Music Reviews : Joyeux Woodwinds Play ‘Facade’ at Gindi

Sixty-eight years after its first performance--in a private home, of course--”Facade,” a poetic/musical, chamber-size entertainment cooked up by William Walton and Edith Sitwell, still gives pleasure and delight.

As presented, in its original version, by reciter Janet Bookspan and six members of the Joyeux Woodwind Chamber Players, Wednesday night at Gindi Auditorium, it titillated, danced, roared and smirked.

“Facade” has been called a precursor of surrealism, and it was; more important, seven decades after its premiere, it can still surprise. Sitwell’s text remains pristine and exuberant, Walton’s music wondrous and stylish.

With the vigorous, tightly paced conducting of Yehuda Gilad in support, Bookspan approached the 18 varied poems--their rich and evocative language the verbal equivalent of high-calorie confections--in her own way.

She declaimed some, cooed others, objectified all of them and created deep verbal contrasts throughout the set; her vocal range created dramatic resonances not always found in these words.

Gilad and his sextet of young players proved happy collaborators.

Before intermission, two trios of Joyeux layers operated efficiently. Clarinetists Gilad and Michelle Lucia, with bassoonist Michele Grego, gave a full-voiced reading to Mozart’s B-flat Divertimento, K. 229.

And Kira Bernstein, Lucia and Rebecca Payne produced a rather unsmiling performance of Malcolm Arnold’s brief Divertimento for flute, oboe and clarinet (1952).