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The newEar Contemporary Music Ensemble continued their eighteenth season on Saturday with a series of chamber works composed by Pulitzer Prize-winning composers. A modest audience of sixty gathered at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church for the program curated by newEar pianist Robert Pherigo. The program included some lovely pieces by John Corigliano, Paul Moravec, and Jennifer Higdon, though several of the other selections left me uninspired and suffered from unenergetic performances.

The program opener, Leon Kirchner’s Duo No. 2, consisted of rising modulatory phrases that generated an unrelenting tension. In the course of the concert, it became apparent that this was the greenest piece on the program. The aggressive allegro moments were sold better than the introspective moments, though they still betrayed a general lack of comfort with the piece on the part of the performers. I had planned to comment on a balance issue with the violin’s pizzacatos, which were buried under the pianos expansive arpeggios, however, after hearing the same problem in the closing piece, Kirchner’s Piano Trio No. 2, I realized the fault lay more with the composer’s orchestration than with the performer’s playing.

Saturday’s best performance nod goes to cellist Lawrence Figg. Performing two unaccompanied cello works and two piano trios, his stage time was surpassed only by concert curator and pianist Robert Pherigo, who played in five of the seven pieces. Figg offered a sensitive and nuanced performance of John Corigliano’s Fancy on a Bach Air, an Andante-paced series of simple, unadorned melodies in various keys and modes. Unexpected, tonally-distant intervallic transitions and modulations kept the diatonic melodies interesting. Though fleeting, the piece’s fragmented allusions to idiosyncratic Bach cello gestures were likewise intriguing. A chorale-like section had some particularly pretty moments despite a few intonation blunders. Later, in Steven Stucky’s Dialoghi, Figg drew a wide variety of unconventional sounds from his instrument, showing he was unafraid of the sul ponticello gestures and dramatic marcato accents called for in the piece.

The harmonic language of Paul Moravec’s aptly-titled Autumn Song was one of the most enjoyable treats of the evening. The writing displayed a keen understanding of modern harmonic progressions. Performers Robert and Lyra Pherigo demonstrated a consummate knowledge of the shape of the piece, artfully leading the audience though the alternately dissonant and lush sonorities, despite some intonation issues and a few moments where the energy waned.

I did, however, find myself wondering why Moravec’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tempest Fantasy, a chamber work for piano trio with the addition of a clarinet, wasn’t on this program. The piece would have fit nicely into a program which already included two piano trios – by Higdon and Kirchner – especially considering that newEar’s resident clarinetist, Thomas Aber (who was not featured on this program), has given many excellent performances with the group over the years. In truth, the program’s title was a bit deceiving as the concert did not actually feature any Pulitzer Prize-winning compositions. Rather, the concert featured other works by five Pulitzer Prize-winning composers, which in several cases, were composed decades apart from their prize-winning works. As Moravec’s quartet was the first small-scale classical chamber piece to win the prize since Aaron Jay Kernis’ String Quartet No. 2 won in 1998, I saw this as a significant missed opportunity.

I also found myself wishing there was more energy and daring on the stage. Though it goes without saying that twentieth- and twenty-first-century music is often outside the box. On Saturday, it seemed to have gotten lost in the corner of the delivery truck. There wasn’t anything challenging or innovative about this new music concert, which is unfortunate as there really is a lot of weird, wonderful music out there. A few years ago, I saw a chamber ensemble perform a sextet that called for the cellist to play a musical saw then saw a 2x4 in half while a pianist ran around a piano knocking on the casing. It was a fantastic piece! Even if it was awful though, just the fact that a composer had gotten a group of musicians to wholly invested themselves in that piece would have had me talking about it just as much.

Having attended a number of newEar concerts over the last eight years, I have to say that sometimes the ensemble offers up stellar programs, while other times they fall short. Here, there were several lovely selections and a few attentive performances. However, these were nearly overshadowed by a number of uninspired selections and resigned performances. In writing this review, I hit backspace frequently finding it hard to strike a balance on something that seemed so pained at times while giving the benefit of the doubt and avoiding biases.

Looking back at the last several concerts newEar has produced, which for the most part have been more stellar and less uninspired, I’m hoping this weekend’s program was a brief slump they can climb out of for their next show in February of 2011, which will feature Grawemeyer Award-winner Sebastian Currier’s song cycle Vocalissimus as well as works by Sofia Gubaidalina, Leon Kirchner, Sara Graef, and Tomas Svoboda.

REVIEW
newEar Contemporary Music Ensemble Presents
Pulitzer Autumn Reflections
Saturday, November 13, 2010
All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church
4501 Walnut St, Kansas City, MO
For more information visit http://www.newEar.org

By Topher Levin

Classical Editor and Contributor

Christopher (Topher) Levin is a composer, pianist, music theorist, and music blogger based in Kansas City, MO. His compositions have been performed at music festivals across the US and in Europe. He has spent two summers in Paris, France studying music at the Ecole Normale de Musique through the EAMA program. His trio for clarinet, piano, and percussion is published in the SCI Journal of Scores.

Topher holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (M.M.) in music theory and (M.M.) in composition and from James Madison University in Virginia (B.M.) in composition. Primary composition teachers have included John S. Hilliard, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Claude Baker, Narcis Bonet, Michel Merlet, and João Pedro Oliveira. His piano teachers have included Patricia Brady and Karen Kushner. Topher maintains a piano studio of 22 students.

Having recently completed a Master's thesis on the beautiful complexities of Chinary Ung's trio, Spiral I, Topher turned his writing attention to the more informal blogging medium. He has taken to it quite well, sharing posts on strange and wonderful music and art found across the web with a modest but growing number of blog followers. He looks forward to writing for KCM and sharing with its readers the stories of all the amazing musicians performing in Kansas City.