REVIEW: Ekmeles Delivers Cryptic "The Little Match Girl Passion"
Above photo by Steven Pisano.
December 8, 2023
Andrew Ousley’s The Crypt Sessions at the Church of the Intercession in Washington Heights brilliantly relocates classical music from the formal trappings of the recital hall. Following a welcoming wine & cheese reception — a reset after the workday and city commute lacking in traditional venues — you descend into, yes, the crypt of the church.
The creepy Gothic arches and stone floor emanate a chill, the perfect setting for David Lang’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning vocal work The Little Match Girl Passion. A retelling of the story by Hans Christian Anderson, Lang’s text (after H.C. Andersen, H.P. Paulli, Picander and St. Matthew) is set for four voices (a later version was issued for large chorus) who also play percussion. New music vocal group Ekmeles, the first American recipients of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s 2023 Ensemble Prize, delivered a disquieting and hypnotic reading for this December's Crypt Sessions, complete with candlelight and an almost funereal ambiance.
Photo by Steven Pisano
The Anderson story — in which a little girl suffers alone in the cold, hallucinating of her late grandmother in the flame of a dwindling supply of matches, before freezing to death — is indeed cryptic. It captures an allegory centering, as the composer writes in his program notes, on a “naive equilibrium between suffering and hope.” He sees in one line of the story a response from “the people,” and draws from this a parallel with the crowd in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, alternating the narrative fabric of Anderson’s tale with commentary like that of a Greek chorus. His score even makes certain references to the great Bach Passion imperceptible to the listener.
Photo by Steven Pisano
The musicians of Ekmeles approached the chant-like work with reverence, and the phasing, often overlapping words were projected for maximum clarity. Clear-toned Charlotte Mundy, soprano has a delicate touch on brake drum and sleigh bells. Amber Evans contributed a rich alto and played crotales. Tomás Cruz’s creamy, bright tenor voice was impressively secure while playing glockenspiel, and Steven Hrycelak, bass, maintained a warm, grounded foundation for the colliding harmonies, as well as rhythmically crisp bass drum and tubular bells.
Under the baton of conductor Jeffrey Gavett, the performance was impressive for its cleanliness and lack of sentimentality. The percussion clangor was an eerie death knoll in the crypt’s acoustics, but never overpowered the tender, rounded vocals. Well-balanced, perfectly in tune, and with floaty, unadorned diction, Lang’s Passion is a perfect showcase for the virtuosity of Ekmeles.
Our poor heroine succumbs on New Year’s Eve — I guess this is why The Little Match Girl Passion has come to be associated with the holidays. And, as Radio City Music Hall is to The Rockettes, Death of Classical’s The Crypt Sessions shall henceforth be the natural setting for Lang’s mysterious confrontation of death and redemption.
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Ekmeles’ next performance in NYC:
Stimmung is for Lovers: Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung (1968)
February 14, 2024 7:30PM at the Dimenna Center
