NYBERG | KSU chamber music recital brief but enjoyable | Features

A most unusual recital played in Hale Library’s hemisphere room Friday as part of its ongoing chamber music series: a very short program featuring the talents of Amanda Arrington, piano, Steven Maxwell, tuba, and Susan Maxwell, flute and bassoon.

For me, it posed the serious, “bedrock” level question: odd as the combo was, did it still lie within the appreciative range of my reviewing competence? It’s actually a question I really do ask myself every time I prepare to do a review. That’s for something like 40 years now.

I don’t know if this is my last review for The Mercury, but if not, it well could be. Once I found that Vivaldi and Brahms were among the composers whose works, suitably adapted, would be among those featured Friday, I decided I was likely to be as near qualified to write about it as any available local commentator. So, in a nutshell. let me say that in my capacity as a designated reviewer I was pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of music offered by this ensemble. From start to finish, the selections provided (with one exception) ear-friendly harmonious, even melodic array of short pieces and/or movements of longer pieces, expertly delivered.

Turned out that the opening number was a world premiere, “Windfall” for bassoon, tuba, and piano, written specifically for the Maxwells and for this program.

It felt structurally mature and sophisticated even though Grace Baugher Dunlap, who was present to accept applause for the work, is only 30 years old.

Also included in the program was a set of 3 short duets for Bassoon and Tuba, “After Manhattan,” by Gwyneth Walker, who visited here in 2022 and met the Maxwells. Barbara York’s “Conversations” for bassoon, tuba and piano were indeed chatty, “jaunty,” and very American in their idiom.

As for that 40-year history of publishing columns assessing the achievements of a wide variety of musical and dramatic events, I can only say that in retrospect it strikes me as a fortunate coming together of collaborative factors: the Mercury had a history of promoting local live productions, I had substantial familiarity with the history of “classical” music without being a member of KSU’s music faculty and with stage drama without being in KSU’s drama department, both of which would have been “conflict of interest” disqualifiers.

So it turned out being a splendid opportunity to advocate for at least two major art forms, and beyond that, for the live, local presentation of them. Throughout my years of reviewing for the Mercury I’ve tried to do my best to be both upbeat and honest, which has not been terribly hard, since most of the productions I’ve attended have been well worth the effort of getting to them.

I’m in no position to say whether any words of mine have influenced anyone to try a local, live event, and as to my motives of course I’m the last person able to assert there’s nary a shred of ego-serving in them, but I’m pretty sure that commenting on the arts for The Mercury can never been a serious “side hustle” because Mercury management has wisely chosen to keep the level of compensation below what would be needed in order for it to be a serious inducement to write them.

So let me close by saying that it’s been a mostly enjoyable privilege, getting my mostly “promotional” commentaries out there available to be read. I can only hope that they have been of some use.

And that one exception on Friday? “Fnugg” for solo tuba (2000) by Øystein Baadsvik.

I just didn’t hear anything I could call music, although I’m willing to concede that the sounds must have required extraordinary capability on the instrument to execute.

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