Music Review | Da Capo Chamber Players

June 3, 2009

Pairing 2 Impulses: Dreamy and Brash

By ALLAN KOZINN

 

Making instruments sound peculiar, when composers demand it, is part of every new-music group’s bag of technical tricks, and the Da Capo Chamber Players have become adept at it. But for the final concert of their season at Merkin Concert Hall on Monday evening, they stretched a bit further. The program, “Da Capo on Direct Current,” was devoted mostly to works that combine electronic sound — either a recorded track or processed versions of the live performance — with acoustic instruments.
	Often the electronics were subtle, more a matter of weaving an atmosphere around a performance than of adding sounds that grab the attention. Benjamin Broening’s “Like Dreams, Statistics Are a Form of Wish Fulfillment” (2005), which opened the program, was one of those works. More interesting than the timbres Mr. Broening used was the work’s rationale: it is, apparently, a commentary on Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” although that work is not quoted, and Mr. Broening’s alternately brash and dreamily nebulous language is a world apart from Debussy’s. Lydia Ayers uses electronics more assertively in “Pearls” (2009), a work about Japanese pearl fishers who dive without oxygen or masks and brave shark attacks and the bends. As scenarios for electronic pieces go, that has plenty to offer, and Ms. Ayers responds with distorted voices, instruments and sea birds, filtered to sound as if they were being heard underwater. The score pivots between energetic cacophony and an attractive otherworldliness.
Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times Blair McMillen playing Hans Tutschku’s “Winternacht” on Monday evening at Merkin Concert Hall.
Meighan Stoops, the group’s clarinetist, closed the first half of the program with Anna Clyne’s “Rapture” (2005), a virtuosic piece that climbs through the clarinet’s range while navigating an increasingly crowded minefield of electronic noises. A counterpart for piano and percussion, Hans Tutschku’s “Winternacht” (2006), opened the second half. Matthew Gold, the percussionist, and Blair McMillen, the pianist (who also played a handful of percussion instruments) performed this bracing dialogue with such athleticism and energy that you could almost miss the subtle electronic track, which gracefully laid harmonies over and around the keyboard line. Richard Teitelbaum has a large and distinguished catalog of electronic works, but his “SoundPaths” (2009) seems to have caught him out of sorts. A long introduction with the violinist Curtis Macomber playing glassy harmonics at the top of the fingerboard had the charm of a dentist’s drill. Mr. Teitelbaum eventually thought better of it and had his players make more agreeable noises, with electronic processing following them along. And the quietly tactile closing section left you with the feeling that this could be a striking piece, if only you could tune in late. The ensemble closed the program with Judith Shatin’s “Spring Tides” (2009), a rich evocation of the power of nature, with technical effects (creating wind sounds by blowing almost tonelessly into a flute and clarinet) giving way to lush textures that blended instruments with their distant-sounding electronic echoes.