Strata Echo

Hannah Kendall: Network Bed for Piano Quartet
(b. 1984)
Huang, Trio Dolce

Frank Bridge: Cello Sonata in D minor, H. 125
(1897-1941)
Allegro ben moderato
Adagio ma non troppo
Watkins, Vonsattel

— INTERMISSION —

Antonín Dvořák: Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, Op. 81
(1841-1904)
Allegro ma non tanto
Dumka: Andante con moto
Scherzo: Molto vivace, poco tranquillo
Finale: Allegro
Barnatan, The Dolphins Quartet

Tonight we return to that most fundamental of musical and architectural materials, the formal device par excellence: we return to lines. And we return to lines by way of the woman whose visual imagination and material dexterity gave the Great Lakes Festival such a prerogative to think this year about form and structure; one of her textiles lends the title for this concert. Ruth Adler Schnee’s Strata Echo looks, if we have music on the brain (and its title certainly suggests sound), like a cross-section of a wave form. Computer-generated spectral imaging of sound turns up likewise piles of bandwidths, lines of varying thicknesses and curves meant to visually replicate the acoustic fluctuations of frequencies as they move through air. The miracle of Strata Echo, however, on closer inspection, is that Adler Schnee’s lines don’t only flow, like a flat spectrogram, left to right, up and down. Read more…

© Ty Bouque