San Francisco Classical Voice

Let's hear it for the Academy. On Monday the University of California Music Department's Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players delivered an engaging, listener-friendly spread of works in Hertz Hall. This third and final concert of their Music of the America's series was well designed and expertly performed for the usual smattering of contemp-niks. It would have played as well to a larger audience.

The white-hot core of this event was a set of five etudes for solo violin by Tamar Diesendruck, performed with eyebrow-singeing virtuosity by demon fiddler Karla Kihlstedt. The first of these etudes, Holding Up the Mirror, presented what amounted to the life and times of the musical interval of a 4th, which resonated in double stops and reflected itself in eloquent chords all over the fingerboard. The second etude, Fast Glass, chugged, careened, skidded, stalled, resumed speed, and finally took flight into a high, rarefied realm of surreal joy. Etude No. 3, wisely titled Cartoon, allowed the audience to delight in slapstick gestures. Its uncannily speechlike discourse was by turns giggly, whimpery, coughing, pathetic, contentious, or melodramatic. It was here that Kihlstedt most clearly identified with Diesendruck's brilliant mischief.

By contrast, Etude No. 4, Astronomy: the high and lonely, melody, was a remote, solitary voice in the cold night sky. A brief excursion into nonvibrato, often double-stopped harmonics, it was technically difficult, musically simple, and ineffably sad. Etude No. 5, Flames Begotten of Flames, was the climax of the set. Variously motoric, spasmodic, or prattling on the high-wire, it grew more and more ferociously intense, ultimately incinerating itself in a release of the musical and emotional energy that had built up in the course of all five movements -- a masterful final stroke. It takes a player of Karla Kihlstedt's caliber and temperament to bring such work to life.

After the Diesendruck, which would have been a night's work for most violinists, Kihlstedt tore with relish into Conlon Nancarrow's early work Toccata, a fireworks display for violin and taped player piano. It came and went at Nancarrow's typical superhuman tempos, effective for its very brevity.

Next, kudos to the student group who performed Paul Hindemith's String Quartet No. 3, a youthful, robust work of (by now) classic appeal. The young players who rose so admirably to the demands of this still-challenging idiom were first violinist Joshua Walden (his opening solo had a diffident sweetness), second violinist Janice Park, violist Stephanie Ng, and cellist Benjamin Hagemann. Their intonation, balance, ensemble, and interpretation were close to professional, reflecting fine coaching and future promise.

The other three works on the program were generic, color-me-modern compositions, each more interesting in the moment than as cumulative experience. Their similar instrumentation, each using Schoenberg's Pierrot ensemble, invited comparison of these pieces. Eitan Steinberg's Fragile emerged the winner. While less technically confident than the other two, this work was driven by a real musical impulse. And its gradually coalescing, warmly harmonized chord streams lent contour, if not trajectory, to the piece.

The opening work, Mexican-born Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez's Luciérnagas' ("Fireflies"), pitted chaotic rhythmic outbursts against ruthless ostinati. The very regularity of this alternation gave the piece an aimless quality. Expectation sagged, and only local events provided sporadic interest. The composer employed a full panoply of imaginatively conceived impressions -- buzzing, flickering, swarming, white noise -- all skillfully rendered by the players. But the piece, owing perhaps to overcalculation, was not more than the sum of its well-wrought parts.

Sept Couleurs ("Seven Colors"), by Canadian composer Linda Bouchard, ended the program with sound and fury. In her program notes the composer described the piece as a "tapestry of successive patterns or textures," each 15-second segment built on two "fabrics" of different durations. Such a plan doomed the piece to stasis, no matter how hard the players worked to dazzle, or listeners to envision.

In all three of these ensemble pieces David Milnes' smart, efficient conducting kept players on a short lead. Their quick response, tight ensemble, high sonic sheen, and athletic prowess were reflective of fine talent and preparation. Special compliments to clarinetist Peter Josheff, whose every note was pure gold, and to percussionist David Carlyle for his lightning reflexes and timbral sensitivity.

(Elinor Armer is a composer. She teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music )

©2000 Elinor Armer, all rights reserved