17 January 2011
These music innovators are into piano. . . literally
by Kerry Clawson
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If you weren’t watching eighth blackbird live, you’d never believe these sextet members were all creating the sounds of a string ensemble by making music from inside the piano.
The Akron Symphony Orchestra’s program Saturday night at E.J. Thomas Hall was a dramatic buildup to the piece de resistance: Jennifer Higdon’s On a Wire by the star sextet and orchestra. The exhilarating new concerto, co-commissioned by the Akron Symphony with a consortium of seven other orchestras, received its Ohio premiere in Akron.
Composer Higdon was in the audience as the Chicago-based sextet gathered around the grand piano — rather than at their respective instruments — to start the performance. Mysterious bowing sounds emanated from around the piano, created by each musician pulling bass bow hairs along the piano strings.
The goal was to make the piano strings vibrate in different ways than a hammer does. The piece started with low, eerie vibrations, punctuated by the percussive sounds of Matthew Duvall’s mallets on the piano strings, as well as pianist Lisa Kaplan’s ”stop notes,” which she produced by playing various piano keys while using her other hand inside the piano to cut off the sound in front of each damper.
The effect became more and more rhythmic, with the orchestra’s string section joining in an unexpectedly organic manner by tapping their bows to string. On a Wire‘s exuberant scales and jaunty rhythms created a lusty sense of play, including dynamic runs among Tim Munro on flute, Michael Maccaferri on clarinet and Duvall on marimba.
Higdon created the piece keeping in mind that eighth blackbird excels at extended techniques, or using instruments in different ways to create new or unusual sounds. Saturday night, Kaplan used a guitar pick on piano strings and later rhythmically hit the edge of the piano with her open hand to create percussive effects.
Maccaferri also created a popping sound with clarinet by taking off the mouthpiece and slapping the top of the instrument with his palm. Cellist Nicholas Photinos also joined in on the percussive effects with a rhythmic thwacking of his bow against strings.
The concerto’s slow solo sections were often contemplatively beautiful, especially Matt Albert’s viola solo, where he and the cello, bass clarinet and flute breathed as one.
The eighth blackbird musicians traveled back and forth between the piano and their own instruments, playing without sheet music as they’re often known to do. You could tell these Grammy-winning musicians had thoroughly internalized this piece created specifically for them by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Higdon.
Her title, On a Wire, refers to the balancing act of creating a concerto for six soloists and orchestra. Maestro Christopher Wilkins said some of his musicians said they were happily stretched to the limit playing the new piece, which was also the case with the sextet members learning to perfectly execute their new, bowed piano sounds.
The lively piece’s exciting finale was a bombastic crescendo, which received a standing ovation from the highly appreciative Akron audience. Akron is the fourth of eight co-commissioning orchestras to present On a Wire, which received its world premiere with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in June.
The Akron performance was a bit of a homecoming for members of the sextet, all of whom are Oberlin Conservatory graduates, and Higdon, who studied flute as an undergraduate at Bowling Green. They gave Akron-area audiences several chances to get inside the music with an open rehearsal Friday evening and pre- and post-concert talks Saturday.
Those who missed eighth blackbird will get a second chance to hear On a Wire with the Cleveland Orchestra May 27. The recording also comes out Feb. 22 on the Atlanta Symphony’s new ASO Media label.
Wilkins prepared a program full of dramatic wonder and multiple treats. Concertmaster Alan Bodman’s solo in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending was like an exquisite whisper, while Stella Sung’s 2008 Phoenix Rising created turbulent contrast with its opening mood of huge danger. Harder to wrap the ears around was Michael Gandolfi’s contemporary The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, inspired by a 30-acre private garden in Scotland as a tribute to science in nature.
The Akron Symphony was at its most glorious with its performance of Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite, a brilliant complement to the later Higdon work. The orchestra went full throttle with six scenes from the ballet, ranging from a lush lullaby for a princess to the thunderous danger of the Infernal Dance of King Kashchei.
Most memorable was the sweet dialogue among oboe (Terry Orcutt), clarinet (Kristina Belisle Jones) and cello (Michael DeBruyn) in The Round Dance of the Princesses and the suite’s jubilant, life-affirming finale. All of Saturday’s pieces combined for a lavish program that, thanks to the orchestra, Higdon and eighth blackbird, left the audience surfeited with intoxicating music.
