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CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
April 2, 2004
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By Jules Langert
“Remembrance of Things Past” might have been the title of Friday evening's concert by the San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players and Chanticleer at Berkeley's First Congregational Church. Exploring texts and traditions from earlier times, four talented composers came up with some fascinating and provocative musical results.
Iannis Xenakis' Medea Senecae (1967) was the most radical and bizarre work on the program. Scored for clarinet, contrabassoon, trombone, percussion, cello, and men's chorus, it draws its Latin text from Seneca's description of Jason with his Argonauts on their voyage in search of Medea and the Golden Fleece. Seneca evokes the hardships and dangers aboard the ship, battling the sea on a treacherous course toward its perilous destination; Xenakis provides a harsh, uncompromisingly original setting for Seneca's verse. The ominous pounding of a drum, the trombone's low, rasping pedal glissandi, the clarinet's high, shrill cries, and the uninflected, declamatory intoning of the chorus create a strong impression, whose raw, primitive force brings out the strangeness, violence, and courage encountered on an ancient mythic journey.
Giacinto Scelsi's Tre Canti Sacri (1958) for mixed a capella choir is an ecstatic yet impersonal meditation on three brief excerpts from the Roman Catholic liturgy. Fluctuating, repetitive sound patterns enhanced by microtonal variations and other vocal effects cluster around a few isolated pitches, somehow bringing to mind the austere, contemplative intensity of Perotin's music and the thirteenth-century school of Notre Dame de Paris. Chanticleer's mastery of this extremely difficult and often very dissonant music, and their ability to convey its rapt, incantatory expressiveness with such clarity and conviction were truly impressive achievements, and a joy to hear.
Pablo Ortiz' Oscuro (2003) for mixed choir, flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano sets two hyper-emotional poems by Francisco Alarcon and Amando Nervo, first in Spanish and then in English translations, separated by instrumental interludes. Their images of death, religious ecstasy, and dark, passionate eroticism brought forth a musical response that owes much to Gesualdo, according to the composer. Ortiz' settings have a trance-like, almost ritualistic beauty, which becomes less compelling in the somewhat too artful English versions. Here the rich harmonic choral texture seems cloying and merely pretty, while the instruments provide less dramatic support. Israeli composer Betty Olivero's Bashrav (2004) for flute, clarinet, trumpet, string quartet, piano, and percussion “takes its inspiration from various tunes originating in the Arab-Jewish heritage”. The piece is a fluid, graceful meditation on some of those elements, abstracted from their original context and transformed into a kind of freely evolving fantasy, whose style is temperamentally related to that of her former teacher, Luciano Berio. This was the only purely instrumental work on the program, and it was also the most absorbing and richly beautiful in the intricacy of its ensemble writing. This evening we were present at a rare collaboration of two excellent performing groups as they delved into a little-known body of music desperately in need of their combined skills. A fairly large and highly appreciative audience demonstrated that another such fortuitous partnership would be eagerly awaited.
(Jules Langert is a composer and teacher who resides in the East Bay.)
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Betty Olivero
Pablo Ortiz