David langs collected stories at zankel hall nytimes

http://nyti.ms/QFI259

MUSIC

|

MUSIC REVIEW

Telling Stories, From ‘Beowulf’ to the Hobo Life

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

APRIL 23, 2014

As the composer David Lang points out in his program note for “collected stories,” a fascinating series of concerts he has put together through the auspices of Carnegie Hall, music has long been called upon to help tell different kinds of tales. In planning this six-concert series, which opened on Tuesday night at Zankel Hall before a packed house, Mr. Lang was a far-ranging and visionary collector of stories.

In a bold pairing of medieval and modern works, Tuesday’s program, called “hero,” opened with the early music singer and consummate storyteller Benjamin Bagby performing his scenes from the Anglo-Saxon epic poem “Beowulf.” The evening ended with a complete rendition of Harry Partch’s genre-defying opera “The Wayward,” composed in the early 1940s, performed here by the Harry Partch Institute Ensemble on the actual, wondrously unconventional instruments that Partch built, now maintained at the institute’s headquarters at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

The “collected stories” series is clearly a personal project for Mr. Lang, who this season holds the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall. The offerings range from Tuvan throat singing to a complete performance by the brilliant pianist Louis Lortie of Liszt’s “Années de pèlerinage,” a three-hour musical diary depicting Liszt’s years of pilgrimage; and from a 2008 work by Richard Ayres that incorporates

yodeling to tell what happens to a plane crash survivor, to a piece by John Cage where stories are recited from random cue cards. When you think about it, don’t many life stories seem to unfold with randomness?

It was an inspired idea to begin on Tuesday with “Beowulf,” which made the point that music has been used to tell stories for as long as music and stories have been around. Mr. Bagby has won deserved acclaim over the years for his one-man performance of “Beowulf,” which he speaks and sings while accompanying himself on a six-string medieval harp. Yet a performance of the complete epic story could last as long as five hours. So each Bagby “Beowulf” is different. This one lasted about an hour and focused on the first quarter of the poem.

In this telling, we learn about Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, who has overseen the building of a great banquet hall, where warriors drink and songs are sung. But Grendel, a savage monster who cannot abide the sounds of human gaiety, makes nightly attacks upon the hall, eating sleeping warriors and carrying off others to be enjoyed later. Beowulf, a heroic warrior from another realm, comes to the rescue and in a bloody fight kills Grendel.

Mr. Bagby’s “Beowulf” is, of course, an act of reconstruction, even speculation. He shifted from whispering, to muttering, to shouting, to singing the Anglo-Saxon lines so deftly that song and speech were essentially merged.

Somehow, “The Wayward,” Partch’s 45-minute, self-described opera, was an ideal companion piece. Partch (1901-74) was a true American maverick, a mostly self-trained composer equally inspired by vernacular idioms, experiments in modernist music and ancient Asian tuning systems.

Partch built his own “surreal collection” of instruments, as Mr. Lang puts it, made from found objects and army surplus materials. It was as wonderful to see these instruments on the stage as to hear them played.

Their names suggest what they sounded like: Cloud-Chamber Bowls; Bamboo Marimba; Spoils of War. Partch spent years during the 1930s as a hobo, and “The Wayward” is

a depiction, almost in the manner of ancient Greek drama, of hobo life.

The words were taken by Partch from hobo speech. “Barstow,” the first section, uses inscriptions from eight hitchhikers on a highway railing in California; “San Francisco” is a setting of the cries of two newspaper boys; “The Letter” is a Depression-era message from a hobo friend; and “US Highball” is Partch’s musical account of a transcontinental hobo trip.

The music was an alluring blend of tart, slightly Asian-sounding harmonies, pummeling percussion, volleys of dancing marimba riffs, frenetic bursts of patter, and echoes of Americana. The cast was headed by the baritone Stephen Kalm and the bass-baritone Robert Osborne, both dynamic performers. In their hobo garb they looked as if they had wandered in from the road and were looking to catch a break, grab a snack and then get out of town.

As it happened, Tuesday night was the 70th anniversary to the day of the premiere of “The Wayward” at Carnegie Hall.

The final concerts in Carnegie Hall’s “collected stories” series are on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday evenings at Zankel Hall; 212-­247-­7800, carnegiehall.org.

A version of this review appears in print on April 24, 2014, on page C8 of the New York edition with the headline: Telling Stories, From ‘Beowulf’ to the Hobo Life.

© 2014 The New York Times Company