The Classical Recording Foundation Keep Their Eyes on the Prize

Tuesday night at Carnegie Hall was the Classical Recording Foundation’s annual awards night, and to their credit, they keep blazing a trail. Keeping an eye on the arists that producer/engineer/violinist Adam Abeshouse’s nonprofit is championing is one way to stay in touch with some of the best things simmering just under the radar in the world of classical music these days. Auspicious things are happening with the foundation as well: if all goes according to plan, they’ll have new digs in Williamsburg for both recording and live shows, complete with bar and restaurant, by 2014.

The concert celebrated centuries-old traditions as it saluted new ones. The star of this particular evening was harpist Bridget Kibbey. While the classical concert harp probably isn’t the first instrument that you would think of as being badass, Kibbey makes it that way. Praised for her DIY esthetic, she lends her unorthodox virtuosity and powerful attack to a nonstop series of new commissions: much as the Imani Winds are doing for wind ensembles, she’s singlehandedly springboarding a new repertoire for her instrument. This time out she began with latin jazz, which is a good fit for her rhythmic, hard-hitting style since the one contemporary instrumentalist that she sometimes evokes is Colombian jazz harpist Edmar Castaneda. While she didn’t go deep into the funk like he can, Weill Hall doesn’t really have the acoustics to accommodate that. But the moody intensity of a Paquito D’Rivera diptych, a shapeshifting partita by David Bruce and the rapidfire circularity of a Kinan Azmeh piece were more than sufficient to wow the crowd.

The old guard was first represented by harpsichordist Gerald Ranck, who deserves a special shout since he’s the man in charge of music at the perennially eclectic New York Society for Ethical Culture. He’s also an intense and intuitive player: at one point during his all-Bach program (from an upcoming recording of the entire Well-Tempered Klavier, on harpsichord, piano and organ), he hit one particular low chordal sequence in the G Minor Fugue, BWV 885 so hard that the assistant turning pages beside him broke into a grin: no doubt he was doing the same inside. Likewise, his take on the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, BWE 847 was hair-raising, one of the most lusciously invigorating performances of Bach in recent memory.

Representing for the 19th century were Philadelphia Orchestra violinist Barbara Govatos and pianist Marcantonio Barone, who delivered a passionate, dynamically rich, suspensefully spacious version of the first movement from Beethoven’s Sonata in A, Op. 47 from their new Beethoven sonata cycle cd. To close the night, soprano Elizabeth Futral sang a brief series of Philip Lasser songs backed warmly and tersely by pianist Margo Garrett. Lasser’s signature update on the French High Romantic in this case served primarily as a showcase for Futral’s stunning range while keeping the theatrics in check on the piano side. And when the lyrics – a series of French texts from across the ages – took a sudden turn into darkness and angst, Lasser illuminated the words (a Louise de Vilmorin poem) with a sudden, Debussy-esque, wary lustre.