RANDOM
REVIEW EXTRACTS
The mastery of ultimate
survival in show business is to rise to what you are irreducibly best at, then
give it honestly to your audience. For artists with remarkable longevity, that
germ becomes ever more subtle yet powerful, sending reviewers into paroxysms of
prose as they attempt to get to the core of a Karajan or a Bruno Walter. And yet
for the artist, the way seems ever clearer, and this ease of expression translates
once again to the audience as mastery. ********************************************************* Take
a clumsy, noisy rehearsal of Le Sacre du printemps. Subtract anything slow or
eerie. Add the climax from every monster movie soundtrack you've ever heard, playing
duo and trio. Throw in a couple of train wrecks for good measure, with a dash
of earthquake and aerial raid. Now you're close to the impact of Edgard Varèse's
Ameriques, as conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas at Davies Hall last Friday night.
But wait, that's not all. It's not merely that
the piece was groundbreaking in the literal sense, that is, expecting the floor
to split open and swallow the first three rows… ********************************************************* At
its best, minimalist composition is a craft more akin to painting than to writing.
Organization of cumulative details involves obsession with color. Devising elemental
patterns of rhythm demands an elevated understanding of line that courts the fractal
or pointillist. This approach was much in evidence at Saturday's American Mavericks
performance of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians at Davies Symphony Hall. Briskly
reflected points of plink and clunk laid down a bright wash from a double quartet
of pianos and marimba/xylophones. Broad sweeps of pulsing texture cascaded through
the catchy, slowly evolving cross-rhythms. ********************************************************* Ellington
gets under your skin in a dozen different ways. He is like a pleasant itch, than
a consuming fever. He knocks you cold, then massages your heart muscle to make
sure you're still alive. He hits all the buttons, even the ones you didn't know
you had… *********************************************************
[Lou] Harrison has lived long enough to discover what is inalterably interesting
and captivating to the ear. His modal approach to harmony, when combined with
a penchant for unceasing melodic flow, weaves highly visual and sensual tapestries
of sound. Narrative without being programmatic, descriptive without being cinematic,
his music is a sharp lesson for those convinced that tonal music has run its course.
After listening to his music, it seemed the surface has barely been scratched.
********************************************************* Christopher
Rouse's Bonham needed no explanation. Arrayed across the stage were all nine percussionists
[of Adesso Percussion Ensemble], each playing something timpanic, led by the cautious
yet precise baton of conductor Anne Krinitsky. A paean to the departed rock god
of Led Zeppelin fame, the piece validated the respect that Rouse's pupils at the
Eastman School of Music, such as Gareth Farr, hold for him. Naturally, riffs and
breaks from old Zep songs were in evidence, although somewhat intellectualized.
The effect was suitably offensive to the ear but brilliant to the mind. Yet I
couldn't help noticing how many percussionists it took to recapture the excitement
of one man's spontaneity and musicianship. *********************************************************
[Onyx String Quartet] achieved interpretive heights in the Bartók comparable
to its performance by such quartets as the Tokyo, the Kronos, and the Emerson.
Onyx has a unique chesty brilliance, a sweetness and penetration as thrilling
and sensitive as a cabaret singer. This vocal quality dominated the smoky darkness
of the opening Moderato, intensifying the episodes and imbuing them with inquietude.
In the following Allegro molto, the passion and humor the quartet lent to the
music never wanted for elegance and synchronicity. Its muted final passages were
executed with an almost supernatural exactness. But they shone brightest in the
harrowing Lento, showing how a slow movement can close a piece with greater effect
than a fast one if the musicians give it everything. ********************************************************* Orchestral
transcription is a tricky thing. At its happiest, the transformed works feel entirely
orchestral in conception, making the piano originals a distant memory. Prime examples
are Debussy's setting of Satie's first and third Gymnopédies, portions
of Petrouchka (originally scored by Stravinsky for two pianos), and Ravel's many
transcriptions of his own piano works and those of others: Ma Mère L'Oye,
Alborado del Gracioso, Le Tombeau de Couperin, and the titanic transfiguration
of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. But
for every such triumph, there are at least two failures. Most prominent is Les
Sylphides, a potpourri of Chopin pieces set as ballet. The choreography scintillates,
the orchestrations do not. Several orchestrators, including Glazunov himself,
tried and failed to make this entirely pianistic music sing for strings, wind,
and brass. Another harsh lesson is Ravel's transcription of his own Une Barque
sur l'Océan. Its piano original is quintessential Ravel. The orchestrated
version sounds like second-rate La Mer. ********************************************************* Is
it possible for a group to be too good? This was a question I asked myself at
the Saturday night performance of Kronos Quartet at the Yerba Buena Center. Certainly
these performers have been the frustration of many a reviewer by presenting very
little to take issue with, at least in their quality of tone, command of interpretation,
and sheer excellence of performance. The years have only improved them. Hank Dutt's
warm, powerful viola playing is still a rock upon which the ever-more-intense
relationship of violinists David Harrington and John Sherba can build. With Jennifer
Culp completely at ease in her role as cellist, they have never sounded better.
And yet, the nonconformity and drive for esthetic
individuality that make Kronos unique also have their risks. The quartet's rapacious
omnivorousness has somehow passed by the best of the current generation of emerging
composers in Kronos' own home town of San Francisco, producing a kind of isolation
locally that is certainly at odds with their musical persona. And there is also
the sense that the group's programming decisions have created a set of expectations
that preclude astonishment. ********************************************************* Whoever
inherits the podium of the Marin Symphony will have his or her work cut out, as
Sunday night's concert showed. Small habits of carelessness, little inconsistencies
in pitch and rhythm, and looseness of ensemble all have grown over the past year
into a consistent pattern of amateurishness as the orchestra tests out new conductors.
This is a shame, because so many players of individual excellence are currently
among the ranks, particularly in the string section, where much of the defect
lies. There is little excuse, for many of these musicians also can play with tightness
and accuracy, making a real presence in the other orchestras in which they perform.
And there is no explanation, save the need of a firm hand at the tiller. ********************************************************* This
old warhorse felt more coltish in the open air of the summer evening, lakeside
on the grounds of Sonoma State University. In the quiet, moist breeze, Tchaikovsky
had to stand up a little and get less lost in himself. While Fate knocked and
all of that, here it was only a decisive theme and not an overblown gasp of a
great, tortured soul. ********************************************************* One
of the most obvious effects of today's globalization is the free sharing of languages
and cultures. To be in the arts and sciences today is to belong to a country larger
than the one you were born in, a point tellingly made at last Sunday's performance
of Japanese composers by the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players at UC Berkeley's
Hertz Hall. As these works showed, the musical heritage of a country is becoming
less impetus or framework than flavor or character, while the composer's true
emphasis seems to be more on expression of personal experience and emotion or
insight. ********************************************************* Form
follows function. This is true whether you are writing a review or composing a
symphony or blowing a glass vase. No matter how elegant or violent the creation,
success comes by the degree with which an object fulfills its purpose. In the
case of Carolyn Yarnell's new score to The Smiling Madame Beudet, a classic black
comedy of the silent era screened last Friday night at the University of Santa
Cruz Music Recital Hall, the function of inhabiting silence with laughter, pathos
and tension was fulfilled with confidence. ********************************************************* Discipline
- the very word can carry an implication of emotionless perfection and, when used
as praise, often suggests a somewhat inhuman process of application. But as the
Saint Petersburg Philharmonic showed last Sunday night at Davies Symphony Hall,
the root of the word is disciple, as was each of this youngish group of spectacular
musicians. The excellence and uncanny accuracy they displayed was ultimately an
expression of humanity rather than clinical bravado. At
the heart of this consonance is the conductor Yuri Temirkanov, in whose hands
the conjoining of supposedly divergent principles seemed most organic in union.
Precision met expression, as integrated as a nervous system runs a heartbeat in
his interpretation of Shostakovich' Fifth Symphony . ********************************************************* The
opera itself is a marvel of miniature. Cast for seven women's voices, its one
act and three scenes comfortably inhabit an hour and twenty minutes with a complete
and elegant statement about not just the hubris inherent in its epic subject,
but also the relationship of creator to creativity and the question of authorship
of inspiration. Sarah Michael wrote the libretto with a composer's sense of drama
and a comparative mythologist's sense of psychology. Both the inevitability of
the story and the momentum of the music rolled along with surprise, humor, and
perceptive emotional dialog. ********************************************************* As
much as with any established work, a performance of the Brahms concerto is part
of an ongoing dialogue with history. It is as interesting to note as it was gratifying
to listen how the purpose and presence of soloist and accompanying orchestra melded
with such ease and grace. The six curtain calls were not merely the response of
an overawed suburban audience to easy virtuosity. Soloist and orchestra deserved
every one of them. ********************************************************* As
his career proceeded, Zappa seemed to blend qualities of the best of the 20th
Century's approaches to the role of composer and performer, with a bandleading
virtuosity akin to Duke Ellington, a sense of sexual horseplay and social commentary
as biting and clever as 20's Berlin Cabaret, and an uncompromising indulgence
of his own creative will. He never wrote a note to please anyone but himself,
and we can take it or leave it. We'll take it, thanks very much. ********************************************************* Some
cellists play as if they were barely hanging onto a monumental cliff of rosin,
wire, and wood. Miland's physical presence is just the opposite. His cello seems
like a small bright thing beneath the synergetic dance of his two arms, an image
reinforced by the urgent, pleading, yet flowing quality of his melodic phrasing,
evocative of the easy lyricism a solo violinist would emote in that heart-string
high range. He took the little 4-note melodic tag that [Jake] Heggie used as a
motivic foundation, a throwaway scrap of Lalo or Wieniawski, and put it through
its paces, growling it, shouting it to the heavens, weeping it onto the cold ground,
soothing it with drowsy sweetness. ********************************************************* …it
was difficult to find a greater redeeming value in the onslaught of cinematic
histrionics than the opportunity it gave us to hear a truly remarkable player
put through his paces on a classic Strad. Korngold seemed incapable of ending
a musical episode without an upsweep on the harp, which occurred at such frequent
intervals in every movement until the convention had passed all limits of cliché
writing. Another predictable feature of this piece was the composer's penchant
for immediately repeating every impassioned melodic idea an octave higher. When
the idea was really hot under its collar, it was given the opportunity to be played
yet another octave higher, and so on to the point of preposterousness. The
great folly of this exercise is most clearly illustrated by the program notes'
assertion that Korngold was "...one of the last Romantics." But, with
all due respect to the Santa Rosa Symphony and its excellent program annotator
Mark Osten, this statement is balderdash. The Romantics whose creative passions
defined them as an artistic movement placed discipline at as high a degree as
emotionalism - as well they might, for they had the spirit of Beethoven looking
over their shoulders! All the way from Schubert to Strauss, there is a tempering
logic and sense of proportion which not only makes the genre appealing today,
but has also given it relevance through the many changes of taste and perception
that have occurred since that era. ********************************************************* She
understands dynamics and phrasing better than people who merely listen. Her energy
and focus on a performance are total, pulling the audience completely inside her
tactile vision of music. I write, of course, of Evelyn Glennie, whose solo percussion
recital marked the apex of an immensely satisfying festival for this year's Other
Minds participants. For all that this yearly celebration is about composition
and experimentation, the real impact of what contemporary music can be was brought
home by the presence of a world-class virtuoso on the Palace of Fine Arts Theater
stage. ********************************************************* The
hardest piece to listen to came last, as Opus Posth joined the Dresher Ensemble
in a premiere of Martynov's Kali-Yuga Dances. This piece basically repeated two
notes in a jig, over and over again, with no melody, no development, and no variation
except for a few little bars thrown in of riff. This continued for many unpleasant
minutes. Perhaps as an American I am missing something here, not being exposed
to all of the musical directions and subtleties of a foreign culture. But even
at that, my own culture is one where idiots leave their car alarms going on for
hours in the wee hours of the night, and I would advise against programming anything
that unduly reminded us of that.
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