1+1: Maley Performs Bach and Glass

Artwork by Kelly Schultz

Pianist Rachel Elizabeth Maley presented a 60-minute recital of works by Philip Glass and J.S. Bach to raise funds for three local human services charities Sunday at St. Patrick's Church of St. Charles. Conceived as a program exploring compositional parallels, to us it was realized as a program of intersections, or incongruities.

St. Patrick's is a light, spacious and beautiful building whose muted earth tone interior is decorated with stark contrasts. A few human likenesses are surrounded by overwhelming patterns of rigidly ordered geometric forms. In the stained glass windows, the human figures are intersected by shapes with dark, heavy boundaries. We leave the interpretation to you.

In the midst of these visual tessellations, Maley explored the non-melodic motifs of Bach in a slow movement from the Italian Concerto (1735), Partita No. 1 (1726) and Toccata in E minor (1706). As a master of counterpoint, Bach displayed an astonishing talent for building large scale works out of small materials: he could use a single four-note sequence to produce many bars of music by inverting, transposing, multiplying or subdividing it.

This is the parallel with Glass, whose Études 2, 3, 6, 12, 20 (written between 1992 and 2012) also demonstrate composition based on, as he puts it, "repetitive musical structures." Using a pair of alternating notes like blades of grass, his works are more like textural landscapes than melodic tableaux — colored and shaded, but abstract rather than descriptive.

Maley has combined these composers before, and the extent of her understanding was evident as she shifted easily from Bach to Glass twice without pausing. Working from a digital tablet, she "turned pages" by tapping a pedal, and executed 300 years of keyboard technique with the touch sensitivity of a pianist and the left-hand skill of an organist, varying her volume of sound independently from a volume of notes so massive they had to be performed by remembering rather than by reading.

And instead of a mere exhibition of the music, this recital was an art performance in which Maley herself was the meaningful gesture against the repetitive musical structures of thousands of dots and lines. Swaying fluidly from phrase to phrase, tensing and relaxing, leaning forward, cracking a smile — her performance was beautifully imperfect and essentially human. It's an intersection of form and gesture she gravitates to in her own work, and in the images she paired with this event.

And if you knew her, you might say it's the kind of incongruity she works with every day.

Hidden Lessons: The Fifth Annual EYSO Faculty Recital

In its fifth annual recital Sunday, the faculty and staff of Elgin Youth Symphony Orchestra performed a wide variety of short, interesting pieces for an audience of mostly students and parents, but their finest work was not specifically noted in the program.

These inspired artists each taught a different lesson—often hidden, but always powerful—with their choice of material and careful performances.

Daryl Silberman performs
 three movements from
Canonic Sonata No. 1
in G Major by Telemann.

In her "digital duet" of three movements by Georg Telemann, violinist Daryl Silberman vividly demonstrated how listening is just as important to musicianship as is playing. Her delay-enhanced renditions, like performing in front of a mirror, makes the point that at times, we may learn the most when we listen to ourselves.

A minimalist composition by Philip Glass tied in neatly with EYSO's spring theme (exploring musical concepts of time), but another truth could be found in its world premiere arrangment for piano and four hands by Rachel Elizabeth Maley: a piece of music lives many lives. With every new performance or arrangement, we create a new life for it, using one of the few human powers that approach the divine.

Like the other selections in the recital, program notes for the marimba solo by Joe Beribak provided concise history and listening points, but his expert mallet work illustrated something different that every artist or athlete eventually must learn. Performance involves your whole body—its systems, size, position and proportion—and how it interacts with the space around it.

Joseph Beribak performs
Capricho Árabe by Tárrega.

The EYSO Faculty Recital offers unexpected instrumentation, like the combination of trumpet, violin and piano. Beyond the interesting pairing of brass with strings, the trio of Jason Flaks, Andrew Masters and Rachel Maley suggests that all voices, even muted ones, are capable of great beauty, and that everything that's beautiful is, first and foremost, sincere.

The Piano Quartet by Gustav Mahler is noteworthy because it's the only surviving piece of chamber music from the great symphonist's earliest years. Serving not just as a vehicle for the expressive playing by EYSO faculty, it proves that great work by a student is meaningful, and not everything from our own youth need be discarded.

Anthony Krempa (violin), Rachel E. Maley (piano),
Theresa Goh (viola) and Timothy Archbold (cello)
perform Piano Quartet in A Minor by Gustav Mahler.

With his well-placed "teachable moments," EYSO Artistic Director Randal Swiggum confirms what we have repeated for decades, that in Elgin, you can get as great an education as you want ... you simply have to want one.

Perhaps above all, this recital showed that technical perfection, despite its pedagogical importance, is not the goal of music education. Artistic expression is part of our humanity, and whether we choose the notes, play the notes, or listen to the notes, we can communicate across centuries in ways that transcend any particular language or doctrine.

The EYSO experience is not just for students who are preparing for advanced musical study; it is for any student preparing for a higher quality of life. For more information, visit www.eyso.org.

Timothy Archbold (cello), Randal Swiggum (piano) and Karen Archbold
(soprano) perform Geistliches Wiegenlied by Johannes Brahms.

Glass: String Quartet No. 2 ("Company")

One of the most influential American composers of the twentieth century, if not the most “popular,” is Philip Glass (b. 1937), a descendant of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe (as were Copland, Gershwin and Bernstein).

At age 78, Glass has been a prolific composer since about 1960, and has created works in a tremendous variety of forms and styles. Often summed up as “minimalist” composer, he prefers to describe his style as “music with repetitive structures,” and even that does not apply sufficiently to his entire catalog of work which is still growing after 55 years.

Glass has often collaborated with artists of every non-musical genre, as well as with musicians working along the edges of popular music like Brian Eno, David Bowie and David Byrne. His first string quartet was written in 1966 after he worked on an experimental film score with the Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar. Exposure to the “additive rhythms” of Indian music would become the most powerful and definitive influence on his music for the next three decades.

The four movements of the String Quartet No. 2 were written for the theatrical production of Company (1983) by Samuel Beckett. At first, Glass considered it incidental music (“like salt and pepper ... just something for the table”), but published it in 1986 as a string quartet and an arrangement for string orchestra.

Just as his minimalist phase gave way to his characteristic non-narrative rhythmic style, his art continued to evolve to encompass choral works, opera, and symphonies. In later years, Glass found renewed interest in historical forms, lyricism, and conventional melody. In his 2015 memoir Words Without Music, Glass says his favorite composer was Franz Schubert, with whom he shares the same birthday.

Maley Envisions Bach's Goldberg Variations

Despite the frigid temperatures Friday night, music and art lovers packed themselves into the main gallery of Side Street Studio Arts, which is quickly becoming the primary downtown Elgin venue for chamber music performance.

They came to hear J.S. Bach's 32-part Goldberg Variations (c. 1740) performed by artist-in-residence Rachel Elizabeth Maley, in conjunction with an exhibit of her visual art that was inspired by the music.

Groupings of four small, float-framed paintings echoed the orderly mathematical subdivision of the music. Each element was related in scale, tone and color, but fully developed and individually recognizable after a thoughtful observation.

On an opposite wall, an unframed drawing emphasized unity over individuality, composed of proportionate geometric forms decorated by the counterpoint of a wandering line. The effect was Bach-like: more about the harmony of a structure than the melody of a story.

Pairing abstractions with the human touch of pencil is always beautiful, and the suggestion of architectural sketches of stained glass designs was not lost on those of us from the Prairie.

The concert opened with Wichita Vortex Sutra (1988) by Philip Glass, a piano piece composed to accompany the reading of Allen Ginsberg's 1966 anti-war poem of the same name. Wearing fingerless gloves, Maley's fine rendition of the piece reminded us of the repetitive rhythmic and tonal structures that serve as Glass's characteristic compositional material. 

Some musical detail was acoustically blurred for listeners seated in the back of the room, an unusual placement made necessary by the sheer size of the audience. Some might suggest the Glass could have fared better here with the soft pedal down.

Legend has it that Bach wrote the Variations as an exercise for Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, a young harpsichordist who traveled with an ambassador prone to insomnia. The suite was supposedly used as a repertoire of soothing diversions for sleepless nights.

Reading the score from a digital tablet, Maley worked her way through the nearly eighty minutes of continuous music, subtly differentiating each piece with tempo and affect, and deftly negotiating difficult crossing passages that were originally played on an instrument with two separate keyboards.

The dim light and salon-like atmosphere effectively recreated variations of the scene from 275 years ago, as some listeners experienced closed-eye serenity, while others anxiously counted the passing minutes.

This well-conceived program was a highly successful culmination of creative efforts by Maley, and another milestone for Side Street, whose tireless support of local artists is helping transform downtown culture.