Ending the student year

It's about the end of the school year at the University of Colorado. Within the next few weeks exams start and then they leave, blessing Boulder with a more quiet environment. Unfortunately that also means the end of the faculty and student recitals. Summer will bring the Colorado Music Festival back, but their season, once the highlight of my summer, has been dismally broken with crappy world music and miserable programming.

Last week I heard 3 concerts, two at CU. First was a performance of the Colorado Symphony in Denver with Ralph Kirschbaum in Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1. It was sterling performance and he really drew me into the long cadenza which separates the second and last movements. The CSO admirably played Dvorak's "From the New World", with the anticipated audience reaction. Kirschbaum apparently also held a master class at CU later in the week.

The Pendulum series at CU has always been one of my favorites, where students and faculty have new works introduced by various players from the music school. This time a guest group, "The Playground Ensemble", was featured in two separate works by graduate students Anthony Green and Leanna Kirchoff. A frequent complaint of mine has been the diction of the singers. Even when singing in English and singing something as familiar as the Gettysburg Address, I just have a hard time making out the words. As a result, the art suffers.

What surprised me most at this Pendulum performance was a piece performed by Hunter Ewan. A graduate student and frequent participant in Pendulum, Ewan performed his own composition "Ohi'a and Lehua" on alto saxophone wired into a system which manipulated and synthesized play back. He controlled it with a foot pedal and got very interesting results. I couldn't help but think that music like this would make good movie background music.

Finally, I attended a performance by Oscar Soler, violin and Clayton Vaughn, cello doing their DMA chamber recital. They first performed Ravel's Sonata for Cello and Violin, a work I've never heard. It was very well played. Then they were joined by Kahyee Lee, violin and Rachel Gibson, viola to form the Altamira String Quartet. Rachel has been living with us this past year and I try to follow her performances and her quartet. The quartet did two, now fairly familiar works: Bartok's Second Quartet and Haydn's Op 76 No 1. Somewhat to my surprise I enjoyed the Bartok more. As I told them later, they really hit a home run in the second movement. Crisp, snappy and perfect.

I'll probably not contribute much more to this blog until the fall season starts again. I think I've got a Boulder Phil performance of Carmina Burana coming up, but little else. It's a good thing that I've got a large collection of MP3s to keep me happy.