Prize winner, he is a former director of the Columbia (University)/Princeton Electronic Music Center. He has long been fascinated by combining standard acoustic instruments with electronic and computer-generated sound.
Goal to 'tame and civilize'
There is nothing faintly cold or robotic about his excursions into such thoroughly modern musical terrain, however. Friday's program was nicely varied, and in all five works, Davidovsky's musical language displayed a warmth and emotional depth that reached far beyond the realm of mere technical experiment. His ideas frequently came in short, staccato outbursts and their moods were changeable, but their underlying logic propelled each piece like a bracing conversation.
The program included two works for solo performer and electronic tape: "Synchronism No. 10" for guitar and electronics from 1992 and "Synchronism No. 9" for violin and tape from 1988. In comments to the audience, Davidovsky said that a major goal when he started working with tape in the early 1960s was to "tame and civilize" electronic sound. In the "Synchronism" for guitar, the taming seemed to be working in the opposite direction.
The piece opened with an extended section for guitar only, hectic and vigorous, shifting from metallic fury to weary calm. When electronic sounds began to emerge, Lippel's meticulous phrasing and penetrating tone seemed to soften and relax.
His guitar line sounded more expansive, somehow taking comfort in the companionship of the resonant electronic oscillations and gentle whistles.
In "Synchronism No. 9," David Bowlin's violin and a prepared electronic tape were partners from the start. A founding member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Bowlin is a formidable violinist, combining dulcet sweetness of tone with incisive drive. Throughout the piece, he often seemed on the verge of plunging into a full-blown sublimely expressive lyrical melody, only to dart away in a flurry of brief, breathless outbursts.
Haunted sadness
"Flashbacks," a 1995 work for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and percussion, also played with teasing hints of longer, lyrical lines constantly interrupted by short, fragmented rhythms. Colnot kept a firm grip on its crisp phrases, and the variety of ever-shifting colors from flutist Claire Chase, clarinetist Joshua Rubin and Bowlin's violin sparkled like a kaleidoscope.
Written for guitar, viola, cello and bass in 1994, "Festino" was equally brilliant, though its slow movements conveyed a haunted sadness.
Accompanied by flute, clarinet, violin and cello, Bentley's mezzo was sumptuous but clearly focused in "Romancero," a set of four songs with texts drawn from traditional Spanish romantic poetry. Proclaiming her own beauty in "Morenica, they call me," Bentley swaggered proudly, her claims punctuated by austere accompaniment. In "Sad was King David," her wide-ranging a cappella melodic line was full of anguish and transfixed heartbreak. Tentative bits of accompaniment from violin, cello and clarinet and flute rose and fell like the comforting but useless words of well-meaning friends.
