Weill: ACJW Ensemble Performs Schubert and Crumb

For its final recital of the season at Weill Recital Hall, the ACJW Ensemble yesterday evening performed works by Franz Schubert and George Crumb.

The program opened with Schubert's Piano Quintet in A, D. 667 (1819), nicknamed the Trout.  The piece is so called because its fourth movement consists of a set of variations on the composer's lied Die Forelle (1817) based on a poem of the same name written in 1782 by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart.  Schubert's quintet is, of course, one of the best known works in the chamber repertoire.  It is incredibly cheerful and upbeat and never fails to make this listener smile.  At yesterday's performance, I was most interested in comparing the piano part to the composer's other music for that instrument, most particularly the Sonata in G which I had heard played only two nights before by Mitsuko Uchida next door at Carnegie Hall.

After intermission, the program concluded with Crumb's Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos, Vol. III).  The Makrokosmos series takes its name from the collection of piano pieces by Béla Bartók  entitled Mikrokosmos.  The Hungarian composer exerted a great deal of influence on Crumb and, together with Debussy, inspired the composition of the present work.  The composer also notes connections to Chopin and Schumann as well as the literary influences of Salvatore Quasimodo, Pascal and Rilke.  Crumb himself wrote of his work:

"As in several of my other works, the musical fabric of Summer Evening results largely from the elaboration of tiny cells into a sort of mosaic design ... I feel that the work projects a clearly articulated large expressive curve over its approximately 40-minute duration. The first, third, and fifth movements, which are scored for the full ensemble of instruments and laid out on a large scale, would seem to define the primary import of the work (which might be interpreted as a kind of 'cosmic drama'). On the other hand, 'Wanderer-Fantasy' (mostly for the two pianos alone) and the somewhat atavistic 'Myth' (for percussion instruments) were conceived as dreamlike pieces functioning as intermezzos within the overall sequence of movements."

As I had never before heard any of Crumb's music, I did not know quite what to expect from a work laden with so many references to other composers and authors.  Though the piece was at times uneven and self-indulgent in the early movements (it sometimes seemed certain musical effects were included simply to hear the unusual sounds they produced), it was in all a fascinating and innovative work that rightfully held the audience spellbound.  The final movement, Music of the Starry Night, was extremely moving and satisfying.  The four ACJW members who participated (Alexandria Le and Tyler Wottrich on piano and Ian Sullivan and Jared Soldiviero on percussion) all did a tremendous job.  I'd be extremely interested in one day hearing the same musicians perform Bartók's work for two pianos and percussion which is scored the same instruments.