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Photo: Danny Coles
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Akira Miyoshi is a composer of considerable prominence in Japan. While he isn't yet a household name in America, a recent concert by new music group Ensemble Anura made a persuasive case for his music being more frequently performed. Ensemble Anura's core membership is a quintet (flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano), led by the group's clarinetist and artistic director, David Dunn. They are currently at work on a substantial Miyoshi project, performing and recording a number of his compositions. For this concert, guest musicians brought their complement up to fourteen, including a guest soloist, marimba player Greg Giannascoli. Giannascoli specializes in new music from Japan; his performances Saturday of five of Miyoshi's works featuring marimba were nothing less than astonishing, both in terms of artistry and virtuosity.
The program opened with Concerto for Marimba and Strings (1969). Repeating f# octaves were a focusing and cadential device throughout the work, operating in a colorful and harmonically rich environment. The marimba clearly leads the proceedings, with the strings responding to its florid solos with rhythmically charged tutti sections. Although the string parts were written as en masse utterances, for the most part, it was still impressive to see the Ensemble Anura perform this piece for sizable forces -- and all the other works on the program -- without a conductor, a gutsy move that doubtless requires extra rehearsals! While it may not be economically expedient to forgo having a leader up front, the fluidity with which the ensemble performs, imbuing even larger pieces with a collaborative chamber sensibility, is striking.
The concerto demands tremendous facility from its soloist, and Giannascoli played incredibly fast runs with the utmost of clarity and precision. This startling display was repeated in Ripple (1999), a solo piece. Its signature device resembles its title; a note is struck firmly and then haloed with softly repeated echoing "ripples". This "rippling" expands into buoyantly florid arpeggiations, which span the entire compass of the marimba in an impressive fashion. Although it was written thirty years after the concerto, Ripple shares its colorful and imaginative harmonic palette, emphasizing certain pitches as important in the texture without articulating an overtly functional tonality.
After a brief intermission, Giannascoli performed the American premiere of Preludes for Marimba (2001). These pieces were a bit less individual in terms of language, featuring squarer rhythms and etude-like scalar passages. Still, they are an important addition to the "technique-polishing" end of the marimba repertoire. More impressive was the Etude Concertante (1977), a marimba duo on which Giannascoli was joined by fellow percussionist Peter Cruz. The high level of ensemble coordination required, amid a fearsomely dense span of demanding writing, makes this piece inherently dramatic. When performed with technical command and flair, as it was here, the effect is even more pronounced.
The concert ended with one of Miyoshi's more experimental works, Nocturne (1974). Marimba, percussion, flute, clarinet and double bass negotiate a complex notation, often featuring indeterminate rhythmic devices. This lends the piece a quasi-improvisational character. Dunn and flutist John McMurtery made the most of this freedom, crafting an angular and incisive duet out of their respective gestures. Bassist Daniel Buttner leaned heavily on glissando effects, while Cruz unleashed a shattering barrage of gongs and glockenspiel. Giannascoli's rhythmically incisive solos took center stage, serving to focus and lead the group along many intriguing musical pathways. Given that the material was inherently more diffuse than the other Miyoshi works on the program, it was a gutsy move placing it last, but Ensemble Anura made it seem like a fitting closer. The audience, nearly a hundred strong (quite an impressive turnout for a new music concert in New Rochelle!), was most appreciative, demanding several curtain calls, and an encore, from Giannascoli. He obliged, not with a piece by Miyoshi, but with an elegant transcription of a work by J.S. Bach.
In 2005-2006, Ensemble Anura is planning concerts in New York, and Hartford, Connecticut, as well as a concert series at New Jersey City University, with ambitious programs that feature music by Schoenberg, Wuorinen and Luciano Berio. Abundantly talented and adventurous in disposition, they are a group to watch for in the future.
Article by Christian Carey
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