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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
Alarm Will Sound March 11, 2007
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Kaleidoscopic Nancarrow By Jason Victor Serinus
Composer György Ligeti may have called Conlon Nancarrow’s (1912-1997) music “the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives … the best music by any living composer,” but that has hardly earned it a place in major concert halls. Part of the problem stems from the composer’s relative obscurity, a product of his self-imposed exile to Mexico, where he found a safe haven in the early 1940s after fighting on the side of the communists in Spain. The rest has to do with his rhythmically and tonally confounding, all-directions-at-once compositions, the bulk of which are studies for player piano, for the most part unplayable by two human hands.
Alarm Will Sound, the superb 20-person new music ensemble from New York City, under the direction of Alan Pierson, could well have found the key to introducing the composer to larger and more diverse audiences. Performing in UC Berkeley’s Hertz Hall in Cal Performances’ final Composer Portrait of the season, the attractive young ensemble lent an irresistibly colorful, human dimension to Nancarrow’s often unpredictable, polyrhythmic music, welcoming listeners in ways player pianos cannot.
The concert began with Yvar Mikhashoff’s chamber arrangement of Study for Player Piano No. 6. Rather than position the entire ensemble onstage in traditional fashion, Staging Director Nigel Maister had the clarinetist play as he walked down the aisle. Next, the flutist, then several other performers, emerged from the wings and walked onstage as they began to play. Standing performers eventually formed a semicircle facing the audience, as if to open the music to us. With the ensemble clarifying opposing lines that remain hidden on player piano, the effect was as delightful as the music was whimsical.
The entire ensemble, including pianist and cellist, stood to perform Managing Director Gavin Chuck’s arrangement of Study for Player Piano No. 2A. Some musicians walked forward as they performed prominent lines, drawing attention to the highly individualistic, syncopated path Nancarrow had laid out for them. With jazz-inflected riffs reflecting the composer’s personal performance history on trumpet, the trombone and trumpet players dueted in somewhat traditional form, while the drummer banged away as though on another planet. At one point, piccolo and French horn players circled each other, the trombonist dropping down to his knees shortly before the work’s smile-inducing conclusion.
By this time, the audience had been warmed up enough to permit seated presentations of the composer’s idiosyncratic music. The three-movement String Quartet No. 1 (1945), his final work before he traded the inaccuracy of live musicians for the reliability of the player piano, featured cross-rhythmic plucking, an uncommonly affecting middle movement, Andante moderato, and an everywhere-at-once conclusion that built to a furious pace. The three-movement Sonatina for Piano (1941), played as written by keyboardist John Orfe, included a droll, quirky, opening Presto; a second movement Moderato with honky-tonk, progressively deconstructing jazz syncopation; and a wild Allegro molto. As with most of Nancarrow’s music, you needed to hear it to believe it. The set ended with a performance of Piece No. 1 for Small Orchestra (1943), in which Pierson had a field day with dynamic gradations. The composer’s last work, Three Movements for Chamber Orchestra (1993), was commissioned three years after a stroke eventually rendered him unable to compose. His assistant, Carlos Sandoval, transcribed the piece from abandoned piano rolls, orchestrating it with some assistance from Nancarrow. Alarm Will Sound’s five percussionists began wearing earphones, presumably to help them accurately articulate competing cross-rhythms that would reduce most drummers to tears. Then they ceded the honors to others in the ensemble. The xylophone/marimba player was remarkable in the final movement, which is marked “As Fast as Possible.” Next came the early Septet (1940), a far more player-friendly work featuring fewer random syncopated jazz elements than later compositions. To remind us that Nancarrow was hardly the first composer to juxtapose contrary rhythms in ear-opening ways, the ensemble next traveled back six-and-a-half centuries to perform Johannes Ciconia’s strikingly modern Le ray au soleyl (arranged by Gavin Chuck). Violinists Caleb Burhans and Courtney Orlando did double duty, surprising me with credible, historically informed vocals. The concert ended with everyone going all out on Derek Bermel’s arrangement of the riotous Study for Player Piano No. 3A, Boogie-Woogie Suite. The sheer exhilaration impelled most of the cheering audience to its feet.
(Jason Victor Serinus writes about music for such publications as San Francisco Classical Voice, Opera News, Stereophile, San Francisco Magazine, East Bay Express, and Bay Area Reporter.)
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