Present Music ended the season last Friday evening, returning to Hot Water Wherehouse, a dance club that is a surprisingly good concert venue. Most of the music was chosen by audience vote. The result was a good and consistently intriguing program.
Two pieces featured virtuoso solo performances. Jennifer Clippert was terrific in Peteris Vasks’ Landscape with Birds, displaying every technique possible on the flute. Clippert went far beyond the technical to create a sensitive, sophisticated rendition. William Helmers nailed Fredrik Högberg’s Popmusikk for clarinet and recording, capturing its happy spirit and relentless, percolating rhythms.
Missy Mazzoli (b. 1980) is one of the most promising young American composers. Her Harp and Altar, homage to the Brooklyn Bridge for string quartet and recording, ultimately conjures majesty. Mazzoli’s music is full of boldness and substance. Every work of hers I’ve heard makes me want to explore more from her. The string quartet of Eric Segnitz, Peter Vickery, Maria Ritzenthaler and Adrien Zitoun was also heard in David Hertzberg’s Méditation Boréale, which started high and sweet before plunging into angst with the instruments in a low range. Ritzenthaler was persuasive in a mournful, extensive viola solo.
Ken Thomson’s Perpetual: Underlying is for the unusual combination of bass clarinet and string quartet. I found the unexpected and sympathetic writing for cello and bass clarinet interesting, with the instruments playing off one another. Marcos Balter’s Bladed Stance, for violin, viola, cello, flute, clarinet and trumpet, is a lovely, delicate soundscape, like light glistening on water, with slow changes of harmony. Balance Problems, by Nico Muhly, uses the same instrumentation. This is a better piece, full of attractive variety and drama, than So Far So Good by Muhly, heard at Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra two weeks ago.
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Present Music’s innovative community outreach program, Compose Milwaukee, was featured in The Discovery of Water, written and performed by employees of Badger Meter. Audience participation invariably makes me uncomfortable, so I squirmed through Nick Weckman’s A Metaphor, with audience members asked to create various sounds. It was all so loud I couldn’t hear myself anyway.
