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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
February 27, 2006
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By Benjamin Frandzel
The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players brought a
varied and rewarding program to Yerba Buena Center
last Monday, crossing generational and stylistic lines
with music ranging from complex modernism to
contemporary eclecticism. Drawing on a smaller than
usual group of players, the evening was most memorable
for the superb level of its performances, no matter
what their style.
The program started off raucously with Bang on a Can
co-founder Julia Wolfe's Dark Full Ride. Wolfe has
emerged over time as a composer capable of varied
approaches to her work, but this piece for four
percussionists is very much in the rock-influenced
mode for which her festival is famous. Starting with
a fast beat on a closed hi-hat, punctuated by the same
sonority from the three other players, the work
evolved with Tom Gierke acting as beat keeper while the
rest of the quartet — Chris Froh, Dan Kennedy, and
Florian Conzetti — played as a mostly unison section and
Gierke's expansion to the full kit was followed by
the rest of the group's increasingly dense fills and
figures.
Wolfe's beat-driven approach and some theatrical
pauses generated excitement through most of the piece.
The work was compelling not only for the drive and
energy of the playing but for Wolfe's confidence in
her basic concept and single-minded focus on driving
it as far forward as possible. Conversely, the work's
extended repetitions wore out their welcome at a few
points. The real highlight of the experience was the
strength of the performance itself, with the excellent
players led by David Milnes' sure conducting.
The percussionists reconvened in the second half of the program, with William Winant replacing Gierke, for a brilliant performance of Charles Wuorinen's 1994 Percussion Quartet. The generational differences between Wolfe and Wuorinen were apparent as the drum kits were replaced by a large array of vibes, marimbas, and metal and wood instruments of all kinds, and Wolfe's grooves gave way to Wuorinen's high modernist abstraction. Milnes and the players started by breaking down the audience/listener barrier through an often funny instrument demo. The two-movement work moves forward through a dazzling array of textures and colors, reveling in the possibilities of sound and the players' virtuosity. Though Wuorinen's music tends to be driven by complex, muscular gestures, this work reveals a spirit of play and invention that stood out the most, along with the composer's surpassing skills as an orchestrator. None of this would have been apparent without the beautifully prepared performance that Milnes and the four players delivered. Every phrase had clearly been thought through and refined, then executed with great care and deep musicality. This work, on its surface, doesn't yield an immediately recognizable structure the way Wolfe's piece does: Hearing the performance was more like witnessing a sculpture being carved from stone, with its complex details and beauty as an integral piece made deeply and fully visible at the work's completion. The program also introduced Lisa Bielawa's recent song cycle, Kafka Songs. Bielawa, a Bay Area native, has been a rising star as both vocalist and composer in New York's new music scene for several years, giving SFCMP a chance to make a local connection while bringing a valuable East Coast voice to the Bay Area. Her new piece is a seven-song work for soprano and violin and was written for the special talents of Carla Kihlstedt.
Kihlstedt is an exceptional player who approaches new works with great flair and musicality, and her singing brought a haunting clarity and plaintiveness to Kafka's brief aphorisms. Although the work recalls Gyorgy Kurtag's great Kafka Fragments for soprano and violin, Bielawa approaches the brief texts not with the Hungarian composer's condensed emotions but with an expansive patience that allows the language to unfold and be seen from more than one angle. There was a kind of ironic sprightliness to the moving "A Handful of World," the guitar-style strumming behind "Ghosts," and an intermingling of tunefulness to suit the voice and an exploratory spirit to examine the texts. Kihlstedt was compelling throughout the performance, reading the texts before each song to deepen their effect, and her special brand of musicianship helped to heighten the originality of the work itself. Having been heard as a solo work, the piece would also benefit from being performed by a duo, with the possibilities of interaction between voice and violin intensified.
(Benjamin Frandzel is a Bay Area musician and writer. In addition to writing concert music, he has collaborated with dance, theater, and visual artists and has written about music for many publications and musical organizations. He is currently a graduate student in composition at San Francisco State University.)
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Carla Kihlstedt
