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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
Skillful Playing, Spotty Program
June 1, 2001
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By Dan Leeson
A group of very good Bay Area players gave their friend Matthew Naughtin the treat of a public concert of six of his compositions, two of them premieres, last Friday at Old First Church. Naughtin is music librarian of the San Francisco Ballet, also a professional violinist, arranger, and composer, and his responsive colleagues were the Chamberlain String Quartet, currently resident at Cal State Hayward, SF Ballet orchestra clarinetist Tom Rose, and pianist Miles Graber, a local chamber music specialist.
When Naughtin's compositions were short, there were interesting moments. Both the opening work, Chase, for clarinet and string quartet (a premiere), and the closing work, Moldovanke, for clarinet, string quartet, and piano, were brief and clever. Moldovanke, a wonderfully crazy union of Budapest restaurant Gypsy music and Polish klezmer, was his best composition. Chase was a sort of round with melodic affinities to the spiritual "Joshua 'fit' the battle of Jericho."
The other works were derivative, with occasionally endless repetitions of a particular rhythmic figure. The program's other premiere, Habañera, for clarinet, string quartet, and piano, beat to death the main rhythmic figure derivative of Bernstein's "America" from West Side Story. Initially it was a clever idea, but it seemed to go on forever. Naughtin's music is melodically, harmonically, and rhythmically traditional, not minimalist, where multiple repetitions of figures are part of the composition's fabric.
Three pieces, for violin, cello, and piano, had pleasant moments in the middle movement, "Tangostück." There the strings did a luxurious and sexy tango, their opulent melodies intertwining sensuously, but it went on too long. The final movement of the same work used untraditional instrumental techniques, such as reaching inside the piano to pluck a string manually with one hand while holding up the damper with the other and providing additional rhythm by slapping the instrument's body. "I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing," a sextet for clarinet, string quartet, and piano, was too static, introspective, and nondirectional to sustain interest. And "Just Passing Through," a quintet for clarinet and strings, was another example of a complex rhythmic figure endlessly repeated. All the players performed well. Unfortunately, publicity for the concert was almost nonexistent, resulting in an audience that was painfully small. The pieces selected had difficulty maintaining our attention, and the absence of program notes impeded our understanding of the composer's intentions. The woefully inadequate printed program even omitted the names of the string players — Sharon Yumae Hendee and Michael Yokas, violins, Darcy Rindt, viola, and Rebecca Roundman, cello — who deserve credit for their fine contributions in a taxing program. (Dan Leeson, a musicologist and author, is a former member of the San Jose Symphony Orchestra, a retired businessman, and an editor of the 220-volume complete Mozart edition published by Bärenreiter.) ©2001 Dan Leeson, all rights reserved |