Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE) continues its 30th anniversary concert series with Sounds Divine. Mysticism and ecstasy permeate this varied program, which explores a variety of spiritual experiences. Olivier Messiaen's Poèmes pour Mi, Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel, complement works of T.J. Anderson, Errollyn Wallen, and Maurice Ravel.
Andrea Plesnarski and Tom Nugent, Left Coast's oboists, have chosen Eric Nathan's Just a Moment, a piece that is a conversation between two oboes and creates a sense of trancelike meditation and dancing joy. Presenter Seth Knopp describes Nathan's ability to encompass these two worlds in his compositions: “[Nathan] writes music from a quiet but very passionate place... it resonates in such large ways. Yet it’s also so intimate and personal.… It very quietly seeps in."
T. J. Anderson's Shouts, an enticing oboe quartet,opens with a hymnlike section marked religioso and unfolds in forty improvisations. Arvo Pärt's mesmerizing and spacious Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror) reflects his fascination with early European polyphony and chant. We present the particularly songlike version for oboe and piano in this program.
Left Coast’s artistic co-director Anna Presler describes Errollyn Wallen's Dervish: “It starts with a feeling of suspended animation before giving way to repeating short motives that emerge gradually and accumulate to create a state of rapture. The dervish dance, according to the composer, lasts for hours and the ‘whirling’ part known in popular culture does not occur until late in the ceremony." As Wallen explains, “In dervish dances, contrary to popular myth, there is absolutely no hedonistic wildness; the swirling skirts move from rapt and still devotion. The Sufi dance is solely for worship. I wanted to capture this atmosphere (Dervish proceeds from an intense, trance- like state) and also to set it beside the passion that is speed.”
Matilda Hofman, co-director with Anna Presler, describes the songs which frame the program: “Ravel’s Two Melodies Hebraiques uses sparse and haunting harmonizations of the Kaddish, followed by a Yiddish verse exploring the “eternal enigma”. The songs are a beautiful meeting of musical and spiritual sensibilities. Finally, Olivier Messien’s extraordinary Poèmes pour Mi are a rapturous and surreal take on New Testament writings which culminate in the singer, the pianist and the text almost transforming together into one sonorous, ringing bell-like body.”
In Advance: $30 General Admission / $10 Students At the Door: $38 General Admission / $20 Subsidized / $15 Students.