Every once and a while, it is helpful to shift the lens from a composer’s work to the musical landscape that influenced the artist. For example, who was on Schumann’s playlist? He was responsible for reviving works by Mozart and Beethoven, but what new composers did he prefer? Any historian would tell you that if it weren’t for his enthusiasm for Chopin and Brahms, the two composers might not have seen the success they did. Throughout music history, well-established masters have kindled the careers of younger composers, and the CONTACT! series, in collaboration between the 92nd Street Y and the New York Philharmonic, is a 21st century approach of doing just that. In an innovative concert experience, John Adams curated a night of living composers to shine the spotlight on his favorite new works, answering the question: “Who’s on John Adams’ playlist?”
Björk, Sigur Rós, and volcanic ash aren’t Iceland’s only exports. All the way from the land of fire and ice, Iceland-based composer Daniel Bjarnason presented two of his works on the program. Up first, Bow to String sketches three caricatures of his friend and cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir. Glittered with explosions of sound and blended timbres, the eclectic chamber-sized assortment of New York Philharmonic musicians sounded at times like computerized sound. Not atonal or minimalistic, the first movement is a constant wave of moving sound, allowing the soloist to move in and out of focus, while the second experiments with tone color by placing paper clips on the bowed and hammered strings to create a buzzing sound with a clock bell pulse. Adams described the finale as something that would have pleased Mahler because of its prominent neo-Romantic melody. Not quite Mahler, not quite Berg, the melody ascends and descends while avoiding a conventional resolution that is eventually heard from the piano. His second piece Five Possibilities for clarinet, cello, and piano unearths windows into other worlds, painted through contrasts in tempo, color, and intensity. Both works left a positive impression on the supportive audience.
Up next from Yale composition professor, Ingram Marshall, Muddy Waters is based on a hymn from the Bay Psalmbook of 1692. The heterogeneous combination of bass clarinet, cello, bass, marimba, piano, and guitar are amplified to satiate the composer’s note to “start with reverb in extremis”. The variety of timbres helps the listener navigate the murky, fugal counterpoint, something along the lines of Bach stuck in the snow on the way to Lubeck. The introduction of each new subject often occurs one beat apart from the previous subject and the result is unclear and obscure. Adams like to use culinary terms to describe Marshall’s works, and Marshall once joked “Adams, do you think I put too much butter in it?”