The Boston Musical Intelligencer, December 21, 2016 — “The content of some ‘modern’ music is just as human as what is thought of as ‘classical,’ composer Yehudi Wyner explained to the audience at the concert featuring his music at the Boston Athenæum on Monday evening. His explanatory remarks were well taken; although there were a number of active composers, music critics and announcers, and musicians in the audience, it was generously sprinkled with regular attendees at Athenæum events who might not have been as familiar with the modern-music scene in Boston.
“The concert was the first of three by the superb New-York-based Ecce scheduled for this academic year by the Athenæum. It offered three pieces by Wyner: Concert Duo, for violin and piano (1955), Refrain, for solo piano (2011) and Trio 2009 (2009), that ended the program. Also heard were two strong complementary pieces, Trio No. 4 (2014) by Martin Boykan (born in 1931) and Tenebrae (2013) by Martin Brody (born in 1949, and a former student of Wyner). Violinist Jennifer Choi, pianist Julia den Boer, clarinetist Liam Kinson, and cellist Seth Woods, performed.
“Wyner’s music, probably more easily digested than that of many other modern-music composers, deals very much with emotions, in very rich textures, with wide variety of rhythms, tempi, and dynamics, and, as he noted, ‘the power of pauses and punctuation.’ The instrumentation of the Wyner compositions is inventive, often provocative, conversational, combative and bemused, by turn. His titles are often evocative. The endings of Wyner’s two latter pieces particularly left this listener with a profoundly satisfying emotional experience.”
“The concert was the first of three by the superb New-York-based Ecce scheduled for this academic year by the Athenæum. It offered three pieces by Wyner: Concert Duo, for violin and piano (1955), Refrain, for solo piano (2011) and Trio 2009 (2009), that ended the program. Also heard were two strong complementary pieces, Trio No. 4 (2014) by Martin Boykan (born in 1931) and Tenebrae (2013) by Martin Brody (born in 1949, and a former student of Wyner). Violinist Jennifer Choi, pianist Julia den Boer, clarinetist Liam Kinson, and cellist Seth Woods, performed.
“Wyner’s music, probably more easily digested than that of many other modern-music composers, deals very much with emotions, in very rich textures, with wide variety of rhythms, tempi, and dynamics, and, as he noted, ‘the power of pauses and punctuation.’ The instrumentation of the Wyner compositions is inventive, often provocative, conversational, combative and bemused, by turn. His titles are often evocative. The endings of Wyner’s two latter pieces particularly left this listener with a profoundly satisfying emotional experience.”
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