Sarah Cahill Launches 2026 at Old First Concerts

Sarah Cahill address the audience last night in Old First Church (screen shot from the YouTube video of her recital)

Once again, Old First Concerts began the new year of programming with a solo recital by pianist Sarah Cahill. The title of her latest program was No Ordinary Light, which she described as “a new project combining classical and new compositions on the theme of homage and loss.” The title itself was taken from Jawaharlal Nehru’s eulogy after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi: “The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light.”

That text may have motivated the funereal opening of the program. Cahill began with the “Tombeau de Mr de Chambonnieres,” the final movement in a suite in D major composed by Jean-Henri D’Anglebert. This was the last of four harpsichord suites published in 1689. To the extent that I have cultivated an ear for music from that period when my studies of music history were reinforced with listening opportunities, I regret to say that, while Cahill may have accounted for all of the notes, her phrasing was out of touch with the rhetoric of this particular period. (Fun fact: Johann Sebastian Bach’s table of ornaments for keyboard music was inspired by D’Anglebert’s.)

Cahill concluded her program with a selection that may well have been inspired by D’Anglebert but was much more familiar. This was Maurice Ravel’s six-movement suite Le Tombeau de Couperin. Ravel would subsequently orchestrate four of the movements, and the result is probably more familiar in the concert hall than the original version is among piano recitals. Sadly, while Cahill may have accounted for all of the notes, there was little of Ravel’s spirit, whether his reflections on the past or his new rhetorical tendencies.

The other composers in Cahill’s program were, in order of appearance, Robert Helps, Zenobia Powell Perry, Samuel Adams, Lou Harrison, and Maggie Payne. In Ravel’s spirit, Harrison reflected on two composers: David Tudor and Darius Milhaud. Sadly, over the course of all of this diversity, I came away feeling that, while Cahill had been attentive to all the notes, she never quite caught the spirit of the music, so to speak, in any of her selections.