Last Thursday evening’s Artist Recital Series concert was a welcome change from the usual for the lover of new music. The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) graced Finney Chapel with a wonderful evening of new music. Almost every performer in this ensemble is an alum of the Oberlin Conservatory. Although their program may have been somewhat conservative by new music standards, all of the pieces were expertly performed, and familiar pieces were given a new face.

The first piece on the concert, Moromoro, was scored for piano, electronics and video. Spencer Myer (OC ’00) played the crystalline piano part of Dai Fujikura’s music with an expert touch, holding the instrument back to the softest pianissimos and calling forth the loudest roars during the “tour de force.” Tomoya Yamaguchi’s video dealt exclusively with negative images of water: skipping images, beads of water, still water and moving waves. These pictures were arranged so that the cuts sometimes aligned with texture changes or major points of articulation in the music. A major change in the video occurred during what Fujikura described as the “tour de force” of the piece. Here, the piano changed to a much faster, more aggressive texture and the image froze for the duration. What followed seemed to be a mistake: the screen faded to black and then an image of a bird flying against a brilliant sunset appeared for a moment. This color-saturated image was in stark contrast to the blues, blacks and whites that had preceded it for the entirety of the piece.

Claire Chase, OC ’01, Kivie Cahn-Lipman, OC ’01, and Phyllis Chen, OC ’99, played George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) with great skill, conviction and emotion. If one knew this piece, it was a real treat to hear it played live by these players; if one didn’t know it, this performance was a great introduction. Like many of Crumb’s pieces, it mixes the ancient and the new. All players dealt with the difficult extended techniques this piece calls for as if they were child’s play. Most importantly, their playing contained clearly communicated emotion and brought life and dynamism to the music.

Perhaps the most interesting piece on the program was Huang Ruo’s, OC ’00, The Lost Garden. The piece contained a remarkable assortment of genres which mixed and mingled in unusual ways. The flute, first violin and clarinet play quasi-romantic music, the second violin and cello play ostinatos, often of a folk character and there are also sections in which members of the ensemble sing, together and alone. The piece ends with the first violin, flute and clarinet exiting the stage while playing an ostinato which continues for many minutes even after the players are off the stage.

Following the performance of Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King, a woman sitting behind me remarked that “that was why Hitler made so many poor decisions towards the end of World War II; because he had syphilis.” That was what this non-conventional performance captured so well: King George’s madness.

It was impossible not to compare this performance of the piece with that of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble (who performed the work in October), but it’s only fair — CME invaded New York in January and they’re invading Oberlin now.

CME’s performance was much more conventional, and followed the score much more closely. Lydia Steier, OC ’01, who was the stage director for the piece, eschewed bird cages and chose instead to capture the players inside a television screen. The king himself was captured in a large projection screen. All of these images were high-contrast and black and white, providing for a hyper-real atmosphere on stage which could not have been created without the aid of technology.

Unlike in CME’s performance, the madness was not created through stage acting, with exaggerated gestures and the like, but was instead communicated through the window of the video screen which showed the audience, how King George perhaps saw himself. All of the music was played exceptionally well, and Peter Tantsits, OC ’02 must be given special commendation for singing the part of the king.

This reviewer wishes the best to ICE and hopes they will be a regular feature in the Artist Recital Series.