WILMINGTON, NC – Chamber Music Wilmington is one of the leading concert series in the Port City region. Led now by Oskar Espina Ruiz as the artistic director, each event is a top-quality concert. The series typically features exciting younger groups who are already making an impression on the national or international stage. Such a group is the Akropolis Reed Quintet.
The Akropolis appeared previously on the series, just about exactly two and a half years ago. In presenting the quintet for a second time, Chamber Music Wilmington evinces the willingness to allow its audience to experience an exceptional group in a fresh way, with different repertoire from their first appearance. That is especially the case with an ensemble which itself is an emerging instrumentation. New works are being created, and new possibilities explored. The standout instrument in this evolving grouping is the saxophone (played here with rich tone by Matt Landry). The reed quintet may be the first time that the saxophone is finding an established place in a chamber wind ensemble, whereby one could say that its sonic counterpart in the standard wind quintet is the horn. The other instrument newer to the chamber setting is the bass clarinet (Andrew Koeppe). Mr. Koeppe was described in the introductory commentary from the stage as being the exceptional player who actually specializes in this instrument.
The Akropolis has now released six albums, the latest appearing in April 2024. They are in their 16th season, with the same five performers who founded the group. They have commissioned numerous and varied new works and are the recipients of prestigious grants. They also make a great contribution to musical life as educators, running several substantial school programs in their home Detroit. They are winners of the Fischoff Educator Award.
This program again showcased the group’s top-level artistic skill. It picked up, in a way, from where their first Wilmington concert left off: with a movement from Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel. This was the concluding Toccata, a section they didn’t play in their appearance in 2022. As the name implies, it is a high-speed, virtuosic movement. To be given as the opening piece, it almost seemed designed to announce their brilliance. It was played with virtually total precision and clarity, a most exciting opening. There are a couple of points where beautiful melody emerges from the rapid movement. In the first statement of that, the thickness of the part writing may have been why the oboe – finely played by Tim Gocklin – was not optimally heard. The saxophone had greater success. Notwithstanding that, the wind sonority works well for this higher-lying diaphanous music; it is fully the equal of the original piano score.
Three movements followed from A Soulful Nexus by Derrick Skye, commissioned by the quintet and completed in 2023. With its mixing of Persian with Balkan and electronic elements, it is an example of the kind of innovative creation that the Akropolis has been spurring. With irregular and syncopated rhythms, this piece put the tight cohesion of the quintet on full display. It was upbeat and in a tonal language – as might be expected from its cultural origin points, but with pitches (microtones) that didn’t fully match the tonal scale. The off-beat rhythms required endurance from the players in that this was a kind of ostinato and there were many such chords, all tight; the bassoon (Ryan Reynolds) is an anchor for this. Kari Landry had a fine brief solo on clarinet, and the movement came to a soulful end. It is rather too long for the material, even as any individual section was interesting.
The bass clarinet had a chance to shine melodically in the opening of the next section, and the presentation was very lyrical. This movement also introduced dissonance among the moving lines. The final section used clapping and stomping, presumably as a counterpart to what in the original genres would have been drumming. There was equal rhythmic tightness here! The players traded off with this percussion element; navigating the changes of “instrument” is a skill as well. More irregular rhythms: one was reminded of the compound meters of Bartok, who worked with Balkan music as well. There were also some augmented 2nds, further evocative of the Eastern origins. The final chord was a well-done ending.
The last brief number before intermission was the popular standard “For All We Know.” It has been covered by many artists; here the version by Nina Simone served as the basis for the wind arrangement. Simone, who was a classically trained pianist, used counterpoint in the first section of the song, followed by a more standard chordal accompaniment. This worked well in the wind setting. The inner lines had a pleasing flow. It is also appealing that Simone’s performance, and this one, eschewed the cloying sentimentality that one can hear in other versions of the song. The saxophone took over the melody and it was very expressively played. There were a number of little bluesy grace notes which suited the style of Simone’s singing perfectly, even though she doesn’t obviously sing such notes. The ending was beautifully wistful.
The first of the two pieces after intermission was The Hebrides by Felix Mendelssohn. Written when the composer was barely 21, it is a marvel in its complete musical maturity. Mendelssohn had grown up in Berlin in a highly cultured Jewish family. His earlier string symphonies – still worthy of performance today – were premiered in regular musicales at the family home. His sister was the enormously gifted Fanny Mendelssohn, whose music is now gaining the attention it deserves. Felix emerged as a master at the age of 17 with his often-performed Midsummer Night’s Dream overture. He spoke several languages, was on cordial terms with the queen of England (his “Wedding March,” still standard at weddings today, became famous following its use there) and was prominent on a European scale as a composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor.
In this arrangement of the full-orchestra tone poem, the Akropolis presented as good a case for it as could probably be made. They captured interweaving lines and there was a light articulated section that was very fine. Lyrical lines were projected with full expression. The ending of the development created atmosphere. The coda was exciting, with high virtuosity. Yet overall, one questions translating an orchestral piece of these dimensions to the comparatively diminutive scale of a quintet. This simply can’t match the drama and color, the range and dynamic power of the original. One admired the skill of the players, but the nature of the music does not seem well-suited to an ensemble of this type.
The ending piece returned to an idiom which the group carried with full success. This was Homage to Paradise Valley (2019) by Jeff Scott. Not in this case the well-known Paradise Valley in Arizona, but “a now-displaced [African-American] neighborhood of Detroit,” according to the program notes. It goes on to say that Scott has a “diverse musical background as a jazz and studio musician in New York City,” and this could be readily perceived in portions of his music. The quintet performed three of the four movements. The first was “Ghost of Black Bottom,” perhaps evoking the image of a place now gone. It started with dark, low-register, reflective chords. A higher melody followed, with a beautiful shift between registers to bring it back to the opening sound. There were evocative, shivering trills and a move to a livelier, syncopated section. The earlier composer Gottschalk came to mind here.
The following movement was in the character of a spiritual, heartfelt and soulful. The accompanying instruments played softly and sensitively, creating a lovely tonal palette. The movement simply stopped at the end.
The concluding section, “Paradise Theatre Jump,” evoked both an actual theatre, and the lively, rhythmic style of jump blues, made well-known in the 1940s particularly by Louis Jordan. The piece was humorous – and required considerable rhythmic precision from the performers. The bassoon introduced a lively fugato; the movement and the suite came to a rollicking end in full fun mode.
And therewith the concert as well. No encore followed, but the audience certainly would have enjoyed one. This second appearance by the Akropolis Wind Quintet was a great success.