|
Back
The Art of the Impossible New York
Salmagundi Club
09/17/2024 -
Jennifer Higdon: American Canvas
Victoria Bond: Blue and Green Music: IV. “Dancing Colors”
John Musto: Later the Same Evening: Ruth’s Aria
Ned Rorem: Trio for Flute, Violoncello and Piano
Amanda Page (director): Jackson Pollock: Portrait
Amy Burton (Soprano)
John Musto (Pianist), Dolce Suono Trio: Mimi Stillman (Flute), Gabriel Cabezas (Cello), Charles Abramovic (Piano)
Roger Trefousse (Speaker-Composer)
V. Bond, C. Abramovic, M. Stillman, G. Cabezas (© Samuel A. Dog)
“A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.”
Leopold Stokowski
“For they (art and music) are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
C. S. Lewis
Only once has the improbable merger of painting and music made personal emotional sense. A museum in Al Hambra had a room filled from ceiling to floor with ten‑foot high Spanish Renaissance paintings of Jesus’ Crucifixion. One more tortured than the other. Blood, tears, agonizing eyes, Mary weeping, dark backgrounds with lightning, vicious centurions.
And the music from the sound system? Of course 16th Century Spanish church music. The masses of Tomás Luis de Victoria, the contrapuntal lines of men and boys bewailing, praying, issuing their Kyries, Dies Iræ, pleas of Libera me, eight‑voices supplications.
The combination was too much. I left the Museo and wandered down the endless Al Hambra gardens, perhaps even shedding a tear or two.
Last night Cutting Edge Concerts, compeered by Victoria Bond, attempted another duality of music and–in this case–American 20th Century painters. In many ways, their aspirations were fulfilled.
The site was the126-year-old Salmagundi Club, created by and for artists and still a treasure-house of conservative paintings on every wall. Then too, the evening started and climaxed with a splendid PBS documentary about Jackson Pollock. It commenced with a filmed interview from the composer, Roger Trefousse and his methods of composing. Then after the live music, the documentary was shown.
Like most good films (with lots of exceptions from On the Waterfront to Star Wars), the music was hidden. In this case hidden behind the commentaries from painters, from John Cage, from Pollock’s wife. And from the mighty Homeric paintings from Jackson Pollock himself.
That prelude and postlude gave promise. As for the live section, one inevitably had the unhappy choice of considering a) the music; or b) whether it gave a picture of the artist. This was made easy–unhappily–since no examples of Georgia O’Keefe, Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth or Jackson Pollock was put on display during the piano/cello/flute of Dulce Suono Trio. Thus one could hear the music itself.
Oh, one exception, Ned Rorem’s Trio, for which one could have imagined any art except music itself. I’m not a fan of his non‑vocal works, but here Rorem blasted with a terrific voice. Mimi Stillman bursted out with flute sensuosity and surprises, cellist Gabriel Cabezas played a dark solo, real inane conversations with the three instruments in joking through the final. This was a dazzling work which hardly needed the painter’s brush.
Too short was a movement from Victoria Bond’s String Quartet, arranged here for the trio. The title was “Dancing Colors,” and that could have applied to any painter. (My thought was Joan Miró, and I dare any reader to dispute that!)
The wonderful composer Jennifer Higdon depicted three painters in her American Canvas. It was deftly put together. But no way could I have detected Georgia O’Keefe’s New York silhouettes or Andrew Wyeth’s spaces. The middle movement “Jackson Pollock”, had lines flashing around each other, flute, cello and Charles Abramovic’s piano darting, jumping. Was it too obviously Pollock made for music? Was it more literal than searching? Let it be.
Composer John Musto introduced and accompanied soprano Amy Burton in an aria from his Edward Hopper opera. And here I had a personal problem. Most great paintings have a hidden voice. Rembrandt whispers, Franz Hals drunkenly laughs. Bosch has music of the Spheres.
But Hopper? His paintings are silent. Any voice–any voice, even a hush or a rustle–destroys the celebration of what T.S. Eliot called its “lucid stillness.”
Ms. Burton has a gripping operatic voice. But with each note from Hopper’s “woman at a window”, the Hopper Image disintegrated. The opera, Later the Same Evening, might be an enchanting one. Yet, as the evening progressed, the simulacrum of painting and music increasingly seemed like the search for a wondrous myth.
Harry Rolnick
|
