On Monday, April 8th, I visited the Roy Barnett Recital Hall once again for another installment of the UBC Composers’ Concert, after I had such an enjoyable visit on the last one that I had went to. This one had a longer list of songs, with a repertoire of eight songs in total, each composed by UBC School of Music students.
I won’t go over all the pieces themselves, but while going through the program before the start of the performance, I could already tell from some of the titles, I noticed I could already recognize some of the influence of 19th century and modernist movements. For example, there were the compilation of piano and vocal pieces composed by Morten Yu and performed by Roan Shankaruk (alto) and the composer himself, called 5 Nocturnes, which of course, is reminiscent of the 3 Nocturnes which we looked at in class (only two of the five pieces were actually played). Another example would be the name of the saxophone piece named “Incessance”, composed and performed by Jackson Bell, which has a name reminiscent of the the Romantic style of naming in relation to program music.
My favourite piece of this Composers’ Concert was the piano piece called “Spirit of the Wood” composed by D.I. Danny Choi, and performed by Noah Ha. This is another piece that has a name which is supposed to tell us of the mood and idea of the piece. The piece sounded to be in a minor key, and was rather melancholy and tense throughout the entirety of it. I believe it was a hybrid of a free-flowing composition reminiscent of the attitudes in music of the late 19th century, as the theme at the beginning continues to build and change throughout the piece. It never really falls into any expected rigid form, hence my assessment. In general, I quite enjoy tense pieces, and the performer seemed to really be impassioned in his playing.
A piece I found really cool was the piece named “Four Landscapes for Guitar Quartet” composed by Frederic Lau, and performed by the guitarists Eric Li, Daniel Cheung, Joel Thompson, and Tejay Liao. I think this is one of the few times I have encountered a guitar quartet. I really love guitar music in general, but have not had a lot of exposure to classical guitar music, so this was a real treat.
All in all, I am once again, really glad that I got to participate in this, and even more so, I am glad that I now have some more musical knowledge to understand the roots of the choices for some of these compositions, or at least try to apply some of my own inferences to it. Even though I am graduating, I would love to be able to come back sometime if given a chance to see more of the performances. I am really impressed that all of these pieces were composed and performed by such talented students of the UBC School of Music.