On February 25, 2019, I had an opportunity to attend the UBC Composers’ Concert performed by the students of the UBC School of Music. It was one of the first concerts I have ever attended at the UBC and it was an interesting experience to see a live performance.
The students performed three musical pieces:
1) Growing Pains by Greg Andersen
2) Cascadilla by John Stetch
3) Misplaced Dream – For Solo Flute by Ivan Salazar Gonzalez
The first piece, “Growing Pains” was performed by three violins, viola and two cellos. The structure of “Growing Pains” reminded me of “Israel in Egypt, HWV 54 (excerpts) – Part I: He sent a thick darkness over all the land (Chorus)” by George Frederic Handel we listened to in the class. The composition started with a calm and steady bass performed by two cellos and created a mysterious yet exciting atmosphere. Just like the Handel’s music piece, I felt as if I was walking somewhere in the full darkness and the further the “Growing Pains” was developing, the more light I could see at the end of my journey. Its structure was clear homophony, where the violins entered the scene straight after cellos and performed multiple imitations to create a more solid accompaniment and the leading part was performed by the viola. The sound was developing throughout the performance and the tempo was increasing until they reached the climax. At the climax point, the viola performed a solo consisted of several quick arpeggios. Following the solo, the accompaniment came to its initial point and the performance ended with the same feeling of darkness as at the beginning of the piece. In my opinion, this piece was well developed but lacked a solid conclusion.
The second piece, “Cascadilla” was written for a solo piano performance. It was much more conceptual and even more mysterious compared to the “Growing Pains”. The piece started off abruptly with solo parts consisted mainly of very quick and virtuosic arpeggios. The music included complex timing and odd meters to transfer various melodies that imitated the sound of nature. John Stetch used a weird technique to imitate various sounds of nature, where he played some notes using the piano keyboard and some notes he executed by pressing down the strings inside of the piano. Also, at some point of the performance, he used percussion drum sticks and hammered the strings inside of the piano as if it was a Xylophone. I have never seen anything like this before, and it surely added some unique melodies to his performance. By the end of the performance to conclude the whole piece, he detuned the lowest string on the piano to hit the lowest octave possible.
The third piece, “Misplaced Dream” was performed by solo flute and consisted of three parts. I did not like the performance as it was messy, and the composition did not have a clear development. The composition consisted of three movements that were not connected to each other, I could not follow the reason for dividing the performance into three pieces with moments of silence in between each of them.
Overall, it was a pleasure to listen to completely different music pieces. “Growing Pains” was a great introduction to the concert, whereas “Cascadilla”, in my opinion, was a highlight of the concert with its virtuosic technique executing all the possible notes from the piano.