Review by Mary Ellyn Hutton

L, Julie Spangler, R, Greg Tate. Quartet, L to R, top to bottom: Joanne Wojtowicz, Heidi Yenney, Theodore Nelson, Anna Reider

 

What a piece of work is concert:nova.

Apologies to William Shakespeare (“Hamlet,” act 2, scene 2), this cutting edge chamber ensemble keeps expanding the boundaries of classical music in Cincinnati.

Thursday night at The Mercantile Library downtown, members of c:n presented “Words + Music,” a multi-media event with a capital “E.” No venue could have been more fitting, the walls lined with books and busts of authors looking on from all sides.

Featured work on the program was Elvis Costello’s “Juliet Letters” (1992), a song sequence comprising letters to an imaginary recipient named Juliet Capulet. No direct link to “Romeo and Juliet,” though the inspiration was there. Vocalists Greg Tate and Julie Spangler collaborated with a string quartet consisting of Anna Reider and Heidi Yenney (violins), Joanne Wojtowicz (viola) and Theodore Nelson (cello). The impact of the work, mostly bittersweet, was moving in the extreme.

But that was not all. Also on the program were Michael Fiday’s Nine Haiku for flute and piano (2005), Ned Rorem’s “After Reading Shakespeare” for unaccompanied cello (1980) and “A Visit from the White Rabbit” for French horn and narrator by Eric L. McIntyre (1998). Narrator for all three was actor Michael Burnham, professor of drama at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Fiday is associate professor of composition at CCM. His Nine Haiku after Zen philosopher/poet Basho immediately compelled attention with its evocative use of flute and piano and Burnham’s sensitive reading of the nine poems, which trace the journey from life to death with power and immediacy.

Performers were flutist Randolph Bowman and pianist Julie Spangler. Bowman, principal flutist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, explained the extended techniques used by the musicians, including “tongue rams” and “key clicks” (percussive sounds on the flute), tapping the wood of the piano and placing coloristic or muting devices on the strings (here rubber pencil erasers). From the merry rice planting song, which opened the set with Spangler’s tapping and Bowman’s percussive flute, to the final, wan-sounding “Sick on a journey, dreams wander the withered fields,” the effect was spellbinding. (Hear Nine Haiku on Fiday’s album “Spanning the Globe,” available at http://www.futureclassicsmusic.com/)

Shakespeare’s bust, sitting on a pedestal nearby, added a visual element to Rorem’s “After Reading Shakespeare,” which he composed, he says, after dipping into Shakespeare’s verses. Soloist was CSO cellist Theodore Nelson, who performed four pieces from the set, “Lear,” “Katherine,” “Iago and Othello” and “Why Hearst Thou Music Sadly” (the latter from his Sonnet No. 8). As Nelson explained, these are non-programmatic, character pieces, composed before they were given names. And the characters fit, especially given Burnham’s authoritative declamation of select verses preceding each movement.

“Lear” (“King Lear”) was gritty and indicative of a struggle, but also pleading and somehow gentle to Nelson’s final, downward glissando. “Katherine” (“Henry V”) was warm, romantic and a bit folkish. “Iago and Othello” (“Othello”) was a quarrel in music, one voice conciliatory and soft spoken, the other impatient and seemingly advancing the same argument repeatedly (angry trills). Outcome? Who knows? The softer voice faded upward at the end. By contrast, the excerpt from Sonnet No. 8 read like a gentle soliloquy (one might even conjure Johann Sebastian Bach and his Suites for Unaccompanied Cello toward the end).

A treat on the program was McIntyre’s “Visit from the White Rabbit,” drawn from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass.” Soloist and commentator was Elizabeth Freimuth, principal hornist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Freimuth explained how she had met the composer (on the faculty of Grinnell College in Iowa) and learned about the piece from him. She also explained the extended techniques she used on her horn, adding jocularly that she didn’t learn them at the Conservatory and hoped her listeners would “know the difference.” Techniques included blowing through the horn without a mouthpiece and making “raspberries.”

Burnham used props as part of his delivery. The opening “Mock Turtle Song – an exchange between a whiting and a snail – was a hoot, with Burnham’s “Will you, won’t you join the dance?” and the snail’s answering “would not, could not . . .” after successive verses. Burnham tossed a rubber lobster aside after the second verse, and tucked British and French flags behind his ears for the final verse, in which the whiting proposes a journey to France.

“The Mouse’s Tale” opened with loud salutes by full and stopped horn. Freimuth exhibited her acting skills, too, shrinking meekly before Burnham’s menacing advance at the end. The “Jabberwocky,” a toe-tapping dance to gibberish text, grew dramatic on “Beware the Jabberwocky,” with Burnham wielding an ax.

Costello, who like Sting and other rock artists, has crossed over from time to time into classical music, wrote a classic with his popular “Juliet Letters.” The work was written for the Brodsky String Quartet and became a best-selling CD during the 90s. The letters partake of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers with their angry, questing texts and ill-fated outcome. The opening “Deliver Us” and penultimate “Last Post” are for string quartet alone

Vocalists Tate and Spangler stood on either side of the quartet and sang together and separately. Spangler is best known as keyboardist of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, but is also a talented composer, arranger and singer. Tate is a senior musical theater major at CCM. Both have deeply affecting, expressive voices and tapped a world of emotion: sadness, anger and despair in Tate’s “For Other Eyes,” “Swine” and “Taking My Life in Your Hands,” tenderness in Spangler’s “Romeo’s Séance,” and for both singers, “I Almost Had a Weakness,” “Jacksons, Monk & Rowe” and “I Thought I’d Write,” expressing sarcasm , bitterness and perplexity. In short, the world of feelings aroused by love.

The quartet played with full, lush emotion, as well. Reider (CSO first violinist and concertmistress of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra) soared in the tango-flavored “I Almost Had a Weakness” and sang with sweetness in “Romeo’s Séance.” CSO violist Wojkowicz added plangency to “Last Post”

Tate and Spangler brought tears to their listeners’ eyes in the final “The Birds Will Still Be Singing,” an acknowledgement, to rhapsodic music by the quartet, that life and the writer’s heart will go on without the beloved.