New Jersey’s Princeton Symphony, led by Music Director Rossen Milanov, with oboe soloists Lillian Copeland and Erin Gustafson in Viet Cuong’s new Extra(ordinarily) Fancy. Photo courtesy of Princeton Symphony.
In Tuesday’s (3/11) Sequenza 21, Christian Carey writes, “Some … orchestras play it safe, not straying far from Mozart and Beethoven … Not so the Princeton Symphony. Last Saturday, they played two new works by Viet Cuong and Julian Grant, as well as the complete ballet version of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella…. In Extra(ordinarily) Fancy, Viet Cuong uses the baroque concerto style as a template for postmodern roleplaying…. The soloists, oboists Lillian Copeland and Erin Gustafson, traded a chromatic theme back and forth, but whereas Copeland played the piece in conventional fashion, Gustafson distressed the lines with multiphonics, alternate fingerings producing multiple pitches. … The orchestra got into a rambunctious spirit themselves … Vaudeville in Teal featured the harpsichordist Mahani Esfahani, joined by a reduced orchestra … Grant is a prolific composer of operas and his flair for the theatrical shone through here…. The soloist is given a dramatic part to play, which Esfahani enacted enthusiastically…. There were moments in which Esfahani’s light-hearted demeanor shifted, with dissonant chords suggesting brooding ominousness. Grant is an adroit orchestrator, and he trusted the ensemble with challenging music of their own.” Princeton Symphony Music Director Rossen Milanov led the concert.
