On the face of it, the Composers Ensemble's portrait concert of Irish composer Gerald Barry contained some bizarre juxtapositions. As well as a selection of his chamber music from the past 25 years, it featured another composer, Johann Strauss, with arrangements of his most famous waltzes. Connections between Strauss's Viennese confections and Barry's objective, acerbic aesthetic seem remote in the extreme. But Barry professes to a consuming passion for these waltzes, and conductor Richard Baker revealed fascinating musical links between these different soundworlds.
Many of Barry's pieces are based on material plundered from other composers. One of his most notorious works, cryptically entitled "______", uses chromatic scales taken from the climaxes of Tchaikovsky's symphonies. By making these ornamental figures the basis of a 12-minute piece, they are transformed from fleeting musical moments into substantial, structural objects. The Composers Ensemble's performance created a compelling drama of frustrated anticipation. Instead of leading to a final release of tension, "______" ended with a serene, chorale-like progression.
That sense of capturing and extending individual musical moments resonated with the Strauss waltzes. In remarkable arrangements by Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg for sextet and septet, the Composers Ensemble demonstrated the sophistication and brilliance of Rosen aus dem Süden, Kaiser-Walzer, and Wein, Weib und Gesang. The repetitive but unpredictable structure of these pieces offered another point of contact with Barry's music. And just like "______", the waltzes created a sense of frozen time: their infectious tunes ensnared the listener no less than Barry's obsessive, circling figures.
The other feature of Strauss's music is its sheer pleasure; and there was another, darker kind of sensuality in Barry's Bob. The title is an acronym of Bower of Bliss, an image from Spenser's Faerie Queene, and a place in which all earthly pleasures are indulged. Barry translates this image into a sextet of violent musical extremes, from a blisteringly energetic opening to a searing, lamenting clarinet line.
Baker and the Composers Ensemble were superbly attuned to the work's volatile changes of tempo and texture. But even Bob's vividness was eclipsed by the explosive drama of Barry's Octet. This relentlessly powerful piece features one of the most fearsome piano solos in the whole literature, here brilliantly dispatched by Stephen Gutman.
