The first part of Saturday’s afternoon concert, “Remembering Olly,” a tribute to Oliver Knussen, composer and 2005 OMF Music Director, featured 7 short but concise pieces performed chronologically. Moving through five early works to end with a couple of pieces from the current century that were revisions of earlier themes and fragments, the final one completed in 2018, the year of his death. That last piece, “Study for ‘Metamorphosis,'” made an interesting segue to the second half, Rachmaninoff’s “Isle of the Dead” followed by Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Twice Through the Heart,” also about death. Soprano Kate Howden gave a rivetingly emotional performance as the woman who murdered her abusive husband the piece is about. The evening brought a concert of contrasts, beginning and ending with two of the highlights of the festival for the more adventurous among the attendees, John Zorn’s “Jumalattaret” and Gérard Grisley’s “Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil,” both given spine-tigling performances by Barbara Hannigan. Her vocal gymnastics in Zorn’s song cycle in praise of Finnish Goddesses taken from the epic tale the “Kalevala” were extraordinary, and the hauntingly repetitive and spare piece about crossing over to the next world by Grisley (conducted by OMF regular Steven Schick) neatly tied up the theme of death and it’s aftermath begun in the afternoon. The middle of the concert was the part that got some to grumbling, questioning the appropriateness of light hearted folk songs coming between some seriously high-minded fare, but most of the audience gave them a standing ovation.
