“Zaffre,” a deep cobalt blue, contrasted the piano in its far treble register with soft, low sounds from the clarinet, viola, and horn.

Violist Daniel Foster and horn player James Nickel joined Cigan and Emenheiser for the last two movements of Luke Carlson’s quartet Spectra, each associated with a particularly vibrant color. The trio mostly sustained one musical character, an animated piano pattern overlaid by intertwined lines from clarinet and piano, with whiffs of multimetric whimsy that evoked Bernstein. Printed in the program, the poem describes the vivid burst of flavor and color from a blackberry picked and eaten surreptitiously. Moments of calm beauty emerged as the intensity of the piece cooled, ending with scales rising upward into the ether like wisps of steam.Ĭellist Rachel Young joined her colleagues for Blackberries by Elena Ruehr, who drew the title from a poem by her ten-year-old daughter. Pianist Lisa Emenheiser supplied seemingly endless repeated-note motifs, harshest in the faster sections, where they were often accompanied by jagged clusters of dissonance. The spring is known for the chemical rainbow of colors produced by microorganisms, which somehow survive in the varying degrees of boiling water.Ĭigan mastered the extremes of range in the piece, from off-the-staff shrieks to the chalumeau depths heard in some of the slower sections. The composer, a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh, drew inspiration from the hot spring of that name in Yellowstone National Park. The event was free to all listeners who wore a mask and presented proof of Covid vaccination.Ĭlarinetist Paul Cigan, a member of the National Symphony Orchestra like all six musicians featured on this program, opened the evening with Eric Moe’s Grand Prismatic. The 21st Century Consort explored this idea with a program of music inspired by colors in their latest concert Saturday evening at St.

Composers can relate their work to non-musical ideas, but there is no guarantee that listeners will hear those associations without being informed of them by other means. 21st Century Consort performed Saturday night at St.

Color finale review