My last hearing of Australian composer Liza Lim’s music was with Elysion Ensemble’s Tongue Singing, incorporating a wide range of her opera catalog collected last year.or releaseI wanted to hear more of her theater music, including Lim’s avant-garde “The Oresteia.”
Alas, Thursday’s Limb program at Columbia University’s Miller Theater didn’t feature anything like that. Still, Miller’s first portrait of the composer this season in concert confirmed how Lim can create drama through experimental conceit.
The program provided the US premiere of her String Creatures, written for the Jacques Quartet. Also, her 2016 solo work, Oceans Beyond Earth, featured cellist Jay Campbell, a member of that groundbreaking group.
Or were you solo? In “ocean” each cello string has a cotton thread attached to a nearby violin string. Campbell would sometimes pull on those strings to make the violin strings vibrate independently of the instrument. At other times he alternately bowed the binding threads and the strings of the cello. As a result, he explored various separate ways to make sounds on the two instruments.
The piece was also a good example of Lim’s character. Her approach is consistent with aspects of contemporary experimental music, but also with aspects that can be cliché (such as harsh, harsh string sounds and breathtaking extension techniques). But Lim uses these now-familiar tones as moments that foster suspense in music with a solid sense of balance and unmistakable direction.
On “Ocean,” whose dramatic trajectory more firmly evokes the cello’s more booming stature, Campbell gradually moves beyond the first faint cotton-string turbulence. A gentle, straight bow followed. And finally, a strong pizzicato.
Lim’s expressive writing becomes more powerful with the addition of more instruments. At the beginning of the three-movement “String Creatures,” a country-western “chop” accent (percussive bows on strings repeated for rhythmic effect) gave the music its impetus.
For the Jack player, the piece had other highlights. A brief lullaby teased at the end of the first movement later emerged as Campbell’s spotlight, proceeding in what sounded like microtonals.
Still, the ghostly ensemble textures throughout the quartet were the highlight. At times, the group seemed aligned, united around mechanical minimalism. But stabilizing the quiet dynamics, Lim bent the individual strings his lines out of the expected polyphonic pattern.
It was all grip material. So, after a night like this, who brings her rich design drama to New York?
Composer Portrait: Liza Lim
It premiered Thursday at Columbia University’s Miller Theater in Manhattan.