Music Reviews : Composers’ Competition Winners Perform at USC

For most of the past decade, the National Assn. of Composers USA has made a fetish of providing recognition to young musicians willing to specialize in contemporary music. Friday night at USC, two of the winners in these Young Performers’ Competitions displayed their expertise.

Soprano Jennifer Cable and flutist Rachel Rudich offered a short but substantial program of works by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Raoul Pleskow, Marshall Bialosky, Harvey Sollberger, Miriam Gideon, Brian Ferneyhough, Ursula Mamlok and Lee Hoiby; their performances proved clarified and bracing.

Rudich’s playing of Sollberger’s “Riding the Wind,” Parts II, III and IV, for solo flute (1973-74) seems to exhaust the possibilities of extended techniques for the instrument while contemplating musical materials that invite reconsideration. Here, one had to admire the flutist’s deep virtuosity and probing seriousness, just as one had to marvel at her ability to memorize, play and dance a complicated Stockhausen score.

Cable, sympathetically supported by pianist Phillip Young, negotiated the myriad difficulties in 11 songs by five contrasting composers. Of particular interest were Bialosky’s touching “Three Short Songs for Voice Alone,” to Dickinson texts, and Gideon’s tortured, restlessly atonal cycle, “Poet to Poet.” Mamlok’s “Daybreak” and two Hoiby songs reminded us that neo-Romanticism is alive and well.