IU music faculty take spotlight

It's refreshing to see composers given top billing and a moment in the spotlight. So much of our concert life is spent watching conductors and singers interpret the music that we may forget it is actually the composers who brought the music into being and who give the audience a reason to gather. Sunday night's faculty recital of compositions by Don Freund and P.Q. Phan in the Auer Hall was such a gathering. Fellow faculty members John Rommel, trumpet, Mary Ann Hart, mezzo-soprano, Federico Agostini, violin, Peter Ellefson, trombone, Otis Murphy, alto saxophone, and Kim Walker, bassoon, joined Freund and Phan. \nFreund's pieces comprised the first half, and alternated between traditional instrumental groups and those encountered less often. His String Quartet No. 2, an early work written in 1966, began the program and was performed by a student quartet. The buoyant and haunting work was an inviting opening statement, and when second violinist Federico Hoodm and violist Aurelie Entringer exchanged smiles, the Second Quartet's friendly qualities were seen and heard.\n"Silver Linings" was next, with Rommel playing piccolo trumpet and Freund on piano. Considerably more vivid and disjunct than the previous work, it makes use of large leaps in the high trumpet part and a thunderous piano part. Both players were superb, navigating the works shifts between melodic and fragmentary material with ease.\nThe moving "November Songs" followed, sung by Hart, the composer again at the piano. They showed Freund back in his more melodic vein, and Hart sang the poetry with moving urgency. Her knowing, full-bodied tone in the line, "I know your secret, my dear, my dear," was especially arresting. Her diction was also excellent.\nFreund's final piece of the evening was his "Trio for Violin, Trombone, and Piano," for which he was joined by Agostini and Ellefson. The works fleeting phrases dart from player to player, and it was impressive to hear them finishing each other's phrases by the end.\nPhan's works "Beyond the Mountains" and "It Eats You Alive" filled the concert's second half. Phan described "Beyond the Mountains" in the program notes as an attempt to come to terms with those beliefs not analyzed, but taken for granted. This reviewer is not sure the piece reflects that, having only heard it once, but its large scale and emotional sweep certainly suggest something profound is afoot. Clarinetist Christopher Chance tackled the work's wailing clarinet part with skill, and pianist Jordi Torrent, cellist Avigail Arad and violinist Benjamin Hsiao-En Sung gave him a sturdy floor to leap from.\n"It Eats You Alive" was dedicated to Phan's mother and is a moving elegy on death and its finality. Pianist Eunsik Park played the eloquent and thrilling piano part with depth and musicality, while Murphy and Walker were moving in their woodwind dialogue. Both of Phan's pieces make bold use of dissonance and shifting colors, and the instrumentalists of both groups carried the works off with grace. \nToday, the IU Orchestra Series presents the Chamber Orchestra with Conductor Ilya Kaler at 8:30 p.m. at the Auer Concert Hall in the School of Music.