Music Review from The Columbus Dispatch

FOR THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Published: February 3, 2008
Edition: Home Final
Section: News
Page: 02A

Contemporary music concerts can be a little like a box of chocolates. If you don't like one piece, try another.

That was the atmosphere at last night's local debut of the Juniper Chamber Music Festival, presented by Chamber Music Columbus at the Southern Theatre. Some of the new music performed was much tastier than the rest, starting with the world premiere by Roger Braun, Independent Streams. For a string trio and a heavy artillery of percussion, the piece and its propulsive rhythms and engaging themes made it accessible at first hearing and engrossing to experience. The musicians also performed the work in convincingly polished fashion.

A little less technical perfection might have been reached in the Dvorak Piano Quartet in E-Flat Major, the program's nod to the common practice period. But one had to admire the group's commitment to building excitement by over and over again going for the big moments, not risks every ensemble is willing to take.

If an announcement was made about the originally scheduled second world premiere, Mark Phillips' Porch Music, I missed it, but the performance was evidently postponed. Instead, Juniper co-founder Marjorie Bagley was featured soloist in a substitute selection, Lou Harrison's Concerto for Violin and Percussion Orchestra.

The battery of instruments assembled onstage for the work looked intriguing -- a set of suspended flower pots, metal buckets of several sizes and so forth. Yet the piece itself turned out to be more tedious than fun, chiefly because of the strident writing for the violin.

Though I did not get to listen to all of last night's rendition of Tan Dun's Elegy: Snow in June, featuring cellist Michael Carrera and four percussionists, what I did hear was disappointing. The performance seemed to be missing the technical solidity needed to do justice to music so rooted in Chinese musical traditions.

Reprinted with permission.