San Francisco Classical Voice

The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players presented a concert of remarkable diversity last Tuesday at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. It was the debut of the ensemble's new music director, Donald Palma, and as such, clearly announced his intentions of covering a broad swath of musical styles. Three of the works touched the disparate techniques of tonality, atonality, and jazz-influenced writing.

"Penthode," by the elder statesman, Elliott Carter with its atonality, and "Chana's Story" (premiere) by the 1970s renegade tonalist, David Del Tredici, would seem to represent the far right and far left of current compositional styles. But, having moved in this century from tonality to post-tonality to post-atonality, who is to say which is left and which is right? Then the Chamber Concerto No. 3, by the jazz-influenced rising star, David Sanford, cut a middle path between tonality and atonality.

Only thirteen years after its premiere, Carter's "Penthode" has become a repertoire piece for larger new music ensembles and considered to be one of the masterpieces of our day. It is a complex work, composed for five groups of four players, each group with its own material. The composition's synthesis of lyric lines and fluttering gestures, block chords and contrapuntal textures, create an engrossing and dramatic palette.

Palma's interpretation was masterful. Always careful to allow the melodic line that runs throughout the work to shine through, Palma led the ensemble through a performance that was accurate and expressive, beginning with an extensive viola solo played by Benjamin Simon with warmth and variety. Palma and the twenty virtuoso members of the ensemble found Carter's pathos and humor, lyricism and aggression, and tranquility and agitation, molding it all into a stunning performance.

David Del Tredici's cycle "Chana's Song," with text by poet Chana Bloch, was performed with dramatic flair and lucid text articulation by mezzo-soprano Miriam Abramowitsch, with the composer accompanying at the piano. The six songs of the cycle express love found and lost.

Although Del Tredici's music has become progressively more tonal since the mid-1970s, his is a fluid tonality, flowing colorfully among keys and modes. The composer's handling of the text is also free, with frequent repetitions of whole sections for structural symmetry. Short reiterations were often used to great effect-- as with the words "over and over," and "I-I-I" in the song titled "The Stutter."

Del Tredici finds every corner of the mezzo-soprano voice, from extreme highs and lows (often juxtaposing the two), and from bright to richly dark. Miriam Abramowitsch handled the technical demands with ease, bringing all the color necessary, even managing a yawn while singing "I catch myself yawning."

Carter's modernist tendencies and Del Tredici's neo-romanticism in part reflect their generations. Sanford, who is Carter's junior by 55 years and Del Tredici's by 25, defies similar categorization. His 1992 Chamber Concerto No. 3 exhibits a technique melded from tonality, atonality, and even big-band jazz. With the requisite credentials and fellowships to validate his talents, he is among a younger generation of American composers who abjure one camp or another. Instead they accept all techniques as valid for assimilation into their own languages.

The Chamber Concerto for six players shows off Mr. Sanford's unique well-honed voice and multifaceted technique well. Many of the motives are heard in the first movement and then picked up and developed in later movements, each of which refer to tunes by Charles Mingus. Biting tuttis or lyrical counterpoint alternate with extended solo passages, the most memorable being William Wohlmacher's jagged-edged clarinet passages and Stpehen Harrison's more songful cello solos.

(Ronald Caltabiano is a composer living in San Francisco and teaching at San Francisco State University.)

©1998 Ronald Caltabiano, all rights reserved