Music Arts Reviews

A Vancouver New Music Festival presentation. At the Scotiabank Dance Centre on Saturday (October 25). No remaining performances

Kurt Schwitters’s Sonate in Urlauten, constructed over a 10-year period beginning in 1922, is one of the most bizarre scores ever written for the solo voice. Perhaps the defining example of what we now know as sound poetry, it’s a taxing vocal tour de force and an icon of the modernist movement in art.

Nonetheless, Dutch vocalist Jaap Blonk made it sound like child’s play on the closing night of the Vancouver New Music Festival’s Solus event—or at least that was the opinion of the delighted preschooler who laughed her way through his 40-minute barrage of twitters, roars, grunts, and barking.

Proving that abstract art can connect on the most visceral level, Blonk demonstrated that new music can range from the deeply theoretical to where-the-wild-things-are playfulness, sometimes in the same piece.

A few more wild things would not have hurt this festival of solo virtuosity, with the worst offender in terms of tameness being French bassoonist Pascal Gallois, who had the unenviable task of following Blonk’s madcap mastery. His recital was characterized by the extraordinary beauty of his tone, by his impeccable articulation of very difficult musical passages, and by a series of scores that were unrelievedly morose—a natural tendency, perhaps, in writing for this often lugubrious instrument, but regrettable nonetheless. Toshio Hosokawa’s Sen VII stood out, however, for the composer’s deft adaptation of shakuhachi techniques in a piece that played out like a series of hushed haiku.

Two nights earlier, bass clarinettist Lori Freedman gave a somewhat similar recital—at least in terms of playing extremely demanding pieces on a dark-sounding woodwind. But Freedman understands that music and dance are inextricably intertwined; she throws her whole body into her performances, and this passionate physicality is as much a part of her approach as her extreme virtuosity. In Claudio Ambrosini’s Capriccio, detto: l’Ermafrodita, both combined to startling effect: the powerful exploration of polyphonic techniques offered one startling moment after another, yielding whoops of astonishment from the audience at its conclusion.

Other festival highlights included the Canadian premiere of local composer Rodney Sharman’s stark and lovely The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, as interpreted by cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, and the Vancouver debut of Bulgarian pianist Tzenka Dianova, who recently moved to Victoria. Take note of that name, for her flawless rendition of György Ligeti’s fiendishly eclectic Musica Ricercata indicates that we have a new master in our midst.