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Cool French sounds from Bent Frequency
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW Bent Frequency. “Timbre and Sound II.” Sunday at Eyedrum.
Among the former music powers of continental Europe — Austria, Germany, Italy and France — only the last retains today a prosperous creative scene.
Yet aside from the late Olivier Messiaen, whose music is regularly performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, we rarely hear modern French composers.
To help address this gap, the French Consulate in Atlanta gave a grant to Bent Frequency, a new-music group powered by ASO musicians and top local freelancers. In two shows — the first was heard in February; the second Sunday evening at the Eyedrum art/music space — Bent Frequency covered a half century of Gallic music.
They picked the scores well and played them with virtuosity. Messiaen was on Sunday’s program with “Le Merle noir” (1952), a cadenza of bird songs and impressions of the primeval forest, where flutist Sarah Kruser Ambrose and pianist Lisa Leong impersonated the blackbird and other avian singers.
Paradoxically, the French “scene” has gained strength through more than a half-century of cultural battles. One of Messiaen’s students, Pierre Boulez, now in his 80s, once dominated the landscape of French music. He accomplished this hegemony not through the appeal of his abstract yet impressionistically bewitching music — at the concert we heard his “Derive 1” from 1984 — but by creating artistic factions and bullying everyone who wouldn’t play along. Boulez is a one-off genius, however, and few of his followers have the talent to keep up.
So it was interesting to hear side by side a prominent Boulez disciple, Gerard Grisey, and a composer the old man shunned, Pascal Dusapin.
Guess which one is the better composer?
Grisey’s micro-tonal “Talea” (1986), is innovative and rigorous in construction but rarely ear-catching. For the six players, conducted by Robert Ambrose, it seemed like a lot of hard work with little aesthetic payoff.
In contrast, clarinetist Ted Gurch and cellist Brad Ritchie found warmth and love in Dusapin’s Klezmer-inflected “Ohe” (1996). The 10-minute duet moves at a conversational pace. The talk is emotional, of loss and melancholy, almost like brothers sharing their private thoughts. Dusapin’s eloquent vocabulary allows him communicate personal feeling in an abstract medium — and kept the listeners rapt throughout.
At 40, Yan Maresz was the youngest composer of the bunch. Last on the program was his “Entrelacs,” from 1998, where six voices are interlaced, passing musical fragments to and fro. It’s feisty and confident in its abstraction, with a serene and almost jazzy middle section: the flute flutters and the piano twinkles above cool bass plunks. The enchanting moment lasted just a minute or two, but showed a powerful voice in the making — and a continued bright future for French music.
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