Notable ensemble and a string quartet headline week's offerings

Cornell's Department of Music presents two concerts and a discussion this week in Barnes Hall.

Ensemble X will open its 1999-2000 season tonight, Sept. 16, at 8 p.m. Concertgoers will experience a magical depiction of flying sparks from China (Chen Yi's Sparkle), and hear a striking but little-known early work from Hungarian master György Ligeti (Sonata for Cello Solo). The concert also features Argentinean Jorge Liderman's Notebook and, from Mexico, Javier Alvarez's Temazcal. Maurice Ravel's rarely heard songs from Madagascar (Chansons madécasses) will be performed as well. The program closes with Kappa Alpha Professor of Music Emeritus Karel Husa's Sonata a tre, commissioned by the Verdehr Trio and composed in Ithaca in late 1981 and 1982.

For this performance, Ensemble X, in its third season, features conductors Steven Stucky and Mark Davis Scatterday, with Elizabeth Simkin on cello, Gordon Stout on maracas, and soprano Judith Kellock.

For those interested in an inside look into the music, Stucky, Cornell music professor and Ensemble X artistic director, hosts both Yi and Husa in a preconcert discussion on stage from 7:15 to 7:45 p.m. Also today at 1:25 p.m., Yi presents the Composer's Forum in 400 White Hall.

A native of Guangzhou, China, Yi is one of the most widely commissioned, performed and honored composers of her generation. Noted for her skillful drawing together of the music of East and West, Yi will be in residence on the Cornell campus today and Friday, Sept. 16 and 17, a visit made possible by Meet The Composer, which is funded by the New York State Council on the Arts, American Society of Composers, Publishers and Authors (ASCAP), Virgil Thomson Foundation, the Eleanor Naylor Dana Charitable Trust and the National Endowment for the Arts.

On Friday, also at 8 p.m., the Clinton String Quartet presents a concert of three works, among them Professor Emeritus Robert Palmer's Fourth String Quartet. Formed in 1981, the Clinton Quartet is now central New York's most active professional string quartet. Through the Syracuse Society for New Music, the quartet has given world and local premieres of works by many central New York composers. Members include violinists Michael Bosetti and Vladimir Pritsker, violist Kit Dodd and cellist George Macero, and the quartet released its first CD, CQ1, in 1998.

All Department of Music concerts are free and open to the public. For information and tickets, contact 255-4760 or visit the department's web site at www.arts.cornell.edu/music/concerts.html.