Paul Lueders, oboe

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Olmos Ensemble

Martha Long

incident light

Eric Gratz (violin) and Patti Wolf (piano) in Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango.

February 17, 2016 The Olmos Ensemble’s contribution to Las Américas Music Festival offered a strong collection of top-shelf chamber works, Feb. 15 in First Unitarian Universalist Church.  The concert opened and closed in Argentina with works by Alberto Ginastera and his slightly younger contemporary Astor Piazzolla, respectively. Between them came works by the Americans John Harbison, Samuel Barber and Charles Tomlinson Griffes.  The popularity of Piazzolla’s tango-based music has put Ginastera in eclipse, at least in terms of performance frequency, so the latter’s Duo for Flute and Oboe (1945) was especially welcome.  Although most of Ginastera’s music from this early period was explicitly nationalistic, employing Argentine folk melodies or idioms, this Duo is a neoclassical work, bracing in its tonal harmony, and sounding remarkably like Hindemith at times. The opening allegro features intricately intertwining counterpoint that was handsomely served by the taut teamwork of Olmos regulars Martha Long (flute) and Paul Lueders (oboe). Their timbres blended nicely, though in a few patches Mr. Lueders’s tone might have been a shade too aggressive. The middle slow movement features melancholy, long-lined melody for the oboe, and the quick finale is a joyous dance, again benefiting from the musicians’  split-second timing.  Piazzolla composed his Le Grand Tango in 1982 for the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. It was performed here in a version for violin (Eric Gratz) and piano (guest Patti Wolf) . The music, drawing on tango, jazz and classical idioms, is by turns come-hitherly sweet and slashingly intense, and nearly always over the top. Both musicians gave virtuosic, crisply delineated, stylish performances, though at times Mr. Gratz seemed slightly more inhibited than the music wanted to be.   John Harbison’s Twilight Music (1984) for horn (Olmos regular Jeff Garza), violin and piano might be more aptly situated an hour or two before dawn. There’s a dreamlike quality to its shifts in idiom. The opening movement starts in Modernist free tonality, which dissolves into a neb-romantic episode in the middle. The second movement is like the sound track to a chase scene in a noir film. The third recalls Renaissance music — and Debussy. The finale is most notable for long, expressive melodic lines for the violin. The performance was first-class all the way. Barber’s Canzonetta (1978) for oboe and piano was intended as the slow movement of an oboe concerto, which was left unfinished at the composer’s death in 1981. (The piece is better known in a version for oboe and string orchestra.) As one expects from Barber, the spine of the piece is a lovely winding filament of melody for the oboe — sweet, but not cloyingly so, and expressively played by Mr Lueders.  Griffes, who died at age 35 in the influenza epidemic of 1920, was an American influenced by Debussy and by the music of East Asia, especially Japan. His music is less fashionable than it once was, and it’s due for a revival of interest. His Poem (1918) for flute and piano (originally orchestra) has recurring episodes of calm reverence interrupted by agitated, furious and garishly erotic episodes. Ms. Long’s supple phrasing and rich tone gave pleasure, as did Ms. Wolf’s alert support.  Mike Greenberg  

A poem, a tango, a twilight dream, and more