Nicolas Baldeyrou and Alexis Descharmes

at the French Embassy, 12/9/2005

The French Embassy has put together an excellent contemporary music series, and they've been working hard to promote the events and build an audience. Those efforts are paying off. This concert was well attended (I'm guessing the crowd was around 100 - 150?) which I think is extraordinary for contemporary music in DC.

This was a challenging recital of "high modernist" music, performed by two phenomenal young musicians. Both displayed flawless technique and remarkable virtuosity. For some crazy reason (God bless 'em) they've decided to specialize in contemporary repertoire, and they played a great deal of thorny music convincingly, making it look easy - and keeping it engaging.

I'm not a great fan of some of the composers featured, but I'm a little concerned about publishing nasty things about composers given my day-job, so let's focus on the pieces that I liked: The concert opened with a solo cello piece by Kaija Saariaho, "Spins and Spells." This was easily my favorite work of the evening. I don't know very much of her music, but Saariaho is quickly becoming one of my favorite contemporary composers. A duo of hers for clarinet and cello, "Oi Kuu," was also on the program - and it was good, but I liked the solo cello piece best.

Baldeyrou performed Berio's "Sequenza IX" for clarinet - which was quite good, although not my favorite of the Sequenza series, and a bit too long for my taste. But well played for sure. His tone is gorgeous, so in a certain sense it doesn't matter what he's playing - I could just sit and listen to the instrument and be perfectly blissed-out.

After intermission, Descharmes provided another stunner for solo cello, Henri Dutilleux's "Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher." A three-movement work that had all the cerebral density of Berio, Boulez, etc., plus the visceral impact that puts Dutilleux in a class of his own (well maybe in a peer-group including Bartok and Stravinsky?) I think my personal preference is for modern music that doesn't get so lost in the math that the surface of the music becomes secondary. I feel like that's a trap that many composers fall into... getting so into their own head, or lost in the structural details, that they forget about what I'm calling the "visceral" component... the part that hits you in the gut, or in popular music the part that puts the asses in motion, y'know what I mean? I think this is why I'm a sucker for Saariaho -- she really succeeds in creating her own universe of sounds, equal parts gorgeous and interesting.