SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Wagner and Schoenberg: Ensemble ACJW, (conductor) Paul Recital Hall, Julliard School, New York 9.1.2009 (CR)


Ensemble ACJW is a post-graduate ensemble formed from members of The Academy, a training programme formed in 2007 supported by the Juilliard School, Carnegie Hall and The Weill Music Institute, in conjunction with the New York City Department of Education.  Players are accepted on a two-year fellowship and given opportunities including performance, teaching and community-based work.  As one would expect from a selection procedure which attracts graduates from the best of America’s colleges, the standard is high, both individually and as a whole.

The concert opened with Wagner’s sentimental love offering to his wife Cosima, the Siegfried Idyll, conducted this evening by Asher Fisch. This was a polished performance, with good communication between the players and an excellent sense of ebb and flow. Some minor niggles – Fisch’s tempi were at times a little too slow for my personal preference, and I would have liked a little more of the bass end in the balance – but these were only very minor concerns, which did nothing to detract from the performance as a whole. Heard here in a version for 13 players, the performance was intimate and poised.

The Wagner was paired, perhaps unusually, with Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire; a gritty, biting work which is as dark and sombre as the Siegfried Idyll is charming and loving. Lucy Shelton delivered the soprano role with gutsy intensity, her range of expression remarkable and her diction crystal clear throughout. Her gripping performance was matched by Erin Lesser (flute), Sarah Beaty (clarinet), Owen Dalby (violin), Caitlin Sullivan (cello) and Angelina Gadeliya (piano), who demonstrated excellent ensemble playing as well as some exquisitely beautiful soloistic moments (Der Kranke Mond particularly springs to mind here). This was a performance of the highest order, which will stay in my mind for a long time.

Carla Rees


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