Washington Classical Review

The Voyager Ensemble performed George Crumb’s Black Angels Friday night at Linehan Hall. Photo: Jeremy Keaton

Arnold Schoenberg may be the most famously triskaidekaphobic composer, but George Crumb’s iconic Black Angels takes the cake for obsession with the number 13. Crumb even inscribed the work with the words “Friday the Thirteenth, March 1970 (in tempore belli).” The Voyager Ensemble marked this month’s occurrence of Friday the 13th, reportedly without intending to do so, by performing this piece at Linehan Hall on the campus of UMBC, where Voyager co-director Airi Yoshioka is on the faculty.

Scholars trace fear of the number 13 to the Death Card in tarot decks, which was often given that number. The “time of war” in the score’s inscription was the Vietnam War, and it was composed not long after the 1969 revelation of the My Lai Massacre but prior to the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. In keeping with the Voyager Ensemble’s programming of themes along national lines, the concert was dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the United States.

The spectre of death pervades the thirteen movements of Black Angels, scored for an amplified string quartet with the musicians also playing a range of other unusual instruments. Violinist Lina Bahn, leader of the esteemed Contemporary Music Forum formerly resident at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, joined as first violinist for this piece. She gave a Mephistophelian edge to the Tartini-infused solos in the “Devil-Music” movement of the first section. The sense of satanic ritual was heightened by the well-timed incantation of counted numbers in several languages.

Tongue clicks, col legno strikes, and other dry sounds marked the “Sounds of Bones and Flutes” movement. Bowed and struck sounds from two large tam-tams, heard first in the “Lost Bells” movement, shocked the ear. In all of these shifts to other instruments, including the rattle-like warnings of maracas, the ensemble moved with care and silent grace. No sonic effect seemed calculated to be over the top, but the overall effect produced an otherworldly unease.

Cellist Jan Müller-Szeraws, as Yoshioka announced before the concert, celebrated becoming a U.S. citizen last month. His elegantly placed high harmonics proved a highlight in the “God-music” movement, accompanied by the other three musicians on bowed crystal glasses filled with water. The limpid major tonality of this accompaniment was one of Crumb’s many uses of consonant harmony to balance the work’s otherwise prevailing discordant violence.

Voyager’s co-directors, violist David Yang and Yoshioka on second violin, anchored the piece from their central position in the group. Crumb’s many musical allusions to historical music had their intended ghostly effects. The melody of the Dies Irae sequence, in fragile harmonics echoed by soft whistling, had an eerie impact. So did the snatches of Schubert’s song “Death and the Maiden,” quoted from the second movement of his String Quartet No. 14 and played with the bow higher than the fingering hand to create a sound like a phantom viol consort.

Preceding this seminal experimental piece were two recent short works for unamplified string quartet also by American composers. 

The concert opened with a world premiere, fellow UMBC faculty member Linda Dusman’s Matsutake | Hope, which is “a polyphonic rendering for string quartet of a photograph of mycelial growth,” according to the composer. The result was not nearly as deadly as it sounds, featuring as it did a range of textures and plenty of contrapuntal interest, if not necessarily much noteworthy melodic content. Yoshioka, who took the first violin part for these two introductory works, led with confidence.

In the middle of this compact program, performed without intermission, came the 2018 String Quartet by Thomas DeLio, who like Dusman was present in the hall. This piece, around eight minutes in duration, seemed to center on a single pitch. Played in stark unison at first, this note was obscured by other snatches of sound. Many silences, some of marked length, punctuated the work and much of the score focused on notes of longer duration and often at whisper-like dynamics. The composer, it should be noted, has written books on both Morton Feldman and John Cage.

The Smithsonian Academy Orchestra, led by Kenneth Slowik, performs Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 (“Surprise”) and Brahms’s Serenade No. 1 in a free concert 7:30 p.m. February 20. music.umbc.edu