Post-Classical Ensemble

Art & Life - Music
Saturday, November 11, 2006; Page C12
by Andrew Lindemann Malone

Mexican composer Mario Lavista, renowned at home but virtually unknown here, took the spotlight on Thursday night at the GALA Hispanic Theatre in Columbia Heights. In the first of a series of "Encuentros" (encounters) with contemporary Latin American composers, the enterprising Post-Classical Ensemble invited Lavista for an illuminating discussion of three of his works (all Washington premieres) with Artistic Director Joseph Horowitz. The music and the performances rewarded the attention.

In Lavista's "Marsias," based on a Greek myth in which the title character challenges Apollo to a musicmaking contest, Wes Nichols's oboe burst with pleading melodies and passionate squawks. On the opposite side of the stage, tuned glasses, filled with water to set their pitch and played by ensemble members running wetted fingers around their rims, created perfect-fifth harmonies with a steely glint that, like Apollo, did not recognize the challenge. Claude Debussy's reserved yet evocative "Syrinx" for solo flute, unspooled gracefully by David Lonkevich, had an obvious kinship with Lavista's "Three Secular Dances." The latter depicts "three moments — that escape any descriptive purpose — in the courtship of imaginary birds," the composer informed us in a program note. Cellist Evelyn Elsing and pianist Naoko Takao captured the dances' strange, affecting lyricism and occasional odd whimsy.

Music Director Angel Gil-Ordóñez and the Post-Classical Ensemble presented "Reflections of the Night," for string orchestra, at both the beginning and at the end of the program, each time in appropriately low light. Lavista had the strings play harmonics throughout — the eerie, whispery reflections of fundamental pitches that are never heard. The sheer otherworldliness of the sounds dominated first impressions, but upon closer acquaintance, the piece's glissandi, dynamic shifts and flickering melodies conjured a hypnotic musical landscape.