Ensemble Dal Niente members Tarn Travers (violin) and Chris Wild (cello) may be familiar to Chicago listeners from recent appearances with the ensemble at Harris Theater as part of the Ear Taxi Festival, or at the Music Institute of Chicago for the album release concert Assemblage. On March 15, they will join forces to present a recital of string duos and solos at Andersonville’s Ebenezer Lutheran Church. Titled Old and New, the evening’s program features contemporary chamber music inspired by Renaissance era practices of musical ornamentation, presented alongside examples of such inspiration.
Some of the oldest published compositions existing for string instruments were Italian Renaissance Ricercare, and Chris Wild will start the evening with Domenico Gabrielli’s evocative Ricercar No.7, composed in the late Baroque era. Indiana-based composer Eliza Brown is familiar to fans of Dal Niente, as her opera The Body of the State was premiered at Chicago’s EDGE Theater 2017, and was recently revised for a February performance at Omaha’s KANEKO. Brown’s string duo Shaked Graces will follow Gabrielli, drawing inspiration from Christopher Simpson’s 17th Century treatise on Renaissance musical traditions.
When composer Elliott Carter passed away in 2012, he was one of the USA’s most prolific and revered composers. Travers and Wild will perform two short duos of his, Adagio and Duettino. Completed in 2008, the two works reflect a more expressive and playful side of the composer’s otherwise sophisticated catalog. Travers will then take the stage as soloist in Matthias Pintscher’s Study III for Treatise on the Veil. In addition to his successes as a composer, Pintscher is a faculty member at the Juilliard School and succeeded Pierre Boulez as conductor and Music Director of Paris’ Ensemble Intercontemporain.
Presented without intermission, the concert will finish with Guillaume Dufay’s dreamy Renaissance song Adieu m’amour, as well as German composer Mathias Spahlinger’s ode to the song, adieu m'amour: homage à Guillaume Dufay. Spahlinger’s composition succeeds as metaphor for the evening’s reflections on tradition, perspective, and time: he composed his homage in adulthood, representing the process of remembering what it first felt like to hear Dufay’s song as a young boy.
Program:
Domenico Gabrielli - Ricercar No.7
Eliza Brown - Shaked Graces
Elliott Carter - Adagio and Duettino
Guillaume Dufay - Adieu M’Amour
Matthias Pintscher - Study III for Treatise on the Veil
Mathias Spahlinger - adieu m’amour, hommage à guillaume dufay