PhilPaine.com

I’ve always been a suck­er for low-reg­is­ter instru­ments. A cel­lo or a vio­la da gam­ba will move me much more eas­ily than any vio­lin, and I get all dreamy if I hear a con­tra­bas­soon even tun­ing up. Edgar Mey­er is wide­ly regard­ed as the finest dou­ble-bassist alive. But I will con­sider him here as a com­poser. Now, many ter­rific solo per­form­ers have giv­en forth embarass­ing turkeys when they turned to com­pos­ing, but this is not the case with Mey­er. His Dou­ble Con­certo for Cel­lo and Dou­ble Bass, which he per­forms with the inim­itable cel­list Yo-Yo Ma, has none of the surly chug­ging along you expect from the instru­ment. It’s a spright­ly com­po­si­tion, with pleas­ant melodies, and some sar­cas­tic pas­sages that Prokofiev would be proud of. The Con­certo in D for Dou­ble Bass and Orches­tra, is down­right weird. It starts with lit­tle waft­ed frag­ments of melody, resolv­ing them every now and then into an orches­tral tut­ti, and plays lit­tle games of syn­co­pa­tion and call-and-answer. The sec­ond you think you know where the piece is head­ed, it twists out of it like a wrestler break­ing a Boston crab grapevine leg lock. It even­tu­ally drifts into a slight­ly sin­is­ter and puz­zling end­ing. The over­all effect is sur­pris­ingly pleasing.

Mey­er is a long-time friend of folk ban­jo vir­tu­oso Béla Fleck, and they’ve put out an album togeth­er that I’m most eager to hear. If any­one out there has heard it, send me a review. The two con­certi are togeth­er on the CD Mey­er and Bottesi­ni Con­cer­tos, along with two works by the 19th cen­tury Lom­bard com­poser, Gio­vanni Bottesi­ni, whose music I’ll dis­cuss next.