by Melanie Wong
Known for their originality, innovation, and experimental
nature, Alarm Will Sound presented “Composed for Us” last Saturday at Carnegie
Hall. Carnegie’s intimate Zankel Hall was a perfect fit for the 20-member
contemporary chamber ensemble and the intriguing program boasted five works
composed specifically for the group, including a Carnegie-commissioned world
premiere and three New York premieres.
Opening the program was the New York
premiere of Journeyman, written
by their very own pianist, John Orfe. The five-minute work was colorful,
energetic, and an easy listen harmonically, however it somehow left the group sounding a bit small—coming across more like a work for a
collegiate-level wind symphony.
Second up was David Lang's increase, an Alarm Will Sound “oldie,” having been the first
piece ever written specifically for the group. A quasi-minimalist piece, the persistently
pulsing rhythm unfortunately seemed to get old well before the end, and although
the soloists projected well throughout, the group as a
whole had some trouble filling the hall once again. By the end of the work, thankfully, AWS seemed to pull together a newfound strength and produced a powerful and riveting finale.
The newly created energy continued through the world
premiere of Ty Braxton's Fly by Wire. Known for his innovative and cross-genre compositions, Braxton was able to
effectively combine digitized sounds, electric guitar, and classical instruments
to create a whirlwind aircraft journey. Fly
By Wire featured some killer marimba playing, complex upbeat rhythms, a
mariachi-style section, and romanticized string playing, altogether stealing
the show for the evening.
The New York premiere of Charles
Wuorinen's Big Spinoff closed out the first half, a
recent arrangement of his 1983 Spinoff
for violin, bass, and congas. (Humorously, some refer to the piece as a “spinoff
of Spinoff.”) Though the work was
quickly paced and complex, it came across as a bit anti-climactic. Alarm Will Sound’s energy
seemed to drift throughout and left the moto
perpetuo piece feeling somewhat lifeless.
After intermission came the New York premiere of Donnacha
Dennehy's 45-minute “musical suite” incorporating scenes from The Hunger, a work-in-progress
music-theater piece based on the Great Irish Famine of 1845-1852. The dour subject
was profound, yet overwhelming, including intermittent
recordings of ordinary people singing traditional sean nós (old style) which,
when accompanied by the ensemble, expressed a truly sad, yet hopeful power.
However,
while the music was well-written and oftentimes beautiful, the sections
without sean nós lasted too long without explicitly going anywhere. The fidgety
audience’s attention was all but lost when mezzo-soprano Rachel Colloway joined the group to sing, “If he died, what then.” Colloway’s stunning vocal performance was spoiled by the
fact that her “song” was not really a song at all, but rather eight full
paragraphs of text taken from Asenath Nicholson's narrative, Annals of the Famine in Ireland.
The
excruciating length and improbability of following the text proved too much for
the audience’s already stretched attention span—and more than a few found
themselves asleep in their chairs.