Wa Concert Series presents Wind Power in Review
New York Woodwind Quintet
Carol Wincenc, flute; Stephen Taylor, oboe; Charles Neidich, clarinet; William Purvis, French horn; Marc Goldberg, bassoon; Bryan Wagorn, piano (guest)
Tenri Cultural Institute, New York, NY
April 12, 2019
The beneficent ghost of Samuel Baron (1925–1997) was undoubtedly smiling in attendance at the New York Woodwind Quintet’s April 12th concert at the Tenri Cultural Institute. Mr. Baron, founder of the Quintet in 1949 and, for a half-century, a beloved conservatory mentor to flutists (and their collaborative pianists), was also a conductor, a champion of new composers, a musical entrepreneur, an arranger, a member of the Bach Aria Group, New York City Symphony and City Opera, and a captivating lecturer on subjects psychological and practical. In this April installment of the Wa Concert Series, titled “Wind Power,” quintets by John Harbison and György Kurtág preceded a rendition of Mr. Baron’s sextet transcription of the Brahms G minor Piano Quartet, Op. 25, comprising throughout a glorious tribute both to Baron’s own legacy and to the Quintet’s seventieth anniversary.
Mr. Baron viewed the principal winds, the core of the symphony orchestra or the “leaders from within,” as bearers of a crucial responsibility in the realm of chamber music; in place of their standard role as simple executants of an orchestral conductor’s wishes, the players in a small ensemble could—and must—be interpreters and magical conjurors, channeling the composer’s ineffable spirit. To this aim, the most spectacular of the Quintet’s achievements on April 12 was Kurtág’s Woodwind Quintet, Op. 2 (1959), with Harbison and Brahms trailing close by.
György Kurtág, who is 93, has often been compared to Anton Webern, albeit in Central European Jewish guise. Kurtág was lucky enough to sidestep the horrors of World War II by studying in 1940 in the inconspicuous locale of Temesvar (Timişoara), Romania, later emigrating to Hungary in 1946. A pithy writer heavily influenced by Kafka, he underwent a brutal course of psychoanalysis during his years of study in the late 1950s in Paris, where he recounted the reverse metamorphosis of a “cockroach striving to change into a human being, seeking light and purity.” Perhaps stemming from art therapy sessions in which Kurtág was asked to create confessional sculptures from matchsticks, his penchant for divining expressive significance from the most ascetic of materials led to his rough-hewn, aphoristic early style.
Kurtág’s Quintet for Winds traverses eight movements in as many minutes, implanting microcosmic layers of intent within every terse utterance. For the breath-stopping duration of these miniatures, the bright and sterile concert room of the Tenri became a murky, post-war therapist’s lair, in which out-of-doors motifs of Bartók were exhumed and the birdcalls of Messiaen (with whom Kurtág studied) twisted themselves around a skein of intimate associations. Whirs and jabs floated, pierced, fell by microtones, and leapt questioningly from flute to oboe to clarinet and bassoon, all over a sustained horn (Mr. Purvis appeared to have a mountaineer’s lung capacity). This sort of identification with black dots takes place only under the obsessive tutelage of a composer, and although the twelve-page program booklet neglected to offer notes on the music (or even the correct key of the Brahms), we were treated to helpful verbal explanations of Kurtág’s coaching and the nurturing process behind what we were hearing.
The stage-setter for this catharsis came from the opposite end of the Schoenberg-Stravinsky spectrum. John Harbison, 80, is one of our national treasures and has been especially fêted in the current season. At the height of his career, the renowned composer is unveiling new recordings, world premieres, a book, and numerous performances to add to an enormous catalogue of symphonies, concerti, choral works, and operas including “The Great Gatsby,” commissioned by the Met. Mr. Harbison, winner of countless accolades in addition to a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize, hails from the Northeast (Harvard, Princeton, MIT) and is active throughout the United States, with many of his compositions receiving performances worldwide.
His five-movement Quintet for Winds, a Naumburg commission from 1978—both Mr. Neidich and Ms. Wincenc are former Naumburg Competition winners—is an aural feast as well as a cerebral one; traditional dissonances and tensions between mismatched notes speak the language we know from Bach and Stravinsky, merely updated and laced with Americana, lyricism, and humor to bring us home. Harbison is all about communication, from before the music starts until the performers walk offstage, and this group’s burnished blend could react to the gesture of a shifting eyeball on the part of Mr. Goldberg. The clever choice to open the concert with Harbison’s animated declamation (Intrada), filled with sevenths, expressive doublings, and stratospheric explorations of every instrument’s range, was outdone only by the players’ attention to highlighted balances and well-honed intonation, leaving no harmony to chance. A moment for Mr. Taylor to shine in the plaintive Romanza opened forth into a series of escalating, quirky punctuations, perfectly calibrated, followed by the most seamless and ridiculous barrage of perpetual natterings in clarinet, flute, and bassoon (Scherzo: Prestissimo), paving the way for a somber Adagio and a hilarious, multi-tongued, gimpy march to close.
Considerations of balance were evidently central to Mr. Baron’s arrangement of Brahms for piano and five winds (the original calls for piano and three strings). Pre-concert publicity and print had conspired to secrecy about the name or even the existence of a pianist in this piece, leaving the introduction of a mystery guest to Mr. Neidich. When he arrived, however, Bryan Wagorn was a game contributor to the festivities. Already an established figure in the vocal world, Mr. Wagorn has performed with legendary singers and worked as assistant conductor at the Met. His presence at the Tenri’s seven-foot Steinway, a Wittgenstein family bequest, was dazzling and evocative, and certainly Mr. Baron’s arrangement of the G minor Quartet is a thrill to hear. The piece presents new challenges in wind territory, as double-reeds and brass tend to drive the tone much more than bowed nylon and titanium, and the horn’s dominating lines kept bringing to mind stretches of unwritten Mahler symphonies. The molto piano, con sordino pulsating triplets in the Intermezzo were recast as vibrantly tongued attacks, a timbral stimulant to the piano’s whimsical folk melodies. If one was looking for completion from the earnest, soul-searching Brahms, his reassuring voice warmed the air in transitional moments such as the piano’s Bachian cadenza in the Zingarese finale and a heavenly flute entrance joining its afterglow.
The Wa Series is also highly recommended for its culinary post-concert delights, courtesy of Ayako Oshima.
