Classical Concert Reviews Cinci

@mayfestivalcincy continued its 2024 season with mesmerizing performances of two of the most unique pieces to emerge from the American contemporary music scene in the last 20 years, which celebrate natural beauty and raw hardship in one of the darkest, yet overlooked, chapters, in American history.
Michael Gordon’s Natural History, commissioned by the National Park Service in honor of its 100th anniversary, was a massive work which explored the spatial elements of music to its fullest. First performed at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon with brass and percussion players placed on cliffs and ridges surrounding its rim, @cincysymphony spectacularly recreated the effect with brass and percussion placed throughout the upper gallery, with the May Festival Chorus and Steiger Butte Drum and Singer providing earth-shattering resonances.
Anthracite Fields, which won Julia Wolfe the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2015, explores the tragedy and perseverance of those who toiled mining in Pennsylvania’s coal country through the late 19th and early-20th centuries with a musical landscape combining minimalism, folk and punk rock. The most evocative moments included the second movement’s setting of a nursery rhyme telling the tale of Micky Pick-Slate and the fifth movement’s setting of actions such watching a movie and washing dishes which require some sort of heating power, of which coal was a huge component for much of the last century.
The May Festival Chorus (in a smaller chamber configuration), joined by Bang on a Can All-Stars and guest conductor Teddy Abrams, brought this musical exploration spectacularly to life, with pure tone, a dramatic leadership style and an unparalleled ferocity of playing from the All-Stars, using an assortment of instruments including no fewer than six bicycle wheels. Other fascinating elements of tonight’s Performance included the use of a white curtain as a backdrop to project images matching the spirit and tone of each movement, including the faces and names of miners who were likely involved in accidents or worked as breaker boys).
Looking forward immensely to the final May Festival performance this Saturday featuring Fauré’s Requiem.