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An opportunity to step away from the usual concerts and operas at Lincoln Center arises when the Juilliard School presents a concert. Last night's performance by the New Juilliard Ensemble at Alice Tully Hall featured a number of premieres and some students of exceptional ability. Joel Sachs conducted five fascinating and rather different pieces, during which several students shone; in particular, Ann Miller distinguished herself on violin playing the novel Violin Concerto No. 2 (1998) by David Matthews. This concerto has five sections, and the third with solo violin and wind parts suggests the songs of Australian birds (a fascinating trope most famous in Messiaen's "Turangulila-Symphonie").
The opening piece featured the New York premiere of Mary Finsterer's "Nyx" (1996), offering many curious and disparate elements that blended rather harmoniously, especially the parts for flute played by Emi Ferguson and Xiang-Yu Zhow on bass clarinet. There followed Pablo Ortiz's "Heat Wave," a world premiere with a self-described "relentless tempo" during which various forms of waves are musically suggested. Even more curious was David Glaser's "Apparitions" (2005), based on the collages of Linda Plotkin, whose otherworldy forms included musical depictions of "Dragons Observed" and "Serpent's Tail" and a number of others. The closing piece was the rousing and vibrant world premiere of Ricardo Romaneiro's "Blue Steel," a "highly energetic work depicting the orchestra as a machine." Given the audience's thunderous reaction, that is no understatement.
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Posted on 11/17/2006
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