An Eclectic Program from USC Thornton’s Young Stars

l-r: Lina Bahn, Abigail Park, Louis Milne, Abigail Koehler, Solomon Leonard, Seth Parker Woods.

REVIEW

USC Thornton Chamber Virtuosi, Second Sundays at Two, Rolling Hills United Methodist Church

BARBARA GLAZER

This Classical Crossroads' concert featured USC Thornton faculty members Lina Bahn (violin) and Seth Parker Woods (cello), and their premier students—Louis Milne (clarinet), Abigail Park (violin), Solomon Leonard (viola), Andrew Edwards (piano), and Abigail Koehler (bass)—in a diverse program of European masterworks and ethnologically-imprinted American classical compositions. Bahn and Woods in supportive ensemble playing gave center stage to the students for solos in which they excelled, as well as poised and articulate context.

The concert began with all but Andrew Edwards playing You, on the Mountain and Blessed are your Wedding Garments, the first two movements of the four Palestinian Songs and Dances (2024) by the Syrian-born, American-raised Kareem Roustom (b. 1971), the Emmy-nominated ethnomusicologist and Professor of the Practice (orchestration, and film music composition) at Tufts University. Roustom is interested in contextualizing music as a kind of “genetic material” in which to preserve and transmit to a larger audience the whole of a society's culture.

Kareem Rustom.

His strong identification as an Orthodox Syriac Antiochian Christian has inspired his use of Orthodox melodic shapes, hymns, and chants for many works that bridge Western classical and Middle Eastern folk traditions. In You, on the Mountain, a Palestinian folksong with encoded messages for mountaintop-imprisoned loved ones (during the years of the British mandate) is refashioned as a highly emotional and programmatic chamber piece evocative of a place and culture. Blessed are your Wedding Garments, by contrast, uses a folk melody for line dancing at Middle Eastern weddings.

Roustom scored them for clarinet, string quartet, and audio playback, the latter for a more "orchestral" sound and a steady beat to support the melodic lines and more fluid instrumental rhythmic patterns. The clarinet substitutes for the mijwiz's piercing tones, the playback for the yarghul's drone, making the music more accessible for Western players and listeners. The playback is “optional” but its function is necessary. Various instruments can substitute for it and here it was a bass, on which Abigail Koehler was outstanding, and only at a few days’ notice.

Jenö Hubay.

All the players have to make finger adjustments and in addition the clarinet must use circular breathing and changes in embouchure to produce the maqam (Arabic scale), which on Jim Eninger's excellent video can clearly be heard. Clarinetist Milne's gorgeous spectral glissandi, and his ability to maintain the unbroken driving melody and lively rhythm needed to fuel the stamina of the wedding dancers, and suggest their bodily motions, were masterful.

For a stark contrast in music and locale, we next heard Park, with Edwards (piano), play the Carmen Fantaisie Brillante, Op. 3, No. 3 (1877), by the Hungarian-born violinist, composer, and teacher Jenö Hubay (1858-1937). It's a dazzling, virtuosic showpiece in which the 17-year-old Hubay, enthralled by hearing Bizet's Carmen, used the Aragonaise, Habanera, and Escamillo's triumphant Toreador Song (the only violin version to do so), not linearly, but as interwoven themes. It needs very advanced violin techniques as well as the ability to delineate sultry, flirtatious music, singing vocal lines, high drama, and a full “orchestral” sound. Park excelled—and was well supported by Edwards.

Andrew Edwards.

He returned for Debussy’s Étude No.11 (1915), dedicated to Chopin, and entitled Pour les arpèges composés. Its broken chords often include non-harmonic dissonances, while the impressionist use of harmonic tones, blended with a very precise sustaining pedal, is designed to produce the color of the notes—not just their mechanical sounding. This Étude is a masterpiece of shimmering fluid textures, of cascading harp-imitating lines, and strong dynamic contrasts in the scherzando middle section. The pianist must find their own solutions to these demands of a keyboard exercise transformed into high art, and Edwards did well.

The Jewish/Argentinian/American multi-genre classical and film composer Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960)  is known for blending Western classical music with Latin-American genres and Jewish Klezmer music. He grew up in an Ashkenazi Eastern European household and this Ashkenazi klezmer tradition infuses The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. Isaac the Blind (1160-1235), a kabbalist rabbi of Provence, theorized that the universe is shaped by the meaning and different combinations of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; Golijov’s work, of which the first movement was played, elaborates on this linguistic role in Jewish history by referencing three historic languages: Aramaic, Yiddish, and Hebrew.

Osvaldo Golijov.

In the Agitato con fuoco opening, the string quartet (Park, Bahn, Leonard, Woods) reference the Rosh Hashanah prayer Un' taneh Tokef—chanted in Hebrew, but containing many Aramaic words, grammatical structures, and concepts. This is juxtaposed with the klezmer clarinet invoking the confessional and merciful pleading prayer Avinu Malkeinu. Milne switched between three types of clarinet (B-flat, A, bass) to achieve a mix of crying, wailing, and weeping in contention with the upbeat dance-like rhythms and joyful klezmer sounds in a movement embodying the tension between ritual and faith, anxiety and yet joy. His was a very good effort at overcoming the movement’s many technical pitfalls.

Robert Schumann.

Next came the Andante cantabile third movement of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet, Op. 47, played by Park, Leonard, Woods, and Edwards. This, the work’s emotional core, features a lush, deeply romantic, song-like cello theme which evolves into a tender, almost canonic duet with the violin. Parks played beautifully, and Edwards was an equal colorist partner in his left-hand arpeggios and chordal responses; Woods did not over-emote, avoiding the maudlin or stretching the rhythms, enabling a gentle flow. An excellent performance by all.

Milne's clarinet solo, The Abyss of the Birds—the third movement (of eight) of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (1941)—was magnificent. Messiaen, a French hospital nurse, was captured (late Dec. 1940) by German troops, and while awaiting transportation to a POW camp with his friend, clarinetist Henri Akoka, started writing The Abyss of the Birds, envisioned as part of a suite inspired by his deep Christian faith—in particular, Chapter 10 of the Book of Revelation.

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992).

With a sympathetic camp guard's provision of a pencil, some paper, and access to a decrepit piano, he composed the Quartet for the available instruments (clarinet, violin, cello, piano), within which The Abyss of the Birds was the only solo, written for Akoka. It symbolizes the contrast between the agonizing weight of temporal time, and the jubilant, eternal freedom of nature, and explores the extremes of the clarinet's sonic capabilities—some crescendos so painfully loud as to represent immense psychological pain., Milne's performance was a delight.

The classically trained, Afro-American Jessie Montgomery (b.1981) is famous for combining classical music with R&B, jazz, hip-hop, and poetical references, improvisation, and Black folk elements, to explore themes of social consciousness and community. She wrote Rhapsody No. 1 for violin (2014) for herself to play, intended to be part of set of six violin solos that paid homage to historic solo traditions, especially of J. S. Bach and Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931).

Jessie Montgomery.

She transposed it for the viola (2021)—here played by Leonard—as part of a project featuring various solo voices across different instrumental families, and also to expand the viola's solo repertoire. Although it is heavily inspired by Ysaÿe, that is not the whole story: Montgomery integrates blues harmonies and rhythms, and the improvisatory feel of Afro-American vernacular music. Leonard gave a very impressive performance.

Sheridan Seyfried.

Finally, in this long and highly varied program, came the Con spirito finale of the Sextet (2010), in three movements. for clarinet, piano, and string quartet by Sheridan Seyfried (born 1984 in Philadelphia). His music combines elements of Celtic and American folk music, blues, bluegrass, and New Age and, although not Jewish, he is deeply involved in the Jewish community. His music is highly approachable—vibrant, with easy-to-follow melodies. This finale gave each player moments to shine, and they did! Plaudits to them, and to Jim Eninger for his video, and for hosting the talented Thornton players.

 

---ooo---

Second Sundays at Two, Rolling Hills United Methodist Reform Church, Sunday, May 10, 2026, 2:00 p.m.

Images: The performers: Classical Crossroads, Inc.; Roustom, Golijov, Montgomery, Seyfried: Composers' websites; Hubay, Schumann, Messiaen: Wikimedia Commons; Andrew Edwards: Instagram.