Music Reviews : Engaging Pairing of Instruments in Monday Concert

This is the era of the emerging downtrodden, and no less so among neglected instruments than among social minorities, the homeless and the previously invisible.

Musically, the underrepresented now seek parity, and a place in the sun. Violists are beginning to rise up. No more nice guy, say our friends, the piccolo players.

And, this week, the distinctly unlikely duo of Stefano Scodanibbio, a contrabassist from Italy, and Harry Sparnaay, a bass clarinet virtuoso from the Netherlands, offered a surprisingly varied duo-recital at Monday Evening Concerts.

True, the evening began as one feared it might: with gray-sounding, live bleeps, bloops and squawks played by the duo. This was Fernando Mencherini’s inappropriately titled “Playtime II,” a dull and directionless essay for the pair.

After that, however, interest, color and musical motivation characterized this collection of unfamiliar works by Franco Donatoni, Brian Ferneyhough, Salvatore Sciarrino, Scodanibbio himself, Paolo Perezzani and Arduino Gottardo.

Except for Gottardo’s brief and soothing duet, “Momenti,” which closed the program, the most fascinating piece may have been Perezzani’s “Vocativo” for the duo. “Vocativo” offers hostile dialogue and ugly encounters between the pair; at half the length of its 14 minutes, it might be more effective.

Solo pieces for each of the instruments held the interest unstrainedly. Equally important, Scodanibbio and Sparnaay delivered each of these four works with utter commitment and an easy virtuosity.

Donatoni’s “Soft” explored much of the dynamic and sound-range of the bass clarinet profitably, and articulated its many themes attractively. Ferneyhough’s “Time and Motion Study I” for bass clarinet became a noisy soliloquy, not unlike a diatribe, but sufficiently differing in its expressions of self-pity to hold the listener.

For solo bassist, Sciarrino’s “Esplorazione del bianco I” proved more engrossing than Scodanibbio’s “Tre pezzi brillanti,” because it stopped short, in probing its materials, of exhaustive explorations.

As stage personalities, both performers related smoothly to the affable audience in Bing Theater at the County Museum of Art, speaking easily and offering insights into the music at hand.

At the next Monday Evening Concert, May 7, Joel Thome conducts music by himself, by Dorrance Stalvey and by Husa and Ferneyhough.