“Revelers” at Carnegie Hall

Spirits were high at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall for Decoda’s sold out show “Revelers”. The program started with the revelry of Lutosławski’s folk-flavored dances, the impish laughter of Strauss’s madcap trickster, the New York Premiere of a work by ensemble member Brad Balliett with images by Will Storie that evoke merry pranks.  The world premiere of Valerie Coleman’s Carnegie Commission, Revelry, takes a different turn in a two movement, sensory guide to the reckless abandon that emerges when people congregate, while Connesson’s Techno parade is an exhilarating carnival, in which the illusion of revelrous abandon belies taut precision and craft.  The program ended with Poulenc’s raucous and ravishing Sextet for Piano and Winds that evokes the Parisian nightlife its composer frequented, in his characteristic tender and sardonic musical tone.