Photo by Fadi Kheir.

 

At Zankel Hall on the evening of Thursday, February 29th, I had the pleasure to attend a fine concert—which was presented as a part of Carnegie Hall’s current festival, “Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice”—featuring the excellent orchestral ensemble, The Knights, exemplarily led here by its Artistic Director and Conductor, Eric Jacobsen.

 

The night began at its acme, which was a superlative account of Maurice Ravel’s astonishing Le tombeau de Couperin. Ravel completed the piano version of it “in 1917, shortly after his discharge from the French army, and orchestrated it two years later,” according to the useful program note by Harry Haskell. He goes on to provide some more background on the work:

 

In the Baroque tradition of the tombeau, or musical memorial, he dedicated the six original movements to the memory of fallen comrades. (His orchestral suite omits the second-movement Fugue and the final Toccata, in which the writing is especially idiomatic for the keyboard.) Inspired by the forms and procedures of Baroque music, his music anticipates the neoclassical style that flourished in the 1920s. Although a dance by François Couperin provided the initial impetus for the work, Ravel wrote that “the tribute is directed not so much to the individual figure of Couperin as to the whole of French music of the 18th century.”

 

The Prélude that opens the suite is oddly ebullient for an elegy, while the Forlane that immediately follows is quirky and also strangely effervescent. The ensuing, more solemn Menuet is probably the prettiest of the movements and the concluding Rigaudon is exuberant at times but with a subdued middle section.

 

The extraordinary Wu Man—a virtuoso of the traditional Chinese string instrument, the pipa—entered the stage for an impressive performance of Du Yun’s powerful Ears of the Book—which was co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall, The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra—which received its world premiere at this event. I here reproduce the composer’s note on the piece:

 

The soloist is the narrator of the story. We listen to her, telling us of encounters that fan out like folds of skin.

 

Ears of the Book, footnote of a paragraph. Shu-er, a word used in ancient Chinese bookbinding that in literal translation means the ear of the bookmark where titles of each section would be notated.

 

Rather than dividing the piece into movements or sections, I saw Polaroids of scenes. Each Polaroid is a snapshot in an emotive mosaic. As in our daily life, these Polaroids appear unexpectedly in the streets, on our kitchen counters, in our key-holder bowls, and scattered around deep corners of our living space. We see moments frozen in time, and our memories relive them, yet again, for us. Our lives are made of intertwined threads that are never broken.

 

The work begins with whiffs of the Nanyin, a Fujianese opera style (from southern China). It is my own footnote of a sonic state with which I resonate. These sonic moments ebb and flow quickly with the orchestra and morph into other lands before taking their own shapes. An interjection, a migration to somewhere else.

 

Thank you to Wu Man for giving me inspiration on the pipa. More importantly, together we attempted to work against the grain of the pipa, finding new territories for this instrument to venture into. And so, we decided together, for the Chinese title, theEars of the Bookcould also mean listening to the stories of the frozen Polaroids that are yet to be told.

 

The work is evocative, mysterious, and sometimes agitated, ending abruptly, and exhibits the major influence of traditional Chinese music. Du Yun was present to receive the audience’s acclaim.

 

The second half of the evening was also memorable, starting with an admirable version of Kurt Weill’s seldom played, dramatic, serious, and compelling Symphony No. 1 from 1921–written, remarkably, when he was only twenty-one. The program closed enjoyably with three classic songs, beginning with Bob Dylan’s marvelous “When the Ship Comes In”—from his celebrated album,The Times They Are a-Changin’—effectively executed here in vocalist Christina Courtin’s own arrangement. Wu Man then returned to the stage to accompany the wonderful singer, Magos Herrera, for a superb rendition—arranged by Artistic Director Colin Jacobsen—of the beautiful “Geni e o Zepelim” by Chico Buarque, from his 1978Ópera do Malandro.Thefinalperformance was of “Alabama Song”—famously recorded by The Doors as well as by David Bowie—written by Weill and Bertolt Brecht, from their magnificent 1930 opera,Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny;it was sung by Courtin and Alex Sopp, accompanied again by Wu Man on thepipa.

 

The artists were rewarded with an enthusiastic ovation.