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rich, and the sextet (which also includes tenors Steven Bradshaw and James Reese and bass-baritone Daniel Schwartz) grace the score with penetrating refinement. Jeremy Gill’s Six Pensées are vibrant settings of verses by Blaise Pascal, one a piquant condemnation of nefarious flies.
Jackson’s Spring is as fragrant in harmonic language as its subject, and Joanne Metcalf’s glistening The Sea’s Wash in the Hollow of the Heart, set to a poem by Denise Levertov, contains the line that gives the disc its title: ‘Let in new suns that beat and echo in the mind like sounds.’ As performed by Variant 6, those sounds are sumptuous. Donald Rosenberg
‘Perspectives’ Elfman Percussion Quartet Flutronix/Third Coast Percussion Rubix Glass Metamorphosis No 1 Jlin Perspective Third Coast Percussion Cedille (CDR90000 210 • 74’)
It was only six years ago that Chicagobased Third Coast Percussion became the
first percussion group to win a Grammy in the chamber music category, with an allSteve Reich CD celebrating the composer’s 80th birthday. Since then percussion groups have become increasingly popular, and this new recital of four premiere recordings demonstrates the kind of highquality repertoire that is emerging through new compositions and collaborations.
In Danny Elfman’s entertaining, finely structured Percussion Quartet there are moments of poetry and, in the last movement, a spectral haunting with chimes. The electronic musician known as Jlin has created in her Perspective a series of stunning études that originated as
Our monthly guide to North American venues Jordan Hall, Boston
electronic tracks, from which Third Coast created this performing version, with the painful beauty of ‘Obscure’ and the exquisite chrysalis of ‘Duality’ among the highlights. Third Coast’s arrangement of Glass’s Metamorphosis No 1, inspired by the recording made by Uakti, is dazzling.
After all of this has been achieved on unpitched instruments alone, marked by the sadness that comes with their decaying tones, the recital ends with a literally playful collaboration, titled Rubix after the cube, between Third Coast and the two pitched instruments of Flutronix (flautists Nathalie Joachim and Allison LogginsHull). Based on textures, sketches and performance instructions, the music has a mesmerisingly ephemeral quality, ending in a radiant Cirque du Soleil yearning.
The recordings made at the Chicago Recording Company have a delicacy and physical beauty in addition to their dynamic impact and clarity. Laurence Vittes
Year opened 1903 Architect Edmund M Wheelwright Capacity 1051
Walk south-east down Massachusetts Avenue from Harvard, bisect the sprawling campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and cross the Charles River on the Harvard Bridge that offers unparalleled views of the Boston skyline, and McKim, Mead & White’s great Symphony Hall stands imposingly in the distance, letters on its roof announcing the home of the BSO.
But to find the real gem of Boston’s concert halls, you have to go past Symphony Hall, take a right on to the broad boulevard of Huntington Avenue and find the home of the New England Conservatory, a National Historic Landmark since 1994 that holds within it – where a central courtyard might otherwise be in the Renaissance palazzos that inspired it – the elegantly proportioned Jordan Hall.
Built in 1903 to plans by Edmund M Wheelwright, a distinguished New England architect who also designed the nearby Horticultural Hall and the long-ago demolished Boston Opera House, Jordan Hall has always lived something of a double life. Jordan is one of the more spectacular school auditoriums around, the stage on which several generations of conservatory students have now made their musical way. But it also serves as the second hall for the city at large, being intimate enough for song and piano recitals but steadfast enough in its acoustics to host ensembles such as the Boston Philharmonic and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project – even the explorations into forgotten histories staged by Odyssey Opera. In that capacity, Jordan is much more the home of Boston’s musicians – from period practitioners to contemporary composers – than Symphony Hall across the street.
Renovated in 1995 at the cost of $8.2 million, Jordan is still an unusual place to walk into for the first time. The entry is no ornate hallway, offering no hint of its being a temple of the arts; you enter from a side street and across a corridor, notices visibly pinned to nearby walls advertising student performances or asking for tutoring.
Its spirit is in some ways familiar; the crest above its proscenium recalls that of the bigger brother that the Symphony completed three years earlier than its own opening, for one thing. But to step through its doors is to greet a marvel, all attention on a stage of dark wood and golden organ pipes. The stalls beneath the doorways seem relatively few, and the seats around bank on all sides; above is a large balcony, again steeply raked, below a vaulting ceiling of white plaster. The sound has always been ideal.
The pity is that Jordan has only just started opening up again to the outside performers that have given it such life for well over a century. Understandably, the Conservatory has made its priority the protection of its students throughout the pandemic, and in Jordan’s absence from public life, some groups such as BMOP have struggled to get back on their feet. But now they are – and Jordan resounds again, as ever. David Allen
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