Piano Performances Stand Out at Mannes College Festival

By BERNARD HOLLAND, New York Times. June 26, 2006.

Half of Thursday's program was given to solo violin pieces played by the splendid Rolf Schulte, who over the years has been one of the great gifts to contemporary music in New York City. Fever and agitation characterized two movements of an Ernst Krenek solo sonata. Richard Wilson's "Diablerie" stood apart, contemporary in its vocabulary and grammar but pursuing always the long, lyrical, sometimes operatically expressive lines and Romantic-era concerto writing. The Amernet Quartet joined Mr. Rzewski for "Snaps."

A Trio With Symmetry

By ALLAN KOZINN, New York Times. September 13, 2003.

When a pianist, a violinist and a cellist join to present a chamber concert they usually get around to playing a piano trio, even if the rest of the program is devoted to music for smaller combinations. There's no law saying it has to be that way, of course, but it seems a sensible and symmetrical use of the resources at hand, and an almost inevitable musical consummation. Richard Wilson, the composer and pianist, Rolf Schulte, the violinist, and Sophie Shao, the cellist, opted to forgo a full collaboration in their concert at Merkin Concert Hall on Sept. 7, but the program had a fulfilling symmetry. Mr. Schulte opened the program, and Ms. Shao closed it, by playing a sonata from the standard canon with Mr. Wilson. Between those works the string players played an unaccompanied contemporary work. Mr. Wilson wasn't left out of the solo spotlight; he simply switched hats: Ms. Shao played his solo cello work, "Lord Chesterfield to His Son."

Mr. Wilson's work, composed in 1987, is an engaging elaboration on a series of 18th century paternal recommendations from the collected letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, the Fourth Earl of Chesterfield. Seven of Lord Chesterfield's admonitions ("Talk Often, But Never Long," and "Be Seen to Smile But Never Heard to Laugh," for example) are quoted as movement titles. Mr. Wilson's response to this advice is a form of musical free association. In "Mimickry is the Lowest and Most Illiberal Form of All Buffoonery,'' pizzicato repetitions and elaborations on a bowed line make Lord Chesterfield's point amusingly, although at times Mr. Wilson's commentary is slyly ambiguous. The finale, ``Take Care Never To See Dark and Mysterious,'' was forceful and fiery - dark, if not necessarily mysterious, and in some ways the most interesting of the seven movements.

Ms. Shao gave the suite an eloquent, powerful performance, and seemed comfortable with both the lyrical and angular currents of Mr. Wilson's style. She gave an equally winning account of Beethoven's Sonata in A (Op. 69), its salient features being perfectly centered intonation, a lush, sweet tone and both speed and precision in the jauntier parts of the Scherzo and the closing Allegro vivace.

Mr. Schulte, who built his reputation playing thorny modern works with apparent ease, brought a good measure of emotional dimension to Elliott Carter's ``Four Lauds,'' a set of monuments to friends and colleagues. ``Statement-Remembering Aaron'' recalled Aaron Copland in terms somewhat more rigorous than most of Copland's own music, although ``Fantasy - Remembering Roger'' caught the spirit of Roger Sessions fully. The most frequently performed of these works, ``Riconoscenza per Goffredo Petrassi,'' is also in some ways the tenderest, and ``Rhapsodic Musings,'' written for Robert Mann, the former first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet, is vital and spiky, but not without its lyrical stretches.

Mr. Schulte was equally assertive in Mozart's Sonata in B flat (K. 454), with which he and Mr. Wilson - a solid and sometimes elegant pianist - opened the program.

A Composer at the Piano, a Premiere on the Agenda

By ALLAN KOZINN, New York Times. January 7, 2003.

The program for the chamber music afternoon at Merkin Concert Hall on Sunday was completely democratic: Rolf Schulte, the violinist; Sophie Shao, the cellist; and Richard Wilson, the pianist, were listed in that order, in a typeface that gave them equal billing.

But to a great degree this was Mr. Wilson's show. In standard repertory sonatas by Beethoven and Debussy, the piano was an equal partner with the violin and cello, which is as it should be but not always as it is. More to the point, each half of the program included a work by Mr. Wilson, who is better known as a composer than as a pianist.

His works were composed five years apart, and they suggest a style that is undergoing changes. The earlier work, ''Three Interludes'' (1997), is scored for violin and piano and is in a melodically angular language that gives it an abstruse surface. Beneath that surface, though, there is a lyrical impulse that occasionally seizes the spotlight, particularly in the dark, meditative closing movement.

That lyricism is given freer reign in Mr. Wilson's Piano Trio (2002), a world premiere. This is a passionate work with tendrils that extend toward Debussy and Messiaen, particularly in extended tandem passages for the cello and violin. Striking, too, are the rhythmic vitality of this trio and the tightness of the interplay between the three instruments. Even when the sharp harmonic edges of the ''Interludes'' make their appearance -- most overtly in the closing Theme and Variations movement -- they are tempered by the context.

Mr. Schulte is an experienced new-music performer, and he played the violin lines in both works with assurance and energy. Ms. Shao's contributions to the trio were also strong and focused. She also joined Mr. Wilson for a beautifully phrased and interestingly textured account of the Debussy Cello Sonata. Mr. Schulte's other collaborations with Mr. Wilson were a hotblooded reading of the Debussy Violin Sonata, inflected with portamento that played up the music's sultriness, and Beethoven's Violin Sonata in G (Op. 30, No. 3), which was a driven and at times slightly brash performance.

Team Player and Modernist: Violin Virtuoso Redefined

By PAUL GRIFFITHS, New York Times, December 27, 2000.

Mr. Wilson's ''Three Interludes'' came across as full of charm, each a brief sketch of a musical character: determined, flexible (with a strain of cussedness), soberly thoughtful. Written to offer relief in a sonata program, they provided a gentle cushion between Mr. Martino's ''Romanza'' for violin alone, a substantial exploration of a single state of passionate but controlled lyricism, and Mr. Carter's ''Statement'' and ''Fantasy.''

American Symphony Orchestra: Drama but no Gladiators in a Triple Concerto

By PAUL GRIFFITHS, New York Times, March 19, 1999.

How could one not love Richard Wilson? He starts out his program notes for his Triple Concerto, which had its first performance at the American Symphony Orchestra's concert in Avery Fisher Hall on Wednesday, by saying he had always hated the Beethoven work in the same genre. But now, as a fully fledged triple concerto composer himself, he has listened to Beethoven's work again and changed his mind. However: "The improvement in my opinion of his piece is counter-balanced by a deterioration in confidence in my own effort."

One feels enjoined to reassure him. Come on, Dicky, your piece really isn't so bad. It moves with quiet consistency and effectiveness through a harmonically sophisticated world. It has subtlety of color, along with stormier moments, notably at the beginning and end of the third movement. It is, of course, deftly written for the unusual group of solo instruments (horn, marimba and bass clarinet) and for the large orchestra behind them. It follows a venerable pattern in its own way, being almost a four-movement symphony with the scherzo in second place. And it ends with a bang.

But, no doubt, the composer will see through all this to a deeper dissatisfaction, which comes from a sense that here he has written his self-effacement into his music.

"My soloists," he writes, "are not gladiators in the heroic mold." Indeed not: they can barely bring it upon themselves to speak. The marimba is active for much of the time, but sounds like someone mumbling discontentedly in a corner, or like a child playing sadly by itself. The bass clarinet takes cover within the orchestral texture, and even the horn part, though more audible, is not more assertive.

As an indication of his musical loves, Wilson cites -- beyond the newly acquired Beethoven -- works by Berg, Stravinsky and Carter, all suggesting a far more flamboyant effect than he chooses to make. His dedicated soloists were Jeffrey Lang on horn, William Moersch on marimba and Dennis Smylie on bass clarinet.

Copyright 1999-2006 The New York Times

 

Opera: Reassessing a Royal Failure

By Barrymore Laurence Sherer, The Wall Street Journal. May 24, 2001

You have to feel a little sorry for the medieval English king Aethelred II. During his reign (ca., 979-1016) Britain's armies were repeatedly trounced by Scandinavian invaders. Aethelred tried to effect peace by buying off the Danes with a series of tribues that eventually totalled nearly 140,000 pounds of sliver (and that's weight, not bank notes). The ruinous sum—angrily called the Danegeld by Aethelred's subjects—was raised by the first general tax in England. Throughout this time, Aethelred had been offered plenty of advice by his nobles. But his refusal to take it led to his appellation "Unrede," or "without counsel.""Unrede," which was probably pronounced "oon-REE-deh" by Aethelred's contemporaries, eventually became "Unready," quite another thing.

"Yes, he was even unlucky in his epithet," observes Richard Wilson, whose opera, "Aethelred the Unready," received its world premiere at New York's Merkin Hall on May 13. Mr. Wilson holds the Mary Conover Mellon Chair in Music at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and his gentle, often self-deprecating humor belies his many honors from the Guggenheim and Koussevitzky Foundations, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, not to mention commissions and performances by the San Francisco Symphony, London Philharmonic and American Symphony Orchestra (of which he is composer-in-residence).

Prior to the great day, I asked Mr. Wilson why he chose to write his first opera about such an undistinguished historical figure -- indeed, less a figure than a footnote. He replied that he, too, is somewhat puzzled by the attraction. "A very good friend was constantly supplying me with suggestions for operas, but I never really thought that any of them would work for me. So, in self-defense, I decided to come up with something of my own. At the time, the Yankees were in a very serious losing streak. And I got to thinking about losers, failures, washouts."

In this rosy frame of mind, Mr. Wilson recalled the happy hours he spent during his own varsity years reading the Chronicles of William of Malmesbury, in which the Unrede king figures to some degree. He embarked on his own libretto, despite his understanding of the pitfalls. "When you write your own libretto, people immediately conclude that you think you're Wagner. And the downside is that if the opera doesn't go over well, there's nobody else to blame." On the positive side, however, Mr. Wilson finds that "to be able to start with the words and then follow the musical impulse to change them or the verbal rhythm without having to argue with a librettist makes progress much easier."

In the course of writing his own book, Mr. Wilson discovered the bizarre fact that the luckless Aethelred was even cursed at his baptism by the Archbishop of Canterbury. "I thought that an opera needs a good curse. It's a great tradition." That curse is recounted in the opera by abashed Aethelred himself, who sings that it was due to "a moment of infant confusion: Without intending sacrilege, I defiled the font in a shocking way."

Mr. Wilson's plot, set in an unspecified time, revolves around a periodic tribunal at which Clio, the classical Muse of History, reappraises the reputations of historical figures. Aethelred, who has slept contented in his mediocrity for a thousand years, is jolted awake by his ambitious consort, Emma, and ordered to do whatever he can to improve his standing in the eyes of posterity. Apart from his own reluctance to undertake the task, Aethelred has to deal with Clio's shockingly poor memory -- she forgets names. Even William of Malmesbury, who plays a major role in the opera, is too busy rattling off the exploits of his favorite Saxon kings to pay Aethelred much attention. In the end, after a Publicist and a Hypnotist fail to galvanize the king by transforming him into an orator with a series of charmed words -- artichoke, synecdoche and tabernacle -- Aethelred finds contentment in playing a wistful solo on Clio's trumpet, which the Muse has absent-mindedly left behind.

"I had conceived of the whole thing on the frivolous side," Mr. Wilson admits. "But then I realized how the character could be rather sympathetic." Indeed, he has frivolously scored that final trumpet solo for the more sympathetic sounding bass clarinet.

The semistaged performance at Merkin, ably conducted by the composer, was given before an audience that included American music's current Grand Old Man, Elliott Carter, whose smile at Aethelred's final soliloquy, "I've spared the world so much travail," was particularly sweet.

Among the singers, the young soprano Thea Tullman was outstanding, with a crystalline voice as well as natural stage presence.

Mr. Wilson's music, splendidly scored for clarinet, violin, cello, piano and two very busy percussionists, is sly rather than toe-tapping. As a humorous touch, Clio is sung by a countertenor -- in this case the distinguished Drew Minter -- which creates a sort of reverse trouser-role.

In the climactic ensemble praising bold and bloody actions over sloth and indolence, trained ears can revel in Mr. Wilson's cagey use of Bach's chorale "Erkenne mich mein Huter" (acknowledge me, my keeper), as well as "A mighty Fortress" deftly woven through the counterpoint. At one point, Aethelred, sung by baritone Robert Osborne, sings a lovely old-English folk song for which Mr. Wilson devised an accompaniment whose medieval-flavored harmony is presented as a halo of sustained vibraphone chords. And certainly the final elegiac bass-clarinet-cum-trumpet solo (eloquently played by clarinettist Allan Blustine) could easily take on its own life as an independent concert piece.

WILSON String Quartets: No. 3; No. 4; Canzona: Gail Williams (hn); Chicago String Quartet ALBANY573
Review by Robert Carl from Fanfare, September/October 2003

I find myself enjoying Richard Wilson 's music more with every encounter. Part of it is the integrity it projects, the composer having chosen to stick with a language many consider outmoded—chromatic, precisely angular, definitely an outgrowth of the Second Viennese School . At the same time, our era's stylistic continuum is now so vast and multifaceted that this approach seems far less threatening to some than it might have earlier, instead, it now has a whiff of exoticism about it (a bit like Bach's devotion to old contrapuntal forms in the emerging rococo). Even more important, this is obviously a mode of expression that speaks profoundly to Wilson , and through which he has developed great facility and depth of technique. As a consequence, the music sounds natural and imaginative. Wrenching emotion and whimsy can coexist. Though it certainly sounds related to serialism, by now the takes of different composers toward that system are so individuated that it's ludicrous to typecast any music with that word alone. Suffice it to say these works seem to have formalistic underpinnings that give them a certain sound, that this sound includes real harmonic progressions, points of arrival, and formal flow. If there were any American composer to whom Wilson seems related, it would be one from the generation previous to his (and one whom I admire), George Perle.

This disc concentrates on music for string quartet. For me, the real standout is the 1983 Third. This is a three-movement work that moves through a moderato-scherzo-adagio sequence (labeled Prelude-Episode-Elegy). Its intensity grows throughout its course, and the final movement, with its strophic returns, is beautiful and searing. The music is dark and compelling in the manner of Bartok and Berg, and, if there were more justice in the world, would find widespread exposure in the string quartet repertoire.

The Fourth dates from 1997 and is more neo-Classical in tone (though I do not mean to imply that Wilson here abandons his harmonic practice to become more Stravinskian). It is a five-movement arch, the outer movements dominated by a tolling pedal, the middle a biting scherzo, and the second and fourth lyric slow movements that project both harmonic beauty and emotional anguish. (Though less overtly intense than its predecessor, this quartet in fact is a memorial to and meditation on the death of a close friend of the composer's.) Again, I am struck by the rightness of Wilson 's choices of pitch and gesture. If I don't respond as strongly to this as the Third Quartet, it is more a matter of my own temperament than that of the music's quality.

Wilson 's aesthetic courage and quiet authority are striking… [A]nd the composer can be happy to have such dedicated advocates as the Chicago String Quartet. The recorded sound is clear and full.

 

A Premiere Work From a Premier Composer

By ADAM BAER, New York Sun. January 7, 2003.

You may consider yourself a classical music listener, fan, or even a patron, but if you don 't attend new-music premieres, you 're fooling yourself. Merkin Concert Hall 's Sunday afternoon concert of Richard Wilson 's music — at which the composer 's 1997 "Three Interludes for Violin and Piano" sounded amid the world premiere of his new Piano Trio as well as sonatas by Beethoven and Debussy — was one such event. And while the turnout was a far cry from meager, there were more empty seats in the hall than there should have been.

Mr. Wilson (born 1941) is a composer who, despite the challenging nature of his music, deserves the attention that he 's earned. The author of some 80 works, including the opera “Aethelred the Unready," he is the composer-in-residence at Leon Botstein 's American Symphony Orchestra. He 's received more than a few of the music world 's most coveted composition prizes and is the Mellon professor of music at Vassar College. He also is possessed of a hard-won idiom that has grown and developed over the years into a probing blend of wit, classic form, modern harmony, and impressionistic color.

Sunday 's concert also displayed Mr. Wilson 's considerable abilities as a working en- semble pianist. He performed each piece on the program rather tastefully, either with the new-music violin maven Rolf Schulte, a lithe Andy Warholish character with a mop-top and large glasses, with the expressive young cellist Sophie Shao — or in the case of his trio, with both musicians at once. Beethoven 's G Major Violin Sonata, Op. 30, was an intriguing piece to start with. It is the most frivolous of the composer 's 10 works in the form, but also the most fun. Mr. Schulte shared that attitude, and, despite the serious-ness of his appearance, fun shined through. Because Mr. Schulte holds his bow above its bottom ebony section (called the "frog"), he is able, like a Baroque musician, to create smooth, searching lines as well as articulations that range from scrappy and light to bouncy and sharp.

Matched with a pianist who approaches Beethoven lyrically not percussively, these abilities resulted in an interpretation that breathed as if it were virulently alive. The violin sound may have been on the thin side, and Mr. Wilson may not have been able to play as hiply as his partner, but the reading 's philosophy eclipsed any limitations.

Mr. Wilson 's "Three Interludes" is not nearly as tonal and superficially playful, but it served as a nice antecedent to the Beethoven. It is made of three short works that deal in chromaticism, chaotic rhythmic combinations, and a tonal sense that sometimes hints at a center but never gets there. This can be particularly jarring to people unprepared for such experiments. But Mr. Wilson 's pervasive academic skills never pander to his inner Romantic, and these pieces are as energetic, intense, and fluid as the violin works of Arnold Schoenberg.

Mr. Wilson 's impressionist influences made an appearance with the violin and cello sonatas of Claude Debussy. Here, Mr. Schulte combined an intense, anxious vibrato with small, highly sculpted phrases, clean harmonics, dramatic slides, and pointillistic spiccato. The message: Debussy 's music is not delicate like a French pastry as more conservative musicians would have us believe, but is witty and caustic, riddled with a digressive, modernist panache that deserves its due.

Ms. Shao 's rendition of the cello sonata was broad and open. She has a soothing tenor in her instrument and the affectionate emotionality to sing passages through their natural end while keeping her feelings in balance with the scale of the musical poetry she 's read-ing. These complementary performance styles made the premiere of Mr. Wilson 's "Piano Trio" (2002) particularly vibrant. On its own, the work is made of four classically written movements: Allegro, Reverie, Scherzo, Theme and Variations. The Allegro is a bit busy, with the presence of tone clusters in the piano part serving as a backdrop for unsettling, conflicting motives in the cello and violin that eradicate tonality. But the Reverie came off as a deliciously dark song on account of its descending triplets, ensemble string melodies, high register harmonics, and rumbling piano motives. The Scherzo was full of life, topped with fast violin trills and driven by speedy piano noodling and rhythmic interplay that featured harsh syncopations before the appearance of a surprise ending. The Theme and Variations wasn 't the most dulcet manifestation of that age-old structure, but it did display Mr. Wilson 's penchant for French color, wave-like melodic figures, and clear if not simple lyricism. A new-music critic 's job is not just to assess the evening 's premiere in its relation to works that have preceded it; it is to think about how his readers would react to the work. It would be subversive, in other words, to blindly praise Mr. Wilson 's music, or claim that it can be enjoyed like the Debussy. It needs a certain fluency in involved musical languages. That said, the high quality of Mr. Wilson 's work deserves note. Such efforts are becoming rarer as high-culture is diluted. The next time his music, or that of his col- leagues, is offered in such a palatable presentation, give it a chance. At the very least, you will emerge from the experience with something to think about.