Music Reviews : New Song Cycles at CSN

Simplicity and austerity typify three song cycles by Cal State Northridge faculty composers given premiere performances Thursday night in the campus Recital Hall. The fourth event of the college’s May Music Festival displayed an abundance of melancholy framed within three different conservative styles.

Receiving its U.S. premiere, “Magias e Invenciones” by Aurelio de la Vega, an atonal setting of five poems by Cuban poet Gaston Baquero, utilizes a non-stop piano part creating little variation in tempo or emotion.

Soprano Anne Marie Ketchum confidently sang the Spanish texts, admirably bringing out warmth and insight. Pianist Delores Stevens forthrightly accompanied.

Also receiving its U.S. premiere, Frank Campo’s “The Song of Shadows” for two voices and piano uses fewer notes to convey a deeper sense of loss and passion. A stark arch form and deliberate melodic structures add an academic flavor to four texts in English and Italian.

Pianist Charlotte Zelka’s inhibited efforts included a solo interlude demonstrating the only fast tempo of the work--and the evening.

In the world premiere of Daniel Kessner’s less ambitious “Two Old English Songs” for soprano, flute, viola and guitar, contrasting sections laden with neo-Renaissance ground basses and ostinatos received a pleasant but uneventful performance.