Talented soloists bring continuity to two 'Seasons'By David Weininger, Globe Correspondent | June 12, 2006 New England String Ensemble It was ironic that on what seemed like the city's umpteenth consecutive day of clouds and rain, the New England String Ensemble staged a gala concert with two musical representations of the seasons, those durable markers of cyclical change. It's now common to see Vivaldi's well-trodden ``Four Seasons" paired with a lesser known piece on the same topic. On Friday it was ``The American Seasons (Seasons of an American Life)," a concerto for violin, strings and guitar by Mark O'Connor. O'Connor, a popular violinist/fiddler and a composer known for the strong folk flavor of his music, was on hand as the soloist. Each of the piece's four movements is meant to stand not only for a season but for a stage of life. O'Connor's program note makes reference to ``all the possibilities a new life offers," the ``bravado of youthful adolescence," and ``the wisdom of maturity." The music that represents these grandiose musings is pleasant and largely dissonance-free, mixing in elements of bluegrass, swing, blues , and Tin Pan Alley song. It's skillfully written and nice enough to listen to, but despite the wealth of idioms O'Connor has mastered, one was left searching for signs of the authentic compositional voice that would give it a true identity. For a piece about transformation, it sounded awfully homogeneous. Whatever the merits of his ``Seasons," O'Connor certainly proved himself an excellent soloist. This he showed in the long cadenza at the end of the piece, a sort of Paganini in the Blue Ridge Mountains affair. Whether it was playing the violin or fiddling, his technique was dazzling. O'Connor's sweetly nostalgic ``Appalachia Waltz" led off the program, and the Vivaldi followed. Each of the violin solos was taken by a recent winner of the ensemble's annual String Competition, for students 18 and under. They were Anna Williams (``Spring"), Tema Watstein (``Summer"), Metok Hughes-Levine (``Autumn") , and Mari Black (``Winter"). They are all talented performers at various stages of artistic development, and though there were occasional rough patches, each showed herself equal to Vivaldi's considerable demands. Black's performance was particularly impressive. The ensemble did solid work under the energetic direction of Federico Cortese. Black also joined O'Connor for an encore, a flashy hoedown for two violins, to the audience's feverish delight. © Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company. |
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