CLASSICAL MUSIC

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Post-Classical Ensemble

Aaron Copland wrote his first film score for "The City," a documentary produced by the federal government in 1939 to advocate a new type of planned suburb ringed by a "green belt" of unspoiled nature. Many of the film's idyllic images of such communities came from the city of Greenbelt, which celebrates the 70th anniversary of its founding as a public cooperative this year.

Greenbelt is also convenient to the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, which is where the celebration went on Sunday afternoon, when the Post-Classical Ensemble and its music director, Angel Gil-Ordonez, performed Copland's score and actor John Basinger provided narration to accompany a projection of "The City."

The live performance liberated Copland's score from the film's low-fidelity recording and made the music an equal partner with the film's images and words, presenting dated propaganda but with considerable dramatic power. The Post-Classical Ensemble synced precisely with the film (a challenge Gil-Ordonez likened to "conducting an opera where the singers are robots") and vividly rendered Copland's striking music: a pastoral evocation of a New England village, rich with lambent wind chords; little melodic stabs matching frenetic cuts in a famous lunchroom montage; and a breezy ditty called "Sunday Traffic," mocking the ancestors of our random Beltway backups.

After the nightmarish big city, Copland's music for the utopian green belt town sounded pretty but insubstantial. Sunday's events engaged Greenbelt much more vividly: The ensemble's artistic director, Joseph Horowitz, led a conversation about the film and the urban planning ideas it advanced, and after the performance, a panel discussed whether Greenbelt has achieved the promise of "The City."

Hearing Copland's score in artistic, historical and social context made the concert experience all the richer.

-- Andrew Lindemann Malone

Richard Goode

Pianist Richard Goode brought his customary clarity of thought and finger work to a meaty program of masterworks Sunday afternoon at Congregation Beth-El as part of the FAES Chamber Music Series. In a set of Debussy preludes, Goode was a master tone painter, summoning up the widest palette imaginable on the instrument. In "Ondine," he limned a shimmering, darting portrait of the water nymph, and in the climax of "La Cath¿drale Engloutie" the walls veritably shook from the force. The first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata was on the fast side but still atmospheric, and Goode hurtled through the finale with splendid panache, perfectly capturing the presto agitato marking.

His opening Bach set was least successful. There was excellent separation of voices, but the dotted rhythms of the G Minor Prelude, BWV 885, were flaccid, and the meter of the E-flat Sinfonia, BWV 791, was left to the listeners' imagination. Elsewhere, some of Goode's playing seemed a bit mechanical (for him). Was any of this because he was using the score?

Goode's Chopin is not self-indulgently beautiful, but it is logical and satisfying; each piece has structural cohesion, and the music always breathes. Some might wish for less atticism and more hedonism in their Chopin, but Goode's searching clarity etches the music more deeply into our minds, if not our souls. Three mazurkas were sharply characterized (sounding entirely different from waltzes), the Impromptu in F-sharp sang with gentle innocence, and the thunderous Polonaise in F-sharp Minor, despite some missed notes, came out with backbone and attitude.

-- Robert Battey

Opera Theatre Of Northern Virginia

There are few operas as family-friendly as Engelbert Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel." Although it is the most Wagnerian of all children's operas -- Humperdinck was Wagner's assistant and his son's music tutor -- it has warmth and sweetness that make it far less grim than the Grimm fairy tale on which it is based.

The new production by Opera Theatre of Northern Virginia is a perky one, sung in English and set for some reason in the 1950s, when modest suburban houses apparently had dark witch-filled woods nearby. It's compressed to one hour, preceded by a chance to watch the stage being set up, and followed by a question-and-answer period. Sunday's performance at Thomas Jefferson Community Theatre in Arlington had plenty to offer novice opera-goers. Director Joe Banno kept the action (and scenery) moving briskly, and John Edward Niles conducted a chamber group -- string quintet, woodwind quartet and piano -- with enthusiasm.

Soprano Katherine Osborne was bouncy and bright-voiced as Gretel, and mezzo-soprano Elaine Dalbo made a playful Hansel. Soprano Sarah Philippa was both the harassed mother and the farcical witch -- with huge nose, purple wig, rolling-pin wand and a vacuum cleaner to ride. Baritone Wade Thomas was a strong, stolid father. And soprano Kathy Hankins made the nighttime Sandman and morning Dew Fairy equally silly. Unfortunately, the cast's words were not always audible -- apparently a problem with sound rather than enunciation.

A nine-member chorus of local children brought brightness onstage at every appearance, even when moving scenery.

The performance will be repeated Saturday at 4 and 7 p.m.

-- Mark J. Estren