San Francisco Classical Voice

Doing the impossible was and remains a near commonplace for Takahashi's pianism. Xenakis's Eonta for piano and brass quintet was written for him, and he premiered and recorded it. Like most of Xenakis' complexity-for-complexity's-sake music, one feels a sense of pride merely being able to keep one's place in the score when listening to Eonta. Takahashi's recording was released here by Vanguard as an LP. Indeed, I remember a wild subscription week of the San Francisco Symphony years ago that featured Takahashi as soloist in both Eonta and Scriabin's Prometheus, Poem of Fire — an outstanding series in every respect.

Besides piano, Takahashi also studied composition at the Toho School of Music in Tokyo with Minao Shibata (Japan's first serial composer) and Roh Ogura. He went on to private studies with Iannis Xenakis in Berlin (1963-65), when he became an advocate of that composer's stochastic procedures. Following that, he worked at computer music in New York, also attending the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, Mass.

Standards were highly variable Friday evening, both in the music and in the performances of it. The most impressive event was pianist Schultz playing his piece, rather sensationally. For Thomas Schultz is a basic arc form. It began somberly as an extend introduction for the left hand alone in the deep bass, followed by a tinkly passage in the high register for both hands. Then came a fast section à la Boulez all over the keyboard before a soft ending trailing off into the void.

Hikage's koto piece and the three brief shakuhachi pieces from Gelb were performed with enormous sensibility as well as accomplished virtuosity. But neither While I was Cross the Bridge, a set of variations on a folk song of Viet Nam, nor the shakuhachi pieces took any recognition of modern music. Each proved to be quite traditional tonal folk-based music of an ordinary kind.

The choral Mattasutta employs an antique Buddhist sutra as its text, and a beautiful ode it is, laying out what constitutes elegant and proper conduct for the good human: “... easy to speak to, gentle, and not proud... Let no one deceive another nor despise any person anywhere, in anger or ill will...” etc. It is sung and sometimes spoken as free chanting — every individual on his own — in both the original Pali and the modern Japanese translation.

Takahashi has the choir sit on the floor in an odd formation. There were two small circles of singer-chanters, one on each side of the conductor, joined by a line of singers to his front. Some of the vocalists thus had their backs to the conductor — now there's a first. Again, the music was purely tonal in modal style, coupled with large hunks of free spoken texts. The Stanford choir did an excellent job with this work; however, the effect of the music seems a bit dampened by the gimmicky format. I had the impression more of a happening than of a seriously religious composition, much as in Verdi's too-operatic Requiem.

The shamisen piece was, plainly speaking, awful. Again, this was an attempt at traditional music but played as if the player were sight-reading: no phrasing, no dynamic variation alterations and rhythmically unstable. Ms. Na's piece sounded like a disjoined prelude to an event that never occurred. It should not have been played, but at least it's now disposable.

There have been many wonderful, serious, totally admirable performers who aspired to composition and utterly failed at it. Need one mention terrific conductors Wilhelm Furtwängler, Dimitri Mitropoulos and Rafael Kubelik? Of course, it's common to come across actors hoping to become playwrights, and dancers aspiring to choreography. Some can, most simply cannot. The nature of talent is that it is rarely uniform in all areas. Ravel, for example was an indifferent pianist and a so-so conductor; Schumann, a genuinely terrible conductor.

Takahashi's works rely too much on theorems and gimmicks to have lasting value. He is a historically great pianist. That's how he will be remembered, as is Artur Schnabel, who turned out wildly dissonant symphonies, a piano concerto, solo pieces and such. Those who achieve great things in one area of music should learn to be content. As the sutra warns, be not proud.