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Reviews
OPERA
A Night at the Opera, Starring Death!
By George Thomson
San Francisco Opera
Le Grand Macabre
(10/29/04)
RECITAL
Winter of the Soul
SYMPHONY
Kaleidoscope
CHAMBER MUSIC
Ably Serving Many Styles
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
Eastern Array
SYMPHONY
Mostly Of Our Time
RECITAL
High Voltage
CHAMBER MUSIC
Slavic Shades
EARLY MUSIC
Unalloyed Delights
MUSIC NEWS
One-Act Operas Redux
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Responses to Our 10/26/04 Question of the Week
By Stephanie Friedman
Ian Bostridge
Leif Ove Andsnes
(10/25/04)
By Renato Rodolfo-Sioson
San Francisco Symphony
Leif Ove Andsnes
(10/29/04)
By Heuwell Tircuit
Left Coast Ensemble
(10/25/04)
By David Bithell
BluePrint Project
(10/25/04)
By David Bratman
Symphony Silicon Valley
Robin Mayforth
Patrick Flynn
(10/30/04)
By Jodi Levitz
Hilary Hahn
Natalie Zhu
(10/29/04)
By Scott MacClelland
St. Petersburg Quartet
Teddy Abrams
(10/30/04)
By Rebekah Ahrendt
Musica Pacifica
(10/31/04)
By Janos Gereben
Robert Commanday, Senior Editor
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Stravinsky it was, I believe, who described Balanchine's choreography as making the music visible. That thought came to mind while watching and listening to the Mark Morris Dance Groups Program II at UC Zellerbach Hall Saturday, a Cal Performances presentation. Whatever instrument he does or does not play, Morris is a fine musician. This is the major part of this choreographer's gifts, as has been often noted in reviews here, especially of the Morris performances of The Hard Nut (Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ), Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.
To start with, Morris insists on live instrumental support, no dancing to tapes. That makes a great difference. The dancers and musicians are interacting and there is a vitality that gives extra meaning to the term "live." The dancing is a direct expression of the music, which raises the danger of literalism, the dance gestures and movements slavishly mirroring the musical ideas, gesturing the rhythmic patterns in unison with the score. It's called "Mickey-Mousing." Morris does some of that, and when he goes too far with it (not often), the energy and tension go out of the visual experience. It is best when the dance acts equally in counterpoint or, better, counter-melody with the music — in and out, in unison and then against.
The opening work, "I Don't Want to Love" (1996), named after the first of seven Monteverdi madrigals, "Non voglio amare," was gracefully interpreted and danced. The movements of the dancers catch the feeling, phrasing, particular lyricism and pointed expression of Monteverdi's style. The typical madrigal-text conceits, describing poetically a lover's pain and exaggerated torments, are reflected nicely in the ballet. The musical performance, too, was clear, warm and stylish, by four singers and three instrumentalists of the American Bach Soloists, Jeffrey Thomas leading from the harpsichord.
Yet the choice of seven madrigals for such a work was not an inspired one. When the listener is not focused on the specific madrigal and its text but is also watching, it's too difficult to relate the music's specific detail to the dancing. It hardly helps when the house lights are down and no reading of or glancing at the provided texts is possible. In any case, music for dance should provide a formal structure larger than the phrase-by-phrase design of madrigals. A movement in sonata form, for example, has a design that lends appropriate contrast to a dance.
Rock of Ages, given its premiere performances during this Morris engagement last week, raised a somewhat similar issue, a need for contrast and a more pronounced structure. It was danced to Schubert's Piano Trio in E flat — not the familiar E-flat Trio, D. 929, but the single-movement "Notturno," D. 897, composed in the same year (1828), and possibly originally intended as D. 929's slow movement. The Andante con moto of D. 929 has an entirely different character from the one Morris chose for his dance work. It is deeply melancholic, almost dirge-like, but more an eloquent lament that becomes passionate and then subsides in sorrow. Very moving. The Schubert that was danced, the Notturno, a longer piece, is emotionally more stable, almost idyllic in atmosphere.
The Notturno's music itself is a kind of equilibrium, the musical ideas not pronounced. The dance sketches designs on its face with different pairings and groupings of dancers, visual glances, suddenly informal, natural walking. It's like a muted, distant lyric exercise.
Accordingly, the music was a lyrical drifting piece, lovely, gentle, not at all dramatic, exquisitely done and finely played by Yosuke Kawasaki, violin, Arianne Lallemand, cello (too soft), and Benjamin Hochman, piano (with the concert grand's lid fully up, a mistake).
Morris' early, inexplicably named Marble Halls (1985) caught quite a different style in the dance as is inevitably dictated by the musical style of Bach's Concerto for Oboe, Violin and Strings, in C minor, BWV 1060. The dance is crisp and rhythmically articulated, lyric in the Bach manner, the music projecting its momentum to the dancers. Even in a work so early in Morris' career, his flair for embodying the music's impetus, spirit, and phrasing is manifest in this piece for ten dancers. Robert Cole, Cal Performances' director, conducted a good, clear performance with twenty musicians from the Berkeley Symphony. Deborah Shidler (oboe) and Yosuke Kawasaki (violin) were the fine soloists.
Finally, the pièce de resistance was V (2001) to Schumann's piece with the most unquenchable spirit, his Quintet in E flat for Piano and Strings, Op. 44. It was proof positive that the more character the musical work has, the stronger its structure and energies, the more pronounced, coherent and eloquent the dance to it would be. To be sure, the dancing must respect the music's style; and that, with his musicianship and taste, is where Morris steps to the fore. The Quintet was played excellently by Kawasaki, Jonathan Gandelsman (violin), Jessica Troy (viola), Lallemand and Hochman.
There are two corps of seven dancers each, appearing initially in a V formation, one in blue, the other in pale green, typically for Morris, light, diaphanous costumes. They strike distinctively different, pronounced poses and sometimes move creepingly like insects. The dancers spring away from each other after lightly brushing contacts and execute continuities of fascinating designs. All happens in dynamic response to the character of the music, its melodic and rhythmic nature, ultimately ebullient. In short, V realizes Schumann's great piece, without overriding, mocking or merely using it. Dance can be a musical experience.
Everyone has something to say about the availability of new music performances, or the insufficiency of it, but some institutions go into it in a major way as a matter of regular course, business as usual, "that's what we do."
The ambitious annual Festival of New American Music begins tomorrow and continues through November 14 at California State University, Sacramento. There are events morning, afternoon and evening at many different venues and everything free to the public. For 27 years, this has been going on but remarkably, with very little news of it getting to the outside world, even as close as the Bay Area, until now and here. SFCV welcomes the Sacramento State's festival to the Bay Area and to its readers.
The nineteen events, every one of them free, include programs devoted to the music of Bernard Rands and of George Crumb, with both composers participating and giving lectures. There will be performances by ensembles of different types and provenance, including the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Earplay, Meridian Arts (brass quintet) Ensemble, Pinotage (an instrumental quartet from Chicago), the Sacramento Experimental Music Group, Fair Oaks Woodwind Quintet, the Festival Ensemble, the Eclipse and Sun String Quartets, guitarists Eliot Fisk and David Starobin. Other composers participating are Robert Beaser, Kathleen Ginther, Jerome Begin, Marion O'Leary and Stephen Blumberg, co-director of the festival along with Daniel Kennedy, percussionist.
The Festival events are listed in SFCV's Calendar (click on "Calendar" at the bottom of this page, and then click on "Outlying") but for more, go to Festival of New American Music or call (916) 278-5155. A brochure is available. Tomorrow night's opening concert, Contemporary Solo and Chamber Music, featuring Eliot Fisk, guitar; Laurel Zucker, flute; Earplay; Sun Quartet; Bernard Rands, composer; Robert Beaser, composer, with music of Bernard Rands, Robert Beaser, Daniel Kingman, and Peter Lieberson in the CSUS Music Recital Hall will be broadcast over Capital Public Radio, KXPR, Capital Public Radio at 8:00 p.m. direct to you over your computer. Right along with SFCV, your constant classical companion.
(Robert P. Commanday, senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)
©2004 Robert Commanday, all rights reserved
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From September 1, 1998 to September 21, 2004, we have published, in addition to the Music News, feature pieces and weekly editorials 1898 reviews of Bay Area performances by: 50 symphony orchestras (409 reviews), 78 chamber groups (220), 33 new music ensembles and programs (201), 36 opera companies (257), 26 choral groups (122), 15 music festivals (85), 32 early music ensembles (140), 21 chamber orchestras (81), 6 musical theater groups (14), world music (14), recitals (333), youth music (10), Other (12).
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