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calimacA concert at le petit Trianon more enlightening and educational than enjoyable.
Nomura is a baritone with a smooth, operatic voice. He sang settings of two highly literary poems. Most such are accompanied by piano (or occasionally orchestra), but these were for voice with string quartet. Well, it's a difference. One was Samuel Barber's setting of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach", sung at its premiere by the composer himself (I can think of many famous composers who've played their own works on instruments, but none others who've sung them in public). The other was a setting by Respighi of an Italian translation of Shelley's "The Sunset". Both were highly operatic; that is, the flow of the music reflected the emotional content of the immediate text, and no attempt was made to be strophic or otherwise make what the average listener would call a song out of it. Problem is, I don't really enjoy this kind of music, well-performed though it was. (I don't read much poetry like unto these either.)
We also had two real string quartets. One was the world premiere of the Sixth Quartet of Benjamin Lees (now 82 and still hale), with whom the Cypress has been working for some years. I enjoyed this less than previous Lees quartets they've played. Plain open scoring, tiny motifs and rhythmic figures, experimental sounds, all very like late Shostakovich without his noble simplicity. And so intensely chromatic as to be effectively atonal, without the genius needed to overcome that handicap.
After that, the more thickly scored Debussy Quartet sounded heavy and clotted by comparison. I'm not fond of Debussy in general or of his quartet in particular.
But we had tickets for the series and I'm usually up for continuing my musical education, so I wouldn't consider it a wasted evening.
Nomura is a baritone with a smooth, operatic voice. He sang settings of two highly literary poems. Most such are accompanied by piano (or occasionally orchestra), but these were for voice with string quartet. Well, it's a difference. One was Samuel Barber's setting of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach", sung at its premiere by the composer himself (I can think of many famous composers who've played their own works on instruments, but none others who've sung them in public). The other was a setting by Respighi of an Italian translation of Shelley's "The Sunset". Both were highly operatic; that is, the flow of the music reflected the emotional content of the immediate text, and no attempt was made to be strophic or otherwise make what the average listener would call a song out of it. Problem is, I don't really enjoy this kind of music, well-performed though it was. (I don't read much poetry like unto these either.)
We also had two real string quartets. One was the world premiere of the Sixth Quartet of Benjamin Lees (now 82 and still hale), with whom the Cypress has been working for some years. I enjoyed this less than previous Lees quartets they've played. Plain open scoring, tiny motifs and rhythmic figures, experimental sounds, all very like late Shostakovich without his noble simplicity. And so intensely chromatic as to be effectively atonal, without the genius needed to overcome that handicap.
After that, the more thickly scored Debussy Quartet sounded heavy and clotted by comparison. I'm not fond of Debussy in general or of his quartet in particular.
But we had tickets for the series and I'm usually up for continuing my musical education, so I wouldn't consider it a wasted evening.
