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Cellos Add Wordless But Lyrical Voices
by Allan Kozinn, New York Times
03/04/2008
Sequitur usually performs in the expanding and contracting configuration that has become the standard for new-music ensembles. But on Monday evening it turned over the stage of Merkin Concert Hall to its cellist, Greg Hesselink, for an unusual program of works for cello and voice.
That might not seem an obvious combination: composers (and singers too) generally prefer accompaniments by polyphonic instruments — a keyboard or a guitar — that support the voice and fill out the harmonic picture as well. A cellist can produce chords as well as single lines, and a few works called on Mr. Hesselink to do so. But mostly, the cello was used for its inherent lyricism. It was, in effect, a wordless second voice.
Even so, the program began at the more angular end of the spectrum, with Harrison Birtwistle’s “Nine Settings of Lorine Niedecker” (2000). These aphoristic pieces touch on a variety of cello techniques: the cycle’s first sounds are pianissimo plucking, and before it ends, the cello moves through pointillistic passages, lightly sliding figures, vigorous chromaticism and, occasionally, rich, songlike figures. The voice darts through the effects catalog as well, but mostly reflects the quirky naturalism of the poetry.
Elizabeth Farnum sang the Birtwistle deftly, but she was heard to better effect at the end of the program, in Harold Meltzer’s attractive, Neo-Classical setting of excerpts from George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.” Here the cello writing is more picturesque: a rocking figure is meant to suggest the rhythms of weaving on a loom; chordal passages evoke a fog, from which the soprano line rises with an inexorable emotional power.
Mary Nessinger, a mezzo-soprano, gave a lovely account of Bernard Rands’s “Walcott Songs” (2004), inventive settings of three Derek Walcott poems. In the most striking, “Midsummer, Tobago,” Mr. Rands begins by setting fragments of the poem, then recombines them to create new phrases before presenting the Walcott text straight. Lively pizzicato cello scoring supports this, and the unabashedly melodic vocal writing has an immediate and lasting appeal.
Warren Benson’s “Moon Rain and Memory Jane” (1980), based on Robert Hayden’s “Mourning for the Queen of Sunday,” about a murdered gospel singer, has many of the same strengths as the Rands. Its soprano line, performed movingly here by Judith Kellock, mirrors the simplicity and directness of the text. It is supported by tandem cellos, with Mr. Hesselink joined here by Ted Mook. Ms. Kellock also gave a strong account of Arlene Zallman’s spiky, dramatic “Per Organa di Barberia” (2000).
Few composers could make dissonance sound as gentle and inviting as Morton Feldman, who was represented here by “Voices and Cello” (1973), a soft-edged, eerily wordless trio, performed with the right measure of soft-edged gracefulness by Ms. Farnum, Ms. Nessinger and Mr. Hesselink.
Read it here.
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