Thom Mariner
Co-publisher, Express Cincinnati & EXP/arts

The Cincinnati new music festival MusicNOW has announced its seventh season, spanning three evenings: March 28-30.

Festival curator and Cincinnati native Bryce Dessner, founding member of indie rock group The National, has assembled an impressive cast of performers to showcase a wide spectrum of contemporary music, with the expressed intent of blurring the distinctions between musical categories.

Extending from modern works for church organ to improvisations for flamenco guitar and cello, this year’s MusicNOW leans more in the direction of classical music than in the recent past, but there are infusions of more popular styles, as well.

There is a focus throughout the festival on the music of Nico Muhly, one of the hottest composers on the planet.

The opening organ concert at Christ Church, featuring Westminster Abbey organist James McVinne, features several classical works ranging from Bach to Arvo Pärt and Muhly, but also includes a piece by Richard Reed Parry of indie rock band Arcade Fire, and that has to be considered, well…genre-bending, at the very least.

The middle concert welcomes the amazing eighth blackbird back to their “second home” of Cincinnati in a performance of – and with(!) – Philip Glass, and also more music of Nico Muhly. This appearance will be especially anticipated due to the sextet’s cancellation of their January concert with the Cincinnati Symphony. Read more about eighth blackbird in our January feature: www.expresscincinnati.com.

Glass is here in Cincinnati as part of his residency at the CSO, and their world premiere performance of his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi” – played by Matt Haimovitz.

The closing night features a “workshop” performance of a new song cycle composed by Muhly, singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens and Dessner (interesting!), as well as the aforementioned works for guitar and cello.

DO NOT MISS THIS!

Check out the lineup below, and look for more details and background in the March Express, available Feb. 29!

MusicNOW 2012 Festival Line-up

Wednesday, March 28
FREE organ concert with James McVinnie at Christ Church Cathedral. McVinnie, from Westminster Abbey, will be performing new pieces from Richard Reed Parry and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang along with selections from Philip Glass, Bach, Arvo Pärt and Nico Muhly.

Thursday, March 29
eighth blackbird will be joined by Philip Glass to perform “Music in Similar Motion” and premiere a new work by Nico Muhly at Memorial Hall.

Friday, March 30
A workshop presentation of a new song cycle from Nico Muhly, Sufjan Stevens and Bryce Dessner. Pedro Soler and Gaspar Claus will perform improvisations for flamenco guitar and cello at Memorial Hall.
Two-day passes are available for the Memorial Hall concerts.

Tickets are available now:
www.musicnowfestival.org/tickets

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Thom Mariner
Co-publisher, Express Cincinnati

Frank Zappa composed classical music, you say? Really? Isn’t he the guy who wrote songs about yellow snow and being a dental floss tycoon in Montana soon?

Sunday evening, to a standing-room-only crowd at the 20th Century in Oakley Square, concert:nova paid tribute to the diverse, organic and unique creativity of Frank Zappa, American Composer, 1940-1993.

When I was in high school, we used to snigger conspiratorially at Zappa’s lyrics, which we saw as juicily irreverent and oh-so daring. At that age, we had no clue what his music was all about. I think we saw it as just a vehicle for his silliness. Turns out, the man was a certifiable genius. Who knew?! Leave it to concert:nova, Cincinnati’s genre-bending chamber music series, to explore the musical life of this much-misunderstood trailblazer.

The first half of the concert alternated performances of Zappa’s early rock output with classical pieces that especially influenced him as a composer. Leading off was “Hungry Freaks, Daddy,” the first track from the debut album by Zappa’s Mothers of Invention from 1966. This was followed by “Octandre,” by Edgard Varèse, scored for seven wind instruments and double bass.

Igor Stravinsky – another important classical influence upon Zappa – was represented by his Octet for winds and brass, sandwiched between the title track to 1970 album “Chungas Revenge” and “Little Umbrellas” from 1969’s jazzy “Hot Rats.” These juxtapositions gave audience members a peek into the creative pathway Zappa took on his journey from political rebel to composer of “art music.”

The first-half concept worked because of first-class performances by rock band members Dave McConnell, Roger Klug, Julie Spangler, Erica Drake, Matt Zory and Ted Nelson, as well as the two excellent chamber ensembles. Klug’s scorching guitar was the highlight, solidifying his stature as a peerless master of both technique and creativity.

What’s important to note about Zappa’s rock offerings is that, like the classical music from which they drew their influence, they don’t bowl you over with waves of sound. Instead, they tickle your ears and mind with nuance and cleverness, inviting repeated listening. It’s a shame that this concert was only presented once.

Both the Varèse and Stravinsky were expertly delivered, with much of the credit going to conductor Edwin Outwater, who was solid and extremely clear in his leadership of these rhythmically challenging compositions.

Concert:nova is well-known for its multimedia approach to concerts, and this was no different with video clips serving as continuity, further illustrating Zappa’s transformation from nerdy, eccentric guest on the Steve Allen Show to acerbic, surrealist social commentator in his movie “200 Motels.”

The second half featured Zappa’s purely instrumental classical compositions, ranging from 1972’s “Big Swifty,” for brass ensemble and drum set, to “The Perfect Stranger,” a piece Zappa recorded in conjunction with Pierre Boulez in 1984, as well as several excerpts from “The Yellow Shark,” released by Boulez’s Ensemble Modern in 1993, just a month prior to Zappa’s death.

It was fascinating to hear how Zappa, a self-taught composer, absorbed the influences surrounding him and made them his own, with a special ability to exploit the unique characteristics of specific instruments. The colors and textures are one-of-a-kind, spiraling effortlessly through genres from rock to jazz and the most avant-garde. But everything is infused with scads of the personality and humor that are uniquely Zappa. It was fun to see orchestral musicians actually smiling while playing!

In terms of what might have been better, several of the Zappa classical pieces sounded as if they needed just one more rehearsal. This is fiendishly difficult music. Also, a more polished overall sense of continuity would give the evening a better sense of flow. Transitions could have been smoother and tighter, and the introduction, while charmingly delivered, could have been cut by half, and perhaps would have worked better after intermission. It’s important to grab the audience as quickly as possible, and most of the information was available in the program.

The finale, Yellow Shark’s final track “G-Spot Tornado,” was a Dionysian dervish highly deserving of the encore: “Peaches en Regalia” from “Hot Rats.” The resulting standing ovation (all too common these days) was sincere, appreciative and long. The crowd was diverse in age and sensibility, drawing from c:n’s existing chamber music fan base, Zappa devotees from his earliest years, and younger fans who came to experience the legend live.

Bravo to Ixi Chen, concert:nova artistic director, for pulling together this fascinating, varied and complex tribute, and to Al Lopez and the c:n board of trustees for their support in making it possible, and for helping to create the wonderfully campy ambiance with fake Zappa mustaches, a fun photo booth, and posters for sale.

If you haven’t yet experienced a concert:nova performance, put Sunday, April 29, 3 p.m. on your calendar, when c:n and VAE: Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble collaborate on a program at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

www.concertnova.com or www.vaecinci.org

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Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati music director Donald Nally promised “a rest from the bustle of the holidays” and a “world of carols, candles and contemplation” for the VAE’s annual Christmas concert.

Nally kept his word Sunday in Summit Country Day School Chapel in Hyde Park. Always a beauty, this VAE Christmas concert was that and more. Call it a musical essay, a gift of time, whatever, Nally made the listener feel immersed in the music – in another world almost. And no one does it better than the 24-voice VAE. There were no thoughts of shopping, decorating, baking or any of the multitudinous tasks of the holiday season.

The concert (and Saturday’s opener at St. Boniface Church in Northside) was called “A Candlelit Christmas,” and so it was, with the Gothic-style Chapel handsomely decorated with red poinsettias, white mini-lights and candles. As the sun set and the light from the stained glass windows faded, the encompassing warmth of the Chapel heightened the feeling of being suspended in time. There was no intermission and no applause until the end. The singers played hand bells to provide continuity between numbers, create atmosphere and set pitches.

The choir entered from the rear of the Chapel with “O Come Emmanuel” and a gentle Norwegian lullaby, “Sov, Sov Liten Gut” (“Sleep. Sleep Little Boy”). Positioning themselves across the front of the chancel, they sang Gabriel Jackson’s joyous, full-voiced “To Morning” (2007). This was followed by John Joubert’s exquisite, 1954 setting of “There is No Rose of Such Virtue,” which began ever so softly on the interval of a third by a pair of women’s voices. This medieval text was heard three times during the concert, with versions attributed to John Dunstable (ca. 1420) and the 1996 setting by Stephen Caracciolo.

Presenting traditional carols in less familiar settings was a thread on the program. “Lo, How a Rose,” “What Child is This” and “Silent Night” also were heard in contemporary treatments.

The first set also included Paul Manz’s touching “E’en So Lord Jesus Quickly Come” (1953), Caracciolo’s joyous “People Look East” and Alfred Burt’s “The Star Carol” (1954), during which the singers filed down the side aisles. All stood for the proposition — as did the entire concert – that a carol need not be a familiar one to evoke the Christmas spirit. (It is the overall mission of Nally and VAE to focus on music of our time.)

The second set began with “Bia, Bia Lite Ban” (“Hush, Hush Little Child”), another tender Norwegian lullaby. Steve Martland’s cheerful, 1997 “Make We Joy” was followed by a big, dissonant hand bell “chord (commentary?), then the ineffable “Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming” in the 1933 version by Hugo Distler. The choir processed to the left transept of the Chapel for Nally’s own “Christ Child’s Lullabye.” This lovely carol began with soprano solo and alternated contemporary harmonization with more polyphonic treatment. Following was William Chatterton Dix’s “What Child Is This?” in the 1971 arrangement by B. Brant Ruggles.

Composer Karl Hirten’s lovely “Child of Sweetness” (1992) saw the choir move through the pews to the right transept. There they sang Sir David Willcocks’ spellbinding arrangement of the Basque carol “Gabriel’s Message” and Gustav Holst’s serenely beautiful “”Lullay My Liking” (1916).

The singers were back in the chancel for “Silent Night” in the splendid 1992 arrangement by former Cincinnatian and CCM graduate J. David Moore (founder of a cappella group The Village Waytes). Clothed in new harmonies, the old favorite sounded re-vivified and as such, segued beautifully into a repeat of the lullaby “Bia Bia Lite Ban” and the final set, beginning with Edwin Fissinger’s “Love Came Down at Christmas” (1979). Herbert Howells’ 1918 “A Spotless Rose” (a setting of “Lo, How a Rose”) demonstrated yet again how a new treatment can transform a familiar one.

“The Infant King,” a lovely Basque carol arranged by Willcocks, ornamented with hand bells, brought the final set to a close. The recessional, “O Come Emmanuel,” followed, but with a surprise. It was as if the outside world with all its noise and confusion had suddenly broken in. After a unison “rejoice,” the singers rapidly took their leave by the outside aisles, each singing in canon with the others to create a chaotic din.

To ease the transition to the cold outside, there were snacks and drinks in the vestibule.

VAE’s next performance is in conjunction with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, a concert version of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress,” March 18. For more information, visit vaecinci.org.

From “Sarcasms” to DSCH, the chamber ensemble concert:nova illuminated a painful period in history, Dec. 5, at Know Theater.

It was the Soviet era, seen through the eyes – and music – of two of Russia’s greatest composers, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich.

The multi-media production, “Pieces in the Key of Silence,” marked a new collaboration between concert:nova (c:n) and Michael Burnham, professor of drama at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). Burnham has previously worked with c:n on programs focusing on composers Arnold Schoenberg and Gustav Mahler. Assisted by CCM professor Steven Cahn, Burnham assembled the text from journalistic and biographical materials, as well as poetry by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Ossip Mandelstam, Anna Ahmatova, Sasha Cherny and others.

Performing the roles of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, respectively, were dancer/choreographers Stephen Jacobsen and Jimmy Cunningham. Both are members of the corps de ballet for Cincinnati Ballet and participated with c:n in the new Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts in October. (Interestingly, Cunningham was Prokofiev on that occasion in the world premiere choreography of Prokofiev’s Quintet, Op. 39.)

The Know stage area was bare save for chairs, music stands and a piano. A drape lit with color (blue) provided the backdrop. A trio of Soviet apparatchiks – actors Will Kiley, Ellie Jameson and Callie Schuttera, who also narrated and spoke the composers’ lines – introduced Prokofiev. Kiley (in the words of Aaron Copland): “Prokofiev? He was friendly, but not an easy guy to talk to. He was boyish, easily bored, even impolite at times. He was very bright and outspoken.” Pianist Albert Mühlböck began the musical program with excerpts from Prokofiev’s “Sarcasms,” Op. 17 (1912-14), and “Visions Fugitives,” Op. 22 (1915-17).

Dating from Prokofiev’s early to mid-twenties, both works reflect the brash, bold young composer, who, flushed with success, could say (Jameson): “I care nothing for politics. I am a composer. Any government that lets me write my music in peace, publishes everything I compose . . . and performs every note that comes from my pen is all right with me.” Beginning with “Tempestoso” from “Sarcasms,” a percussive, polytonal movement, Mühlböck evoked the rebel not yet brought down by the system. As Prokofiev, Jacobsen danced with confidence, exertion and considerable flair (both dancers choreographed their parts).

The apparatchiks provided a recurring commentary on all that took place during the evening: “All in the name of progress. All just to make things better.”

It was Shostakovich’s turn next. Cunningham looked the part, up to the round, wire-rimmed glasses he wore, maintaining the tip-lipped seriousness associated with the composer and dancing with lightness and agility. The c:n quartet, violinists Anna Reider and Heidi Yenney, violist Joanne Wojtowicz and cellist Ted Nelson, performed the first movement (Moderato) of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 1, Op. 49 (1938), a conservative work in the Russian tradition, without the modernity exhibited by most of his earlier music.

Mühlböck closed the first half powerfully with the second and third movements of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 8. (1944). The scenario was now conflict, with the three apparatchiks surrounding Jacobsen, who pushed them away with a sneer on his face. Apparatchik (Kiley): “You are a brave man, they tell me.” Prokofiev (Schuttera): “I tried to say what I thought loud enough to be heard.” All: “A time will come to have done with those strange times when a man who was simply honest was called brave.”

The famous denunciation of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” followed intermission. In 1936, Pravda published a scathing review of the opera that put the composer on notice that his life could be in danger. (“This is a game of unintelligibility than can end in tears,” read the review.) Then, isolating Shostakovich further, his friend Ivan Sollertinsky died. To set the scene, Mühlböck, Reider and Nelson performed the Largo from Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor (1944). To make it even more poignant, Cunningham danced with Sollertinsky’s corpse (Jacobsen).

The stage lighting blazed red to illustrate the next blow for the composers, the 1948 decree by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, censuring them for “anti-revolutionary, anti-people formalism.” Prokofiev showed his coolness by talking during Andrei Zhdanov’s speech. Shostakovich wrote a letter of contrition, later telling his friends (Kiley): “I read like a wretch, a parasite, a puppet, a cut-out paper doll hanging on a string.”

Then it was March 5, 1953, the day both Prokofiev and Stalin died (all attention was paid to Stalin). As a kind of latter-day tribute, Nelson and Mühlböck performed the melodic, cheerful Andante grave from the composer’s Cello Sonata in C Major, Op. 119 (1948). Jacobsen danced affectingly here, with some awe-inspiring spins and jumps, then was carried off in death by the three apparatchiks.

In 1960, Shostakovich was forced to join the Communist Party. The evening’s real threnody took place here, with the string quartet performing his Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110 (1960). The work is pervaded by Shostakovich’s motto figure, DSCH (D, E-flat, C, B in German transliteration). According to his friend Lev Lebedinsky (Schuttera), Shostakovich intended it to be his final work and to kill himself after completing it.

Led with intensity by Reider, the quartet’s playing was touching, gripping and deeply felt, all reflected in Cunningham’s sensitive choreography. Both in struggling with the apparatchiks and solo, he seemed to be dancing himself to death. At one point, he made dramatic grasping motions, reaching out for something, then pulling it to his chest. The lights

turned purple as the hammer blows of the fourth movement (Largo) began. During the poignant cello solo heard here (Nelson), he danced briefly with Schuttera (Shostakovich’s daughter?). As the Quartet came to its heartbreaking end, he took off his glasses and curled up on the floor in front of the musicians.

The apparatchiks had the last (rueful) word: “Let’s drink to this – that things don’t get any better.”

The next concert by concert:nova is “Shut Up and Play the Zappa,” an introduction to Frank Zappa the classical composer, January 22 at 8 p.m. at the 20th Century Theater in Oakley. Information at www.concertnova.com

The inaugural Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts has met its own ambitious expectations. With 11 of its 13 concerts history as Express goes to press, the festival has experienced overall good attendance, especially for a new endeavor. Saxophonist Ted Nash’s concert at Blue Wisp was a sellout for both shows. Admittedly, turnout for the festival opener, violinist Hilary Hahn at Memorial Hall, was not what it should have been, and there was only a spotty crowd for Alexander Toradze and his Piano Studio in Corbett Theater at the Erich Kunzel Center for Arts and Education. However, without exception, the festival delivered lavishly on its artistic promise.
As befits any successful festival, there were stars, including Hahn, oboist Liang Wang, male soprano Michael Maniaci and saxophonist Ted Nash (with Joshua Bell closing the festival Nov. 8). Toradze did not perform, save for a part in a six-hand Rachmaninoff Romance, frustrating some expectations, but his students were exceptional. Having partnered with several other arts organizations, most in their season openers, Constella included other outstanding artists, such as pianist Menahem Pressler (Linton Music Series) and the St. Lawrence String Quartet (Chamber Music Cincinnati).
As also befits a festival, there were world premieres. Thirteen selections from “The Hilary Hahn Encores,” a set of 27 short pieces she will introduce over the next two seasons, gave considerable note to her concert, as did Nash’s “Suite Ivette” for double quartet (jazz and string quartets), commissioned by Constella itself. Also receiving their world premieres were “Ancient Machines” by Matthew Browne for saxophone quartet (Classical Revolution) and world premiere choreographies by members of Cincinnati Ballet and Exhale Dance Tribe to Prokofiev’s Quintet, Op. 39, and Astor Piazzolla’s “Histoire du Tango.”
Constella’s multi-media dimension was a big plus. Well presented and attended were art exhibits by Brazee Street Studios and Fifth Street Galleries, both of which helped give the festival an exciting “now” aspect (there will be an exhibit by Stewart Goldman at Bell’s concert). The Festival visited numerous Cincinnati venues, including Mayerson and Corbett Theaters in the Kunzel Center and the Blue Wisp Jazz Club, all with favorable results. Best of all, it has spurred collaboration among local arts groups, to the mutual benefit of all.
As for what the festival could do better, a chief concern should be ticket sales. It was difficult to understand and negotiate purchases at the Constella web site (www.constellafestival.org). Also, only the six concerts presented by Constella itself – Hahn, Liang Wang, concert:nova, Toradze and his Studio, Ted Nash and Joshua Bell – could be purchased at the Constella site, and it was perhaps unclear that a Constella Pass was good for those six, but no others. Tickets for the other seven concerts – by CMC, Linton, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players, Vocal Arts Ensemble, Classical Revolution and CCO – had to be purchased individually from those organizations.
The Constella Festival program book was a beauty: 74 pages with color photographs spread over opposite pages and copious program notes. There were Constella representatives at each concert to answer questions, and Festival founder Tatiana Berman greeted the audience before each one.
Absolute highlights? For this listener, Hahn, Toradze’s Studio, Maniaci, Nash, St. Lawrence String Quartet, Linton and VAE. On to Constella 2012. 

“Giselle” takes as the inspiration for its ghostly story a poem by the Romantic German author Heinrich Heine. With music by “Oh, Holy Night’s” Adolphe Adam, the work was first presented in 1841 Paris. Marius Petipa later revised its choreography for the Imperial Russian Ballet in the final days of the 19th century. That reworking has served well many a modern production of this large-scale, 168 year-old ballet.

“Giselle” tells the story of a village girl who dies heartbroken after being jilted by Duke Albrecht, a nobleman who disguises himself as a peasant, seduces and then abandons her. The Wilis – spirits of girls who were similarly deceived by men, roam the woods around the village in search of guilty cads like Albrecht, who are meted their punishment by being made to dance until they fall down dead. This is pure 19th century Romantic ballet, a world of painted backdrops, merry dancing peasants, benevolent aristocrats and haunted moonlit nights.

“Giselle” is to ballerinas what Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is to actors – an artistic triathlon that can either be a banquet served on a silver platter or a disaster-in-the-making. For the title part, a dancer is needed who can play the innocent village girl at the start of the first act, then break our hearts in her mad scene, and still later return as an other-worldly spirit in act two.

On Friday night, Janessa Touchet danced the title role with vibrancy and flair. An immensely gifted young dancer, she portrayed her part with both style and youthful energy, unstintingly executing all the difficult jumps and pirouettes demanded by the choreography and shining in the second act’s duet with Albrecht.
Guest artist Pavel Gurevich played Duke Albrecht. He is both a premier “danseur” with all the necessary athleticism and gravity-defying daring needed for the role, and a fine actor who put across his transformation from callous nobleman in Act I to repentant lover in Act II with sincerity.

Dawn Kelly and Cervilio Miguel Amador danced the Peasant “pas de deux,” replete with air-borne leaps, quick turns and humorous charm, showing them both as young stars-in-the-making. The important roles of Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis and Hilarion were respectively performed on Friday night by the lovely Gema Diaz with lots of regal presence and rock-solid attitudes and Zack Grubbs, a terrific character dancer and actor.

The company’s youthful corps de ballet, augmented by several new company members, was impressively disciplined, earning strong applause for both the men and women in the peasant scenes of Act I and the perfectly synchronized Wilis sequences of Act II, where the women danced with lyricism and strength to Devon Carney’s note-perfect staging and choreography.

With the CSO in the pit and Carmon DeLeone firm command of the score, the Cincinnati Ballet brought musical strength to its production of “Giselle.” Now in its 45th anniversary season, the company, under the artistic leadership of Victoria Morgan takes large-scale classical and modern ballets and does them with class and dignity.

There are two remaining performances of “Giselle” today: 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. at Music Hall.

Tickets: 621-5282 or www.cballet.org. Students with valid ID and Seniors (over 60) may purchase tickets at 50% off in person starting 2 hours prior to show time.

Rafael de Acha was born in Cuba, where he grew up watching the great Alicia Alonso dance on the stage of Havana’s Teatro Auditorium. He’s now retired and living in Cincinnati after a forty-year career in the arts.

Music is for life.

How clear this is, and how heart-warming, when you hear someone like pianist Menahem Pressler.

Pressler, 87, founding member of the legendary Beaux Arts Trio (now disbanded), made his debut on Cincinnati’s Linton Chamber Music Series Oct. 23 at First Unitarian Church in Avondale. A member of the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington, Pressler performed with violinist Alexander Kerr, violist Paul Neubauer and cellist Eric Kim. Kerr, former concertmaster of both the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, is also on the IU faculty, as is Kim, former principal cellist of the CSO. Neubauer, who also made his Linton debut, performs for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. They made an arresting ensemble.

A full house was in place for the concert, which was held in conjunction with the inaugural Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts.

On the program were piano quartets by Mozart, Joaquin Turina and Dvorak, plus an encore and a generous insert by Pressler. The insert was Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, Op. posth., performed in honor of Anne Black, Linton board member and former president, who was presented a plaque following intermission. (Black did not know Pressler would perform, she said, slightly overwhelmed by the tribute.)

Mozart’s Quartet in G Minor, K.478 (1785), demonstrated the ensemble’s strengths right away. Pressler took delight in aligning his performance with the strings, lines were discrete, and Kerr and Neubauer’s tone quality blended so well that in the middle register, one might mistake one for the other.

Spanish composer Joaquin Turina’s Quartet in A Minor, Op.67 (1933), delivered a healthy dose of Andalusian flavor. Kerr phrased the opening theme graciously, while Kim’s solo moment against “icy” string tremolo (Kerr and Neubauer playing sul ponticello or “on the bridge”) later in the movement was hauntingly evocative. The second movement (Vivo) began pizzicato, like a big guitar, and Kerr put a touch of bravado into the cadenza-like opening of the finale.

Dvorak’s Quartet for Piano and Strings in E-flat Major (1889) was heard after intermission. It is a big, expansive work with lots of melody and gesture. Again, Kerr displayed exquisite tone production, invariably matching his instrument to the musical moment. The second movement (Lento) overflowed with melody, beginning with a lengthy passage for cello, beautifully rendered by Kim. The endearing third movement (Allegro moderato, grazioso) gave way to a brilliant Finale, with high-spirited, well-matched playing by all.

Responding to a persistent standing ovation, the quartet performed the slow movement of Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor, a “love song,” said Pressler who, as he did all afternoon, invested lots of it in his playing.

For more information on future Linton Series performances, visit www.lintonmusic.org.

Donald Nally, music director of the Vocal Arts Ensemble since the fall of 2009, has taken the 24-voice professional choir in a new direction – straight ahead. From the great wealth of choral music available, he has chosen to focus on the music of our time, finding new and innovative ways to present it.

Such was “American Icons at 100,” performed by VAE and pianist Christopher Allen in collaboration with the Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts Saturday (Oct. 22) in Memorial Hall. Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti were the icons. Born in 1910 and 1911, respectively, both reached their centenary marks during the past year.

Nally, who wrote the program notes and also addressed the audience from the stage, explained the reason for pairing them on the concert. Barber and Menotti met as students at the Curtis Institute of music in Philadelphia and lived together as partners for 40 years. Both received acclaim as composers (each won two Pulitzer Prizes). Both also knew rejection. Their neo-romantic style of composition fell into disfavor as contemporary music ventured into new directions. Each wrote a deathless classic, Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” Each experienced the pain of living alone and feeling forsaken.

Nally had a connection with both composers, he said, having written his doctoral dissertation on the relationship between words and music in Barber’s choral music, and served as director of choruses at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, which was founded by Menotti.

The texts chosen for the concert dwelt heavily on loneliness and disappointment. There were brighter spots, but underneath most of them lay a feeling of loss. The concert opened with Barber’s best known song, “Sure on this shining night” (1938), a gorgeous “presentation” of VAE, Cincinnati’s (and the region’s) finest chorus. With its mixture of pathos and reflection, they wreathed James Agee’s poem in beauty.

The same could be said of the Twelfth Madrigal from Menotti’s 1956 “The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore” (performed in its entirety by VAE under Earl Rivers in 2008). Though written during the height of his popularity, it could have been a prediction of the future: An artist says goodbye on his deathbed to three creatures that represent the work of his youth, mid-life and old age. All have been successively scorned by the townspeople, yet the Artist dies full of love for all.

Openly autobiographical, Menotti’s “Landscapes and Remembrances” (1976) was written as he was leaving the U.S. to live in Scotland. Two movements were performed: “The Sky of Departure,” reflections on leaving America, included a full-voiced, heart-wrenching ”America, goodbye” by the chorus. The unresolved “A Subway Ride in Chicago” conjured the loneliness of passengers unknown to each other. Soloists from the VAE, soprano Samantha Stein, alto Debra van Engen, tenor Anthony Beck and bass Jonathan Stinson, made distinguished contributions.

“Agnus Dei” from Menotti’s “Missa O Pulchritudo” (1979), with soprano YoonGeong Lee, alto Jennifer Trombley, tenor M. Andrew Jones and bass Wesley Brax, was nothing less than anguished, with its repeats of “dona nobis pacem” (“Grant us peace”) and conclusion on a dismal, dissonant interval.

Conveying greater hope were Barber’s “Twelfth Night” (1968) which moved from dark to light, and his “Regina caeli” (1990), which concluded with a big, affirmative “Alleluia.” Barber’s a capella “Reincarnations” (1939-40 on verses by Irish poet James Stephens) offered a contrast, with the bright, enthusiastic “Mary Hynes” (a love poem) and “Anthony O’Daly,” a funeral dirge, that plunged at the end to a soft, hollow unison on “grief.”

Three movements from Barber’s cantata “The Lovers” (1971), a late work on poems by Pablo Neruda, originally for baritone, chorus and orchestra, were heard as arranged for chorus and piano. “Cemetery of Kisses” (Neruda’s “A Song of Despair”) was shattering, with a particularly hard “k” by the singers on the word “shipwreck” and a disconsolate ending (“O farther than everything? It is the hour of departure”).

One of the most touching works on the program was the concluding “To Be Sung on the Water” (1968) by Barber (from “The Blue Estuaries” by Louise Bogan). The interplay of the men’s and women’s voices was “picturesque” here, seeming to capture the motion of waves against the boat (men) and the lover’s goodbye (women).

Enough cannot be said of pianist Allen, who lent color and drama to all he did throughout the concert.

VAE’s next performances are December 10 and 11 – their annual holiday concert. For more info: www.vaecinci.org.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s Russian Festival met the Constella Festival Friday night in Mayerson Theater at the Erich Kunzel Center for Arts and Education.

Getting an early start on the CSO’s Russian Festival (Nov. 11, 13, 17 and 19) were the CSO Chamber Players in a program of Glière, Shostakovich and Prokofiev. The concert was presented in collaboration with the new Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts, underway through Nov. 8. Chamber music lovers were out in force to enjoy the music and the comfortable new venue, which the Chamber Players have adopted as their home, replacing Memorial Hall.

Performing on the concert were violinists Timothy Lees, Rebecca Culnan, Eric Bates and Catherine Lange-Jensen, violists Denisse Rodriguez-Rivera and Joanne Wojtowitz, cellists Dan Culnan and Susan Marshall-Petersen, double bassist Boris Astafiev, oboist Dwight Parry and clarinetist Jonathan Gunn, all members of the CSO.

Bates and Marshall-Petersen opened with Reinhold Glière’s Duos for Violin and Cello, Op. 39 (1909), a delightful set, comprising eight short pieces for violin and cello. Each is distinct from the rest, with a dark, serious Prelude, a Bachian Gavotte, a sweet Lullaby, a dance-like Intermezzo and a skittering Etude, among others. The two musicians performed with brightness and clarity, giving each piece a character befitting its content.

Second on the program – and completely opposite to Glière as viewed through the lens of Russian history – was Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110, performed by Rebecca and Dan Culnan, Lange-Jensen and Wojtowicz. No more despairing work has ever been written. It was composed in 1960, as the composer faced polio and the always imminent threat of Soviet disapproval (by contrast, Glière was always in favor). There are five movements written as one. Weaving it together is Shostakovich’s musical motto, DSCH (for Dmitri SCHostakovich, which is D, E-flat, C, B in German notation).

Following the plaintive opening Largo, a blistering Allegro Molto broke out, furiously conveyed by violinist Culnan high on the violin’s lowest string. The DSCH motto turned into a sardonic little waltz in the next movement (Allegretto) and twisted by inversion, into a threatening motif capped by loud knocking in the next (Largo). Culnan performed to wrenching effect high-lying cello solo in this movement, which was followed by another Largo to bring the Quartet to its heartbreaking end.

Prokofiev’s Quintet, Op. 39, composed in 1924 for a ballet, was heard on the Constella/concert:nova concert Oct. 15 as accompaniment to new choreography by members of Cincinnati Ballet. It was pure art music this time (as Prokofiev also intended it to be). The musicians – Lees, Wojtowitz, Astafiev, Parry and Gunn – played with virtuosity and superb coordination. The six movements ranged from slightly exotic (Parry’s opening oboe solo) to sarcastic (second and fifth movements, both of which gave bassist Astafiev the chance to shine), jocular (third), stark (fourth) and exhilarating (sixth). Indeed the quintet’s final downwards rush brought the concert to a high-spirited conclusion.

Chamber Music Cincinnati joined hands with the new Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts to present the St. Lawrence String Quartet Tuesday evening (Oct. 18) in Robert J. Werner Recital Hall at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

There could have been no better choice for the collaboration since the Quartet is one of the brightest on the scene today and they brought an exceptional program of 18th to 21st century works with them.

First of all, there is no quartet like the St. Lawrence. (Violinists Geoff Nuttall and Scott St. John, violist Lesley Robertson and cellist Christopher Costanza are ensemble-in-residence at Stanford University.) Extremely communicative, they play with an uncanny combination of informed musicality and pure emotion. One does not intrude upon the other. And making it even more rewarding, they seem to enjoy what they are doing. Nuttall, first violinist and spokesman for the group, could be a one-man ambassador for the joy of chamber music, so enthusiastic was his advocacy, both through the notes on the page and his comments from the stage.

The substance of what the SLSQ does was very much in evidence in Mozart’s great Quartet in D Minor, K. 421, which opened the concert. Never has this writer heard the opening statement of the first movement shaped so expressively. Using vibrato selectively, Nuttall shaped it into a cry of despondency (D Minor had such connotations for the composer). Yet nothing interfered with the ensemble’s pinpoint reading of the score. In the Menuetto, they conveyed passion as well as fun (as in the Trio, with its saucy clipped theme), and the variations in the finale were likewise deeply felt.

Nuttall introduced Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, pointing out its incorporation of themes from Korngold’s Hollywood film scores (and the coincidence of have two composers on one concert with the name Wolfgang). In fact, Korngold’s Quartet No. 3 (1944-1945) was his “return” to classical composition after several years penning Academy Award-winning film music in Hollywood. It was an ear-opening performance. The opening Allegro moderato was angst-ridden, comfortably late romantic, with a slurpy cello theme and a gentle ending. The melodious Trio of the Scherzo is based on a theme from the composer’s favorite film score, “Between Two Worlds.” The slow movement references the love theme from “The Sea Wolf,” its muted theme growing in intensity before ending on a soft high note by Nuttall. There was a triumphal quality about the Finale, as if having just arrived somewhere, bringing the work to an upbeat ending.

American composer John Adams wrote his String Quartet (2008) for the SLSQ. (Nuttall provided an engaging introduction to it, as well as the Korngold.) In two unequal movements (the first much longer than the second), it was full spectrum Adams, with everything from pulsing minimalism to intricate rhythmic interplay, always with a “beat” or ostinato somewhere. It was fun to watch the Quartet “groove” to the music, exchanging smiles and gestures. Nuttall himself rose frequently from his chair or otherwise matched his body rhythm to the music.

The first movement began in minimalist fashion, with rustling upper strings over pizzicato cello. In four parts, it is effectively a quartet-within-a-quartet, with a slower, muted section and much fragmentary development, before ending slowly and quietly. The Second movement opened with bouncing octaves in the first violin and cello, another nod to Adams’ minimalist past. The music grew muscular, even frantic as it approached its strenuous end. Nuttall mopped his brow as the foursome took a bow.

The encore was a literally “swinging” Minuet from Haydn’s Quartet Op, 74, No. 1.

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