Rendering №15

Mad King Stalks the Stage, Ready to Shock

The author of the article is Steve Smith. It was published on 24 May, 2013, in The New York Times. The article provides the information about a choral work for tenor, baritone, choir and orchestra called Cantata Profana.

In the beginning of the article the author describes a usual situaton for any inquisitive musician, when too much curiosity about disparate pieces and few opportunities to play them all within a single ensemble. The group of students from the Yale University School of Music and its Institute of Sacred Music presented both vocal and instrumental works, early music and modern fare.

Then the author tells about an imposing traversal of Peter Maxwell Davies’s “Eight Songs for a Mad King,” a harrowing 1969 portrayal of King George III’s descent into madness, based on poems by Randolph Stow and melodies from a mechanical organ the king once owned. And also Smith describes John Taylor Ward's performance, who stalked the stage in a robe and pajamas, expertly booming and screeching through the work’s disjointed reminiscences.

Steve Smith points that  the players all made efforts to enhance the nervous mood of the performance through gesture and expression, and the climactic moment, when the king grabs a violinist’s instrument and smashes it onstage, retained its sense of shock.

In the end of the article the author tells that the program opened with Mr. Davies’s “Seven Renaissance Scottish Dances”, and representing Handel, a favorite of King George’s, was a blithe account of the Trio Sonata in B flat, in which Mr. Ashworth, the artistic director of Cantata Profana and another violinist, Holly Piccoli, played with diligent attention to period style. 

In conclusion I would like to say that the music of Cantata Profana is quite unusual and so unique. To my mind it is very difficult project, demand accuracy and coherency of all members. I'm sure it would be interesting to listen for people who are fond of misic.