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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC Forceful Works from a Sure Hand December 9, 2002
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By Jules Langert
After all these years, Pierre Boulez is still a force to contend with. His music led off
Earplay's eighteenth season of concerts which began last Monday with music by five modern French composers. Boulez, born in 1925, and a leading member of the post-World War II generation, was represented by two piano works. Notations (1945), his first published composition, is a group of twelve aphoristic pieces whose spirit is somewhat akin to Schoenberg's opus 19 piano miniatures. There is certainly an expressionistic feeling to some of these pieces, like the second one, assez vif, with its brusque glissandi and dense, accented chords. But there is a distinctive visceral beauty and a wide ranging pianism that are recognizably Boulezian, even at this early stage of his career. Other pieces in the set are atmospheric or broodingly meditative, and one is built around a rapid, repeating sequence of notes, possibly a twelve-tone row.
The second Boulez work, Incises (1994), is definitely an outgrowth of his earlier style, so that Notations may be heard as a road map to the future. The litheness and virility of sound, the bright, clear sensuousness of detail, with special emphasis given to the keyboard's middle and lower register, the short, quick runs and accented chords, and, occasionally, a brilliant cascade of figuration, are partly prefigured in the music of Notations. Incises, which features a series of thrumming, repeated notes, took on a toccata-like excitement and drive for much of its five-minute length; it was the musical and dramatic high point of the evening. Pianist Karen Rosenak performed both of these challenging works with splendid intensity, meeting their virtuosic demands, and infusing the music with expressive insight.
In Philippe Schoeller's Madrigal and Marc-Andre Dalbavie's In Advance of the Broken Time, both composed in 1994, there is a postmodern esthetic at work. Instead of listening to a linear, serially influenced score, we hear extended, single tones colored with subtly changing timbres and distorted by slides and various microtonal effects. There is a blending and echoing of piano and strings in various ways; repetition is a key factor. Slow trills passing from one instrument to the next seem to reflect a minimalist preoccupation with simple mechanistic procedures. Rapid passages contain fierce tremolandi but few changes of pitch. This approach is, in part, a reaction against the propulsive, goal oriented music of composers like Boulez, and shows the influence of electronic techniques. The static, repetitive gestures — returning to an opening note or chord again and again, changing its color and prolonging it differently each time — create a trancelike state, or result in frustration and boredom for the listener.
Of the three postmodern works, the most distinctive was Christoph Bertrand's Treis, for violin, cello, and piano. Each of four distinct movements retained its own character and provided real contrast to the others. The youthful Bertrand, born in 1981, was awarded the Donald Aird Memorial Prize by Earplay for this work. The prize is given annually, and is named for a much missed former patron, friend, and supporter of Earplay's efforts, who died last year, and was himself a distinguished composer and conductor, several of whose works were premiered by Earplay.
(Jules Langert is a composer and teacher who resides in the East Bay.)
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