San Francisco Classical Voice

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW Sounds of
Our Time

November 27, 2001

By Eric Valliere

Someone obsessed with recent events and global conflict might read the programming of the latest Composers, Inc. concert as a symbolic reminder of the range of human experience, in times of peace and war. Works depicting the freedom and delight of unhindered flight, cultural barriers to communication, the pleasures (and pitfalls) of dancing, the adrenaline of escape, and even the sound of bullets in the night air, seem to speak directly to anyone listening, and obliquely to those who aren't.

The solo work that opened the Composers, Inc. concert last Tuesday at the Green Room in San Francisco — advertised as a night of “Duos and Trios” — was an unexpected delight. Written for E-flat sopranino clarinet, Nancy Bachman's Aviata (1998) builds on an initial sentence structure based on an abstracted bird call, quickly incorporating passages of such complexity and virtuosity that it's as if an entire flock had descended on the room. High chirps and flutter-tongue effects contrasted with brief dips into the delicious chalumeau register, but it was over in a flash: Diane Maltester took the piece for one agile flight around the hall and then was gone.

A great performance of Lee Hyla's brilliant, muscle-bound We Speak Etruscan (1992) could have obliterated the sweet memory of Aviata altogether. Although players Peter Josheff on bass clarinet and Kevin Stewart on baritone saxophone clearly had the chops to bring the piece off, their take on it lacked the necessary raucous intensity. This is not a delicate work (although the moments of delicacy were warm and intimate); it needs to come flying out of the instruments with a jagged, even percussive marcato bounce, filled with all the electricity of the conflict borne when two people are speaking unknown languages to each other.

Trio in Contrasting Works

Scott Wheeler's unpredictable Camera Dances (2000) is in four snapshot movements of varied characters which were smoothed over a bit too much in the performance by the Navarro Trio. A terse, dark Entrada is balanced by the insistently repetitive final Toccata, but the middle movements are alternately choppy and limply romantic. The trio also performed James Matheson's Falling (2000), a very loose set of variations based on the “process” of downward progression rather than any particular theme. Here, pianist Marilyn Thompson captured the meditative mood of the piece's opening chords just right.

Kaç (1982), Turkish for “escape”, is a collection of shimmering episodes for alto sax (played by the brilliant Dale Wolford), piano, and percussion. Composer Kamran Ince lets his sonorities linger, allowing piano strings the freedom to resonate and echo the sax's vibrations. It's a marvelous sound world, including the dull, foreboding thud of the bass drum, the glassy chime of the glockenspiel and various other percussive elements, juxtaposed in passages of contrasting sound with the piano and sax. The piece pounds and crashes, too, and the players brought committed gusto to their interpretation.

David Lang's relentless Illumination Rounds (1982) for piano and violin was, as the piece's title suggests, delivered like gunshots. The title is one of the evening's wordplays: it describes a kind of ammunition used in Vietnam, which glowed in the night, but also indicates something about the piece's structure, which relies on the echoing quality of musical “rounds”. Violinist William Barbini's attacks had the searing intensity of flaming arrows, and if a few targets were missed it was due to a welcome abundance of spirit. The piece itself is taut and abrasive, screeching and whining its way to a deliberately unbeautiful bull's-eye.

(Eric Valliere earned his doctorate in composition from New England Conservatory in Boston, where he has also served on the Musicology faculty. He currently serves as Executive Director of the San Francisco Chamber Singers and administers the Noe Valley Chamber Music Series. His critical writings have appeared in New Music Connoisseur and on Andante.com.)