Music and Dance Reviews : Cal State Northridge Group Performs ‘Pierrot’

Stretching the limits of his student group’s imagination and technical ability, Daniel Kessner lead the New Music Ensemble of Cal State Northridge in a successful, albeit tentative, performance of Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire,” Sunday night in the campus Recital Hall.

Kessner’s lyrical style of conducting deftly blended the sometimes timid performers into a homogenous whole. Under his direction, soloist Jan Abell’s careful, subdued approach to the demandingly emotive Sprechstimme proved fittingly terse.

In the first part of the program, “Estruturas Gemeas” (1978) for piano, four hands, by Brazilian composer Ricardo Tacuchian supplied a post-modern collage of simple ostinatos and tone clusters. Ara Gevorkian and Maria de Fatima Granja handled the piano parts with mesmerizing intensity.

Also on the program were world premieres of two overly sentimental, tonal vocal works by Northridge graduate students--Three Impromptus for Voice and Piano by Michael Canales and “After Three Years, Seven Months” for soprano, baritone, chorus and chamber ensemble by Janet Gilman.