Emmanuel Ax

The symphony didn’t entirely eschew the tried and true. No, a security blanket, Mozart’s Overture to The Magic Flute, began the concert. But next came Karol Szymanowski’s Symphonie Concertante, a.k.a. Symphony No. 4 for piano and orchestra. Szymanowski is the greatest Polish composer after Chopin, but in the entire U.S. and Canada, according to the League of American Orchestras, he’s only programmed about three times a year.

He started off like a Richard Strauss clone, then evolved two distinctive styles. The first was sensuous, almost orgiastic. Toward the end of his fairly short career (he died of tuberculosis in 1937, aged 54), his music became more astringent, Bartókian, and folksy, but the wildness never left. The 1932 Concertante is a barnburner, and benefits from an over-the-top approach, provided the musicians are in peak form.

The last time the Concertante was performed by the Symphony was nine months before Pearl Harbor. At long last, this terrifically exciting number showed up like a P-51 out of the Bermuda Triangle, and the audience cheered to hear the way Ax banged out its conclusion like he was machine-gunning enemy fighter pilots.

“There are many, many notes,” Ax explained at the Friday “6.5” performance, which jettisoned the Mozart in order to provide five minutes of a loosely prepared public conversation between the soloist and conductor. Ax went on to theorize that Szymanowski, who intended that his compatriot and champion Artur Rubinstein perform the work, was forced by financial difficulties to consider playing it himself. A plethora of notes would make errors less noticeable.

“A” for Accuracy

All the number of notes did at Davies was allow Ax to score more bull’s-eyes with his impressive technique. The hyperactive orchestration rarely left Ax’s piano exposed, where you might hear a deviation from standard interpretive practice — if you can even refer to a “standard” in music this rare.

On the other hand, the orchestra had plenty of exposed moments and, for the most part, Oudjian did a splendid job of moving the music along and clarifying the many solo and soloistic passages (Concertmaster Alexander Barantshik, by the way, was super in the ones that he had). I would have appreciated a little more dynamic variation here and there, and there is a climbing passage for horns about 2.5 minutes into the first movement that could have used a little more emphasis.

Thursday, and even more so Friday, the performance crackled, and the first movement elicited whoops despite between-movement protocol. Oudjian’s direction was effective, if slightly too cool,especially compared to the way Stéphane Denève conducted the Russian National Orchestra in this same work at the Napa Valley Festival Del Sole in July 2006.

After the Szymanowski came Richard Strauss’ Burleske. Here was a second piece for piano and orchestra on the same program, and a second way to provide a peacehorse: perform a rare piece by a famous composer. The Burleske is a fine early work, but is overshadowed by Strauss’ tone poems of the same period, Don Juan and Death and Transfiguration. The last time it graced Davies was 15 years ago.

Ax showed no wear from his earlier workout, and dazzled the audience with his ferocious fingers. Oudjian kept up his slightly cool demeanor. I would have appreciated spikier high points in the development section (the piece is called a burlesque after all), but again the tempos were perfect, the playing exemplary, and the audience thrilled. Principal Timpanist David Herbert did his usual flawless work playing the theme that begins the work and generates most of the other tunes, one of which may well have inspired Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” from West Side Story.

By the way, conductors could stay closer to the spirit of the Friday 6.5 series by having the orchestra play a couple of key illustrative passages in the pre-concert conversations. This would have helped the audience warm even more to the unknown Szymanowski. And it would have been great to show how the timpani tune at the outset of Burleske is found in the “second” and “third” themes.

After intermission came the third adventure, Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini. This is the evil twin of the composer’s great Romeo and Juliet fantasy overture, describing the fate of an adulteress in the second ring of hell in Dante’s Inferno. Like the famous overture, this one has a love theme to die for and has got enough power to defer offshore drilling for many years. yet it’s played less than one percent of the time among Tchaikovsky’s works. Go figure. If it has a flaw, it’s only a bit more than average of one that pervades all of Tchaikovsky’s music: a penchant for repeating phrases in annoyingly predictable pairs.

But at least Oudjian pulled out all the stops this time, greatly pleasing the audience. The orchestra responded in kind and everyone went home, both nights, alive with the joys to be had from adventurous programming.

SCCO is a small orchestra, with just 14 string players altogether. (In addition to the strings, Sibelius’ Rakastava calls for sparse, almost inaudible backing from timpani and triangle, delicately provided by Laura McShane.) The potential snag with a very small orchestra is that when the composer calls for split parts in a section, some lines may be carried only by a single instrument each, creating an unintended chamber music effect. But that was not a problem here. The richness of the acoustics helped tremendously.

So did the power of the players: Nobody in this group is being carried by the rest of their section. This was most obvious with the sole bassist, Bruce Moyer. No matter how exposed his part, never did he sound like a wayward lone bass fiddler sawing away back there. He was more like Sir Galahad: His strength was as the strength of ten.

The conducting also helped carry the ensemble. Music Director Maya Barsacq favors quick tempos and a clear, dancelike rhythm. She led a lightly introspective performance of Rakastava (The lover), a rarely heard, dark-hued Sibelius work in the mode of his cryptic Fourth Symphony. It’s lyrical, though not conventionally melodic. Complex inner parts, and even solo passages for Concertmaster Laura Caballero and cellist Kelley Maulbetch, blended into the general sound. This was a masterful performance.

An Intriguing Wanderer

Viatore by Peteris Vasks is even rarer than the Sibelius, and was a bit more of a challenge for the players. Although this work is seven years old and has been recorded, this was, amazingly, its first U.S. performance. Vasks is a Latvian composer much prized by lovers of somber, tonal modern music. His work bears a relationship to Eastern European “mystic” composers such as Henryk Górecki and Arvo Pärt similar to that which John Adams has with the minimalists: He has absorbed their techniques into his own, more wide-ranging style.

Viatore, which means “The Wanderer,” is a tribute to Pärt. It opens and closes with a descending scale and a rising portamento slide, both very much in Pärt’s style, the final slide causing the music to disappear into thin air. But the bulk of Viatore consists of repetitions of a richly harmonized, deeply consonant hymn — beginning in the lower strings, gradually growing stronger and more drawn out, and then starting to die away over the course of the piece — alternating with brief sections of weird chitterings and harmonics focused on the violins. This kind of repetitive writing can be awesomely hypnotic. Viatore came close. At 17 minutes it was either too long or not long enough to achieve its best effect.

Had I been planning this concert, I might have paired the Sibelius and Vasks with Dag Wirén’s Serenade for Strings or something wistful by Grieg. But that might have been too much dry Northernness for one evening. SCCO instead closed with the cheerful Op. 22 Serenade by Dvořák. This could have used a bit more rehearsal in places. Yet the quick tempos contributed to a charming, bouncy performance with a wonderful touch of coyness at the ends of the movements.

Only 50 or 60 audience members came to this concert. A few I talked with at intermission proved to be relatives of the performers. What a shame. This orchestra is far too good to be heard only by its relatives. Later performances this season will include works by Giya Kancheli, another noted Eastern European postmystic, and the irrepressible Argentinian Astor Piazzolla. I am marking my calendar.

Artists’ Vocal Ensemble

Photo by H. Tran

Singing works by a dozen composers spanning eight centuries, music director Jonathan Dimmock and his ensemble presented a rich and multi-faceted tribute to the Italian monk, mystic, bird-lover, founder of the Franciscan order and patron saint of San Francisco. Credit Dimmock for constructing a program that was as illuminating as it was heartfelt, and credit his 16-voice group with performances that were consistently polished and assured.

Titled “St. Francis of Assisi: Musings on a New World Order,” the program covered a wide range, from 13th century works to contemporary settings by Fredrik Sixten, Gerald Near and Morten Lauridsen. Rather than present them chronologically, though, Dimmock arranged them around various facets of the saint’s life, alternating the old and the new in rewarding juxtapositions. As anyone who has experienced Messiaen’s five-hour operatic masterpiece on Francis will tell you, the life of this particular saint is ripe for musical exploration, and the composers included here were apparently inspired through the centuries in deeply personal ways.

Splendid Singing

Saturday’s concert at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley, which repeated Sunday afternoon at Noe Valley Chamber Music in San Francisco, opened with a processional. Singing the anonymous 13th century chant, Laudar vollio per amore (I want to praise with love), the chorus sounded uniformly vibrant, and their frank praise for Francis, accompanied by AVE members Allison Zelles Lloyd (harp) and Neal Rogers (percussion), set an exuberant tone for the evening.

Next came Perotin’s Gradual for the Feast of St. Stephen. The connection was tenuous — St. Stephen was a martyr, Francis was not, and although Perotin lived at roughly the same time as Francis, the two men never met — but the singing, with the men providing a dark-hued drone beneath the soaring voices of the women, was glorious.

Francis Poulenc’s Quatre petites prières de Saint Francois d’Assise restored a direct link. The French composer’s settings of Francis’s own words are exquisite — quiet, contemplative and, under Dimmock’s direction, sung with elegant, pristine tone.

Josquin Desprez’s Ave verum introduced a section of devotional settings, with a trio of voices — Dimmock, soprano Tonia d’Amelio, and alto Celeste Winant — twining in radiant ascension. Sixten’s setting of the same text, sung by the full ensemble, was intriguing in contrast, but somehow not as affecting. But Adoramus te (We adore you) by 16th century composer Claudio Merulo, followed by Pierre Villette’s 20th century Adoro te devote (text by Thomas Aquinas), came across in performances of striking beauty.

The first half ended with Palestrina’s rarely performed Nunc Dimittis (The Song of Simeon). Here, Dimmock divided his forces into three mixed groups, stationed around the church, and invited audience members to stand behind the group of their choice. The score, whose text comes from the Gospel of St. Luke, is magnificent, and the chorus delivered it with enveloping, surround-sound power. The work got a repeat performance after intermission, with the singers grouped on the altar this time; their close proximity knitted the sound together in a thrilling way.

Thought-Provoking Words, Silence

Francis’s words, sung in English, were featured next, in Near’s A Prayer of Saint Francis. (This is the one that starts “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.”) The chorus, stretched in a single row across the front of the altar, blended to gentle effect, with the final “eternal life” dissolving into a penetrating silence.

Two settings of “Ubi caritas” (Where there is charity) — the first plainsong, the second by Lauridsen — evoked Francis’s call for compassionate love. Giovanni Gabrieli’s Iam non dicam (From now on, I won’t call you servants), followed by Harris’s Bring Us, O Lord God (text by John Donne), were paired in a pointed meditation on leave-taking.

The program concluded with a recessional: another 13th century anonymous setting, Sia Laudato San Francesco, (St. Francis be praised) with bass Rob Stafford delivering the solo part with articulate phasing and admirable heft.

Throughout the program, Dimmock provided insightful commentary. Saturday’s program was presented in connection with the We Campaign (a project of the Alliance for Climate Protection), which seeks to repower America with 100% of its electricity from clean energy sources within the next ten years. Saint Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of the environment, too.

Afiara String Quartet

The recital hall at the Crowden Center is one of the best chamber music venues I have experienced in the East Bay, offering a warm but well-defined resonance that the Afiara put to good use. The Center is perhaps better known as the location of the Crowden School, dedicated to offering a well-rounded education to budding young musicians, so it was no surprise to find a group of receptive, well-educated listeners. Unfortunately, the small yet enthusiastic audience also served as a harbinger of the challenges facing a young quartet like the Afiara.

Maybe better publicity will help draw larger, more diverse crowds in the future, but it was disappointing to see only a smattering of young children and parents among the largely graying chamber music public, especially given the fact that the Crowden School’s history of success in cultivating young musicians has long been such a beacon of hope.

Sunday’s program opened with Franz Schubert’s Quartettsatz, in C minor, one of those late works that remains as a single-movement torso, a leftover from a larger quartet project. The scurrying opening gesture presents a kind of virtuosic jigsaw-puzzle challenge — one that the Afiara met with an assuring sense of confidence, setting a tone that prevailed through much of the concert. My one moment of concern came immediately after this impressive opening, when first violinist Valerie Li took the spotlight. At first, Li’s playing felt forced, particularly in the lyrical second theme, and, like so many “modern” string players, she does have a tendency to rely too much on portato, spending a lot of time in that territory between a true legato and the crisper articulations that this music calls for, and, in the process, skirting decisions about some of the difficult phrasing problems that Schubert poses.

However, by the time the quartet reached the repeat of the exposition, Li had found her stride, and what followed was a composed, most thoughtful interpretation. I was impressed with the Afiara’s light touch in the quieter passages, as well as its willingness to explore subtle, transparent ensemble textures with well-focused intonation and minimal vibrato.

Twelve-Tone Work a Standout

Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite, which followed, was the highlight of the program, and the Afiara seemed most at home in this intensely expressive work. Written in 1926, in the full throes of Berg’s experimentation with Arnold Schoenberg’s compositional theories, the Lyric Suite must surely be among the more popular 12-tone pieces in the repertoire. In recent years, Berg’s autograph score, dedicated to his secret lover, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, has come to light, with clues that add yet another layer to the interpretation of this richly cryptic work, which is also filled with numerological references and allusions both to a suite by Alexander Zemlinsky and to Wagner’s Tristan.

While Berg’s work offers ample rewards for those drawn to exploring its crosscurrents of deeper meaning, awareness of the complexities lurking in the suite needn’t interfere with enjoyment of its purely sensual appeal. Although his efforts at encoding and developing external referents in arcane pitch relationships contribute to a richly complex sense of large-scale form, Berg’s treatment of line and texture create a sense of constantly flowing narrative — one of the factors that have made his music so much more approachable than his mentor’s.

In the Lyric Suite, a simple device provides a large-scale pattern that is particularly easy to follow: Movements alternate between fast and slow, with the fast movements growing progressively quicker and the slow movements slower. Embedded within this structure are several nods to more-conventional string quartet genres, including a glassy Scherzo and a trio third movement that was especially effective in the Afiara’s performance.

The quartet concludes with a doleful Largo desolato. Here, Berg makes his dedication to Hanna Fuchs explicit by suggesting that it include a setting of Baudelaire’s poem “De profundus clamavi,” a German translation of which Berg appended to his score. In fact, soprano Dawn Upshaw, with the Kronos Quartet, has recorded this last movement as a vocal setting (in a “reconstruction” by George Perle), and her performance certainly makes a compelling case for this connection. But the lyric qualities of the movement are just as well served by a good quartet performance, and the Afiara’s on Sunday was exceptionally fine. Violist David Samuel’s plaintive declamation had a vocal quality that was noteworthy.

Beethoven’s Quartet No. 8, Op. 59, No. 2 (the “Razumovsky”), which concluded the program, demonstrated both the strengths and weaknesses of this young ensemble. It’s easy for a youthful group to treat Beethoven too reverentially, to miss his quick-witted twists and turns of phrases while searching for a deeper, more profound sense of drama, but a perusal of Beethoven’s letters suggests that his profound ambitions were always tempered by an earthy sense of humor. In Sunday’s performance, the shaping of individual gestures was often too flat, such as in the lyrical second movement, and transitions between phrases sometimes slipped by a bit too arbitrarily, perhaps in the name of shaping the large-scale structure of a movement. That said, the ability to create large-scale shapes is one of the more difficult and important skills achieved by a mature string quartet, and to its credit, this ability is already one of the Afiara’s great strengths.

David Tanenbaum

Tanenbaum began with a set of guitar duos with D’Agostino that grew increasingly more intricate. The Concerto in G, by Vivaldi, was originally written for lute, strings, and basso continuo and is well-known and much loved by guitarists. Tanenbaum gave a stylish account of the soloist’s part, adding elaborate ornamentation that amazed and delighted those in the audience who were accustomed to more literal interpretations. D’Agostino combined the continuo and string parts with rhythmic energy and sensitivity.

The English composer Peter Maxwell Davies is currently Master of the Queen’s Music, the musical equivalent of Poet Laureate of England. Concerned about environmental issues, he wrote Farewell to Stromness to protest plans to mine uranium on the island of Orkney, north of Scotland. The slow walking bass line that supports the piece is meant to portray the town’s Stromness forced to leave their homes as a result of uranium pollution. In a spoken introduction Tanenbaum quoted his son, who called it the saddest music in a major key he had ever heard. D’Agostino and Tanenbaum, in turn, each played the keening melody and its characteristic Scotch snap, with exquisite sensitivity. The lovely tonal contrast between their nylon and steel strings proved an effective introduction to the next piece.

Reich’s Nagoya Guitars is a creative arrangement that Tanenbaum made of the composer’s Nagoya Marimbas. The piece, written in 1994, is similar to Reich’s early work in its use of repeating patterns that occur one or more beats out of phase. The patterns are, however, more complex and change more frequently than in the earlier music. I’ve enjoyed hearing the music on marimba and with two classical guitars but was quite taken by the combination of nylon and steel strings, which made the intricate unison canons clearly audible while highlighting Tanenbaum and D’Agostino’s virtuosic interplay.

The duo concluded their set with D’Agostino’s own work Venus Over Venice. A phenomenally talented guitarist/composer, D’Agostino is influenced by traditional Italian music, classical music, pop, and steel string guitarists like Leo Kottke and Pierre Bensusan. Venus Over Venice featured the composer playing an elaborate series of arpeggiated harmonies and Tanenbaum on a long-lined, lyrical melody. Their finely calibrated diminuendo conclusion was breathtaking.

Bach’s Sonata in F, BWV 529, originally for solo organ, is a three-movement work in three voices. Harpsichordist Corey Jamason and Tanenbaum each played one of the two upper voices while Jamason also played the bass. The opening Allegro featured a two-part theme in invertible counterpoint, with both artists deftly exchanging parts in Bach’s intricate and absorbing texture. The Largo featured two highly ornamented upper voices weaving in and around each other above a steady bass line. The closing Allegro used a more relaxed theme than the opening, though Bach’s elaboration was just as intricate; throughout, Tanenbaum and Jamason maintained their supple and sensitive ensemble.

Powerful Work of Conscience

The high point of the evening was Tanenbaum’s moving rendition of Riley’s Quando Cosas Malas Caen del Cielo (When bad things fall from the sky), performing it on a National Steel Guitar fretted in just intonation. On February 15, 2003, millions of people in almost eight hundred cities took part in protests against the possibility of a U.S. war in Iraq. In Nevada City, California, composer Terry Riley joined a ragtag group of mostly senior citizens in a march down Main Street and was arrested because the marchers lacked a city permit. After spending a night in jail, the composer was brought before a judge, convicted, and given three options for his sentence: Spend another night in jail, pay a fine, or agree to do community service. Riley told the judge he was a 70-year-old composer and suggested that he write a piece of music for his community service. The judge agreed and this powerful antiwar piece is the result.

The first movement, “National Broadstreet March,” depicts Riley and his band of senior citizens in a festive march worthy of Charles Ives. Tanenbaum played the second movement, “La melodia que se sienta solo” (The melody that feels alone), with a mournful sliding from note to note, capturing the loneliness of a solitary night in prison. “Corrente dicta,” the third movement, was a gathering of energy for continued protest. “Quando cosas malas caen del cielo,” the name of the fourth movement as well as of the whole piece, used the extremely dissonant thirds of just intonation to powerful expressive effect.

Tanenbaum is without peer in this music. He captured every mood to perfection — ebullient opening, mournful solo, building determination, and painful conclusion — with an amazing command of color, time, and empathy.

While it would seem to be difficult to follow such powerful music, Tanenbaum and violinist Axel Strauss took Conservatory Concert Hall by storm in Astor Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango. In four movements that depict the characteristic tango of the periods about 1900, 1930, 1960, and 1980, this is a stylistic tour de force that asks a great deal of performers but offers even more to audiences. I have heard many performances, but until Saturday night none had matched the power of a recording by violinist Fernando Suarez Paz, a long-time associate of Piazzolla, and the Brazilian guitarist Odair Assad. Strauss and Tanenbaum accomplished that feat, getting right every stylistic nuance (none is mentioned in the score) and bringing down the house. I hope they are considering a recording.

Emanuele Arciuli

Arciuli has it all: scholarship, a dreadnought technique, accuracy, a full palette of colors, intellectual prowess, courage — and oh yes, an amazing program of “American Masterpieces.” The event was jointly sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and Old First.

Arciuli opened with Charles Ives’ Sonata No. 2, Concord Massachusetts 1840-1860, in its 1947 version, and after intermission he played John Adams’ Phrygian Gates (1977). Those two lengthy works were enough to fill the program, but after wild applause Arciuli added an encore, an arrangement of the pop tune Bill Evans’ Quiet Now.

The artist’s own program notes mentioned Ives’ connection to Mahler. Ives was, after all, in New York during Mahler’s tenure with the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. He undoubtedly heard some of those performances and had contact with Mahler. It’s known, for instance, that Mahler was planning to premiere Ives’ Third Symphony at the time of his death in 1911. Ives almost certainly knew of Mahler’s statement that a symphony should encompass the whole world, and apparently had that in mind when composing his giant Second Sonata for piano.

Each of the four movements in Concord honors a major 19th-century American writer: Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau, respectively. Running nearly an hour in length, the sonata can and does turn up virtually anything, in a kind of stream-of-consciousness fashion. The listener hears something akin to a montage texture at play. As far as I know, Ives was the first composer to do that in a serious way. He went way beyond mere parody, which previously was the norm.

The Sonata almost amounts to a spot-that-tune exercise, though none of the quotations hangs around for long, flitting by in seconds. Each of the four movements makes little nods to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, but a listener attuned to the music of the time can also pick out a number of traditional hymns and popular tunes: Bringing in the Sheaves; Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean; Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground, and the like.

Dazzling Complexity

The piece’s textures can be incredibly dense or can sit in naked simplicity, particularly when Ives turned out a bit of quiet rudiments from New England church services. There are minor hints of Debussy, ragtime, marches, fox-trots, and all else. For a pianist to cope with so many opposites in so compact a form, and often in multiple styles — as Arciuli did — left me agog. I never dreamed it could be managed by a mere human.

Composed between 1909 and 1915, the original work contained a short passage for flute, accompanied by the pianist. That was and is obviously impractical, so a revision was made in 1947, eliminating the flute. I think I smell the hand of Lou Harrison’s influence in that. Harrison was, after all, a major part of Ives’ recognition during the late 1940s after he premiered the prize-winning Third Symphony in New York.

Adams composed Phrygian Gates while on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, back in the days when it was located way out on 19th Avenue. The work consists of a single virtuoso movement about half the length of Ives’ whopper Sonata, and has become his most frequently performed work.

It’s minimalist, of course, but soft-core. What sets Adams apart from most other minimalists is that he is less dogged about sticking to one pattern. He can sense when it’s time to add on to or change the material, as opposed to, say, Philip Glass, who always repeats the same set of notes until they’re well past their sell date.

Adams opens his toccata of whirligigs with repeated notes, then keeps applying new layers of material. Eventually the piece reaches an uncommon density of sound, always tonal and never harshly dissonant. He pretty much sticks to the ancient Greek Phrygian and Lydian modes along the way. That has helped the work’s popularity, not merely due to its harmonious modesty but also because of its variety and sense of climax. Indeed, I’ll admit that it’s one of the few minimalistic pieces I admire and enjoy.

Supremely Artistic Performances

Both Arciuli performances were astounding. I’ve not heard that kind of keenly polished playing of advanced piano music since the heyday of David Tudor. Arciuli’s forthright renditions covered the widest range of dynamics, and were artistic in every aspect. He played the tremendous chording in such a manner that each note stood out clearly, but with just the slightest emphasis on the most important note in a harmony. That’s most uncommon.

Then too, I greatly appreciated the lack of fake showbiz effects: waving the hands in the air, throwing back the head, swaying with eyes closed, and all that hokum. He must have fingers of steel. He could get orchestral volume from the instrument without lifting his palms from the keyboard, or could turn the volume from one extreme to the other on a dime.

Arciuli, who currently teaches at his alma mater, the Conservatory of Bari in Italy, and as guest faculty at the Cincinnati University Conservatory of Music, has specialized in contemporary music, with emphasis on the Second Viennese School (Schoenberg and company), plus — oddly enough for an Italian pianist — on American music. He’s played the Italian premiere of Adams’ Piano Concerto in Milan; performed Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety, with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic; and recorded major works of George Crumb.

Naturally, he’s played the basics as well … Beethoven concertos in Brazil, Bartók’s Third in Italy, recorded major Liszt too. So it’s odd that he’s so well-known all over Europe and throughout most of South America but hardly known here. I can only hope he’ll return to the West Coast, and often. Make no mistake, Emanuele Arciuli is a major pianist in the proud Italian traditions of Ferruccio Busoni and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

Ensemble La Rota

Falling somewhere in between is the talented young Ensemble La Rota, a Montreal-based quartet whose credits include winning the 2006 Early Music America Medieval/Renaissance Competition. Historical fidelity is clearly a priority for these performers, as evidenced by their scrupulous study of manuscript sources and organization of a concert program, titled “Heu, Fortuna,” around a series of manuscripts copied during or immediately after the reign of Philip the Fair (r. 1285-1314). But as Saturday’s performance at Berkeley’s St. John’s Presbyterian Church demonstrated, such study can coexist with highly nuanced and sensitive performances, moving beyond the score to accentuate the latent drama and passion contained in this repertory.

Intimacy and subtlety are the hallmarks of Ensemble La Rota’s approach. Trading primarily in delicate-sounding instruments such as the recorder, lute, and harp, the group’s four masterful musicians explored a range of motets, trouvère songs (secular French tunes), and instrumental estampies (dance songs) with unfailing grace. They seem to have settled on a standard performance template, in which a single part or duo begins a piece and other instruments are gradually layered on top during later verses. The effect is supremely elegant, never brash or vulgar no matter how lively the music becomes.

Soprano Sarah Barnes paired a winningly bright tone with engaging stage presence to delightful effect in the solemn opening chanson, Chanterai por mon coriage (I will sing for my heart), attributed to Guiot de Dijon. Communicating a woman’s vow to resolutely bear the absence of her crusader husband, Barnes deftly conveyed the text’s alternating fits of sorrow, fear, agony, and hope. An elegant estampie on this same music followed, arranged by the ensemble’s virtuosic recorder/hurdy-gurdy player, Tobie Miller.

Jehan de Lescurel’s piece titled A vous, douce debonaire, a paean to the noble lady in typical courtly love style, exemplified La Rota’s intuitive dramatic inclinations. Barnes began with a florid, confident declaration of the opening lines “To you, sweet lady, have I given my heart; I will never depart,” ably supported by Miller’s florid recorder accompaniment, Esteban La Rotta’s steady harp, and the sinewy vielle lines of Émilie Brûlé. When these lines recur later in the piece, she gave them a softer, more pleading quality — a touching, highly affective gesture.

Alluring Interplay of Texts

The anonymous Dieus! Comment porra/O regina/Nobis concedas (God! How could I give up/O queen of glory/Grant to us) exemplifies the early motet style, in which texts of various languages and meanings are juxtaposed simultaneously, often generating intriguing thematic intersections. Here the idea of brotherhood provided the connecting theme, the French text extolling the virtues of the protagonist’s Parisian friends and the Latin forming a prayer to the Virgin to hear the pleas of her brotherhood. This intertextuality found a complement in the musical styles: more rapid and florid for the secular lines, steadier and more rhythmically regular in the sacred. Barnes’ rapidly flowing declamation of the French blended beautifully with soprano Miller’s sweet, steady interpretation of the Latin, with Brûlé and La Rotta adding unerring instrumental support.

Another highlight was Philippe de Vitry’s Tribum que non abhorruit/Quoniam secta/Merito hec patimur (The tribe that did not shrink/Since the band of thieves/It is fair that we suffer this), a motet declaiming the just punishment given to those taking what did not belong to them. Here Barnes and La Rotta provided the vocals in relatively steady rhythms, contrasted against Miller’s dazzling recorder figurations and Brûlé’s ever-solid support on vielle.

A final note, about the printed program: While photocopies of manuscript sources for the evening’s program offered a welcome addition to the notes, severe misalignments between the order of pieces as presented in the program and how the texts were displayed in the body of the program prompted much frustrated page-turning. Especially on a program sung mostly with a Medieval French accent, where following the text is doubly challenging, this lack of coordination was unbefitting of a program otherwise so finely polished.

Gomidas is credited with preserving Armenia’s rich musical heritage by collecting and notating more than 3,000 songs and dances; these include the medieval hymns of the Armenian Church in which he served as a celibate priest (or vartabed). Acknowledged as “The Father of Armenian Classical Music,” and renowned worldwide as a composer, ethnomusicologist, and choirmaster, he was one of some 300 Armenian intellectuals arrested and deported in 1915 in the first stage of the Turkish government’s Armenian genocide. During the onslaught, everything was destroyed — churches, music, singing villagers: all musical and ceremonial remnants of Armenia’s 4,000-year-old civilization. While Gomidas survived, thanks to the intervention of U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, he lost friends, students, his choir, and most of his life’s work. Emotionally devastated and unable to compose, he succumbed to illness, and eventually died in a mental institution in Paris.

In addition to three sets of songs by Gomidas — two Songs of Yearning, four Songs of Nature and Love, and four Songs for Children and Humor — and five of his lovely Dances for piano, the program included music by Bartók (Romanian Folk Dances), Ravel (Deux Melodies Hébraïques), Nikos Skalkottas (Greek Dances, Opus 11), and Holocaust victim Gideon Klein (“Variations on a Moravian Folksong” from the Partita for Strings). By highlighting how the rich folk heritage of other cultures affected other classical composers, Bayrakdarian underscored the folk roots of Gomidas’ achievement.

Back to Basics

As Bayrakdarian’s just-released Nonesuch recording of Gomidas’ songs (recorded over three years ago) attests, many of the songs Gomidas preserved exhibit a mixture of simple, childlike naivete and heart-tugging sadness. Most have a limited range, lying lower in Bayrakdarian’s voice. They may not be, at least in Serouj Kradjian’s arrangements, as colorful and engrossing as Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne, but they possess significant cumulative power.

Although they’re hardly as deep as the Ravel songs, they may in fact also possess the “mystical and universally soul-stirring quality” that the concert program suggests. Unfortunately, any possibility of mystical transport was destroyed by audience members who refused to heed the printed program’s request to hold applause until the end of each set. Not only did they applaud after virtually every song and instrumental selection, they also noisily turned pages in a semifutile attempt to reconcile the order of texts and translations in the program insert with the complete program printed in the larger brochure. A simple announcement from the stage and retention of the full program order in the insert would have made a huge difference.

To everything she sang, Bayrakdarian brought beautiful tone, an affecting empathy, and considerable grace and poise. Since winning the prestigious 2000 Operalia competition, the 34-year-old soprano’s voice has blossomed into glowing maturity. It retains its lustrous, lyric edge, but has gained substantially in body. The passage of time and perhaps the experience of motherhood — Bayrakdarian’s child is 10 months old — have contributed to a notable expansion in expression and gravitas. If anything, the strikingly wide emotional compass, impassioned vocalism, and tonal beauty that she has shared in local performances with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, have only increased. Her performance of Ravel’s “Kaddish” (Prayer) did not have heart-seizing profundity, but it was extremely moving.

Ably supporting her were the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Anne Manson; pianist and arranger Kradjian; and duduk master Hampic Djabourian. Although Manson’s stiff, jerky, nervous conducting style was distracting — dressed in a semimilitary style blazer, she resembled an army band conductor who had morphed into a semaphore signaler — her ensemble played quite well. Special gratitude belongs to Concertmaster Karl Stobbe, whose soulful musicianship was especially plaintive and poetic in the Bartók.

When onstage, Bayrakdarian’s husband Kradjian was positioned at the piano closest to the audience, with the lid open all the way. As well as posing no challenge to Bayrakdarian, the choice to allow the piano’s sound to bloom enabled Kradjian to produce a twinkling, sparkling sound that ideally supported many of the songs. In Djabourian’s hands, the duduk seemed to speak with the soul of Armenia — as did Bayrakdarian.

At the end of the short, lovely evening, the soprano gave us three Gomidas encores. After the first of two lullabies, she noted that she used to sing it in a higher key, but lowered it after her infant voiced his disapproval. Thankfully, she threw in one impressively strong, high ending on another selection to give us a sense of her ability to master repertoire of greater range and emotional expression. If she did not receive a huge standing ovation, it was only because the sweet nature of Gomidas’ touching material and Kradjian’s arrangements were more conducive to inward smiles than vociferous outbursts.

This concert had something for everyone, including a pair of internationally acclaimed dancers, a bandoneon soloist, and a first half that featured chestnuts by Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel. This type of creative programming with multiple media should be considered a model for symphony orchestras all over the country that are endeavoring to build new audience bases.

Quartet San Francisco

Known for its successful crossovers into numerous musical styles, including jazz, pop, funk, blues, bluegrass, and more, Quartet San Francisco has enjoyed unusual success with its national and international performances as well as its Grammy-nominated recordings of sensuous dance music from Argentina. The quartet’s putative leader, Jeremy Cohen, is quite clearly an extraordinarily creative musician. Nationally acknowledged as a leading jazz violinist, he also possesses significant gifts as a composer and arranger. His colorful orchestrations of tangos by Agustin Bardi, G.H. Rodriguez, and Astor Piazzolla — in addition to three of his own compositions — made possible this satisfying collaboration with the Marin Symphony.

The most compelling piece on the altogether entertaining program was the medley of two tangos by Piazzolla, whose name has become synonymous with this musical style. Pairing the slow and achingly beautiful Melodia en La Menor with the driving, energetic Libertango, Cohen conceived a tour de force that brilliantly displayed the tango’s seductive charms. This is substantial music, featuring the bandoneon (a popular, accordion-like instrument from Argentina), played expertly and soulfully by guest artist Seth Asarnow, and dancers Sandor and Parissa (who enthralled the audience in two other numbers, as well), supporting a mesmerizing freestyle (nonchoreographed) tango.

While the Libertango sizzled with raw energy and superb playing by the quartet and the orchestra’s string section, the Melodia imparted the real essence of the tango’s beguiling character, with ravishing melodies and lush harmonies that unfolded over a lazy, yet insistent, descending chromatic bass line. Cohen has enhanced the medley with a stunning original cadenza for solo violin that bridges the two tangos, and his flawless virtuosity was not lost on the rapt audience.

Fine Work by Quartet San Francisco

The quartet’s playing was solid all night. Rodriguez’s La cumparsita (apparently the most beloved tango of all) opened the program, with its sinuous unaccompanied duet played by Cohen and violist Keith Lawrence. However, the orchestra’s playing in this tango wasn’t as satisfying. Their rhythmic consistency and stylistic execution fell short of the authenticity offered by the quartet. In addition, the overall texture felt too heavy at times, compromising the intimacy of Sandor and Parissa’s sultry choreography.

Al Colon, one of Cohen’s original compositions, featured nimble playing by all the quartet’s members, including a delightful variation in which the composer shows admirable facility in the style of Vivaldi. The orchestra sparkled on this arrangement, as they did on the finale Guamba (Cohen’s clever title for this samba composed on the island of Guam). Principal clarinetist Art Austin, Concertmaster Jeremy Constant, and tuba player Jill Corbett contributed outstanding solo turns.

The first half concluded with an inspired reading of Ravel’s Bolero. Numerous intermission conversations were sprinkled with inevitable references to the movie that made Bo Derek famous and relegated this masterpiece to novelty status. Yet the Marin Symphony’s performance of this thrilling work reminded the wildly appreciative audience that this is a daring, bold, and singularly original piece, and one that must be experienced in a resonant concert hall like the Marin Center in San Rafael, the Symphony’s home.

I never cease to marvel at Ravel’s ingenious use of orchestral color, his audacious use of only two melodies with absolutely no variation, and his ability to create sustained, unrelenting intensity. All the soloists were in fine form. Maestro Neale was masterful in coaxing from the orchestra what must be the longest crescendo in the symphonic repertoire. His only oversight was his failure to recognize the contributions of piccolo soloist Holly Nichols for her duet with principal horn player Alex Camphouse. Ravel’s scoring for this duo in parallel major thirds, evoking the unmistakable sound of a pipe organ, is an outstanding example of his skill as an orchestrator.

Special kudos to tenor saxophonist David Henderson, soprano saxophonist Sean Hurlburt, Art Austin for his solos on both B-flat and E-flat clarinets, and Kevin Neuhoff, who dispatched the marathon snare drum solo with great precision and artistry.

With Saturday’s brief concert of two divertissements (short operatic entertainments) at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley, Magnificat Music Director Warren Stewart and company took another decisive step toward reclaiming Charpentier’s reputation. Delivering a crystalline performance marked by luscious vocal purity and elegant instrumental support, Magnificat captured the vitality and freshness of these charming works, turning the evening into an impeccably refined affair.

Les Plaisirs de Versailles (The pleasures of Versailles; 1682) is house music in the literal sense, originally performed for Louis’ thrice-weekly “fêtes of the apartments” in the main rooms of the Great Apartment of Versailles. Its dramatis personae comprise various pleasures that the Sun King evidently enjoyed in these digs: music, conversation, gambling, and that perennial favorite chocolate. Striking contrasts in instrumentation and style — lyrical airs for La Musique, prattling recitative for La Conversation, solemn tones for the temptations of Comus, the god of festivities — accentuate the central debate over which of these elements best satisfies the king’s pleasures.

Both vocally and in their gestures, sopranos Laura Heimes (as Musique) and Jennifer Paulino (as Conversation) nicely captured the comedic aspects of their characters’ arguments. Finely matched tone colors, keen attention to melodic shape, and vivid stage presence accentuated the elegance of even their most stinging put-downs. Both singers deserve credit for creating vivid personifications of Musique’s campy haughtiness and Conversation’s irksome blabbering. As the purveyor of chocolates, wines, and other delectables, bass Hugh Davies added an appealingly robust and seductive quality to the mix.

Considerably less resounding was the evening’s vocal projection, the one flaw marring an otherwise finely polished gem. Many singers (Heimes and Davies excepted) had difficulty carrying over the orchestra, a crackerjack group of eight players whose superlative accompaniment should not have posed particular problems. St. Mark’s acoustic didn’t help matters, but placement of the vocalists in front of rather than behind the orchestra might have alleviated the problem.

Pastoral Pleasures

Also with a connection to royalty was the evening’s other divertissement, La Couronne des fleurs (The crown of flowers; 1685), a work likely composed for the singers of Marie de Lorraine, Duchesse de Guise and cousin to Louis. Freely adapted from the prologue of Charpentier’s comedy-ballet Le Malade imaginaire (The imaginary invalid; 1673, with text by Molière), this work emphasizes the pastoral over the allegorical. A cast of gods and shepherds celebrates the arrival of springtime with a contest to see who can extol the king’s virtues most beautifully, the winner receiving a crown of flowers.

A graceful orchestral introduction, establishing the pastoral mood, segued into the spring goddess Flora’s declamation of that season’s arrival and the rules of the contest, delightfully captured in Haimes’ pitch-perfect performance. Four characters then made their cases to win the crown, with fine contributions from sopranos Paulino and Ruth Escher and tenors Paul Elliott and Daniel Hutchings. Especially appealing were the alternating trios between women and men, the airtight ensemble singing flawless in intonation and blend. The divertissement concludes with Flora declaring all participants to be equally worthy of the crown and dividing its flowers among them, a judgment also well suited to the evening’s performances as a whole.