|
CHAMBER MUSIC REVIEW Accessible, Not Pandering; Lovely, Not Derivative December 6, 2002
|
By Benjamin Frandzel
The San Francisco Conservatory's Blueprint concert
series continued last Friday with a beautifully
prepared and deeply satisfying sample of new and
recent music. This was aided by the intimacy and warm acoustics
of the Shrine of St. Francis. Highlighting two
excellent soloists, mezzo-soprano Wendy Hillhouse and
guitarist David Tanenbaum, conductor Nicole Paiement
led her Parallèle Ensemble in works that
were accessible without pandering, lovely without
being derivative. Each succeeded on its own terms.
Dusan Bogdanovic's Games, an
intriguing new song cycle to seven poems by the
Yugoslavian poet Vasko Popa. Bogdanovic has a strong
feeling for these texts and gave great care in mirroring their humor and plain-spoken yet surreal
beauty. A striking element of the performance was
the clarity of the text, even in its most flexible
settings, for which both the composer and Hillhouse deserve
great credit. Hillhouse's rich mezzo shone in both lyrical passages and
in wide, leaping figures that matched the surprising
turns in the text.
Tanenbaum was the preeminent voice
in the chamber ensemble, a constant in an instrumental
sequence that gradually and deftly added flute, double
bass, and two players on a set of ceramic gongs. The
relationship between the voice and guitar was a most compelling element, as the guitar's
complex, searching figures underscored the flowing
vocal melody, acting like the subconscious mind beneath the surface of the poem's language. Only a
few of Bogdanovic's more theatrical effects, such as a
sudden reversion to speaking or unexpected melodic
leaps to end a movement, seemed forced. These crossed the
line from enigmatic to cute without warning and
broke the spell of the text. Otherwise, this is a
valuable new piece and it received the fine performance
it deserved.
The program reached back to 1949 for Lou Harrison's Suite for Cello and Harp, performed by cellist Dana Putnam Fonteneau and harpist Jennifer Cass. The Suite is full of the lengthy, song-like melody at which Harrison has always excelled, and the duo's performance was lovely, a graceful journey through the work's pensive modal language. Its fourth movement, drawn from Harrison's twelve-tone period, with chromatically evolving harmony and fluid lines, stood out as one of his few works that bring the Romantic period to mind, Both players summoned a gorgeous sound for this and found a way to express its dreamy quality with no loss of the subtle momentum that carried through the entire Suite. Hillhouse returned to the stage for a superb performance of Luciano Berio's Folk Songs, his 1968 chamber setting of folk songs from around the world. With a voice as varied as it was rich, Hillhouse embodied the spirit of each song, from the haunting loneliness of the American tunes, “Black is the Colour,” and John Jacob Niles' “I Wonder as I Wander,” to the exuberance of the concluding “Azerbaijan Love Song” and several of the Italian songs. Particularly in moments like the joyful la-la-las of the “Ballo” from Italy, she struck the ideal balance between the earthiness and the transporting beauty of the tunes. Even Berio's most modern extensions of the folk context, like the eerie percussion effects in the Italian “Motettu de Tristura,” seemed to spring from the songs' original forms. Paiement summoned an excellent performance from the ensemble. Both Tanenbaum and Lou Harrison's music received more of a spotlight than planned, as Harrison's Scenes From Nek Chand replaced the scheduled vocal work by the young Uzbek composer Dmitry Yanov-Yanovsky. This is a solo work for National steel guitar, the resonant metal-bodied instrument popular in jazz and country music in the 1920s and ‘30s. It draws inspiration from the found-object sculptures created by Nek Chand in the Indian city of Chandigarh.
At its premiere at the Other Minds festival in March, Scenes From Nek Chand seemed a bit lost in the cold atmosphere at the Palace of Fine Arts, but in the sanctuary of the Shrine of St. Francis, its soulful and meditative character found its proper home. Tanenbaum was in tune with the work's spirit through its three movements, from the spaciousness and gentleness of the first movement to the vigor of the second. The music recalled its Indian inspiration with expanding figures circling a central tone, and droning open strings resonating against them, along with the highly ornamented figures of the final movement. All was made vibrant by Tanenbaum s driving performance. The evening concluded with another substantial work, Hans Werner Henze's An eine Äolsharfe (To an Aeolian Harp), a 1986 concerto for guitar and chamber orchestra. Henze has worn many compositional faces during his career, but I think the one on display in this work, the lyrical seeker of beauty, is his most genuine and produces the most memorable music. His imagination worked at its highest level in the work's harmonies, colors, and evolving textures as the orchestra shifted its timbres and thickness constantly but remained beautiful throughout. Created for Tanenbaum, An eine Äolsharfe made the most of his penchant for dramatic contrasts of mood and color, as well as his musical focus and direction. Even with the moderate amplification Tanenbaum used, balancing guitar and orchestra is always tricky. Paiement did a marvelous job of that while mastering the shifting internal balances of the full ensemble.
(Benjamin Frandzel is a Bay Area musician and writer. In addition to
writing concert music, he has collaborated with dance, theater, and visual artists, and has written about music for many publications and musical organizations. He is currently a graduate student in composition at San Francisco State University.)
|
Wendy Hillhouse
David Tanenbaum