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FESTIVAL REVIEW
March 20, 2005
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By Heuwell Tircuit
In a charming addition to the local music scene, First Unitarian Church
sponsored a Béla Bartók Birthday concert Sunday utterly free of
clichés. Appropriately, half the performances were by talented teens,
as both Bartók and his colleague Zoltán Kodály expended so much effort
in behalf of music education. The afternoon included piano music, a
girl's choir, a vocal soloist and a piano soloist plus some sensational
brass playing. Best of all, it was announced that this is to be an
annual event.
Three young pianists opened the concert: Daniel Pulgram played Hungarian
Melody VI, Sean Gowin, Hungarian Melody X and Joojay Huyn, the Sonatina. Sue Bohlin then directed the Piedmont Girls' Advanced Training Choir in Kodály's The Good Housewife, Bartók's Don't Leave Me and Mátyás Seiber's The Handsome Butcher. Then came the adults, opening with soprano Maria Solis and pianist Richard Hawkins presenting Bartók's masterful Eight Hungarian Folksongs. Pianist Peter Grunberg closed the first part of the concert playing Kodály's Seven Piano Pieces, Op.
11. After intermission, Bill Klingelhoffer played a Slovakian
Rhapsody for unaccompanied horn, derived (I gather) from Bartók's
collections. And finally, the Béla Brass Ensemble offered four short
pieces, transcribed for brass quintet.
There's something magical about seeing as well as hearing young children
perform well, especially as in the case of those first pianists and the
choir, while they are prepubescent. Pianist Huyn, a tad older than the
other two — maybe 14? — gave a really professional-level account of
the three-movement Sonatina. Though the acoustics in the First Unitarian Church are generally excellent, they are actually too live, and this extra sonority tended to undo the performers. Playing their normal forte could come off sounding like a thunderclap in that room.
Intonation was excellent, as was the ensemble singing of the Piedmont choir. Clearly, they had been carefully prepared. My one carp would be the elocution. It took considerable concentration to realize that they were singing these Hungarian songs in English. Yet on the whole, they deserved their ”Bravi.” Soprano Solis sang those serious-minded Hungarian songs of Bartók in the original Hungarian, and quite well too. She did have problems scaling the highest notes, suggesting that Solis is actually a mezzo-soprano. That was not so important since she always conveyed the profundity of the score. I gather she's a native Hungarian, since she also furnished English translations in the printed program. The craftsmanship and artistry of Bartók in creating such astounding accompaniments to these war-protest songs leaves one in awe. Bartók took these simple folk melodies and elevated them into inspirations fit to stand beside the finest Schubert and Schumann Lieder. But for almost unrelieved darkness, Kodály's piano pieces take the cake. Like Bartók's songs, Kodály's suite is large in scale. Each runs nearly a half hour in length. The Opus 11 pieces are certainly not typical of Kodály's style. Their dissonance and dour dramatics are distinctly expressionist in mode. Most of the seven pieces are slow in tempo and elegiac in feeling. Grunberg played them splendidly but, again, the hall's acoustics produced sounds that were nearly oppressive when he was at full tilt.
For comic relief, one of the Béla Brass trumpeters sounded the close of intermission by playing the fugal subject in Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra finale. Cute idea! Klingelhoffer, well known for his solo horn work in the SF Opera orchestra, played the Rhapsody magnificently. But no source for this three-minute Rhapsody was listed or mentioned. I would guess it was drawn from Bartók's collections of Slovak material. In any case it was largely poetic and very handsomely performed. Finally, we heard the Béla Brass quintet do four James Mattern transcriptions, originally designed for the Chicago Brass, of which Klingelhoffer was formerly a member. Very skillfully transcribed they are, too, from assorted sources in Bartók's piano music. Five had been announced for the concert, but one had to be dropped due to the illness of the group's second trumpet. Another trumpeter was able to step in at the eleventh hour for a quick rehearsal, but without enough time to rehearse all five. One of the teen pianists had to cancel — the flu bug was doing its work on Sunday. Bartók's birthday is Friday, the 25th — his 124th. Utterly new news to me, and the reason for the concert at this location, is that Bartók was a Unitarian before he came to this country. He later joined a Unitarian church when he arrived in New York. So the church was honoring one of their own. In spite of the fact that there had been little publicity for the concert, the program drew a large and appreciative audience.
(Heuwell Tircuit, composer, performer and writer, was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the SF Chronicle, previously for the Chicago American and Asahi Evening News.)
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Béla Bartòk