PETER CHILD: Rilke Songs (mezzo-soprano & ensemble)
NICHOLAS MAW: Ghost Dances
RICHARD PITTMAN’S ABBREVIATED PROGRAM NOTES
“In a program befitting Boston Musica Viva’s 43-year commitment to embracing a wide variety of today’s classical music, BMV performs three recent works by composers with Boston ties. David Rakowski’s concerto Mikronomicon (2009) was commissioned by the ensemble for its pianist, Geoffrey Burleson. Mikronomicon alternates jazzy and cheeky moods as the soloist occasionally trades the piano for a toy melodica. Offsetting Rakowski’s brash and inventive opening with a more lyrical work, Peter Child’s 2008 song cycle Rilke Songs, featuring mezzo-soprano Krista River, sets to music seven of the “Uncollected Poems” of Rainer Maria Rilke, admired by the composer for their Romantic sensibility. The program closes with Nicholas Maw’s Ghost Dances (1988), an “imaginary ballet for five players.” Mimicking the practice Schoenberg pioneered in his seminal Pierrot Lunaire of having the members of the ensemble perform on multiple instruments, the quintet contributes percussion and folk elements with finger cymbals, kazoos, flexatone, strumstick, and kalimba.“
"The playing of the superb Boston Musica Viva instrumental ensemble, under the skillful direction
of Richard Pittman, was precise, elegant, and fiery."
