Group Offering Two Auburn Performances of 20th-Century Chamber Music, 2018-Sept-19 & 20

Clarinetist Katrina Phillips will perform as part of
the Alabama Arts Ensemble along with pianist
Vadim Serebryany, violinist Guy Harrison, hornist
Brenda Luchsinger, and saxophonist Patrick
McCurry.

This post highlights two upcoming concerts this week by the Alabama Arts Ensemble. The ad hoc group was formed because Ithaca College faculty pianist Vadim Serebryany (A) has a warm place in his heart for 20th-century chamber music, (B) likes to return to Alabama every year to play concerts and to see friends and colleagues, having previously taught at Huntingdon College, and (C) was able to find several of us still-Alabamians willing to tackle some of the hardest music ever written.

I usually put together a draft of the news releases the museum uses to publicize the concerts in the A Little Lunch Music series I run. They appear on Wednesdays in the local paper, and this week I only had time to get a very basic release in by the deadline.

But I really wanted to flesh this one out, so since we've stopped putting these stories up on the museum's website, at least for the time being, I thought I would post my full article here. Event links to the concerts are...

Goodwin Hall, Wednesday 9/19 at 7:30 ($10)
Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Thursday 9/20 at noon (free)

See you there! -PMc

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The Alabama Arts Ensemble will perform two concerts this week at Auburn University. On Wednesday night, the group will appear at Goodwin Hall at 7:30 p.m. and on Thursday at Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art from noon to 1:00 p.m. in the Auditorium.

Tickets for Wednesday’s concert are $10 and can be purchased at the door or through Auburn University’s website at auburn.edu/music. Thursday’s concert is part of the weekly series, “A Little Lunch Music.” It is free to the public and supported in part by an anonymous gift.

Assembled and led by pianist Vadim Serebryany, the group also features Auburn University faculty violinist Guy Harrison, hornist Brenda Luchsinger, clarinetist Katrina Phillips, and saxophonist Patrick McCurry.

The program for both dates will feature 20th-century chamber music. The ensemble will perform György Ligeti’s “Trio for Horn, Violin, and Piano,” Béla Bartók’s “Contrasts,” and Anton Webern’s “Quartett, Op. 22.”

In addition to coordinating “A Little Lunch Music,” McCurry is saxophone instructor at Alabama State University. He performs in Auburn and the surrounding region; promotes, presents, and produces music and arts events; and is an arts writer.

McCurry says the music featured on these concerts is less tonal than most. “When you describe a piece of music as having a strong tonal center, it usually means that its melodies are easy to sing for most people,” he said, “or at least easy to grasp quickly.” He says pop music on the radio is tonal, as is church music and most classical music before the 20th century.

McCurry will play tenor saxophone on one piece, Webern’s “Quartett, Op. 22,” that also features violin, clarinet, and piano. It is a short, two-movement piece which Webern composed in 1930 using an atonal technique called twelve-tone.

Twelve-tone music contains one or more tone rows. A tone row is a set of twelve distinct notes, or all of the black and white keys in a piano octave, for which the composer chooses the order. The tone rows become the harmonic and melodic building blocks of the piece. They are used in ways other classical composers might use a major scale, for instance.

Serebryany has performed in Europe, South America, Australia and throughout the US, Canada and Japan. In 2005, he founded Trio+ which has performed to critical acclaim throughout North America and Japan. In 2016, he joined the piano faculty at the Ithaca College School of Music. Prior to that, he was professor of music at Huntingdon College in Montgomery.

Serebryany, who organized this project, says Webern’s music is not that different from that of Johannes Brahms and other composers of the Romantic Period of Western music. “The spirit of it is hyper-Romantic,” Serebryany said. “It’s not supposed to be weird, but Romantic to the nth degree.”

Russian Romantic composer Gustav Mahler was known for writing long symphonies. His third symphony was around 100 minutes long. Serebryany says Webern’s music is like a Mahler symphony in five minutes, not sped up, but rather reduced to its essence. “He was condensing Romantic gestures to their most concentrated form,” Serebryany said of Webern.

Bartók died in 1945, and Ligeti in 2006. They were both Hungarian composers. Serebryany says Ligeti was in awe of Bartók and as a composer owed him a debt. “A lot of Bartók’s language is adapted and used by Ligeti,” Serebryany said.

Bartók is known for having used themes from Eastern European folk music in his works, and “Contrasts” reflects that. Serebryany says each of its three movements are dances from that folk tradition, and combine its musical language with Bartók’s distinct style.

Harrison has performed with orchestras in his home country of Australia and in states throughout the midwest, and has toured in ten countries. He works with middle school, high school and youth orchestras, and his research includes string-teacher preparation, youth ensembles, and musician wellness. He is Assistant Professor at Auburn University.

Harrison says the pieces by Bartók and Ligeti are very different, though the composers have strong cultural ties. Bartók's "Contrasts" features clarinet, violin, and piano, and was written in 1938 for famous clarinetist and swing bandleader Benny Goodman. Harrison says it uses more familiar classical structures and has clear melodic ideas that will stick to the listener. “The Bartók has quite a lot of tonal moments,” Harrison said.

But Ligeti’s trio, like Webern’s quartet, is atonal, though not written using the same twelve-tone technique. Harrison says even though there is material in the trio that comes back around, it is not as easy to recognize. “It’s a piece that you have to spend time with to find the meaning in it,” Harrison said.

Luchsinger has performed with the Tuscaloosa and Montgomery Symphonies and other groups throughout the southeast and midwest United States. Internationally, she has performed in concerts and chamber recitals in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Luchsinger says the Ligeti trio has a lot of “over the top,” with sounds that our ears are not used to hearing. “There’s always somebody doing something that you don’t expect,” she said.

Serebryany says the trio is very difficult. He describes the first movement as setting up a journey toward the darkness of the last movement. For instance, there are familiar horn calls, but with wrong intervals. Luchsinger says some parts of the piece require the horn to perform using a tuning technique from hundreds of years ago. “It’s as if you could listen to something through a broken mirror,” Serebryany said.

But before the darkness, the second movement comes, which Serebryany describes as using a perpetual motion technique similar to classical music, but through the prism of jazz. “That’s just fun,” he said.

Serebryany says Ligeti’s third movement is challenging because it uses phase, a 20th-century technique. The players begin playing the same notes and rhythms together, but over time gradually separate.

Everything culminates in the final movement. “It’s one of the most severe pieces that I’ve ever played, for sure,” Serebryany said. He says it starts slowly, and progresses as more and more descending chromatic lines pile on top of each other. “It’s ugly, and intentionally so.”

Phillips has performed in Montgomery with groups such as the Capitol Sounds Band, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival Theater, and the Montgomery Symphony Orchestra, and has performed as co-principal clarinetist with the Northwest Florida Symphony. She has appeared as soloist with orchestras in Poland, Alabama, and Missouri.

Both Luchsinger and Phillips are Assistant Professors at Alabama State University. Luchsinger also teaches at Huntingdon College.

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