E4TT at Old First Concerts

Poster design for last night’s E4TT performance (from the Old First Concerts event page)

Last night Ensemble for These Times (E4TT) pianist Margaret Halbig presented a program entitled In Motion at Old First Concerts. She performed with three guest artists: Laura Reynolds, alternating between oboe and English horn, violinist Lylia Guion, and Megan Chartier on cello. Each half of the program began with a selection from the twentieth century. Chartier and Halbig got things started with the “Moto perpetuo” movement from Benjamin Britten’s Opus 65, his only cello sonata. Halbig opened the second half with a solo performance, the “Moto perpetuo” movement from York Bowen’s Opus 39 Suite mignonne. All remaining works were composed between 2008 and the “immediate present,” including with the world premiere performance of “And I Made My Way, Deciphering That Fire” by Ursula Kwong-Brown.

While this was, at least on the surface, a promising program, the event itself left much to be desired. There was too much of a sense of one you-know-what thing after another. When I reviewed the notes I jotted on my program sheet last night, I was confronted with “too long,” “repetitive forms too hypnotic,” and “plodding.” In other words there was very little by way of effort from composers and/or performers to seize attention and then sustain it. Under such circumstances, it is hard to determine whether this was a problem of the contributing composers (other than Britten and Bowen), all living and active, or of the performers not “getting” what those composers had in mind.

E4TT was just not up to the standards it had established in past performances.