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Tone, Words and Memories New York
Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center
07/16/2025 -
Anthony Cheung: the echoing of tenses
American Modern Opera Company: Paul Appleby (Tenor), Miranda Cuckson (Violin), Anthony Cheung (Piano)
A. Cheung (© Ben Gebo)
“And I weep like a child for the past.”
D.H. Lawrence
“Memory is sweet. Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet.”
Li-Young Lee
Each time I’ve heard Anthony Cheung, as pianist or composer, I’ve been absolutely stunned by his invention, his lucidity, his seriousness and originality. Last night, for the final performance of this summer’s American Modern Opera Company, this originality was not only in music but the most singular form.
One could not possibly call the echoing of tenses an opera. The poems sung, spoken and played were too diverse for a song‑cycle. The instruments–piano, violin and tenor–were interrupted by electronic sounds, narration and the quarter‑tones of Mr. Cheung’s piano.
And while the theme was vaguely that of memory, each of the nine poems by seven writers–Victoria Chang, Arthur Sze, Jenny Xie, Monica Youn, Ocean Vuong, Cathy Park Hong and Li‑Young Lee–took the most variegated paths, some actually realistic. The transformation of pandas, Babylonian pistachio trees and stories told by grandparents to children And poems about death, memories, shadowy memories of China to... well abstractions difficult to remember.
That poetry was a surfeit of words. These were not our MTA subway poems. Nor did the Asian-American poets imitate the monosyllabic poetry of “classical” Chinese and Korean poets. Rather, the four poets on stage and one tenor gave us serious verses whose themes metaphysical, spiritual, anecdotal, and imagic. Too many images to take in at one hearing.
Like all serious and thoughtful poetry, the rhythms, the words, the images were coverings for more intense subjects. And true, by the end of this work, one was feeling that great instincts, and thoughts had come through.
(A confession. These were real poets with real homes. Living in Hong Kong for too many years, I realized that poetry was impossible. Hong Kong was not a country, not a state, no history, no past, no future... thus no culture.)
Anthony Cheung’s original concept was an eternal one. From Odyssey to John Dowland, Schubert and the word/music battle of Strauss’s Capriccio, the word/music equation is–happily–an unwinnable battle. So at most, what we had in the echoing of tenses was three musicians taking excellent (and at most puzzling) poetry, and decorating it, filling in the blanks, shedding a light on what had been opaque.
To a degree that worked. The absolute lusciousness of Paul Appleby’s tenor voice (a voice as eloquent, as sheerly beautiful at that of Peter Pears) gave both a lucid and emotional standard to the poetry. And bless him for that.
The renowned violist Miranda Cuckson wasn’t quite so rational. She could imitate words, she could whisper or play lyrical strands. In a way, her violin was resembled the words in Alban Berg’s songs. She sung out the feelings of the words, her fiddle‑range was an echo of Mr. Appleby’s word‑songs. And in line with the total experience, hers were the lines which helped illuminate the experience.
Anthony Cheung was unexpectedly not not the binding force. At times, the piano was silent. At times, he offered a consonant accompaniment, at other times, his quarter‑tone keyboard gave a harmonic jolt to the out‑of‑tune violin.
P. Appleby, M. Cuckson (© Jonathan Tichler/J Henry Fair)
Mainly, though, we had here a concert of words. Nebulous, amorphous, sentimental, bracing, solitary, exquisite... far more than could be swallowed by us in the audience in a 60‑minute endeavor.
Mr. Cheung, as always, must be applauded for his audacity, his invention, his creation, and the singular way it was put into execution. He, with narrators, singer and violin enclosed us under a multi‑colored tent in the middle of a concert hall inside a city, country, and galaxy. That we didn’t comprehend the actions under the tent was irrelevant.
In fact, essentially Mr. Cheung’s words and tones were sometimes utterly meaningless. Like music itself.
Harry Rolnick
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