Trident Ensemble at St. Mary’s
Last Saturday, I needed a break. I could either go to a NY Philharmonic concert w/ an interesting, but traditional program (Dvorak, Janacek) or take a chance on a much smaller listing in the New Yorker -- the Trident Ensemble at Church of St. Mary the Virgin, just off Times Square (skipping the built in joke).
The program was entitled “Outliers” and consisted of Italian vocal music from the Renaissance and from the 20th Century. Part of the draw was definitely Sciarrino, a composer whose music I’ve been fascinated by ever since seeing Luci mie traditrici at Lincoln Center Festival in 2001. We got a larger dose of that then I had even hoped for, which was excellent.
I had assumed that the first half would be the Renaissance and the second half would be the 20th Century. But after we started, I realized how lop-sided that would have felt. They much more wisely intermixed them, to much better effect. It started w/ a not visible soloist (the bass -- Trident has 6 members, all male, ranging from counter-tenor to bass) who sang a Scelsi piece from the back of the church. The more I hear Scelsi, the more I feel it’s pure aestheticism, w/o any emotional content.
The first two interspersed Sciarrino pieces felt more like experiments -- they are pieces to experimental visual poetry. The last, Responsorio delle tenebre in contrast, was a homage & extension to the classic Italian style of Gesualdo, and was so much more meaningful -- gently, but firmly, taking the old style and extending it into his own realm, often by singing the first line of the verse in a traditional style, and then in the second extending out the vocal line in a way that is obviously modern and his own. Not in the breathy way that his instrumental works sound, but as if he’s giving freedom to the soloists to revel in and elongate the traditional sound. Before they revert back to the traditional sound, as the flight of fancy must always return and start again from the ground.
My other discovery was the appreciation for Gesualdo himself. The notes talk about Gusauldo’s chromaticism, but to hear the chromatic density after the sparer earlier works, was quite another thing. I could appreciate the other composers -- especially Monteverde -- but the Gesauldo hit me as it hadn’t before.
Trident Ensemble, The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Saturday, 27 May 2017,