NEW YORK — The Light After, presented Oct. 11 in the crypt beneath the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, initiated a new series from the ever-macabre Death of Classical, which procures eerie underground venues — catacombs, crypts, cemeteries. This latest spot is a particularly successful find.
Bathed in battery-operated candlelight, the crypt provided a rich, deep acoustic. The musicians played in the center of the long, low-ceilinged room, with audience on one side and sarcophagi on the other. Of course, the novelty of listening among dusty old bones would quickly wear thin if the concerts weren’t worthwhile in their own right. Happily, Death of Classical collaborates with outstanding musicians — in this case NOVUS, the new-music ensemble of Trinity Church — and chooses exquisite repertoire.
DoC founder Andrew Ousley introduced this program as representing “the tremendous darkness we feel at this moment in time,” adding that “when we seek the light, we find it.” The first work embodied the dichotomy of darkness and light, Caroline Shaw’s 2009 in manus tuas (“In your hands”). The solo cellist was Andrew Yee, who also curated the program. The first sound is the creaking of the bow pulled vertically along the strings, the friction gradually relaxing into a smooth open fifth. Yee filled in triadic tones by singing “Ah” against sustained chords. Bach was a clear influence, but it was a Bach battered and fragmented. Intense emotion gave a sense of lamentation and loss.
Without so much as a breath-length pause after the Shaw, violinists Katie Hyun and Alex Fortes and violist Mario Gotoh joined Yee, launching quietly into Juhi Bansal’s 2021 miniature string quartet Cathedral Light. Harmonics, birdlike twitters, and the gentle raking of bows over all four strings gave texture to a simple melody, pared to its essence.
The evening’s centerpiece was a world-premiere by Yee: This Love was written for flutist Melissa Baker and string quartet. Yee explained that the work touches on the “fear and absolute joy and anger and all the things that come with motherhood.” Baker’s unaccompanied flute opening seemed to represent strength punctuated by moments of anxiety. The flute part explores the instrument’s range, just as motherhood challenges a woman’s limitations. Comforting triads are interrupted by surprising chromaticisms. Tentative, delicate pizzicato turns to bowed spiccato, then explodes into fortissimo flutter-tongue and big, sawed chords. NOVUS perfectly executed the difficult changes between sections. There was no place to hide even the slightest fault in that lively acoustic space, and there were no faults to hide.
Violinist Hyun then tackled David Lang’s “after joy,” the unaccompanied second movement of his Mystery Sonatas, composed in 2014 as a tribute to Heinrich Biber (1644-1704). It’s an unsettling combination of minimalism and super-human virtuosity. At first, each note in the melody is repeated one octave up; then one and two octaves for each note; finally one, two, and three octaves. That last phase is nearly impossible. Removed from the larger context of the Mystery Sonatas, “after joy” seems like a parlor trick, but Hyun deserves praise for her impressive technique and courage.
For Yee’s The Light After, which gave the series its name, the cellist moved farther back, casting a spooky shadow while sitting among what appeared to be sarcophagi. In the opening for unaccompanied cello, meditative moments soon turn angry. Double-stop slides without harmonic center edge toward madness. Repetitions evoke the repressive mundanity of life (or of the news cycle lately). Baker, out of view, then joined on flute, its ethereal sound offering light and change.
The last and longest piece was the string-quartet version of Osvaldo Golijov’s lushly expressive Tenebrae (Darkness), from 2002. The opening pairs the cello and viola against the two violins; the two duets glide across each other at points of inevitable dissonance that immediately resolve. It felt like an analogy for living in peace: co-existence without letting our differences poison us. Gotoh’s viola provided a constant rippling, so nothing was ever still. The intensity built to a dark, Beethovenian minor section. Finally the calm opening passage returned, weary but tinged with hope.
The only drawback to the evening was the concert’s short, 60-minute length. Death of Classical overlapped two performances of the same program: Ticketholders were treated to a generous nibbles-and-wine reception to lengthen the experience, and the reception for the second showing occurred while the first performance was happening below in the crypt. This approach was understandable, given that seating only allowed for a few dozen listeners at a time.
The Light After series continued Oct. 12 with Dvořák’s American Quartet and works by living American composers. The last installment is Oct. 16, a wide-ranging program of vocal and instrumental music called Vis Aeternitatis (“Power of Eternity”) after Hildegard of Bingen’s famous work.
Ousley promises that DoC has many more burial spaces in the offing “in New York and other cities, and even other countries.” Here’s hoping the dead don’t mind the music.
