Dolce Suono's "Russian Roots'

The solo for an unaccompanied instrument must be one of the most challenging tasks composers can tackle. Trios and quartets offer composers all the possibilities inherent in tone colors, harmonies and the interaction of the different instruments. But the unaccompanied solo limits them to the range and color of a single instrument.

Despite (or perhaps because of) that challenge, the genre has given us some of the most exciting music in the repertoire. The sight of a lone musician, working through a difficult, emotionally intense score is one of the most riveting spectacles the music world offers.

Dolce Suono's "Russian Roots" program included two unaccompanied solos by composer-in-residence Shulamit Ran, and both were winners. Ran says she tries to "find the soul of the instrument" when she writes unaccompanied solos. Her researches seem to have uncovered aspects of the flute and viola previously hidden from other inquiring theologians.

Definitely not sweet

Ran's East Wind for Solo Flute is definitely not a sweet little flute piece. It begins in the flute's lower register, with a suggestion of the call of a shofar, and runs through a gamut of passions and techniques, with an extended passage that reaches volumes not normally associated with the flute. Mimi Stillman gave it a hypnotic performance— the musical equivalent of a great actor declaiming a famous speech.

Ran's Perfect Storm for Viola Solo calls for a performer who can produce a big voice and isn't afraid to cut loose dramatically and emotionally. It's a strong piece, and it received a strong performance from Keri Ryan, the Philadelphia Orchestra's assistant principal viola. Her pizzicatos were so violent that I feared for the safety of the strings.

The Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina likes to employ odd techniques and tamper with instruments. In her trio, The Garden of Joy and Sorrow, the flutist sometimes plays two notes at once, the harpist wraps wax paper around some of the strings, and the violist plays long series of wavy lines with an ultra-light touch.

Eccentric techniques

The three musicians who played the piece demonstrated Gubaidulina's innovations before they launched into the performance. The demonstrations could have focused the audience's attention on the techniques instead of the music, but I found they had the opposite effect. When I heard something unusual, I didn't sit there wondering how it was produced, but I responded to the effect it created.

Gubaidulina may play with eccentric techniques, but Garden is basically a highly emotional piece, with long passionate solos and instrumental dialogues charged with feeling.

Prokofiev's 1943 sonata for flute and piano has become one of the standard items in the flute repertoire. It was the most conventional piece on the program, but its classic, four-movement structure produces just as much variety as the newer pieces without sounding innovative.

Prokofiev's scherzo is properly lively, his adagio is properly romantic, and his final allegro features a march that sounds like a Russian dance. Stillman and Charles Abramovic have played it many times, and they gave it the kind of polished, heartfelt performance it deserves.

Trip to Purgatory

The other two items on the agenda were a trip to Purgatory, which opened the program, and a short final piece for piccolo and string quartet that Shulamit Ran called a "sorbet."

Elena Firsova's Purgatorio for string quartet is the middle section of a triptych based on Dante's Divine Comedy. Its overall structure moves it from the lower registers, as Dante leaves Hell, to the upper registers, as he meets Beatrice and approaches Heaven. It sounds like a rather obvious framework, but it acquires genuine power as the composer develops it, and the journey includes beautiful touches, such as a solo for the higher registers of the viola.

The Argentine composer Maurice Kagel called his five-minute quintet a "Pan" for piccolo and string quartet. Its most notable feature was the way it blended the strings with Stillman's silvery piccolo. But it's also a playful piece, packed with interesting, unobtrusive complexity.

Farewell, Shulamit

Shulamit Ran is listed on the Dolce Suono programs as "artistic co-curator" as well as composer in residence. She and Mimi Stillman planned this program together, just as they collaborated on Dolce Suono's moving Holocaust program in November. This was her last appearance in both roles.

I knew Shulamit Ran by reputation before she undertook this stint, but I hadn't heard much of her work. Her American commissions and composer-in-residence sojourns have mostly taken her to New York, Chicago and other U.S. centers. This is the first time Philadelphians have received an extended contact with her music and the intellectual and artistic vision she brings to it. Credit Dolce Suono with another important contribution to Philadelphia's cultural life.