San Francisco Classical Voice

"Quintets and trios old and new" is how the Left Coast Ensemble billed its concert on Monday, October 16, and it might well have added "and West and East." Brahms and Haydn were matched with two distinguished Chinese composers residing in the United States: Chen Yi and Zhou Long. Zhou's piano trio Spirit of Chimes (1999) was especially interesting. Its textures suggest "the sounds of chimestones, bonewhistles, and chime-balls from ancient China."

Slow, soft tone clusters in the piano's midrange and sliding string harmonics begin the evocation. As the music grows more animated and percussive, quick, stabbing pentatonic motives rotate among the instruments, often in unison, rarely in counterpoint. At one point a rhapsodic, folklike, pentatonic melody takes hold of the ensemble, prolonged and repeated by the violin and cello. In a climactic passage of bright tone clusters and tremolos in the piano and pentatonic ostinatos in the strings the piece reaches its high point. It concludes with a slow section, extending and elaborating the opening material. Along with string duets of expressively sliding melodic fragments, low chord clusters from the piano reverberate like deep gongs, while soft glissandos and arpeggios played directly on the piano strings add to the exotic colors of this unusual and beautiful composition.

ChenYi's quintet Sounds of Five (1998), for solo cello and string quartet, is in four ample movements, the writing often drawn from the quality of a Chinese instrument, like the ch'in or the set bells. In the final movement, intense tremolos, snap pizzicatos, and multiple ostinatos are based on the sound of a Chinese percussion ensemble. While the solo cello tends to have a freer, more lyrical role, there is also generally strong interaction among all the instruments. This vivid, imaginative music sometimes suggests Bartok in its coloristic string writing, ostinatos, and rhythmic drive. But as in Zhou's trio, there is very little linear counterpoint. Overall, there seems to be a spirit of combining Eastern and Western methods and sounds in an intuitive synthesis. Cellist Leighton Fong was the expressive soloist. The quartet consisted of Deborah Tien Prie and Phyllis Kamrin, violins, violist Kurt Rohde, and cellist Kris Tenney.

The concert opened with Haydn's late Trio in E Major (1796). The fluency and elegantly bold harmony of the first movement may indicate a Mozartean influence, though Haydn's characteristic monothematicism remains intact. The slow movement contains a long theme with an elaborately contrapuntal variation, and the finale rounds off a distinctive, original piece. In this largely convincing performance, pianist Eric Zivian's playing was disconcertingly Romantic and wayward, underlining some of the bass notes with personalized accents and self-indulgently adding expressive nuances to the melody and harmony.

Also, in the program's final work, Brahms' Quintet for Piano and Strings in F minor (1862), pianist Zivian disturbed the ensemble balance, often playing too soloistically, his tone too urgent, with a tendency to rush the tempo. The poised, contemplative beauty at the heart of the piece, one of the composer's great early masterpieces, was insufficiently evident. There is plenty of drama in this composition as well, but in this performance it was hectic and driven. Some good coaching might have helped restore Haydn's Trio to a more appropriate style and make the Brahms Quintet sound less overwrought. That being said, there was no doubt about the Left Coast Ensemble's seriousness of purpose and dedication to the music they perform.

(Jules Langert is a composer and teacher who resides in the East Bay.)

©2000 Jules Langert, all rights reserved