|
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW
April 24, 2006
|
Explorations in New Music By Jules Langert
Amplification with live and/or prerecorded electronics was a prominent feature in three of the five pieces on Monday's concert by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. The opening work, whimsically mistitled Glamour Sleeper, by Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy, was a good example: Its amplified violin, clarinet, and double bass were made to growl, grumble, and squeak, blending smoothly with the score's electronic timbres. Percussion-led rhythmic patterns were at the heart of this piece, and they gradually brought the ensemble to an exhilarating climax of raucous, complex, interlocking syncopations.
Definitely a world away from postminimal rhythmic hyperactivity, Mexican composer Roberto Morales-Manzanares' Cenzontle (Mockingbird), for flute and electronics, created a magical aura of multiple soundscapes. The composer played the flute like a conjuror, with all kinds of apparently improvised special effects, from humming to whispering to harsh plosive noises, setting off computer-generated responses that formed an ongoing kaleidoscopic duet with the flute, much of it based on birdsong. In one episode, he picked up a pair of small maracas, shaking them in various ways to produce a whole new range of effects. In the final section, he brought the music to a quiet, contemplative close while playing an indigenous-looking flute with a silvery, recorder-like tone. An accompanying video presentation of abstractly stylized designs, also triggered electronically by the performer, was hardly necessary, since nothing could match or enhance the flowing sound sculptures constantly forming and reforming, filling the hall like a force of nature.
Ken Ueno's blood blossoms for bass clarinet, electric guitar, piano, cello, double bass, and percussion needed its instruments amplified just to be heard, blanketed as they were by an almost constant electronic accompaniment from which they emerged only fitfully. In this performance at least, the texture became wearyingly oppressive at a certain point, but even when the electronic fog was lifted, the ensemble had no cohesive role to play. They never really interacted, just bounced around in fragmentary isolation, seemingly unwilling or unable to move ahead into new territory. This was a piece that may have called for more rigorous shaping by conductor David Milnes, allowing him to adjust the balance between instruments and electronics, regulate the interplay of the ensemble when playing alone, and perhaps curtail the final, interminably improvised bass solo.
Of the other two pieces, which were devoid of electronics, Jason Eckardt's After Serra for flute/bass flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, cello, and piano had a rich palette of colors and an interesting way of handling texture, with instruments often dovetailing into and away from each other in a display of Eckardt's use of counterpoint, otherwise in short supply on this program. Even so, there was an insistent sameness to the motives and material that began to wear thin by the end of the piece. A greater use of development and a stronger rhythmic profile could have helped energize this music a bit more. Single-mindedness was not an issue in Wendell Logan's Transactions, for more or less the same instruments as in After Serra plus percussion and viola. The ensemble "refrains" were punctuated by fairly free solos and duets, creating a kind of interrupted continuity that was appealing. The danger here was the lack of a central, ongoing impulse that would carry the listener through the composition from beginning to end. There didn't seem to be a compelling connection between the full ensemble episodes and the individualized solos; forward motion was slack, the energy dissipated. An element of structural tension was missing, although it could have clarified and vitalized everything.
(Jules Langert is a composer and teacher who lives in the East Bay.)
|
