Lori Dobbins' Wave/Particle (2000), an Earplay commission receiving its first performance, opened the program. The dynamic performers were pianist John McGinn, cellist Dana Putnam, and percussionist Timothy Dent. In three connected movements, the piece is much given to dramatic textures and a tumultuous expressivity that was frequently arresting.

Big, sweeping piano arpeggios interact with mostly pitched percussion to form fast moving sequences of sixteenth notes. These are the particles of the piece's title. The waves come chiefly from the cello's long, sustained melodic solos. These two antipodal elements are often juxtaposed or combined effectively, the slower sections sometimes enhanced by tam-tam and bowed vibraphone. Drawbacks occur in the faster sections, where the syncopated, motoric activity loses its thrust and begins to feel mechanical. The piece ends on a low, cadential cello note, emphatically repeated and seemingly at stylistic odds with the rest of the composition.

Anthony Korf's witty, mercurial Six Miniatures (1997) was played by flutist Tod Brody and pianist Karen Rosenak with style and elegance. It is like a set of fantasy variations, based partly on affectionate parodies of popular tunes, featuring the limping, repetitive opening notes of Tea for Two and the lyrically rising first four notes of Tenderly (occasionally lurching into I Got Rhythm). The piano has some pseudo-jazz chords and a series of sliding, sensuous tenths, increasing the flavor of pop pastiche. Yet there is more than enough sophisticated modernism to make this an interesting, original work of considerable charm.

Martha Horst's Full Circle (2001), commissioned by Earplay, was also given its first performance. It opens with flute and clarinet playing long, sustained notes against which violin and cello sputter in short, vigorous bursts of motion. Gradually, the instrumental roles become reversed as this first movement ends in a climactic flurry of notes. The second movement has the four instruments playing together in a perky, hocketlike canonic structure. At the end, arabesques from the first movement return, surprisingly and delightfully sweeping the music to its final cadence.

Andrew Rindfleisch's What Vibes! (2000), for piano, percussion, violin, cello, flute, and clarinets, was the exuberant final work. This piece, with a strongly defined tonal flavor, is full of quick sleight-of-hand shifts in tempo and texture, multiple ostinatos, bluesy clarinet runs with piercing high notes, brief, noisy snare drum rolls, festive chimes, and a lively infectious jocularity whose punchy, parodistic edge occasionally reminded me of Ravel's G Major Piano Concerto. It was a suitably exhilarating finale to a concert in which good spirits and high energy were such prominent ingredients. Mary Chun conducted this piece, as well as Dobbins' Wave/Particle, with deftness and assurance.

(Jules Langert is a composer and teacher who resides in the East Bay.)

©2001 Jules Langert, all rights reserved