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[Published in and copyright by the Dayton Daily News,
February 13, 2008]

Ying Quartet wins over audience

YELLOW SPRINGS — A capacity crowd sat shoulder to shoulder in the pews at the First Presbyterian Church of Yellow Springs on Sunday evening to hear the Ying Quartet perform as part of the Chamber Music Yellow Springs concert series.

The weather was frigid, but the welcome was warm for the Chicago-based ensemble, which would otherwise have been attending Sunday's Grammy Award's ceremony in Los Angeles, where it was nominated in the best classical ensemble performance category.

The quartet learned shortly before the Yellow Springs concert that it had not won (the group eighth blackbird took this year's award), but it gave a winning performance Sunday evening, nonetheless.

At first blush, the program appeared to be a diverse mix of musical eras, styles and geographical sources, ranging from Franz Joseph Haydn's Quartet in G Major, Op. 77, No. 1, to Maurice Ravel's Quartet in F Major to a collection of works by contemporary Chinese-American composers, which the group labled "A Musical Dim Sum," as in the also-named dining experience at a Chinese restaurant.

Part of the brilliance of the program, in addition to the stellar playing, was the connections that could be heard between the works.

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[Published in and copyright by the Dayton Daily News,
April 2, 2008]

Premiere of Classical Piece Connects Far-away Places

A German quartet debuts a work by a composer who grew up in Yellow Springs

YELLOW SPRINGS — A spiritual sense of place is the personal landscape on which New York-based composer Drew Hemenger constructed his new work "Three Inner Moments" (String Quartet No. 2), which received its world premiere Sunday evening in Yellow Springs.

Performing the piece as part of its appearance on the Chamber Music Yellow Springs series was the internationally acclaimed Vogler String Quartet from Berlin, Germany.
 

Deceptively simple in its conception, the work needed an ensemble of the Vogler's musical caliber to bring it to life, although it was interesting to note the fact that a German group was responsible for unveiling such a decidedly American piece.

For the place — or rather, the three places — that figure in Hemenger's work are part of a thoroughly American landscape and psyche: Glen Helen, in Yellow Springs, where Hemenger grew up; Union Square, Manhattan, days after 9/11; and Fire Island, New York, where Hemenger vacations.

But the work of an artist is to take the personal and find the universal, which is what Hemenger — who was in attendance Sunday — has done, finding in each place not only personal significance, but also metaphoric places where both loss and hope intertwine in poignant harmony — a human experience with significance for all.

Sunday evening's concert also featured a zesty rendering of Haydn's Quartet in E-flat Major, and a memorably sublime performance of Beethoven's Quartet in E Minor, Op. 39, No. 2.

A very special night for all.

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