Reviews and Testimonials

What Film Forum is to cinema, North/South Consonance is to modern classical music—an independent nonprofit bringing New York City deserving works overlooked by big-ticket distributors and mainstream media. North/South continued its 32 season of free concerts Feb. 19 with “Midwinter Sounds,” music for chamber orchestra by composers from Cuba, Italy, and the U.S., at Christ & St. Stephen’s Church.

Mexican-born Max Lifchitz founded North/South in 1980 to guide the works of Latin American composers to worldwide attention. Today North/South has its own record label and a long list of international premiers. Still, Lifchitz feels he’s fighting two concurrent trends: mainstream producers playing it safe by promoting only well-proven (i.e., commercially successful) composers coupled with lassitude on the part of the listening public. “Radio is afraid to play this music, and you can’t get a listing in The New York Times unless you have a big publicity budget,” he says. “With so much prerecording, people take music for granted. They want to have it on in the background, but they don’t want it to get in the way. This music isn’t easy listening.”

Maybe not, but “Midwinter Sounds” sure wasn’t hard to listen to. Modern classical music is often stereotyped as disjointed and overly intellectual, but the largely programmatic music featured in this concert conjured up a wellspring of good old-fashioned images.

Ada Gentile’s opening mournful phrases in Torre del Guado resolved into a pastoral ode, recalling the tenuously happy end of Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow,” while the four movements of Victor Kioulaphides’ New York Moments are so evocative that one can’t help but listen to the city’s sounds in a different way. Even without knowing the title of the second movement—“Central Park (Reflections on the Lily Pond)”—you’re crossing the Bow Bridge with your lover on a spring day; the eerie melodies of “Tugboat on the Hudson (Evanescent in the Morning Fog)” have you rubbing your shoulders against the strange beauty of the river at dawn.

Harold Schiffman studied composition with both Roger Sessions and Ernst von Dohnanyi. In Serenata Concertante, he offers a largo based on Appalachian fiddle tunes, as relaxed and charming as a sly romance. Ironically, the most “modern” instrumentation came from the oldest composer on the program—87-year-old Cuban-born Aurelio de la Vega. Sounds of fragmentation summoned another poem to mind: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Images of a modern age.

cityarts.info/2012/02/22/musical-images-northsouth-consonance-finds-modernity/

NEW YORK The concert presented by Max Lifchitz and his North/South Chamber Orchestra at Merkin Concert Hall on Monday night was billed as a 30th-anniversary gala. Since founding North/South Consonance in 1980, Mr. Lifchitz, a Mexican-born composer, conductor and pianist, has devoted copious effort to promoting the work of composers underserved elsewhere, through a regular series of concerts in New York and on CDs released by North/South Recordings.

But if you were looking for regal finery, flowery speeches and Champagne, you were in the wrong place. This particular gala was celebrated with business as usual. Works by Hilary Tann, Stephen Yip, Edward Green and Mr. Lifchitz received their first performances. A solitary nod to the past, Elizabeth Bell's "Andromeda," was featured in a 2002 North/South Consonance event, the first presented at Merkin.

In all of his endeavors, Mr. Lifchitz has adhered to no particular stylistic dogma, and this concert was accordingly notable for its range. Ms. Tann, Welsh-born and now based in upstate New York, reworked a 1998 trio for oboe, viola and cello, "The Walls of Morlais Castle," into a handsome piece for string orchestra, with dusky melodies and bracing, rustic rhythms.

Mr. Yip's "Spirit Labyrinth II" also dealt in folk-inspired notions, calling on a solo harpist, Megan Levin, and the string players to slap, thump and slide through a ritualistic sequence of gestures, conjuring calm meditation, frenetic enlightenment and eventual repose.

Mr. Green's Concerto for Clarinet and Strings, revised from an earlier work for saxophone and string orchestra, opened with a relaxed lyricism reminiscent of Hollywood's take on Copland's music. Wistful motifs never overstayed their welcome; indeed, you often wished one or another idea would linger to bloom fully. A suave, peppy second part eventually bustled its way back to the first movement's relaxation. Arthur Campbell was the eloquent soloist, sounding especially strong in his rich lower register.

Ms. Bell, a student of Vittorio Giannini and Peter Mennin, showed the most refined grasp of structure and pacing in "Andromeda," less a piano concerto than a well-wrought celestial fantasy in which piano figured prominently. Helen Lin, the soloist, dexterously grappled with contrasting meters and hand-over-hand legerdemain, chorused by strings and two percussionists.

In Mr. Lifchitz's "Night Voices No. 16," for clarinet, strings and percussion, Mr. Campbell was more clearly the focus. Unaccompanied for long stretches, his clarinet sang, purred and growled ornate soliloquies during the fitful work, as strings murmured and a percussionist punctuated the flow.

Throughout the evening you could wish for greater clarity and bite from the ensemble. But the sound the North/South players made was seldom less than respectable; their cause is still more so.

www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/arts/music/10north.html