Music review: IU Wind Ensemble and DAVID Ward-Steinman
Five premieres in two concerts overlap in one night of music
March 27, 2008
by Peter Jacobi
Bloomington’s musical Tuesday was capped by premieres, five in two concerts. Because of scheduled overlap, I was able to experience just three of them.
A 7 p.m. faculty recital in Auer Hall given by faculty composer/pianist David Ward-Steinman offered four new works, of which a pair came early enough for me to hear before heading to the Musical Arts Center and an 8 o’clock program by the IU Wind Ensemble, which held a Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind Ensemble, written by an alum of the university, Chris Rutkowski.
Overlaps are unfortunate. Sometimes they happen even though the clash of concert times was preventable. On this occasion, I suspect it was the result of just too many events having to be maneuvered into the calendar.
Program one
Ward-Steinman made for a diverting figure as he rushed about the Auer stage even beyond his concert’s starting time, testing two pianos, “fortified” ones, he calls them: pianos played on the regular keyboard and on the strings with mallets and fingers and brushes, strings between which implements have been inserted or upon which objects have been placed.
He obviously loves the piano. For it, he composes material that reveals performance possibilities few others would even dream of. In two works — “Songs of the Seasons, for High Voice and Fortified Piano” (a premiere) and “Golden Apples, for Alto Saxophone and Fortified Piano” — Ward-Steinman was at and all over one piano, causing it to emit sounds expected and rare, but sounds always designed so that instrument and music served each other.
In “Golden Apples,” he also managed to supply an adept alto saxophonist, Laura Kramer, with flourishes galore and expositions which benignly exploited instrument and player. He was far less successful in “Songs of the Seasons.” Here, he had shaped for himself an array of playful and evocative exercises and images but had given the soprano, the hard-working Teri Herron, a meandering, occasionally jarring vocal line that seemed to have little to do with the poetic sentiments.
Ward-Steinman’s other heard premiere was “Gemini — Three Pieces for Two Guitars,” an expressive assemblage of themes and developments performed admirably by Thomas Tudek and Guido Sanchez.
Program two
Chris Rutkowski’s new alto saxophone concerto was just one of several highlights heard during the IU Wind Ensemble concert, interestingly planned and ably led, as one expected, by Stephen Pratt. But it earned special plaudits for the imagination displayed in its content, the craftsmanship manifested in the orchestration, and the range of opportunities it gave the soloist, the gifted Thomas Walsh, who seemed to have a grand time as he headed into a musical vista that merged jazz and classical traditions and, as the composer states, provided an “emotional arc” that moved through “anger, loss, reflection, appreciation and celebration.”
Among the other works performed were a ceremonial “Symphonic Fanfare” by Mark Camphouse; a lovely instrumental version of Morten Lauridsen’s choral masterpiece, “O Magnum Mysterium,” led most capably by Richard Frey; a wonderfully showy impression, via music, of an adventurous ride along the Niagara River called “Niagara Falls,” by Michael Daugherty, and a Euphonium Concerto by Martin Ellerby, famously well performed, every challenge in it, by Aaron Tindall, winner of the 2008 IU Concerto Competition. Throughout, the wind ensemble proved its merit.
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music would like
to thank the Herald Times for permission to republish this review.
