Violist Carrie Frey’s Recital Spins a Spellbinding Web
Violist Carrie Frey, a graduating senior at Oberlin Conservatory, is consistently one of the most intrepid musicians on a campus full of envelope-busters. She is a member Chartreuse (sometimes a string trio, sometimes a quartet), the jazz-classical fusion sextet deturtle, the new music collective Semble N, and she conceived and organized the annual In C(hristmas) mashup of her own minimalist arrangements of familiar holiday tunes. So it came as no surprise that her senior recital on April 19, 2014, in Kulas Recital Hall, was a smart reimagining of the concept.
Spun from the thinnest threads of material, Frey used the world premiere of Daniel Tacke’s die Kürze as a gossamer wrapping around two more traditional works. Tacke, a 2006 Oberlin graduate who completed his doctorate at UC San Diego in 2012, traffics in compositions of slight fragments, distinctive gestures, and spare sound. Frey broke up the 21 short segments of die Kürze into three sections and played them as an overture, interlude, and coda to her performance. The opening section set the mood as segments i through vii were mere wisps of sounds on a ground of silence.
Frey’s most standard repertoire selection was Brahms’ Two Songs, Op. 91, for which she was joined by mezzo-soprano Natasha Thweat and pianist Silei Ge. Brahms wrote these for violinist Joseph Joachim and his wife mezzo-soprano Amalie Schneeweiss, in hopes of injecting some domestic tranquility into their stormy marriage which suffered from Joachim’s jealous delusions. The trio deftly brought forth the alto clef’s warm sonorities of home and hearth. Segments viii through xiii of Tacke’s die Kürze returned as an intermezzo, bringing more of that precise, but ghostly soundscape. Most striking was xiii in which Frey played no sounds, just slowly raised her eyes up to the heavens.
Composer and violist Atar Arad’s Sonata for solo viola (1992), while certainly more mainstream than die Kürze, demands thorough command of technique. Frey navigated the tortuous course of left hand pizzicatos while simultaneously bowing and frightfully rapid runs up an down the fingerboard without seeming to break a sweat.
Frey’s clever packaging of her recital came to a close with the final section of die Kürze, segments xiv through xxi. Employed in this manner, die Kürze was more something to inhabit than a work to simply play. Frey’s every gesture and motion felt as if part of a meticulously choreographed meditative state. Even her breathing and turning of the cards on which the score was printed were calculated, precise movements. The total effect was spellbinding, as a quiet surge of energy flowed from Frey and pervaded the entire hall.