GOOD MANNERS = GOOD MUSIC
SANTA FE, N.M.—Call it the battle of the sexes. A group of mostly female composers produced new works to be played by an all-male string quartet at the Santa Fe (N.M.) Chamber Music Festival. The first came equipped with pens and printers, the second with bows more eloquent than any archer’s weaponry.
And music was in flux, matching the name of the ensemble. Happily, the outcome was harmonious, and the fest’s latest package of the new and latest evolved without incident beyond extended clapping by the St. Francis Auditorium fans on Aug. 6.
As often expected, most of the emphasis was on precise challenging sounds making great technical demands of the Flux Quartet, which was not left wanting.
This intimate festival runs full blast, so to speak, from July 26 to Aug. 23. I have yet to hear anything remotely amateurish unless it’s me bleating about the mask requirements imposed by the pandemic.
Augusta Read Thomas, the veteran of the composing group, contributed the four-movement “Filigree of the Sun,” notable for its joint sonorities and a prominent cello lied. Its close harmonies were memorable in a very lyrical work starting off with soft pizzicatos, like water droplets heard in a resonant cave.
The 22-minute String Quartet No. 2 of English composer Helen Grime, 39, is much influenced by Bartok, but she was perhaps the most meditative of the four, starting with a dreamy opening page and ending with a lullaby. In between came great intensity, swarm-of-bees effects, and the trills of intriguing uncertainty.
Lara Poe, 27, a woman of multiple identities—-part American, Finnish, England-based—displayed her gift of the instruments going in different directions while being well coordinated. Her 9-minute “Dialetheia” was aphoristic, growing out of the pianissimo whimsy of the disarming opening.
Cleveland-based Jack Hughes, 38, in his 11-minute “Jubilate PM” has a marvelous opening of enigma—will he go this way, or that? The gets the lion’s share of the drama, going into extra high harmonics, with the cello of Felix Fan providing essential pedal points.
The Flux Quartet impressed in this go-round with unfamiliar music from four commissions, all works created a year ago or less. Both Hughes and Poe attended the Aug. 6 concert.
SANTA FE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL, 48th season, with changing daily concerts July 18-Aug. 23. New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, N.M. At (505) 983-2075 or online: www.sfcmf.org.
