San Francisco Classical Voice

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW

Broad Span

November 9-10, 2004

Martha Ptaszynska

By Miguel Galperin

A well-planned series of concerts dedicated to new American music should be an opportunity to relish diversity. In concerts all across the country Minimalism increasingly shares the stage with High Modernism, Free Improvisation and Post-Modern intentions. Two concerts on the Festival of New American Music, Tuesday and Wednesday in Capistrano Hall on the Sacramento State University campus, exemplified this. These well-balanced and representative programs gave the audience an occasion to delight in differences. In fact, if the stylistic diversity to which the audience was exposed did not feel forced, it was because the myriad emotions elicited by the playing of the two involved groups — Pinotage and Eclipse — opened the door to something beyond style, in the wealth of human expression at large.

Delicacy was one of the many human traits that transcended the stylistic realm, and it was especially emphasized in the interpretation that Pinotage gave Toru Takemitsu's trio, And then I knew �twas wind, for Flute, Harp and Viola, the most ethereal of the pieces they programmed. Then came a work by Martha Ptaszynska that was impressive for its refinement of instrumental writing. Pinotage's concert was less satisfying when the pieces involved angst, as in Robert Lombardo's Kandinsky Songs, mainly because this kind of ensemble, which was created in the sophsticated textural writing of Claude Debussy, does not well support more-anguished musical rhetoric. Lombardo's ideas fit the warm voice of mezzo Julia Bentley quite well — but not the ensemble, which at times ventured onto terrain where the harp, in particular, is not equipped to travel. I had the impression that piano, not harp, was the instrument the composer had in mind for many of the passages of this otherwise pleasant piece.

Among the high points of Pinotage's concert was Bernard Rands' Prelude: “…sans voix parmi les voix….” What most caught my attention was that it occupies that frail space between simplicity and profundity. This two-part effort (described in the program notes as a work in progress) combined elements of excitement with touches of melancholy. The roles that each instrument assumed in the Rand were always in character, unlike in Lombardo's work. Thus, the flute played frenzied lines while the harp was used to punctuate the texture with single sforzando notes. The viola, also characteristically, was in charge of lyricism, which violist Claudia Lasareff-Mironoff managed with aplomb and expressivity.

Pinotage

What made this piece special was the fact that its structure is much more complex than the two-part division suggests. In reality, this brilliant work is a collection of miniatures that come together to form a strange but still organic whole, as if different narrators joined in the telling of an interesting story.

Tuesday night's New American Music experience concluded with a solid interpretation of a fun piece: Elizabeth Start's Sign-Songs — Selections from Three Songs, Three Sign Songs, and more Sign Songs. As the title promised, this rhythmic piece was humorous and smart, and the tactful group of musicians did justice to it.

The performance Tuesday involved a small dose of music heroism. Starting with Martha Ptaszynska's work (the third piece involving voice), Julia Bentley's voice, a mezzo soprano of warm tone, began to suffer from perhaps a treacherous combination of unusually cold/wet weather and the strain of a demanding program. Actually, the velvety voice-quality of this distinguished singer remained intact, but coughing began to share space with impeccable intonation. Bravery and enthusiasm were involved in the decision to go ahead with the program. After all, the choice to continue with a concert that would have been long enough without the extended last piece must be perceived as a firm commitment. Or, put simpler, they just have so much fun performing this cycle of songs that they didn't want to miss the opportunity to play it, regardless of the singer's indisposition. The decision seemed completely appropriate, as the night ended effectively in high spirits.

While Tuesday night was dedicated to Chicago-based musicians (both Pinotage and the composers work from that city), Wednesday's concert, featuring the string quartet Eclipse, offered composers associated with New York City — more specifically, “Downtown.” This ferociously good quartet focused their attention on Mark Feldman, John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, Julia Wolfe and the transplanted Terry Riley. In comparison to the Pinotage concert the night before, it is perhaps fair to say that the sequence across the anguish-delicacy spectrum was inverted. Here, energy and anxiety paid off. The fiercest of the pieces, reserved for the end of the program (Julia Wolfe's Dig Deep), earned them a well-deserved (half-hall) standing ovation.

Eclipse began with Mark Feldman's Real Joe. The piece started calmly, with the strings repeating a lament-like gesture in the lower register. As the sections progressed, however, the almost-Romantic impetus of the beginning was increasingly transformed into a collage of energetic gestures that even called for two improvised solos. A happy surprise was the effectiveness with which both the ensemble and the composer incorporated these solos as part of a general crescendo that ultimately transformed the lyrical beginning into something beautifully complex. The resolution of the piece was perhaps less satisfying, as the creativity let up and the music ended with a too-literal return to the languishing opening section.

Eclipse
Sara Parkins, violin
Sarah Thornblade, violin
Joanna Hood, viola
Margaret Parkins, cello

Notwithstanding the overall musical success achieved, I must question Eclipse's judgment regarding the visual part of their program. Two pieces were accompanied by associated projections (I hesitate to call them anything else). The two that went with Terry Riley's G Song — a dazzling rondo of sorts that makes beauty out of tasteful arpeggiation — and John Zorn's Kol Nidre were linked by a negative empathic process. Stanford Lee Wilson's work, a sterile collection of naïve nature shots that accompanied the correct reading of Zorn's piece, was made to seem superficial by the film used to spoil the brilliant musical interpretation of the Riley.

Even the screen setup was inadequate (something the organizers might also want to consider when programming mixed-media pieces). A small screen sat awkwardly to the left side of the stage and a noisy projector contributed a buzz to the quietness of Zorn's work. I wonder if this mistake is symptomatic of something larger, of an inability to deal with the pressures presented by a too-vague understanding of contemporary music as being “post-modern.” However, accidents are inevitable, especially as a group of young musicians tries to establish a voice in the ultra-competitive business of classical music. Also, judging by the intelligence with which Eclipse tackled the music at hand, they will doubtless correct this mistake in the future.