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New Works from New Players New York
Symphony Space
04/16/2025 -
Victoria Bond: Piano Trio: “Other Selves”
Elena Firsova: Four Seasons
Andrew Waggoner: Matter, Circle, Heart (World Premiere)
Poul Ruders: Piano Quartet
Rudersdal Chamber Players: Christine Pryn (Violin), Marie Stockmarr Becker (Viola), John Ehde (Cello), Manuel Esperilla (Piano)
Rudersdal Chamber Players (© Courtesy of the Artists)
“Ruders can be gloriously, explosively extrovert one minute-withdrawn, haunted, intently inward-looking the next. Super-abundant high spirits alternate with pained, almost expressionistic lyricism; simplicity and directness with astringent irony.”
Stephen Johnson
“I write to entertain, enrich and to disturb, not necessarily in that order.”
Poul Ruders
The opening concert of Cutting Edge’s “New Music Festival 2025” lived up to its name. The four performers of Rudersdal Chamber Players are well‑known in their native Denmark, but this was their first recital in the United States. Of the four composers here, Victoria Bond and Poul Ruders are familiar, but Elena Firsova and Andrew Waggoner were new to this listener.
True, three of the four works have been played previously, but Mr. Waggoner’s Matter, Circle, Heartwas a world premiere. And a work which justified its metaphysical title.
On the surface, the four players dazzled through a perpetual motion of scales and variations, Yet with a few measures s‑l‑o‑w‑l‑y edging toward the whirling (almost) non‑stop four‑artist shenanigans. Yet we had far more here, slithers of melodies peering through the scales, the stops and starts transformed into pure melody.
At first hearing (unlike two of the other works), one didn’t need to look for musical clues to decipher the meaning. Mr. Waggoner’s work swirled for itself.
The opening work by Leningrad-born London-living Elena Firsova also spoke to itself. Though Four Seasons had the doleful quality which she visualizes England’s seasons. I love these seasons, but I doubt if the British Tourist Board would approve the work.
Mind you, Ms. Firsova had created a beautifully crafted piece of “Mild winter, beautiful spring, short summer and dull chill autumn.” And the violin, viola and cello made a dark (if hardly lugubrious) background for piano. Musically it was lovely. Thematically, it turned England into a country dark with clouds, sunlight momentarily pushing through.
Victoria Bond, who hosts Cutting Edge Concert was represented by her seven‑movement Trio: Other Selves. Commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, it was choreographed with the inspiration of sculptures by Marjorie Michael called A Woman’s Journey. One would have liked to see those works, since Ms. Bond’s seven movements, while supposedly theme-and-variation, were a septet of entirely different moods.
Easiest was “Rags”, with its slightly jazzy tone. Then we had three cadenzas. Violin, cello and piano each took movement to show their chops in solo. And finally, we had a finale showing the great craftsmanship which Ms. Bond shows in all here prolific work.
Poul Ruders had no better explanation than critic Stephen Johnson above. But with all the adjectives and nouns characterizing Mr. Ruders, he left out one: the word interesting.
I have loved Ruders’ symphonies, concerti and last night’s Quartet, but one needs many a hearing to peer through the gorgeous jungle of notes. Does he have the thicket of Messiaen (without the New Testament imagines)? Or the jolting lyricism of his countryman Carl Nielsen?
In the four movements of the Quartet last night, I might have tried to “describe” it, but nothing can describe the bounding, soaring, whispering elegiac four movements. Sounds which were clarified into a near-mystical bell‑like finale. I must–as everyone last night should–hear it again and again. Not only for decipherment, but the sheer joy of his inspiration.
Ruder’s Quartet was written for his fellow Danes, the Rudersdal Chamber Players. They were, for four totally separate styles and works, terrific. One might singly them out separately as in Ms. Bond’s cadenzas. But their clarity in Ruder’s Quartet was equally enchanting. May their initial appearance here usher in many more.
Harry Rolnick
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