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SYMPHONY REVIEW
April 25, 2003
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By Thomas Goss
In composing his first piano concerto, Johannes Brahms was writing for a pianist and conductor who did not exist at his time, and may not exist today, either. The treachery of this mine field of interpretation was brought home in Oakland East Bay Symphony's reading last Friday. Despite Michael Morgan's attempt to bring the score into the realm of his musical viewpoint, the exercise ultimately proved elusive. One problem was a concerto-like approach in bars that were essentially symphonic. This robbed the first movement of some of its intellectual depth as sections lost their developmental relationship to one another, and over-emphasized the energy of the Rondo, making the finale overworked.
Part of the responsibility must lie with the soloist, and in this case not only was pianist Jean Louis Steuerman a mismatch with the Brahms First, he also seemed poorly matched to Morgan. Real simpatico was absent between the two. At times it felt like they were merely helping each other along through the different parts of the concerto that were their respective responsibility, rather than creating a synergy of one mind which is so necessary in a Brahms concerto. But Steuerman on his own lacked some of the appropriate introspection and roundness of tone that would have brought out the secret fire, not to mention fireworks. It is really a shame that this piece showed him in a contrary light, and the audience was not treated to a display of his reported strengths, as in the Bach concerti for which he is most noted.
Morgan's instincts did ring true in his choice of composer Joshua Feltman. For those who live on a busy thoroughfare, the content and meaning of his piece Commute was immediately recognizable. Feltman's score had all the hustle and bustle of midtown traffic, but did not lack for moments of grandeur or solemnity, the sleepy stillness of an early morning or the slow pull of a city quieting down. It was nice to hear the clang of a brakedrum being aptly placed in tense moments, played by the unflappable Ward Spangler. Counterintuitively, the brightest moment took the form of a poignant and searching cello solo over an evening hush, the theme slowly climbing into the upper realms of strings and winds, leading to a wonderfully solitary trumpet solo against tightly clustered brass chords. The screeching honk that concluded the work seemed superfluous after that display of real emotional power.
Less clear was the inclusion of Noah Schwartz's Kneading Closure. Self-referential irony is, of course, the butter of a young composer's bread. The 18-year-old Schwartz seemed determined to positively clot his conception with it, from his bio and his program notes to the structure of his composition. Alas, it could not distract from a need for a more developed craft, particularly in the area of orchestration. The almost constant tuttis tended to be middle-heavy, burying thematic development. Brass episodes drowned out string passages placed in the same register. The sense of something having to happen all the time was relentless, making the presence of the orchestra over-busy, then wearing, suffering by comparison to the effortless gregariousness of the Mendelssohn Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream that opened the concert. But the overall sense of music was playful, and some of the aesthetic approach quite promising. It was somewhat representative of the entire evening's presentation — not categorically successful, but innately gifted all the same.
(Thomas Goss is resident composer for Moving Arts Dance Collective, is a member of New Release Alliance Composers and the Cabaret Composers Consortium, and sits on the steering committee of the Bay Area Chapter of the American Composers Forum.)
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Jean Louis Steuerman
Noah Schwartz