Seth Parker Woods commented Sunday afternoon on how George Walker’s Cello Sonata retains a cellist on his toes. “I’ve discovered myself each smiling from sheer pleasure and holding on for pricey life, particularly because the piece nears the coda.” Together with particular visitor, pianist Andrew Rosenblum, Woods, final 12 months’s recipient of the Chamber Music America Michael Jaffee Visionary Award, performed the Gardner Museum’s Calderwood Corridor in a mixture of two romantics and three American moderns.
The affable Woods started softly plucking three open strings whereas asking us to take a couple of deep breaths earlier than going straight into Calvary Ostinato from Lamentations: Black People Music Suite. Having already set the ostinato, or repeated musical phrase, in movement, was as uncommon because it was an efficient method to start his recital. Pay attention! The sold-out crowd did. The utterly plucked work of Coleridge Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004) from Woods was telltale. The cellist’s ample heat and delicateness absolutely directed ears to his intimately various inflections of the pizzicato. Not a pin drop may we hear on this a one-of-a-kind house Woods created.
Woods and Chicago pianist Rosenblum would show well-matched in wistfulness and fiery-ness; however the place had been the Rachmaninoff goose bumps, the nostalgia? Total, the duo projected care evidenced by extraordinary, if not undivided, consideration to element. Woods referred to the second work on the afternoon live performance as one by “a titan:” Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 19 (1901). Blogs go on about a straightforward cello half versus a tough piano half. One may hazard a 6:1 ratio of piano to cello notes. Why this selection? Its length is 35 minutes. One may enterprise to say that the majority wouldn’t be all that enthusiastic about listening to it once more. What may it take to carry this early writing to actual life? Maybe, for instance, the Andante may have been extra contained, restful, much less fussy.
Rosenblum spoke about composer Jeffrey Mumford (1955-) who imagines his music being like clouds, and that the 4 dances for Boris really kind a theme and 4 variations. Most listeners would most likely have thought they could had missed one thing with out Rosenblum’s alert. “Clouds” of mid-20th-century Americanisms overlaid with clouds of 12-tone excursions additionally present a composer who strikes considerably freely. Intently watching the demonstrably emotional Rosenblum and listening to his delicate pianism left us puzzled. Placing that every one collectively nonetheless left questions on states of thoughts and bodily sensations. What was one to really feel?
Then once more, emotions from Schumann’s Fantasiestücke Op. 73 appeared distant, the duo’s imaginative and prescient engendering lightness, enjoying down any emotional stirs of this or that flip of Romantic period phrase. Little question that the 2 wished us honed-in on each be aware.
Woods met George Walker and was in a position to focus on the Sonata for Cello and Piano. Woods even had the nice fortune of enjoying it for him. Woods favors the second gradual motion: it “is intertwined with echoes of blues sonorities and a sense unrequited love.” As to the third motion “its unrelenting drive and quick meter adjustments actually preserve the duo on its toes.” The 1957 work had all that from Woods and Rosenblum.
Some additional ideas on Sunday’s present: the booklet omitted the actions for each the Rachmaninoff and Walker sonatas; obvious reflections of two shiny overhead white lights and one neon blue mild on the piano lid distracted; and with the lid full stick and the cellist on the opposite facet, listeners within the shadow of the lid couldn’t see Woods; and, extra importantly, hear him absolutely as we had been in a position to with the primary association of devices.
Woods excursions internationally and has instructing appointments at varied universities within the USA.
