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SYMPHONY REVIEW
Uneven Choice of Odd-Ball Music December 12, 2001
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By Heuwell Tircuit
The difference between inventive and merely kooky came to the fore during last week's second San Francisco Symphony program devoted to maverick composers. The program was fun and well played — very well played — but even Michael Tilson Thomas' extended chats before each piece could barely camouflage the fact that none of the four works programmed was first rate.
MTT opened with Edgard Varèse's 1954 Deserts, followed by the premiere of Henry Brant's new Ice Field. After intermission, a reduced ensemble offered Astor Piazzolla's Tangazo from 1969, and then the Symphony chorus joined the full orchestra for Villa-Lobos' Choros No. 10. The Pan-American program thus offered music by the French-American Varèse, the Canadian-American Brant, Argentina's Piazzolla and the grand Brazilian, Villa-Lobos.
Rare is the concert where a Villa-Lobos composition stands out at the top of the list. Choros No. 10, however, is as impressive as it is original in concept. The large, expanded orchestra opens with a quiet elegiac prelude in slow tempo. That segued into a dance-like allegro featuring double chorus plus a central, quasi-singing chanters' group. The choruses, to either side of the orchestra, sang a glowing, romantic lyrical poem in something close to pops style. Set to Catulo de Paixao Cearense's Rasga o coracão (“Tear the Heart”), it built and built.
Thus far, ordinary enough. What sets Choros No. 10 apart is the exceptional use of the small chanting four-part choir hurling relatively violent rhythms at the hall in quick tempo. The effect was rather like a second percussion section, loudly proclaiming names and words of the Amazon natives. Each group thus offered a contrast to what was going on from the others, and all of it balanced so as to create a unity. Each section of the four-part chanters has its own text, all in counterpoint with one another. It was a bit like the legend of Babel. The altos, for example, open virtually yelling “Tayapo kamarajo, Ut, to, ce, ta, tore, Kaia!” in harsh accents. Within the overall feeling of noble calm from the other singers and the gay prancing sounds from the orchestra, the chanters created a hint of menace to the whole. The general overview suggests something like, “And now, as we bid farewell to the vernal beauties of the upper Amazon, but remember — there's poison arrows and darts out there.” Bravos were due and earned by the chorus, who surmounted the difficulties with apparent if unlikely ease. Brant is noted for delving into unusual instrumental combinations, often in choirs of one type. His best-known work, Angels and Devils, is scored for three piccolos, five flutes and two alto flutes. Often as not, Brant will spread groups of instruments all around the audience for spatial effects. He's been a leader in that field. The most extreme of these, as far as I know, was the 1984 Brant aan de Amstel, scored for 100 flutes, 4 jazz drummers, 3 choirs, 4 street organs, 4 church carillons, and three bands. Clearly, few of his works are very practical for public presentation.
Occasionally pixieish and more often serious, usually dissonant or occasionally Romantic, Ice Field is certainly individual. The problem is that the half-hour length offered no sense of form. The effects are arresting, but they fell upon us in battalions, so numerous and constant that one could hardly absorb one effect before Brant threw in yet other. It was a bit like being read a phone book at rapid tempo. What price individuality? A half hour of unrelieved kink can be a bit much. It sounded like a long buildup to a peak which never really appeared. With so many and varied ideas, a conclusion wrapping things up might have been anticipated, but in vain. Inspired by a ship passage through icebergs, Ice Field is scored for large orchestra spread all over Davies Hall, for which space it was commissioned and designed. Strings were on stage, a group of oboes and bassoons on the right balcony behind them, a percussion group in a box on the main floor, brass in the balcony, etc, with the 88-year old composer performing a kind of improvised continuo on the grand organ. It was as much a spectacle as a concert event.
Varèse (1883-1965) left very little music for a man his age, and of what exists, few pieces are large scale. So everything is precious. Deserts, one of his last works, employs the orchestra minus strings as a band, plus three interpolations of electronic tape. I believe this was a first such attempt, but Varèse never combines the tape with the live instruments. The orchestra plays, the tape plays, the orchestra plays, etc. The orchestral band, however, never found anything fresh to say. Varèse basically repeats the vocabulary he had established back in the 1920s, notably with Arcana and the Integrales. The end result suggests the work of a tired composer doing the same old thing again. That and its constant aggressive sonics make for a wearisome experience. Deserts deserves respect, but not necessarily affection. Piazzolla was a virtuoso who got the world to recognize tango as a major art form. In the process he dominated the tango field and thrust it into the 20th century via genteel elegance. Piazzolla was undisputed master of tango, and a great composer in that field, but few composers can effectively ride two horses at once. Piazzolla's attempts at concert music tend to be trite and ultimately as drab as can be. Of the 12 or so examples I've experienced, Tangazo sounded less interesting than most. Better we should have been offered a major work by the unjustly neglected Alberto Ginastera — Argentina's greatest composer. Like: bring back soprano Lauren Flanigan for Ginastera's Milena, his cantata on Kafka's love letters? There's a masterpiece in need of exposure if there ever was one. (Heuwell Tircuit, composer, performer and writer, was chief writer for Gramophone Japan and for 21 years a music reviewer for the SF Chronicle, previously for the Chicago American and Asahi Evening News.) ©2001 Heuwell Tircuit, all rights reserved |