San Francisco Classical Voice

It would be nice to be as prolific as Darius Milhaud. The composer, who taught intermittently at Mills College from 1940 to 1971 and died in 1974, wrote 18 string quartets, 12 symphonies, hundreds of songs, and a boggling amount of piano music, as well as operas, ballets, oratorios, film scores, and theater music. But fecund imaginations have their drawbacks. Any output that massive becomes slightly suspect. Milhaud, along with composers like Alan Hovhaness, produced so much of such uneven quality that his reputation has suffered as a result. Unless it's by Mozart, how could music churned out that fast be any good? Friday's annual Milhaud celebration at Mills College proved that the composer wrote many multifaceted gems, vastly different from his classics, such as Creation du Monde, Boeuf sur le Toit, and Scaramouche.

Most rewarding was Milhaud's String Quartet No. 9, Op. 140, in an extraordinary performance by the Ives Quartet. This quartet distills the improvisatory quality of Milhaud's music that Aaron Copland pointed out: It "comes from the 'deep places of the mind' — from a kind of secondary consciousness over which he seems to exert no control." The Ives members pulled together this sprawling piece into a cohesive statement, and revealed a spectrum of moods ranging from lyric tenderness to angry dissonance. Well positioned on the program, next to Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp, the quartet also exemplified the French propensity for fluid form and for ideas continually in flux. As vitriolic as it was, the Ives Quartet had worked out a clear conception and a common purpose. Through the remarkable communication between the four musicians, the piece became solid and masterful.

Milhaud's penchant for spinning out long, luxuriant melodies was beautifully demonstrated by the Ives Quartet, and also by soprano Sara Ganz, joined by pianist Belle Bulwinkle in children's songs and Troubadour songs from the mid-1930s. While their texts were expertly translated in the program by composer Fred Frith, Ganz's articulations and gestures made every nuance so explicit that I hardly needed a translation.

Joining Ganz in Milhaud's cantata "Adieu," from 1964 (Op. 410!), were flutist Michelle Caimotto, violist Ellen Ruth Rose, and harpist Wendy Tamis. Their passionate performance brought out striking timbral relationships as well as the cantata's pliable tunefulness. Milhaud's music perfectly mirrored the supernatural, nightmarish visions of its text, the end of Rimbaud's "Une saison en enfer."

Caimotto, Rose, and Tamis teamed up again for a luminous reading of Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp. Two Mills students, violinist Jennifer Curtis and pianist Aurie Hsu, dazzled the audience in an incendiary performance of Ravel's Tzigane. Dancer Mary Cochran joined them in alluring choreography.

In the context of an otherwise-French program, I couldn't help hearing strains of the "Moulin Rouge" in Pauline Oliveros' solo accordion piece Continuing Variations. Oliveros is Darius Milhaud Professor of Composition at Mills, alternating with Alvin Curran. But her connections to Milhaud run deeper, as David Bernstein pointed out in his program notes: both are ultimately immersed in the colors of sound. I could go further: Oliveros has linked the spheres of pop culture, classical music, and experimentalism as Milhaud did in his time. Oliveros cast a magic spell as she manipulated her Expanded Instrument System to process sustained chords on her accordion, creating new shimmering blooms of sound that to Debussy probably existed only in his dreams.

(Sarah Cahill is a pianist and a music critic for the Express, and hosts a music show on KPFA (94.1 FM) every Friday from 10 am to noon.)

©2000 Sarah Cahill, all rights reserved