Events like the Washington Square Music Festival have a lot to put up with. Removal from the frenzy of city life to a relatively bucolic calm is a principle of festivals in general and one that goes back to the ancient Greeks. But planting open-air music in the middle of a public park means scuffling for attention.
This annual series began its 49th season on Tuesday night. (The first was in 1953; if the numbers don’t add up, there have been a few bumps along the road.) The usual subversives during these concerts have been casual passers-by, competing music makers or the whispered counterpoint of “Smoke, smoke” issuing from stealthy operatives along the park’s leafy pathways. But the most effective enemy remains the open sky, which, having no roof with which to bounce sound back to the audience, invites it to float away, incompletely heard.
This particular concert had a different set of adversaries, namely the extreme heat and the threat of thunderstorms. New York University offered its Loewe Theater around the corner on West Fourth Street, and in the interests of prudence the festival and its relatively large audience, a mix of young and old, relocated to air-conditioned comfort and a more controlled environment.
The only shame was that a program nicely calculated to the out-of-doors was now suddenly out of place. Four trombones are as good a way as any to get the attention of a distracted citizenship. Here they played arrangements from the Baroque ranging from Albinoni to Bach. Following was a quartet of horns in movements from Jean Francaix’s ”Notturno e Divertimento” and Michael Tippett’s Sonata for Four Horns.
The music arrived in fours and in dark colors. After intermission it was a Suite for Four Cellos and the Impromptu (Op. 30), both sweet and inconsequential and written by the late-19th and early-20th-century composer Julius Klengel.
Then it was time for a general merger: first David Taylor’s version of Schubert’s “Doppelgänger” for bass trombone and ensemble, and the weird sounds of Mahler’s Adagietto movement from the Fifth Symphony arranged for all of the instruments listed above. In the Schubert (or sort of Schubert), Mr. Taylor recited, sang and offered wildly flamboyant trombone solos in an engaging improvisatory style. Lutz Rath, who elsewhere had a shaky evening as a cellist, conducted both pieces.
This annual series began its 49th season on Tuesday night. (The first was in 1953; if the numbers don’t add up, there have been a few bumps along the road.) The usual subversives during these concerts have been casual passers-by, competing music makers or the whispered counterpoint of “Smoke, smoke” issuing from stealthy operatives along the park’s leafy pathways. But the most effective enemy remains the open sky, which, having no roof with which to bounce sound back to the audience, invites it to float away, incompletely heard.
This particular concert had a different set of adversaries, namely the extreme heat and the threat of thunderstorms. New York University offered its Loewe Theater around the corner on West Fourth Street, and in the interests of prudence the festival and its relatively large audience, a mix of young and old, relocated to air-conditioned comfort and a more controlled environment.
The only shame was that a program nicely calculated to the out-of-doors was now suddenly out of place. Four trombones are as good a way as any to get the attention of a distracted citizenship. Here they played arrangements from the Baroque ranging from Albinoni to Bach. Following was a quartet of horns in movements from Jean Francaix’s ”Notturno e Divertimento” and Michael Tippett’s Sonata for Four Horns.
The music arrived in fours and in dark colors. After intermission it was a Suite for Four Cellos and the Impromptu (Op. 30), both sweet and inconsequential and written by the late-19th and early-20th-century composer Julius Klengel.
Then it was time for a general merger: first David Taylor’s version of Schubert’s “Doppelgänger” for bass trombone and ensemble, and the weird sounds of Mahler’s Adagietto movement from the Fifth Symphony arranged for all of the instruments listed above. In the Schubert (or sort of Schubert), Mr. Taylor recited, sang and offered wildly flamboyant trombone solos in an engaging improvisatory style. Lutz Rath, who elsewhere had a shaky evening as a cellist, conducted both pieces.
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