![]() Crumb also required black upper-face masks for the performers, to, he wrote, “efface a sense of human projection, symbolizing the powerful impersonal forces of nature. The work has many theatrical elements specified by the composer, including deep blue stage lighting which transports the audience into the ocean depths. Crumb uses electronic amplification which enhances the sounds and highlights the evocative, haunting nature of his music.” Both flute player and cellist whistle and play antique cymbals. He was as American as apple pie, this shy, unpretentious West Virginian. High quality George Crumb Quote inspired Photographic Prints by independent artists and designers. The cello is tuned differently, sounding more like an Indian sitar, while the flute player sings and plays simultaneously. George Crumb, who died Sunday at 92, was an all-American composer one of our best, most original and most important. “The pianist,” says Douglas, “spends a ton of time inside the piano with paperclip, chisel and glass rod, using it more like harp or percussion instrument. He conjures whale song, seagulls, the splashing of waves and the echoes of the Appalachian Mountains. George Crumb, in full George Henry Crumb, (born October 24, 1929, Charleston, West Virginia, U.S.died February 6, 2022, Media, Pennsylvania), American composer known for his innovative techniques in the use of vivid sonorities obtained from an enormous range of instrumental and vocal effects, such as hissing, whispering, tongue clicking, and. And like Crumb’s, the voices of lost children were heard in the room.As in many of his compositions, Crumb requires the musicians in Vox Balaenae to use extended techniques to evoke natural sounds. Just as the evening could not have been planned in anticipation of Crumb’s passing, so could it not have been conceived in expectation of the bloodshed in Ukraine. Crumb’s composition has counts that would surely befit a conductor, but the ensemble executed it with precision based solely on one another’s cues (often coming from Kalish, who also played the 1970 premiere). The bewilderment was kept to the audience, however. ![]() Disembodied voices (did the musicians also sing?) and mysterious sounds lent to the general haze of disorientation the work evokes. The piece is, at times, so quiet that it’s hard to comprehend on record, and was made only so much easier on the stage. The suggestion of Vietnamese lute on harp (played beautifully by Bridget Kibbey) and the sliding of metal across piano set the scene as Arnold (later singing through a cardboard megaphone) and 13-year-old soprano Joshua Randall – singing offstage until the end, as per the score – created an uneasy fantasia. The strength of her voice was on display for these 30 minutes in a very different way, and stunningly so. Arnold sang alone at the outset, bent over the piano case. Written in response to the Vietnam War, the piece is as much of a nightmare as Crumb’s more famous war lament, Black Angels, but here for the loss of children and so all the more wrenching. Arnold brought laughs with Ann Street and she and Gilbert Kalish found resonance in The Housatonic at Stockbridge, but the short set felt a bit much like show tunes in such company.Īncient Voices of Children was presented under dimmed lights, with a small cluster of instruments on stage. Perhaps in part due to context, the four Ives songs felt out of place. In many ways, in in the right hands, the piano version can seem bigger than the full orchestra. The escalation into The Glorification of the Chosen One brought anxious apprehension worthy of a suspense movie. Expressions of death as a place in George Crumb's River of Life Abigail Shupe In his 2003 song cycle, River of Life, George Crumb casts eight American folk. The slow introduction to Part Two was almost unbearable after the controlled fury that had just blown by. Pohjonen and Chien gave it a spirited reading, swarming at times like insects at dusk with a wonderful blur between their hands. Pohjonen was then joined at the piano by Gloria Chien for the four-hand reduction of The Rite of Spring, an arrangement played in its debut performance (for a group of fortunate friends) by Debussy and Stravinsky. ![]() ![]() The ease with which she moved through glissando and into vibrato seemed superhuman and the unbridled joy she brought to Fantoches (from the first book of Fêtes Galantes) on top of that was fairly astounding. The program began with the exceptional soprano Tony Arnold singing three Debussy songs, ably accompanied by pianist Juho Pohjonen. But even if seen as a prelude, what a prelude it was.
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