Musical Literati
Plucky chamber group Alias to perform Pulitzer Prize-winning composition
Made up of several adventurous members of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Alias is a multifaceted chamber group who explore both classical and modern works deserving of wider recognition. The featured work of their Friday concert at Turner Recital Hall at the Blair School of Music will be 2004 Pulitzer winner Paul Moravec's Tempest Fantasy. This challenging piece consists of five movements inspired by Shakespeare's late play, with different characters speaking through the cello, bass clarinet and violin. The instruments represent the grave enchanter-king Prospero, the noble monster Caliban and the ethereal spirit Ariel, respectively. While the neotonalist composer Moravec notes that the piece is held together more by dominant leitmotifs than by a narrative thread, it clearly is true to the play's dramatic arc. The Tempest Fantasy weaves among passions of revenge, forgiveness, hope and playfulness while capturing both the air of fantasia and the return to natural order on Prospero's island (or Caliban's, depending on one's politics).
Moravec's composition should invite comparison with another free adaptation of a literary work on the program, Leo Janacek's Pohadka (Fairy Tale) for Cello and Piano. In the 1910s and early '20s, as his nation was escaping the throes of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Czech composer found inspiration in a Russian epic poem in which a young prince falls in love with and rescues the daughter of the king of the underworld. This work in turn should interconnect well with the Rondo for Cello and Piano by Janacek's friend and compatriot Dvorak, who integrated Eastern European folk music with classical elements in this piece. Besides Mozart's operatic Quartet in F Major for Oboe and Strings, the concert will also include modern composer (and NSO Pops series conductor) Jeff Tyzik's Blues Suite for String Quartet, which adapts the 12-bar blues form and the manner of jazz improvisation to the chamber setting.
—Bill Levine
