Three great cities take the spotlight with Parlando
Even given Parlando’s high bar for the eclectic, with the program “Sidewalk Tango” Ian Niederhoffer raised it a notch or two above.
The thematic red thread running through Parlando’s Sunday afternoon concert at Merkin Hall was the symbiotic relationship between energy and change. For Niederhoffer, that phenomenon manifests itself in the world’s ever-evolving great cities, such as Berlin, Seoul, and Buenos Aires, all of which were represented musically by the afternoon’s three chosen composers.
Erwin Schulhoff captured the vibrancy of the early years of the Weimar Republic in his Suite for Chamber Orchestra. Composed in 1921, Schulhoff in his Suite substituted six popular dances of the time for the courtly ones associated with the Baroque era. He was inspired by the music he heard in Berlin, where he lived in the Twenties, played by black American soldiers stationed there, who not only performed in military bands but did double duty as jazz musicians. There’s more than a whiff of John Philip Sousa, and Charles Ives too, in the Suite for Chamber Orchestra, although Schulhoff probably didn’t know anything about the latter man or his music.
Niederhoffer let Parlando in a colorful, exciting performance of the Suite, beginning with “Ragtime.” The brief dance was replete with the tang of an out-of-tune wind band and energetic rolls from the snare drum. In “Valse Boston,” violinist Joel Lambdin played the somber waltz melody with easy grace. A darker, more mysterious mood was set with “Tango,” accompanied by some great riffs from cellist Diana Golden.
“Shimmy” evoked Ives’ polytonality and musical collages with the blast of a car horn and the screech of a whistle. In “Jazz,” the final movement of the Suite, Niederhoffer propelled the music forward to the beat of the bass drum. Its minor key cast a somewhat disjunct feel to the work which ended with a bang.
Unsuk Chin is a South Korean composer based in Berlin and was a student of György Ligeti. Niederhoffer led Parlando in Chin’s Gougalōn, which received its world premiere in 2012 by the Ensemble Intercontemporain led by Susanna Mälkki.
“Scenes from a Street Theater” is the subtitle for Gougalōn, a word derived from Old High German, which has multiple meanings denoting various nefarious deeds ranging from hoodwinking to making ridiculous body movements. The piece was inspired by what Chin describes as a Proustian moment that she experienced in old neighborhoods on her first visits to China. The composer said they reminded her of the vanished world of Seoul in the Sixties when wandering troupes of entertainers performed on the streets and hawked self-made elixirs to people whose lives were marked by poverty.
Watching the orchestra set up for the performance was entertaining by itself as trays of mutes for the brass and innumerable percussion instruments appeared. Every performer on stage, save the strings, played some sort of percussion instrument in a performance that was as much fun to watch as it was to hear. Unsuk Chin intended the work to have an amateurish air, but with Niederhoffer, it was more controlled chaos.
There was the sound of prepared piano, as well as the stomping of the pianist’s foot. Gongs, bongos, twig brushes, and noise-making apparatuses of all sorts commanded attention, as did the sight of eight bottles being played like a xylophone. Nothing, however, topped watching a large metal sheet being struck by the handle of a long leather whip.
Astor Piazzolla’s 1982 Suite Punta del Este, is a three-movement piece scored for bandoneón, strings, and winds. Composed in the tango neuvo style, it is named for the Uruguayan resort popular with the Latin and North American jet set and tourists, where Piazzolla summered and enjoyed shark fishing.
Argentinian-born JP Jofre and his bandoneón were front and center, which turned the performance almost into a solo concerto. Musically, however, Jofre was more chameleon-like, alternating flashy solo playing and submerging his sound into Piazzolla’s complex musical fabric. There was also some particularly fine playing from clarinetist Nuno Antunes throughout the work. Niederhoffer summoned sound from the orchestra that ranged from chamber-music sensibilities to that of a full symphony orchestra in this energetic, stylish performance.
For an encore, Jofre performed his” Primavera,” which he composed after arriving in New York in 2008. Lambdin began the short, energetic piece with some snappy, driving jabs on the violin before Jofre took over and fascinated with virtuosic turns on his instrument. There were some exciting passages where Jofre displayed the rhythmic possibilities of the bandoneón to the accompaniment of string pizzicatos and percussive piano playing before the work ended in a flash.
Parlando presents “Mystic Chords” with works by Bryce Dessner, Vaughan Williams, and Messiaen, Feb. 23 at Merkin Concert Hall. parlandonyc.com
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