World premiere with Miami City Ballet enlivens NWS chamber music concert

By Lawrence Budmen

Photo of conductor Aram Demirjian

Conductor Aram Demirjian

Three contemporary works, including a world premiere by a Miami-based composer, and a Brahms classic formed the menu for the New World Symphony’s first chamber music concert of the year on Sunday afternoon at the New World Center in Miami Beach.

The new score was a collaboration with Miami City Ballet, which helped to draw a nearly full house. Even the seats on the sides and rear of the stage were almost completely occupied, which is unusual for these chamber programs. Moreover, the audience was very quiet and attentive, and the dance aficionados stayed for the remainder of the concert.

There was a family element to the proceedings as well. Cellist Oliver Herbert played in three of the afternoon’s four offerings. He is part of the orchestral academy’s extended community, as both of his parents are New World alums from the 1990s. (His father, David Herbert, is principal timpanist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Adrienne Sengpiehl, Herbert’s mother, is a teaching artist at the San Francisco Symphony and freelance Bay Area violinist.) Oliver Herbert himself is an Avery Fisher Career Grant winner and a well-traveled orchestral soloist and chamber player.

The concert opened with Suite for Cello and Chamber Winds by Chinese-born composer Chen Yi, a modern evocation of traditional Chinese instruments by the cello and ensemble of four winds, three brass players, and percussion. In the opening “Lusheng Ensemble,” Herbert skillfully performed the high harmonics and challenging solos. In “Echoes of the Set Bells,” the marimba produced bell-like tones and the cello intoned a folk-infused theme against the ensemble’s delicate glints of color. “Romance of Hsiao and Ch’in” proved the suite’s most traditional section with solo flute and winds dominating.

Fierce dissonance and thrashing percussive licks opened “Flower Drums in Dance.” The increasingly agitated cello lines culminated in a hard-driving cadenza, dispatched with dashing bravura by Herbert. Conductor Aram Demirjian (music director of the Knoxville Symphony) led a lively reading. A brief interruption between movements when one of the players had an attack of coughing and had to leave the stage to get some water did not dilute the impact of the performance.

The afternoon’s featured event was the premiere of prohibido: Scenes from an Imaginary Ballet by Florida International University faculty member Orlando Jacinto García, with choreography by Ariel Rose, commissioned by the New World Symphony. The work was part of this season’s Resonance of Remembrance series, commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust. In a program note, the composer noted that his music is a reimagined iteration of his String Quartet No. 3 (“I never saw another butterfly”), written in memory of the children of Terezín, the camp where the Nazis imprisoned Jewish artists and allowed them to pursue their artistic creativity, to fool the world about their murderous intentions. Most of the Terezín inmates were shipped off to Auschwitz and killed.

García’s 20-minute score, recast for 20 string players, alternates between elegiac darkness and aggressive, repetitive minimalist figures. With its sense of pathos, García’s creation made a powerful backdrop for the two dancers. The score’s title means “prohibited” in English and refers to government repression based on race, religion, social orientation.  

Rose, a member of Miami City Ballet, is a gifted and imaginative choreographer. At times resembling a classical pas de deux and at other moments the angular path breaking duo of George Balanchine’s Agon, the ballet blends classical and modernist dance patterns replete with beautiful and striking imagery. In the concluding section, the two dancers went to the far ends of the platform and removed their shoes, blurring the lines between ballet and modern dance.

Miami City Ballet dancers Lucy Nevin and Alexander Kadin were stunning in agility and athleticism. Demirjian drew richly sonorous tonal focus from the strings. Courtney Amaro’s lighting and Clyde Scott and Michael Matamoros’ projections enhanced the darkly reflected aura of both music and dance. García, Rose, Demirjian and the dancers received a standing, cheering ovation from an audience both thrilled and moved by their collaboration.

Following intermission, Pizziquitiplas by Venezuelan composer Paul Desenne was a light palate cleanser. The whirling animated patterns on the screens above the stage and side walls matched the steady pizzicato rhythms of seven cellos, Herbert alone bowing his instrument lightly. The result was a hypnotic, 7-minute fantasia, winningly executed.

The concluding reading of Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 1 was held up by a malfunction with Herbert’s electronic score reader but proved worth the wait. Pianist Shih-Man Weng’s opening kaleidoscopic proclamation set a lyrical tone in the first movement. Hannah Corbett’s resonant violin blended with Herbert’s warm-toned hues. Herbert stood out as an aristocrat of the cello, his incisive attack capturing the drama and yearning at the heart of the piece.

Taking a moderate tempo, the players emphasized the eerie qualities of the Scherzo and gave full weight to the Adagio non troppo, sounding as one. The drama between B major and B minor that dominates the finale was captured in a wide variety of dynamics and coloration. Accurate intonation and forceful articulation brought out the storm-tossed moments.

Jeri Lynne Johnson conducts the New World Symphony in Still’s Festive Overture, Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, and Perry’s Stabat Mater with mezzo-soprano Briana Hunter 7:30 p.m. February 8 and 2 p.m. February 9 at the New World Center in Miami Beach. nws.edu

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