I get started listed here for the reason that I suspect that this certain critical tic — my hunger for (and reliance upon) aboutness — is element of what came amongst me and “Fragments,” cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s multiyear recital job, which planet-premiered its fourth “chapter” at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater on Saturday afternoon in a live performance offered by Washington Performing Arts.
“Fragments” is an try to intermix 36 actions of Bach’s solo cello suites with 27 recently commissioned operates by an age- and world-spanning range of modern day composers. Weilerstein started assembling the venture late in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic shutdowns, inquiring a varied array of composers to produce 10 minutes of new music arranged in two or 3 “fragments,” with the comprehension that they would be issue to potential shuffling into a longer perform.
Weilerstein has been rolling out the resultant 6 chapters — each individual hour-very long block symbolizing one of Bach’s cello suites — considering that previous year. Presented in a shell of mild theatricality (a established of piled geometric forms, underlit like modernist embers), the concert was performed “without pause and devoid of a software.”
“We want to create a room exactly where you are in a condition of listening, and allowing for your possess free associative system to manifest when the audio is happening,” director Elkhanah Pulitzer states in a video clip launched with the venture.
Therefore, viewers associates have been handed just a single sheet detailing which composers we’d listen to: Courtney Bryan, Gabriel Kahane, Matthias Pintscher, Missy Mazzoli and Paul Wiancko. But the sequence of the items and the identities of their composers were being stored sealed driving the vault door of a QR code printed at the bottom. 1 could easily cheat, or a single could merely post to one’s free associations.
Obediently, I opted for the latter strategy, permitting the 18 small movements to introduce by themselves as the hour or so proceeded. But my associations weren’t as no cost as I may possibly have liked.
Initially factors to start with, Weilerstein is a gripping performer to look at and a masterful interpreter of Bach, exhibiting an alluringly personalized and simply expressive engagement with the suites.
Above the course of “Fragments 4,” we listened to (in this buy) the “Allemande,” “Bourrée I & II,” “Prelude,” “Courante,” “Sarabande” and “Gigue” — a shuffle in by itself. In some cases her link felt a little bit also near, her back again-of-the-hand intimacy with Bach translating to actively playing that felt too informal. More usually, her can take had been intense, energetic and billed with a vitality conspicuously absent from the up to date connectors.
The problem with “Fragments” is that, as considerably as it would like to immediate listeners to the focus on the present moment, and as valiantly as it attempts, the audio alone remains stubbornly consultant of a considerably darker moment — i.e., it is #CovidCore.
Each individual of the contemporary parts, anonymously strung like shaky rope bridges in between the comparative terra firma of the Bach movements, struggled to cloak the rocky, inhospitable terroir of their respective origins. The peak of the coronavirus disaster yielded an overload of in the same way perfectly-intentioned miniatures concerning themes these kinds of as “connection” and “isolation”: hrs truly worth of 1-minute violin solos, 10-minute operas, musical “fragments” of each individual possible, commissionable type.
And while, decades from now, this surplus store of incomplete performs, musical doodles and interrupted ideas will supply useful historical context towards excavating the legitimate cultural harm caused by the pandemic, listening to them now feels vaguely like snacking on war rations.
This meant that composers whose operates I are inclined to take pleasure in — Wiancko, Mazzoli and Bryan, primarily — ended up misplaced in the blend, maybe responding to Bach (slackened arpeggios appeared and ghosted by the hour), maybe not. A number of of the “fragments” relied a lot more intensely on silence than sound, Weilerstein normally whittling the audio down to harmonic cries for support and Cage-worthy stretches of tranquil.
It’s value mentioning that the theatrical component of “Fragments” was a largely prosperous reimagining of regular recital dynamics. When the lights came up from comprehensive darkness at the outset, Weilerstein sat nested heart phase in an sufficient royal blue gown. (Not every recital has costume designers this one particular had Molly Irelan.) The supposed drama was accomplished.
Scenic and lighting designer Seth Reiser’s washes of gentle supplied unobtrusive wayfinding, transitioning as a result of colours coded to each and every unknown composer. It was equally visually pleasing and navigationally helpful, but the influence of the golden amber gentle that accompanied every single return to Bach felt like clouds parting, unexpected sunlight, spring returning — a perception of rescue, stability and certainty.
It did not feel fairly good to the commissioned composers, whose performs mostly writhed all-around in bluish darkness. Lining up my memory with the cheat sheet just after the concert, I felt gentle gratification at possessing “guessed” a several of the composers appropriately. Bookending pieces by Mazzoli had been marked by her beckoning sense of melody. And Wiancko’s a lot more straight responsive “Allemande” and “Gigue” revealed their composer’s hand in their timbral adventurousness.
This unpredictable toggle in between the regarded and the unidentified positive felt familiar! Are we confident this tunes isn’t about a little something? Complete music — i.e., audio with no exterior references or which means — is acquiring a instant right now: This year’s Biennale Musica in Venice picked “Musica Assoluta” as its arranging topic.
But “Fragments,” as hermetically sealed and targeted on the now as it would like to be, is every little bit a task about the pandemic: the situations it produced, the songs it left us with, and the issue of what accurately to do with it. In extra ways than a person, the pandemic is unfinished business enterprise, and it appears to be as if we’re only commencing to pick up the parts.
