Orchestra 2001 at Trinity Center

Composers usually opt for poetry when they set texts to music, but occasionally they give a prose writer a crack at musical immortality. One of the classics of American music, Samuel Barber's Knoxville, Summer of 1915, sets a long prose passage by James Agee.

For his 2003 Letter from Cathy, the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen chose a more personal source: a letter that soprano Cathy Berberian wrote him in April 1964. James Freeman opened Orchestra 2001's latest concert with Letter from Cathy and repeated the piece at the end of the first half so we could have a rare second chance to hear a modern work.

Freeman has given us other opportunities to hear the same work twice in one evening. Sometimes a work sounds very different the second time. That didn't happen this time but I did find myself looking forward to the bits I'd liked. Letter from Cathy is a charming, entertaining piece that crowds a gamut of moods into a small compass, as letters often do.

Andriessen's vocal writing is relatively straightforward, but his instrumental accompaniment embellishes it with some memorable touches. When Cathy describes her meeting with Stravinsky, who paid her a compliment in French, the violin and the piano comment on the scene with an ironic lushness. Later, when Cathy tells Andriessen that she misses Amsterdam and its "wonderful streets." a touching violin passage evokes a street scene.

Excessive volume

In between the two Cathys, Freeman presented the Philadelphia premiere of French composer Pierre Boulez's 1997 work Anthemes 2, for solo violin and "live electronics"— a reference to the computer programs that controlled the interaction between Gloria Justen's violin and the sounds emitted by the loudspeakers placed around the hall.

It's an interesting idea, but the first sounds from the speakers immediately evoked my personal bias against over-amplified music. Granted, I probably wouldn't have liked the piece even if the management had reduced the volume to a less aggressive level. To my ear, the electronic part sounded, like much of electronic music, like the sound track for a vampire movie.

Crumb's seventh songbook

The evening's world premiere was the seventh and final installment of George Crumb's American Songbook— a series in which Crumb frames American songs with settings that frequently highlight hidden depths and unexpected implications.

All the songs in the seven books are set for voice, amplified piano, and the kaleidoscope of tone colors that a four-person modern percussion section can add to the proceedings. The seventh book, like the sixth, calls for a soprano and a baritone.

The opening song, "Softly and Tenderly," is a good example of Crumb's ability to emphasize tensions and conflicts that may not be apparent at first glance. I remember "Softly and Tenderly" as an "altar call" hymn that Southern Baptist congregations sang at the end of their services during my teenage sojourns in Florida and Georgia. The refrain "Jesus is calling" is an invitation to join the minister at the front of the church and publicly accept salvation.

But Crumb has noted that the refrain alternates between "Jesus is calling" and "Jesus is coming." The invitation is buttressed by a reminder that the second coming and the Last Judgment could occur at any time. Crumb brings out the tension between the threat and the invitation with devices like the soprano's whispered "Jesus is coming."

Faithless men, and women

In the sixth number in this group, Crumb interweaves two familiar tunes and transforms them into a comic lament of the sexes. The soprano sings "Come all Ye Fair and Tender Maidens," which laments the faithlessness of men, at the same time the baritone sings "On Top of Old Smoky," which laments the faithlessness of women.

Other songs receive more straightforward settings. "Softly and Tenderly" is followed by a high-tension Pawnee Indian chant with plenty of drums and an irresistible forward drive. The Christmas spiritual "Glory Be to the Newborn King" gets a touch of the blues and a cheerful little xylophone run that accents its association with Christmas and infancy.

The songbook project was launched when Crumb's soprano daughter suggested he set some folk songs she was studying. It now includes 65 settings distributed over five hours of playing time. Ann Crumb has been one of the featured singers in the premieres of some of the other installments, and it was particularly fitting that she should lend her vocal expertise, and her special knowledge of the composer, to the last act.

Baritone Patrick Mason contributed a bracing masculinity to the Pawnee chant and handled the rest of his assignments with vigor and understanding.

Crumb's songbooks are obviously a showcase for percussionists. Three Philadelphia freelance percussion stars— William Kerrigan, Susan Jones, and David Nelson— have played in all seven premieres. The amplified piano is actually a part of Crumb's percussion section, and another mainstay of Philadelphia music, Marcantonio Barone, has stayed with Crumb's songbooks all the way.♦


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