The one-day modernist music festival continues to justify the words of George Crumb, performing music that “depends for its very existence on a type of pioneer performer” by Juri Seo, Steve Reich, Terry Longshore, and Crumb’s “Makrokosmos” in its four-part entirety.

July 20, 2024 | Charles Rose
Music

On June 27, the Makrokosmos Project hosted their tenth anniversary show at the Salmon on Redd. Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia, along with half a dozen local pianists and members of the Portland Percussion Group, tackled the entire Makrokosmos cycle by American avant-garde composer George Crumb, along with two premieres of music by Juri Seo.

The series has played plenty of Crumb before. They performed Three Early Songs back at Makro 2, Makrokosmos III at Makro 4, the haunting string quartet Black Angels at Makro 5, and Idyll for the Misbegotten and Processional last year. Given his recent passing and the tenth anniversary, it was an apt time to tackle the whole Makrokosmos cycle in one go. Makrokosmos X (the concert that is) thus felt both like a celebration of ten years of the concert series and a tribute to the life of Crumb and his legacy in the history of American avant-garde music. 

Crumb’s four massive piano works weren’t the only pieces on the program. The concert opened with a set by the Portland Percussion Group with music by Steve Reich, Anders Koppel and PPG’s very own Terry Longshore. Interspersed between the Makrokosmos cycle, performed out of order (4, 3, 1, 2), Saar and Stephanie premiered a new commission from Korean-American composer Juri Seo, Lux, Lumen, Splendor. PPG’s Garrett Arney also premiered a piece by Seo, Twelve Preludes for Solo Marimba.

In his program notes for Makro III, Crumb has this to say: 

In closing, I feel that it would be most appropriate to emphasize the critically important role of the performer in the evolution of any new musical language. New music, with its enormous technical and expressive demands, depends for its very existence on a type of pioneer performer, who, in fact, is engaged in creating and codifying the Aufführungspraxis [performance practice] of our own time.

This paragraph could be a mission statement for the Makrokosmos series. For the past ten years Saar and Stephanie enlisted some of the best musicians in Portland to bring forth this audacious vision. In this sense, the Makrokosmos Project is a celebration of live music and virtuosic performance. 

Makrokosmos spent its opening two shows at the Blue Sky Gallery and the following three years in the Vestas lobby. Since then they bounced around the city, settling the last two years at PICA in Northeast. This year they found themselves at the Redd on Salmon Street in Central Eastside. Volunteers served wine and hors d’oeuvres under a massive piece of industrial machinery, looming large over the otherwise contemporary warehouse space. String lights zig-zagged in the air above us as well. 

Happy hour

The opening set began a bit after 5 pm, with no prior announcements. Portland Percussion Group started Steve Reich’s Music for Pieces of Wood as chatter quickly died down. The quarter note woodblock pulse throughout was piercing, as oppressive as a fire alarm–but that pulse let the group build up its polyrhythmic variations. All five looked poised and locked in, but were still grooving with some subtle head nods. Saar Ahuvia only gave the opening statements after the first round of applause. The next piece, Toccata by Anders Koppel, was a fantastical chromatic piece for marimba and vibraphone, moving quickly with impressionistic runs, impressive four-mallet work and dramatic dynamics. 

PPG member Terry Longshore presented his piece Kangaroopak Sardha for us. The ensemble performed on various hand percussion, including finger cymbals and cajon, while Longshore himself took the tabla lead part. Kangaroopak is composed with a tricky 10.5 beat rhythmic cycle drawn from North Indian music (a “tala,” Sardha Roopak in particular). There was even a spoken konnakol section.

After a brief break, the audience moved from the back corner to the main hall with two pianos and a massive collection of percussion, where the rest of the show would take place. Celestial Mechanics, the fourth and final work of the Makrokosmos cycle, opened the second set. Like in the other Makro pieces, the piano was amplified to bring out the resonances of the piano, and to help the audience hear the extended techniques that appear throughout the cycle. Performers strike the strings with their hands, sing into the piano, pluck the strings like a guqin, and prepare the piano with bolts and paper. The plethora of sounds along with the spacious pauses made it feel as if all the notes were lonely stars drifting through space–hence the name. The transfiguration at the end was downright gorgeous, similar to the ending of Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles. 

Welcome comedown

To complement the greater focus on Crumb, Saar and Stephanie paired it with two world premieres commissioned for Juri Seo. The first was Twelve Preludes for Solo Marimba, commissioned for and performed by Garrett Arney of our very own Portland Percussion Group. As a collection of joyful character pieces, the more classical character of the Twelve Preludes was a welcome comedown from the loud first set and the abstract Celestial Mechanics. Each movement explored a different texture or technique, with beautifully sonorous chords throughout and a tasteful delicacy on the part of Arney. 

Saar and Stephanie premiered the second piece by Seo, Lux, Lumen, Splendor. Seo examines the phenomenon of light through this four-hands piano piece that sounds of a piece with Crumb’s Makrokosmos. In my notes I posed the question, “how does one make the piano luminescent?” The shining Lux, Lumen, Splendor isn’t all harsh sun rays, as the piano duo explore the piano’s deep register with vast arpeggios above, then sweep upwards with quartal chords before ending on a cheeky phrygian cadence.

I would have to hear both again, but the two pieces balanced each other well, showing two different sides of Seo’s output. 

Beyond the eighty-eight keys

After Seo’s two premieres came Makrokosmos III: Music for a Summer Evening, from which the concert took its name.  PPG’s Paul Owen and Chris Whyte joined Stephanie and Saar onstage surrounded by a conservatory percussion closet’s worth of instruments. For those who like to dissect and analyze there is a lot here: the epigraphs by Quasimoto, Pascal and Rilke, the rhythmic patterns, the allusions and quotations of Bach and Mahler. But it is also a sublime sonic portrait of space, placing gorgeous sonorities between pensive silences. The quartet of performers seemed in a trance, letting the music flow through themselves and the audience emotionally and spiritually. 

The final stretch of the marathon finally began a bit after eight pm, in which half a dozen pianists took their turns performing the Makrokosmos I and II. George Crumb did more than just about anyone in expanding the sonic possibilities within piano music. Crumb looks beyond the eighty-eight keys and inside to the strings, the body and beyond, much like Cowell did in “The Banshee” or Cage did in his Sonatas and Interludes. Crumb is also the kind of composer who would use a slide whistle in a quote-unquote-serious piece of music, or include an extended Chopin quotation in the middle of his unsettling textural piano music. 

If Makrokosmos teaches you anything, it is to expect anything. It can be jarring when the pianist starts singing, but the music also puts you in a headspace where basically any sound can inhabit the soundworld.

The pianists recruited should be familiar to past Makrokosmos attendees. The first book of Makrokosmos featured pianists Susan Smith, Alexander Schwarzkopf and Deborah Cleaver. Schwarzkopf previously played the “Scorpio” and “Leo” movements two years ago at Makro XIII, alongside an original composition Synergy that used the elaborate artistic score notation Makro is famous for. 

Through the course of hearing Makrokosmos I and II, we move through the signs of the Zodiac twice. Appropriate, given the multiple meanings embedded in the work’s name. There’s the obvious allusion to Bartók’s Mikrokosmos piano cycle; the pun on “macrocosm;” the word “cosmos.” All three meanings play into the music’s sense of wonder and mystery. The amplified body of the piano lets notes ring out longer than expected, like dust and ice trailing behind a comet. 

Julia Lee, Jeff Payne and Yoko Greeney tackled Book II. It was a great idea to split the load for Makro I and II, since it allowed each pianist to show their interpretation of the music. It also gave the audience a breather during transition time.

And it required deep listening, ending the five hour concert on a contemplative note. 

If you want to support Makrokosmos for the next ten years of music, visit their GoFundMe page.

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