In celebration of Women’s History Month, composer Amy Wurtz gave an inspiring piano recital of music by Chicago-based women composers at Harold Washington Library on Wednesday afternoon. She is also celebrating by posting new videos of her performing women composers on YouTube. Several of the pieces from Wednesday’s concert at the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium can already be viewed.
Wurtz has done a great deal to highlight Chicago composers of all genders over the years. She is president of New Music Chicago and has headed or been involved with the recurring Impromptu Fests, the Thirsty Ears Street Festivals, and the Ear Taxi Festivals. She also performs new music at the Epiphany Center, the Green Mill, and other venues, including her home, where the videos have been shot.
With a tall and slender figure, Wurtz has a dignified presence at the keyboard. Wednesday’s program allowed her to exhibit a wide latitude of expressions, from forceful chords to delicate moments of quiet reflection. She plays with subtlety and elan.
This came out in her performance of several pieces on the program. She described Breathe Life I by Kyong Mee Choi as filled with contrasts and action on both ends of the keyboard. A passage that started at the top of the keyboard and went to the bottom, with hands crossing the whole way, was played with perfect evenness and precision.
The quiet Eurythmy Etute I: Still Life by Augusta Reed Thomas required a delicate touch and Wurtz provided it. As she explained, a lot of the music takes place in the realm of sounds between the notes. Using the damper pedal, the overtones came forth. View that here. The following piece, Free Fall by Osnat Netzer, sounded like a waterfall from the top to the middle of the keyboard, when it stopped.
Wurtz also played her own work, Cycles 4: The Secret, which displayed her compositional style well. Like some of her other works, this piece straddles the atonal and tonal worlds. It played out on both ends of the keyboard. Toward the end there’s a lengthy trill-like feature at the top of the keyboard that got a little blurry.
The composers mentioned above are all living today, and some were present on Wednesday. Several of the most moving pieces, however, were by African American women who have died.
At the top of that list sits Florence Price, who composed in Chicago in the first half of the 20th century. Wurtz opened the concert with A Day in the Life of a Washerwoman, which comprises four brief character sketches, beginning with the dawn of “Morning.” This allowed Wurtz to demonstrate her refined playing. This was also was the first piece she posted on YouTube on March 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgK3A0RVNlU
Wurtz noted that a great many of Price’s scores have survived; many were discovered in a trunk in an attic south of Chicago, where Price had a home. Margaret Bonds, whose I Believe: Credo, No. 2 ended the concert, was not so lucky. Little music by this student of Price’s has survived. Wurtz played a transcription of this prayerful work, which is originally for piano and vocals.
Another high point of the concert was the piece immediately preceding it. Variations on a Theme by MacDowell by Chicago native composer and educator Irene Britton Smith showed mastery of that musical form. Written in a-minor, Smith took the theme in lots of directions over10 variations and ended in A-major. Wurtz has already filmed and posted an excellent performance of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IPnoboqfs0.
Amy Wurtz has performed solo and as a duo with cellist Alyson Berger, with whom she has released CDs. The Wurtz-Berger Duo are celebrating the release of a new album at a free concert at the Epiphany Center, 201 S. Ashland, on Saturday, March 24, at 3pm.
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