Ah Young Hong: A Breath Upwards
Innova

A Breath Upwards features two dramatically contrasting works by composers born fifty-five years apart, Milton Babbitt (1916-2011) and Michael Hersch (b. 1971). Yet for all their differences, Philomel (1964) and A Breath Upwards (2014) share certain key properties: in each case, the specific character of the musical material was guided by the textual material that the composer used as a foundation; and each calls upon the exceptional vocal abilities of Ah Young Hong, who illuminates both works with remarkable versatility. Testifying to her range, the Baltimore soprano has performed works by Bach, Berg, Sondheim, and Kurtág, as well as garnered acclaim for her performance in Hersch's On the Threshold of Winter, a monodrama rooted in the composer's experiences with cancer.

Similar to figures like Stockhausen and Schoenberg, Babbitt's a formidable twentieth-century composer whose music can seem intimidating to the listener coming to it for the first time. Cast in three sections, Philomel proves helpful in that regard: while it would be wrong to regard this audacious work as representative of his style, the nineteen-minute setting offers an accessible portal into his dodecaphonic world when its representational content gives its serial dimension a less abstract tone. There's a playful quality to its music and a sensual dimension, too, despite the fact that the mythical story on which it's based is often gruesome.

While it's rooted in serialism, Babbitt's work transcends academic applications of its principles through the incorporation of duration, dynamics, register, and pitch, such aspects doing much to infuse a piece such as Philomel with humanity and personality. Sonically two elements are combined, the first the tape component featuring vocalizing by Bethany Beardslee and Babbitt's analog synthesizer accompaniment, the second Hong's live performance. The two vocal parts aren't presented in a by-the-numbers call-and-response format; instead, the vocal elements intermix fluidly, with the singers voices liquefying into one another. The pre-recorded material often acts like Philomel's inner voice while the live component might be likened to the externalized expressions by the character in real-time.

Text for the piece was supplied by poet John Hollander, who retells Ovid's Metamorphoses-derived tale of the titular figure's rape and disfigurement by her brother-in-law Tereus and her subsequent transformation into a nightingale (Tereus, incidentally, undergoes change, too, with the gods turning him into a hoopoe, a bird known for soiling its own nest). Philomel's metamorphosis is treated musically in a move away from clipped vocalizing and recitative passages in the work's first part to sustained melodies in its subsequent two. Hong executes the challenging intervallic leaps with agility, as well as the repeated oscillations between singing and song-like speech. The fluttering electronic design reinforces the textual content in evoking the forest setting through which Philomel flees as she attempts to escape Tereus prior to her transformation. Despite the darkness at the heart of the story, in the dance of its vocal and electronic elements the work itself often exudes a free-spirited playfulness emblematic of a nightingale's flight.

As a composer, Hersch isn't easy to pin down, though I suspect he wouldn't find such a characterization displeasing. In this instance, labels such as minimalist, serialist, and/or traditionalist don't stick, for the simple reason that Hersch, drawing upon material from Dante's Purgatorio and Ezra Pounds' Cantos for A Breath Upwards, conceived his expressive musical content by using the text as a guide, the result being music of great intensity and force. It's telling, for instance, that three of its dozen parts are instrumentals that have textual passages accompanying them. And, much like the vocal parts, in these instrumental settings, Hersch is never so crude as to literalize the words into musical form; instead, the emotional essence of the text in question is catalyzed into musical form. An uncompromisingly serious chamber song cycle, A Breath Upwards is performed by Hong in concert with violist Miranda Cuckson, clarinetist Gleb Kanasevich, and the composer's brother, hornist Jamie Hersch, all of who bring impressive recording and performing credentials to the project.

The material encompasses a broad range of moods and styles, some parts frenetic and even harrowing and others peaceful, despite omnipresent undercurrents of mystery and unease. The first intermezzo, for example, opts for eerie quietude, after which the fourth part bursts force with violent intent and piercing clarinet sonorities.Though only three instrumental voices appear, the contrasts between them are considerable, making for a rich, polyphonic result; Hong, for her part, rises to the challenges posed by Hersch's writing, her performance in this context on par with Philomel. Characteristic of the textual content, movement six finds Dante ascending a treacherous path, with flames from Purgatory's seventh terrace on one side and a precipice on the other. While Hersch's music stands on its own, there's an elegance to his writing that recalls Stravinsky's own songs, like Hersch's often sparsely arranged.

May 2018