Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Elliott Carter tribute concerts in this, his centenary, continue apace. On Sunday, the Verge Ensemble presented an almost all-Carter evening at the National Gallery; a broad selection of his solo and chamber works surrounded the premiere of "a garden of flourishing paths" by District native Jeffrey Mumford, co-commissioned by the gallery and the Contemporary Music Forum in Carter's honor.

Carter has produced a wide variety of chamber music for both standard genres and unique mixed ensembles. Verge presented works dating from 1949 through 2006, from esoterica such as the pieces for solo timpani to the classic Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord. In the latter work, from 1952, there are still vestiges of recognizable music gestures: a discernible musical pulse; instruments occasionally playing a melodic line together or passing a motif between themselves; dancelike rhythms; and harmonies that at times seem actually functional. In his recent "Caténaires" for piano, Carter carves out an entertaining pattern of textural and motivic ideas in the moto perpetuo format -- a rush of single notes in steady time -- so beloved by Bach.

Of Mumford's work, a quintet for mixed ensemble in eight short movements, it would be facile to say that it suffered by comparison to those of its preeminent dedicatee. But the fact is that, in this cerebral, modernist idiom, differences in quality are largely theoretical. The work was as difficult to unlock as anything else on the program; perhaps that partly indicates its worth.

-- Robert Battey