ARTIST'S MUSE

for Chameleon Arts Ensemble,

a Koussevitzky Commission

http://www.chameleonarts.org/concerts/may.html

May 20/ 21, 2017

​

Boston Musical Intelligencer Review; May 21, 2017

Chameleon Paints With Music by Leon Golub

The Artist’s Muse for flute, clarinet, cello, piano and percussion, a world premiere Koussevitsky Commission from Laura Elise Schwendinger, followed. Without the mediation of words, the composer proceeded directly to the inspiration behind the painter’s work, bringing to life the women behind seven famous masterpieces, as though honoring but also contesting the visual surface. Throughout, Boldin’s flute served beautifully as the ongoing voice of the perennial muse, the elusive “Other” constructed by the gaze of male painters. A short introduction took us out of linear time, William Manley’s percussion especially effective in plunging us into vanished realms, from the enigmatic interiority of a 15th-century Young Girl by Petrus Christus, to the concluding gold-patterned swirl of Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer. Picasso’s Jacqueline appeared with all of her modernist angst, Cézanne’s wife moved bodily in a poignant waltz, Leonardo’s Cecilia Gallerani stroked her elegant carnivorous ermine, and Vermeer’s Girl with a Pitcher appeared with staccatos in the piano and pizzicatos in the strings, bathed in the light of percussion as she poured her milk. With a sudden twist of waltz, so to speak, the mood darkened as the eternal muse took the form of Sargent’s Madame X, cosmopolitan and scandalous, high-priestess of intoxication and city lights, followed in conclusion by her more vulnerable sister, gold-shimmering Adele Bloch-Bauer, vestal and victim, muse and mourner. Schwendinger’s delightful piece effectively transformed my own gaze on the Artist’s Muse by introducing a competing muse of flesh and bone, hardship and failure, grievance and glory, behind the painter’s still-life effigy.

 

 

Boston Music Intelligencer

REVIEWS

MAY 9, 2011

BMV’s Gathering of Friends

by ELISA BIRDSEYE

​

"For the past forty-two years, Boston Musica Viva has distinguished itself by presenting works by living (or recently living) composers with a passion that comes of deep conviction. It would be every composer’s dream to have a work played with the technical precision and emotional commitment that is offered by Richard Pittman and his assembly of musicians, all of whom play at the top of their game. With that kind of performance, a composer’s work stands on its own feet. Or not. Friday night’s performance (May 6, 2011) at the Tsai performance Center was another in this long line of well-conceived and executed excursions.

The title of the program derived from the world premier centerpiece of the evening, Laura Elise Schwendinger’s Mise-en-scene (2011). But it also provided a context for the other pieces on the program. Schwendinger explained before the performance that mise-en-scene refers to all the elements (lighting, sound, props, stagecraft, etc) which create the feel and image seen in either a theater piece or a film. Her work, in nine short, continuously played movements, described a story, and even without program notes, it would have been possible to imagine what was going on onstage. She described her music as “zany,” but perhaps another term would be “looney” in the sense of the fiendishly difficult and evocative music by Carl Stallings that underpinned the familiar Looney Tunes cartoons. Schwendinger’s music was clear, delightful, and descriptive, almost an opera without words."

 

 

​The New York Times

“The chamber works grouped together on this captivating disc show off Laura Elise Schwendinger’s acute ear for unusual textures. In these works, scored for solo violin; nonet; violin and guitar; or a quintet of flute, piano and strings, she sketches musical short stories of somnambulant fragility and purpose. The color palette she draws from these modest forces is varied and expressive — and brilliantly rendered by a fine roster of performers." (Fonseca-Wollheim)

​

​The Boston Globe

“This was schrewd composing, the genuine article. Onto the 'season's bet list' it goes.” (Richard Buell)

​

Fanfare

“it evokes a sense of serene mystery and infinite beauty.” ( William Zagorski)

​

Fanfare

" talent to burn…ballsy, confident music-making in both writing and execution…proves that serious contemporary music does not have to dumb down to be immediately accessible and emotional. Highly recommended.'  (Barnarby Rayfield)

​