The esteemed Ensemble Modern devoted the second of two nights at Zankel Hall to musical tracings of migratory patterns. The previous night found the German ensemble falling in line with the hall’s Weimar Republic Festival, but Saturday's program seemed to take the Cuban-born, New York composer Tania León as inspiration. Works by León, who holds Carnegie’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair this season, bookended the diverse and fever-pitched concert.
León found inspiration for her 1991 Indigena, which opened the evening, in the street sounds and speech patterns of her homeland, although the cold, dissonant melodies seemed atypical of her work, maybe more in keeping with the harmonies of the previous night or her adopted home. It took a while even after her polyrhythms took hold before the music warmed with a trumpet solo, and even then it seemed of more than one mind (or maybe heart).
The migratory spirit was further reflected in three Yvar Mikhashoff arrangements of Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano studies (composed between 1948 and 1960) interspersed throughout the program. Orchestrating a piece by Nancarrow – who was born in Arkansas, fought in the Spanish Civil War, then moved to Mexico City – feels like a cheat. They were meant to be impossible instrumental solos, but Study no. 7 spread across two pianos, celesta, harpsichord, tuned percussion, strings and wind, animated it, uncovering the Carl Stalling freneticism that was always there, if only in monochrome. Fractured canons and overzealous counterpoint played cat-and-mouse across the stage. The second, no. 6, was a brief, fractal ballad. The ensemble grew for no. 12 – the most unilateral of the three arrangements – in the second half, adding accordion, guitar and more percussion. A succession of reed and harpsichord dialogues, first bassoon, then oboe, then clarinet, brought out shades of Ennio Morricone. Other quick, instrumental combinations were truly magical and fairly inscrutable. Was that doubled piano and harpsichord? Were those flutes and staccato strings? It was frustratingly fascinating.
South African composer Andile Khumalo, who studied under Tristan Murail at Columbia University, referenced music of his homeland in Invisible Self, an upbeat and scattered piece that felt downright grounded between the two Nancarrow treatments. Ten minutes of swirling, circular statements, both charming and perplexing, capped by a remarkable piano interlude played with buoyant precision by Ueli Wiget.
New Orleans–born Christopher Trapani brought back the icy dissonances after the interval with his 2020 no window without a wall. Strange, uneven, loping repetitions; brushes on drums and pizzicato berimbau; blocky interwoven piano and harp themes; textural plucked piano strings; slowly formed a moving mass, then fell into a low-key, exciting, stasis.
León’s Ritmicas, with syncopated percussion and quick, bright melodic suggestions, felt more familiar than the opener. Fast lines in the strings and percussion felt as if they were rushing through then stopping to breathe, while clarinet exaltations seemed poised for an outbreak of Rhapsody in Blue. The fourth movement shot for the stars with fantastic piano/harp repetitions met by fantastically off-kilter accompaniment. It drew applause which maestro Stefan Asbury seemed happy to oblige before launching into the taut cacophony of the final movement.
A brief encore rewarded my earlier ruminations with the first performance of an anniversary miniature given to the ensemble by Morricone in 2020, titled Per i 40 anni. It was more formal than the Nancarrow arrangement that had, to my ears, suggested the Italian master: pastoral, floating strings, piano points of light and scene.
