Mostly
Mozart Festival 2006 (V):
International Contemporary Ensemble, Christian Knapp,
Conductor, Stanley
H. Kaplan Penthouse, New York City, 22.08.2006 (BH)
Lindberg:
Linea D’Ombra (1981)
Lindberg:
Clarinet Quintet (1992)
Lindberg:
Zona (1983, rev. 1990) (U.S. premiere)
International
Contemporary Ensemble
Claire
Chase, Flutes
Joshua Rubin,
Clarinets
David Bowlin,
Violin
Marc Rovetti,
Violin
Maiya Papach,
Viola
Katinka
Kleijn, Cello
Randall
Zigler, Bass
Daniel Lippel,
Guitar
David
Schotzko, Percussion
Adam
Sliwinski, Percussion
Christian
Knapp, Conductor
In
another of its exhilarating late-night concerts (starting
at 10:30 pm), the Mostly Mozart Festival followed the
world premiere earlier in the evening of Magnus Lindberg’s
Violin Concerto with an all-Lindberg concert by
the International Contemporary Ensemble (a.k.a. ICE) in
its Lincoln Center debut. It was heartening to see
the Kaplan Penthouse packed with eager listeners on a
late Tuesday night, for a bracing hour or so by one of
the country’s most intriguing new contemporary music groups.
I’ve
now heard ICE perform Linea D’Ombra three times
in less than a year, and it just gets better with each
encounter. Lindberg wrote it when he was just twenty-three,
shortly after finishing his studies at the Sibelius Academy,
and it has the stamp of a composer fleeing from every
tradition possible. Opening with a scream, the ensemble
of flute, clarinet, guitar and percussion (Claire Chase,
Joshua Rubin, Daniel Lippel and David Schotzko, respectively)
rapidly explores a vast catalog of contemporary instrumental
techniques, including vocalizing here and there with scraps
of poetry, deconstructed into syllabic outbursts.
The mesmerizing finale has the clarinet in a solo turn,
while the other three musicians gather around a large
cymbal, lightly struck with objects including a paper
towel core – all movements precisely notated as it turns
out. Much of the pleasure came from the superb ICE
musicians having internalized this score after repeated
performances, and it shows in their tightly coiled, confident
reading. A recurring regret in hearing contemporary
scores is that they are often performed by a group once,
and only once, but the impact of hearing a piece like
this well-rehearsed cannot be overstated. This will
likely become a signature work for the group, if it hasn’t
become so already.
Even
more striking is the Clarinet Quintet from about
ten years later, and here the composer has begun to find
his voice that would gain him international attention.
Introduced with a beautiful passage by violinist David
Bowlin, the piece rapidly becomes an exhausting cloud
of hundreds and hundreds of tiny musical gestures swirling
in the air, like leaves stirring up in a gust of autumn
wind. After all the breathless energy, the unusual
ending winds down, pairing the clarinet with the cello,
and here Mr. Rubin and Katinka Kleijn, respectively, were
superbly in synch with each other.
Lindberg
wrote Zona in 1983, but this was surprisingly its
United States premiere – “surprisingly” only because it
is an attractive work (if not as highly original as the
Clarinet Quintet), and now a window into his early
compositional skills. Lindberg was influenced by
Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, The Stalker (1979), in
which characters enter “the Zone,” a mysterious area surrounded
by soldiers and barbed wire, where dreams literally come
true. In Zona, Lindberg uses a classic chaconne
as the starting point before asking the cellist to enter
“the Zone,” and Kleijn’s focused tone, darting in and
out of the glittering textures, was one of the evening’s
high points. If the language in the piece is perhaps
more similar to other modernist works of the time period,
the ensemble’s adroit performance was continually attention-getting.
Christian Knapp was the fine conductor, who also gave
well-considered remarks before the performance.
Bruce
Hodges
For
more information on the International Contemporary Ensemble:
www.iceorg.org.
