Strings and Things
Since its founding in 1991, the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble has remained this country’s only large, professional touring mandolin group. With music ranging from Bach to the Beatles to Bill Monroe, its performances are as eclectic as its instrumentation. The group uses all the members of the mandolin family, including the alto mandola and the tenor mandocello, coloring them with the addition of guitar, fiddle, and bass, along with an occasional clarinet or soprano saxophone lick by the group’s conductor, Paul Zonn.
That the NME has been active of late is an understatement—the last few years have seen two critically acclaimed recordings, several tours, and a schedule of semi-regular local performances. With all that activity, perhaps they thought a night among the leafy glades and lightning bugs of the Sewanee Summer Music Festival would be a bit of a rest. If that was their intent, there was no rest for the weary, as they performed a program last Saturday that was by turns jazzy, sentimental, traditional, and full of vivacity. The normally serious audience lightened up with the bugs, and the two hours flew past.
Judging from the selections taken from the group’s most recent release, Plectrasonics, the NME’s concert performance was about as polished as its recordings. In some cases, the live renditions were even better: The Alexander Courage theme from Star Trek—punningly titled “Where No Mandolin Has Gone Before”—was played with even greater gusto, and the group’s interaction with the audience gave it a special zing. Likewise, the medley of Charlie Mingus’ “Goodbye, Pork-Pie Hat” and the Django Reinhart/Stephane Grapelli tune “Tears” had a livelier sense of orchestral color and a much zestier sense of swing than it did on the disc.
I was totally unprepared for the depth of color and the great dynamic contrasts achieved in the arrangement of Tárrega’s “Recuerdos de la Alhambra.” Truth to tell, the NME’s laid-back recorded performance is closer in spirit to the introspective original for solo guitar, but this onstage version swelled with strong emotion—these were Technicolor memories. The tempo could have been shade slower, but the lovingly crafted phrases and clean ornamentation made it an outstanding performance nevertheless.
Of course, a group like the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble is going to lean heavily on traditional and folk materials, and these traditions were amply represented on the program. The set of early 20th-century pieces that opened the second half of the program—the waltz “Laughing Eyes,” and two numbers that owed much to the two-step dance craze in the early teens, “Texas Fox Trot” and “Fieldston March”—brought the salon to the front porch. There were hints of Léhar and Joplin as well as a strong whiff of music for the balalaika, a close cousin of the mandolin. “Sweet Georgia Brown” was given a zestful run-through, and the program’s close, a fiddle-tune medley, was “enhanced” by the Stravinskian rhythms of the students in the audience, who spontaneously puncuated the tune with erratic clapping.
I was most intrigued, however, by the set of pieces by blind Irish harper Turloch O’Carolan. O’Carolan’s music is usually considered the purview of Celtic ensemble and folk groups; it’s generally played in a folk style, with lots of slurring between notes and lots of bending of pitches. NME generally conformed to this style, but occasionally it would, in its phrasing and ornamentation, make the connection between O’Carolan’s music and that of the Italian baroque composers. In fact, O’Carolan’s planxtys and harp tunes were strongly influenced by the work of Vivaldi, Corelli, and Francesco Geminiani, all of whom were contemporaries of the Irish composer. NME’s O’Carolan performances were fine and vital, but the group should consider rendering this baroque connection even more explicit in the future.
The most unusual number on the program was “My Last Days on Earth,” a composition by the father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe, who wrote the tune during a bout of ill health. The tune is unusual in its use of scordatura, or deliberate mistuning by the soloist, and in its use of a peculiar break that interrupts the tune at different times. The basic melody has all of the minor-key oppressiveness of “The House of the Rising Sun,” but when these peculiar breaks occur, they release the tension like shafts of sunlight on a stormy day. This selection also marked another instance in which the group’s sound had an almost balalaika-like quality; it was very strange and very good.
In a program that brimmed with too many highlights to mention, the Beatles tunes that began and ended the performance were real standouts. The tight ensemble and interesting counterpoint in “Eleanor Rigby” let the audience know from the very beginning that, no matter how naive some of the material might be, it would be played with virtuoso flair. The final number, an arrangement of “Because,” was a showstopper, both literally and figuratively. More than any other performance of the evening, it showed the range of impressionistic color that the ensemble was capable of achieving. Even the lightning bugs glowed in approval.
There are plenty more reasons to make a trip up the mountain this week. On July 23, the Adkins String Ensemble will do the C Minor String Trio by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky’s string sextet, Souvenir de Florence. On July 26, the Faculty Ensemble will present the piece that made Beethoven famous in his own time, the op. 20 Septet in E-flat, along with Molineux’s Encounter for Brass Quintet and Mendelssohn’s famed octet. I’ll see you there.
