Concert reviews
Sonic Dresses, Prison Letters, and Musical Mosaic under the Green Umbrella
As Pauchi Sasaki and Claire Chase meandered toward stage in darkness from the back of Walt Disney Concert Hall, handheld lights dimly illuminated their dresses. The sparse flickering revealed patchwork sonic robes, constructed of speaker arrays and emanating curious noises from the far reaches of the hall. Their spatial wandering journeyed patiently towards a flute and violin resting on opposite flanks, corralling our attention towards the stage—a bare landscape minimally ornamented by luminous geometries. Spiraling grains of light dance on the dramatic, escaping curves of the hall’s organ, which only adds to the immense sense of space. Like the staging, the sounds of Sasaki’s “Gama XV” emphasize texture and space, drawing the audience into the quiet details of disembodied speech and sound fragments. In this suspended sound world, time was marked only by the choreography, most of all a brief intersection on stage before scattering outward toward the wings. A few (rare) moments might have betrayed the modes of audio processing, but overall the atmosphere was maintained to stunning effect, culminating in a final, pulsing gesture of sound and visuals.
Admittedly, the marriage of sound, performance, and visual art left me a little saddened to see the stage invaded with chairs and music stands for the following work. This feeling dissolved quickly, though, as high-octane bass lines drove the shifting, minimalist tapestry of Frederic Rzewski’s “Coming Together.” Continuing in the theme of evolving textures, Rzewski sets the text of a prisoner letter from the Attica prison rebellion; in a sort of cyclic re-synthesis, new passages of text and music intersect with each pass. Dudamel led the LA Phil New Music Group in an effective performance, behind narrator Davóne Tines who enraptured the audience with the weighty tone and intelligent nuances in his voice. The second section, “Attica” offered a gentle, somber antidote to the first movement’s relentless and fragmented energy.
After an intermission to digest the mysteries of sound garments and a long ride in a fast machine, we return to Ted Hearne’s “Law of Mosaics.” Musical excerpts are divorced from their original context before being reimagined, layered, distorted and stretched by Hearne. The results are complicated transformations that yield a completely new sound world. But while “Law of Mosaics” clearly draws inspiration from the standard repertoire, in it’s DNA lies a formal cleverness and self-awareness akin to Johannes Kreidler—an aspect highlighted by the projecting of descriptive section titles during the performance. Written for string ensemble, Dudamel once again led a clear and controlled performance here, though the gritty interjections of the final section were allowed to relish in all their wildness for a dramatic conclusion.
I found all three pieces to be unusually memorable, and was left with a sense that the concert as a whole balanced being intimate and casual while ambitiously modern. The choice to break traditional performance practice with the very first piece helped the rest of the evening feel exploratory and inviting. Perhaps more than anything, the programming allowed us to explore, to feel, but then reminded us not to take ourselves too seriously; that great art can come from unexpected places and processes, even from breaking apart the very canon and conventions the classical concert hall so reveres.
Monday Evening Concerts: Sciarrino and Mundry, Labyrinths and Enigmas
Monday Evening Concerts is the longest running contemporary music series in the world. The series began in 1939, and has programmed the world premieres of pieces by Stravinsky, Boulez, Sciarrino, and Kurtag, as well as U.S. premieres of just about every major 20th century composer you can think of. Their concert on April 16th was not a momentous occasion for premieres, but it was my first time hearing Isabel Mundry performed live, and first time hearing a Sciarrino performance in the United States. I was giddy with excitement. Spoiler alert: the concert lived up to expectations. I am absolutely amazed by the talent of the performers, and I wish to commend concert curator and conductor Jonathan Hepfer on a marvelously selected and executed program.
Aptly named “Labyrinths and Enigmas,” the concert offered intricate, intimate works by Isabel Mundry (b. 1963) and Salvatore Sciarrino (b. 1947). First, Mundry’s Dufay Bearbeitungen [translation: Dufay Machining or Machination] (2003/4) delivered familiar Dufay chansons (familiar if you’re into Renaissance motets, at least) in a 21st century way. The text and musical motifs themselves were largely unchanged from the original – the staging and light work made the performance new. In the first section, the instrumentalists sat around the reciter in the dark. The lights only rose when the clarinetist played his first note, swelling and brightening like a sunrise. When the music fully enters, it manifests in ways Dufay never could have dreamed: on bass marimba, on fluttering alto flute, on dulcet chimes. Mundry used quite a bit of low end to make the music feel substantial, but also delicate touches and staccato to give it an ethereal lightness. In each section, the instrumentalists moved farther away from the reciter. First they moved to the edges of the stage and almost into the audience. For the third section, they went up into the balcony surrounding the stage and audience, playing down like angels from on high. As the musicians moved farther from center stage, the music moved farther from the original Dufay sound. And yet it felt less like the musicians moving away and more like the audience zooming in on the reciter. Mundry applied dissonance, harmonics, and unfamiliar timbres and spectral techniques like plucking the strings inside the piano to gradually move Dufay to the present day. At the same time, the modern staging techniques moved the audience into Dufay’s world.
After the intermission to reset the stage and the audience’s ears, we were engulfed in Salvatore Sciarrino’s Perduto in una città d’acque (translation: Lost in a city of water) (1990/91). His program notes indicate that the piece is largely inspired by visiting the composer Luigi Nono in Venice near the end of Nono’s life. He notes that death resonates through our hearts, like pitch resonates in our ears; the meanings of both are illusive. In Perduto, I felt like I was underwater as a rush of quiet notes flooded my ears. Occasionally, the flood was broken by an Ablinger-esque burst of notes. I imagined I could hear words in the piano, but I just couldn’t understand the language. Pianist Richard Valitutto managed to splash the keys and swirl the notes just right so to keep the illusion of treading water, swimming through the melody and eddying through the harmony.
This was not my first encounter with Sciarrino, but it was my introduction to his operatic work. The audience was provided with the Italian libretto and its English translation. It was still difficult to keep pace with the pointillist singing style. Eventually I gave up keeping track and finally relaxed into the music. Aspern Suite (1979) is a condensed version of The Aspern Papers, an opera based on the eponymous novella by Henry James about Lord Byron’s affairs. The surprisingly sassy songs include snippets of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and gondolier songs reworked into Sciarrino’s mystical compositional language. Alice Teyssier, the amazing soprano who brought these songs alive, sang from a cozy armchair, and sometimes from offstage. Whether she was sitting, standing, or backstage, the orchestra changed their timbres to match her vocal timbre and environmental filtering. It seems like a trick that can only work in certain spaces, but the ensemble pulled it off very well.
On the whole, the concert showcased incredible talent and a variety of compositional styles and textures. Clocking in at a full two hours, it wasn’t for the faint of heart or the tepid contemporary music aficionado. For those seeking the cream of the crop in late 20th – early 21st century music programming and performance, you will not go wrong with Monday Evening Concerts.
Kaleidoscope’s pared-down program of young composers, old and new
The most recent installment of Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra’s fourth season was an intimate program of solo and chamber music by young composers, two living and one from the past. The evening placed new works by Nina Shekhar and Gregor A. Mayrhofer against Schubert’s Oktett in F Major in a paired-down instrumentation that showcased the considerable individual talents within the ensemble. A few extra-musical considerations might have made for a better performance as the degree of informality occasionally risked feeling haphazard, but a distinct musical identity seems to be developing within the ensemble which is promising for the collection of new works they champion.
Opening the evening was Shekhar’s Cajón, a cello solo that (as one might expect from the title) incorporates percussive and modal elements from Indian and Arabic traditions. Shekhar’s writing employed an unforced, effective pacing that wrapped energetic episodes around a tender passage of harmonics. Cellist Clement Chow was excellent: precise and virtuosic, he performed with a sense of improvisatory ownership that was sometimes exploratory, sometimes reflective. Texturally, some moments of Cajón compare easily to Berio’s Sequenza XIV, though Shekhar’s is less impulsive—a sort of “Luciano, drink this water and go to bed, you can tell me about it in the morning” version of his excitable textural superimpositions. If anything was lost musically, it was only due to the chatty gaggle filtering in from the adjacent theater; the performance itself was clear and engaging.
A significant part of Mayrhofer’s Lageder Oktett was also impacted by the ambient noise, its dramatic dynamic contrasts sheathed in fragmented gossip–a bit like listening to the opening of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony in a single earbud during happy hour at The Thirsty Crow. Still, even the most subtle passages were clearly packed with detail; bouncing bows and wispy tremolo twinkled behind stretching contrapuntal lines in the winds. Delicate solos in the horn highlighted a patient, roaming harmonic language that settled into moments of stunning convergence. Together, the alternation of texture and line unfolded in romantic, fusing undulations that highlighted the dramatic and timbral versatility of the octet.
By the time the Schubert was performed, the peripheral distractions had mostly died down. What the piece lacks in concision it makes up for in charm, which the performers maintained with steadfast focus. In my limited exposure with Kaleidoscope so far, this was their most convincing performance: detail and nuance were attended to, they allowed the piece to breath, and the soloistic passages were virtuosic and engaging. Most of all, a singular vision defined each passage and provided a tight, overarching coherence. A few moments of pause were rushed over, but the confidence to rest together requires enormous trust and vision within an ensemble. Based on some especially expressive passages and tempo alterations, such trust and shared vision is definitely emerging within Kaleidoscope. And given their commitment to building a repertoire of new works, that is an exciting and promising prospect for the LA new music scene.
Perishable Music Remains: Now Hear Ensemble at PMCA
The Now Hear Ensemble presented composer and bassist Federico Llach’s Perishable Music as a part of ArtNight Pasadena on Friday, March 9, performing for all four hours of the late night reverie. Billing itself as an installation rather than a performance, the quintet of clarinet, saxophone, viola, bass, and percussion took up residence in the Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) to explore issues of impermanence in music.
Six stations were distributed throughout the museum space, which the majority of the ensemble rotated through over the course of the evening. Performers shredded their pages as they were completed in a growing heap on the floor with no bin to catch the detritus: another sculpture in the making and a nod to the fleeting nature of music. A street-level installation projected images unto graffitied walls in the parking structure, rotating from footage of the performers playing to reciting text with changes spurred on by the spectator’s shredding of the score.
The music was well designed to stand alone and work in this alternate mode of presentation. Certain sections sounded interchangeable even with idiomatic lines: the ghost of a bowed vibraphone from Jordan Curcuruto, warm clarinet trills by Amanda Kritzberg, and Jonathan Morgan’s glissandi that skittered across the viola. The material was well planned despite no conductor and little communication amongst the players as dyads traded corners of the room, seemingly coordinated yet hard to discern the truth of the score. Far from being frustrating, the effect was quite liberating. Floating colors of sound and atonal melodies cleverly resisted standard harmonic progressions, allowing the music to sidestep resolutions and feel complete on its own as the hours passed.
Being in the main space for so long encouraged an amorphous fourth wall. Performers became art sculptures and docents as they interacted with the crowd. Museum-goers stood close to capture pictures and video. When the ensemble took staggered breaks their stands and instruments remained, creating silent works like found objects amongst the paintings. The nature of the work shone through, however, as the musicians steadily created, destroyed, and resumed their practice. Perishable Music lived up to its name but the experience was one to remember.
Jacaranda goes Extrasensory with Messiaen concert
This was my first time seeing a Jacaranda concert. I always look for an excuse to hear Messiaen and Debussy live, so I jumped at the chance to attend “Extrasensory.” Based on the title, I was expecting a focus on synaesthesia, and probably some multimedia works. After all, in the 21st century, one comes to expect some electroacoustic elements or re-tunings. I was a little surprised that the entire program used acoustic instruments in traditional systems with nary a quartertone or key-slap in sight. It was different to hear 20th-century music that does not rely on the bells and whistles of the modern era.
Only one piece on the program was younger than me, and the oldest isn’t even 20th century. The program notes provided a history lesson in a nutshell. Rather than giving each piece a paragraph or two, Patricia Scott provided an entire essay that tied together all the pieces on the program. She tied together Debussy’s compositions and audience reception to Messiaen’s early works and development, and how he, in turn, trained and inspired the next generation of composers, like Betsy Jolas.
Though the beginning of it all, Debussy was put at the end as the show-stopper. Debussy is often called the father of modern music, and his Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894) is touted the beginning of the twentieth century. As a flutist, I have a deep-seated adoration of Prélude and Debussy’s flute pieces in general, and it was a great joy to hear the 1920 arrangement for a smaller ensemble plus harmonium. To our 21st-century ears, Prélude can sound tame and a little sappy, but it was an absolute scandal to the 19th-century audience. Think “Victorian woman showing ankles” scandalous. The extended tonality and the unique timbres it built in addition to the erotic source material left listeners either appalled or ecstatic. And thus began the noble tradition of 20th-century music.
Besides the Debussy, the Messiaen was even better than I had hoped. I always enjoy Oiseaux Exotiques (1956), and it was just as good as any other performance or recording I have heard. I have to give Aron Kallay a gold star for his performance, as always. My absolute favorite piece of the night was Messiaen’s La Mort du Nombre (1928). It is an unequivocally stunning lament, and it felt as though the violinist (Jessica Guideri) were drawing her bow across my heartstrings rather than her violin strings.
Andre Jolivet’s Chant de Linos (1944) is a flute piece with accompaniment, in this case, harp and string trio, written for the famous Jean Pierre Rampal. Again, as a flutist, I was in love. Rachel Beetz is a master of Rampal’s French style, and a worthy successor to play this beautiful piece. The story Chant de Linos tells is that of Linus, the son of Apollo (who you all know is the god of music, poetry, art, medicine, the sun, light, and knowledge – so, just a few things). Linus himself is credited with inventing melody and rhythm, the two most fundamental elements of our Western music tradition. The story goes that Heracles killed Linus with his own harp after one too many tutoring sessions gone sour. The flute represents Linus, while the accompanying quartet performed a quasi-recitative part for plot points and mood changes. The trick in the piece is the continuously shifting tempo on top of wild rhythms and intricate melodies. The music flipped on a dime between calm repose and fleeing from an enraged god. It is an astoundingly trying piece, and a beautiful way to start the concert.
Next, Eric Tanguy’s Sonata for Two Violins (1999) was an intellectually stimulating piece. His spectral training shows in the way he treats sound versus music. The violins sawed away without a break, never allowing the audience’s ears to rest. Debussy once said music is the space between the notes, but there wasn’t much space to be had. The music was not so much the quasi-minimalist violin duet, but rather the difference tones that squeezed out between the violins like juice from a lemon.
The remaining piece did its part to fill out the narrative of Debussy’s influence on the twentieth century, but I could take it or leave it. Betsy Jolas’s Quatour III “Nine Etudes” (1973) is the product of several inspirations coming together in her mature period. It stems from her love of Josquin des Prez, Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp (1915), Messiaen and Milhaud, and finally Boulez’s improvisation and Cage’s aleatoricism. The result is a quilt of nine movements, each with its own identity based on techniques like harmonics and tremolo. The ninth movement, “Summing up,” combines the eight traits into one final etude. I like the concept behind the piece, and the quartet executed the notes well enough. But frankly, it didn’t do much for me. I think it was too many flavors in one pie, so to speak.
It’s great that Jacaranda is able to program less familiar 20th-century composers alongside the 20th-century greats. I love what Jacaranda is doing for the community in this way. I encourage anyone who wants to hear more acoustic 20th century works to check out the rest of Jacaranda’s series. The next concert, titled “Science,” features works by Xenakis, Messiaen, and Barraqué.
Isaura String Quartet in Concert
The Isaura String Quartet, based in Los Angeles but too rarely heard, appeared in Chinatown on Sunday, February 18, 2018, at the spacious Human Resources venue. The concert program consisted of five contemporary chamber pieces, including first performances of works by Scott Worthington and Ulrich Krieger.
Valencia (2012), by Caroline Shaw, was first. The audience – appropriately enough – snacked on orange slices thoughtfully provided at the door and this simple token worked on the imagination of the listener, even before the first note sounded. As the composer writes of the Valencia orange: “It is a thing of nature so simple, yet so complex and extraordinary.” The opening arpeggios are light and breezy and some very high squeaks in the violin suggest a gentle breeze blowing in the branches of an orchard. A twittering of birds is heard and a solid optimism prevails in the tutti passages. The feeling is warm and earthy, and taking the orchard metaphor further, it is as if we are watching the fruit ripening in the sunshine. The pizzicato phrases towards the finish even suggest oranges plucked from the tree. The Isaura Quartet played with their accustomed sensitivity, deftly extracting all of the elements present in this inventive work.
Next was Decay One (2015), by Amy Golden. A quiet, sustained chord was followed by a slow, downward glissando in the cello and this imparted an increasing sense of anxiety. The others joined in, sliding up and down the strings at different rates and increasing in volume, much like a slow motion siren. Each string instrument independently varied its pace, pitch direction and register, neatly simulating a group of sirens and adding to the sense of discomfort. Every Angelino immediately understands that many sirens coming from different directions amounts to a major problem. The sudden stop at the finish only inflated this sense of urgency – when the sirens stop you know that trouble is close at hand. The playing throughout was disciplined and cohesive even as the score lacked any melody, pulse or formal harmonic structure. Decay One artfully invokes one of the more instinctive anxieties of contemporary urban living.
The first performance of Scott Worthington’s The Landscape Listens (2016) followed. Long, quietly sustained tones opened this piece, building into luminous harmonies. No pulse or melody intruded on the delicately introspective sensibility. As the chords progressed smoothly upward, small changes in their construction and some unconventional pitch combinations continuously recast the sound into a beautifully calming ambiance. There is a timeless feel to this piece – it slowly unfolds at its own pace, yet never loses the listener’s interest. With everything depending on precise intonation, the poise and concentration of the Isaura Quartet never faulted. Towards the finish, the top pitches in the violin were very high and thin, but these were played squarely in tune and with a very fine touch. The Landscape Listens is a radiant piece that is a superb addition to Worthington’s already impressive body of work.
Darkness is Not Well Lit (2016), by Nicole Lizée was next and for this the Isaura String Quartet entered a large metal cage made from small aluminum tubes, as you might see in a tent frame. The players arranged themselves, each sitting behind a circular fan placed just in front of their music stands. The fans were powered up and rotated at a fairly low speed so that when a note was played the sound partly reflected back and partly passed through the fan. This effect added a cheerfully alien character to the music as it proceeded in a series of two or three note phrases and by sustained tones. The shorter notes tended to acquire an echo from reflection by the fan blades while longer notes could interact in various ways with their own standing waves. Some syncopated vocalizing was occasionally heard, broken up by the fans, and this added to the unorthodox feel. The low throbbing of the four fans was heard most effectively in the mechanical processing of the string sounds, and not as a separate component of the ensemble. For the finish of the piece the fans were turned off and the players froze in mid-motion as the sounds slowly faded away. Darkness is Not Well Lit is remarkable for the simplicity of this novel concept and the unexpectedly powerful way that the sound of the string quartet was transformed.
The first performance Up Tight II (1999/2010/2018), by Ulrich Krieger completed the concert program, a work some 19 years in the making. This latest edition for string quartet began with a great busy chord, roiling and bubbling outward into the audience. The players were all using two bows applied to open strings, creating an active texture of breathtaking proportions. It was like hearing a great primordial soup of sounds, very dense and often rough, yet surprisingly cohesive. After a few minutes the viola and violin players shouldered their instruments and everyone began playing with a single bow. This thinned the texture somewhat, but it continued flowing outward as a hot, swirling cloud of anxious sound. Following a grand pause, the quartet restarted, this time in a somewhat more organized fashion. A steady beat appeared and a stream of accelerating tutti notes suggested a steam locomotive gathering speed. The tempo increased again after a second grand pause, adding to the sense of powerful kinetic movement and high velocity. The playing was as precise as the composer’s intentions; the extended techniques, JI tuning, and lack of conventional structure were all masterfully navigated throughout.
Another grand pause, several seconds in length, signaled a turning point in the piece. A series of strong gestures gave way to softer tutti chords and slower tempos. High, thin tones in the violins – played perfectly in tune with the darker pitches in the lower strings – gave the feeling of a failing machine in need of lubrication. After a short burst of frenetic activity the piece came to a sudden halt, having finally broken down completely. Up Tight II is a remarkably acute vision of the forces of genesis and entropy as expressed in sound, expertly performed by very talented musicians.
Playing Like a Girl at REDCAT with Eve Beglarian
Saturday night at REDCAT treated a full house to Play Like A Girl, an evening of works by American composer Eve Beglarian. CalArts students and faculty explored music from her ever-evolving Book of Days. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “a grand and gradually manifesting work in progress,” this latest installation did not disappoint.
Examples of “playing like a girl” abound in stories of justice, strength, regret, and courage. Highlights included Vera Weber’s Fireside rendition of Ruth Crawford Seeger’s poetry with block chords that cycled through harmonies from Crawford’s fifth prelude. The choice to have the pianist recite the text instead of a vocalist lent the work an intimacy it would otherwise be without; as the pianist played with her back to the audience, illuminated yet still not fully visible, you felt the singularity of her efforts and hung on to every word, unsure when the next iteration would begin. The program’s opener I will not be sad in this world for flute and pre-recorded voice based on the Armenian song Ashkharumes Akh Chim Kashil left audience members spellbound by CalArts faculty member Rachel Rudich on the shakuhachi, whose melodies rose and fell with a mystery and grace only matched by the timelessness felt by Beglarian’s setting of the traditional text.
The titular pieces delivered on their taunt with energy and style. Performed by a quartet of pianists (Vera Weber, Yaryn Choi, Vicki Ray, and Sarah Voshall), the variations on Kaval Sviri from the Bulgarian Women’s Chorus can be played in any combination for either toy pianos, grand pianos, or both. This evening presented two variations with mixtures of grand piano, toy pianos, celeste, melodica, and harmonium. The propulsive lines floated and spun, glittering with the metallic bite of the celeste and the elongated vibrations of the harmonium.
The program closed with The bus driver didn’t change his mind from 2002. Beglarian’s Bang on a Can commission constructed a world taut and rhythmic led by pianist Vicki Ray, with references to Mahler’s second symphony and Berio’s Sinfonia. Laced with pre-recorded material constructed from pipa samples, the band intoned bluesy ululations from the clarinets by Phil O’Connor and Tal Katz on cello. Vocalist Meltem Ege was strategically reserved for the end, cutting through the texture with a “keep going” mantra inspired by poetry from the Bangladeshi troublemaker Taslima Nasrin and closing the event with the perfect message.
Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra with Schoenberg and Competition Premieres
Music stands and couches ornamented the floor of the spacious Los Angeles Theater Center on Saturday night. The breaking-down of a formal performance space allowed the audience to mill around, taking in the scattered spoiler of instruments warming up while gazing on the building’s marble boundaries. A bar nestled into the far corner helped encourage curious roaming behind a vague suggestion of stage, and the casually awkward pre-concert discussion conveyed a sense of heartfelt “we’re glad you’re here”-ness. Taken together, the whole atmosphere had a communal spirit—one that begins with Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra‘s self-branding as a conductor-less chamber orchestra and extends into their significant educational and artistic outreach.
Many things felt right. Among them, the location and late start time gave a feeling of entering a musical petting zoo buried on South Spring street. Both before and after the concert I noticed dozens of passer-byes stopping, poking their head in, trying to understand what was happening behind the shiny glass doors. The fact that inside was a musical gathering of palpable informality was made even cooler by the idea one might have walked right by it were their head buried in their phone. But our heads were up, for the moment, and our reward was a peek under the lid of this strange buried treasure in the neon-blue depths of downtown.
In fact, many of the details of the evening were so thoughtful: The audio mix in the first half, the layout of the ensemble and equipment, the programs (save a few typos) and promotional materials were all very good. The Sandbox Percussion Quartet were excellent, both in Viet Cuong’s Re(new)al with Kaleidoscope, and as solo quartet on Aart Strootman’s Requiem Apoidea. That first half, in particular, had a sense of musical impetus and vision stemming from the quartet—simultaneously mindful and theatrical. Besides their ecological commonalities, Strootman’s work was reflective and ritualistic where Cuong’s employed a linear, at times post-minimalist, language. In both cases, the music, performance, and environment were integrated to feel fresh, young, decidedly anti-stuffy.
The second half, for me, demonstrated one of the challenges inherent to any an ensemble sourcing artistic vision from the whole ensemble rather than a single musical director: incoherence. It was clear that there were talented musicians on stage who had spent time rehearsing together, but for both Alyssa Weinberg’s Title TBD and Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No.1, the music would have benefited from a unifying interpretation, a unifying set of ears to balance, a unifying set of emotions to feel and respond to the room. The vision and physicality conveyed by Sandbox Percussion on the first half led the ensemble into realizing musical ideas with a sense of coherence and inevitability. That sense was noticeably missing from these final two works—works which were, more than most, reliant on that very nuance. How to develop clarity and detail as a group is tricky for any ensemble, especially one that emphasizes such a democratic artistic process. The takeaway from my first experience with Kaleidoscope? It will not be my last: it was entertaining and unpretentious and fresh. Add to that their philosophy and ambitious programming for this season, I can say for sure I’ll be there rooting for them.
Three’s a Crowd-Pleaser: LA Phil premieres Zimmermann Ballet
The LA Phil and Susanna Mälkki perform Zimmermann’s cello concerto with Tero Saarinen’s choreography. Photo by Mikki Kunttu.
On Friday night, Walt Disney Concert Hall hosted the U.S. Premiere of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra: en forme de pas de trois. Under the baton of Susanna Mälkki, the Los Angeles Philharmonic skillfully navigated the work’s technical and conceptual challenges in a thoughtful marriage with Tero Saarinen’s choreography.
True to its title, Zimmermann’s concerto utilizes the parings and structure suggested by the pas de trois: five movements—starting with an introduction and concluding with a coda—present the three dancers in various combination. The significance of “three” was prevalent throughout, not only in the cleanly-partitioned triangular spaces of the dancers, but in the shape of the props, the lighting design, the staging, and the layout of the orchestra. Originally scheduled to be performed by Robert deMaine, the cello solo was divided among three cellists: Ben Hong, Eric Byers, and Timothy Loo, whose own choreography cycling through the solo stand furthered an sense of tripartite structure. With the added element of dance, the concerto took the form of a three-way conversation between solo, ensemble and body.
The music reflected the range of textures one might expect more from a ballet than from a mid-century modernist work. Mälkki offered an intelligent interpretation, painting an eerie modernist landscapes propelled by energetic outbursts and percussive cello episodes. The balance of soloists and orchestra maintained a certain intimacy which traded easily with the dancers; only in the penultimate march did the music’s intensity momentarily seize full attention. The later sections added to the weight of tutti passages with a sense of familiarity: where the early movements showcased Zimmermann’s sensitivity to pace and silence, the march and blues movements looked to outside musical influences for thematic material. Committed and virtuosic performances by each of the soloists pulled attention in still one more direction, instilling the work with a frenetic energy that, along with the staging and dance, kept the audience enraptured from beginning to end.
In addition to the lights and stage design, the premiere benefitted from its pairing with the other works on the program. Webern’s orchestration of Bach’s Ricercar spun out Bach’s fugal entanglements with a delicate, admiring glance over the shoulder, while Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony peeked into the future by combining romantic gesture with complex timbral swaths. Together, they framed the Zimmerman in a way that highlighted its internal stylistic contrasts and diversity as a key feature, making it feel exploratory while also cohesive. For the LA Phil, this concert was not only musically successful, but another example of how their attention to programming and staging makes each performance stand out.
Yarn/Wire bring thoughtful brutality to Monday Evening Concerts
I want to talk to you about mud.
Not the sole-adorning, crossing-the-grass mud. I’m talking about thick, jailbroken swamp; the kind of mud that takes a full hand of fleshy, calloused fingers to scrape from your cheek. That was the raw, slopping sound world of Øyvind Torvund’s “MudJam”—a rib-vibrating reminder that beneath the glyphs and tuplets and extramusical suggestion, music is just sound; simple, physical, shoved around by skin, wood, and metal. At the most recent installment of the Monday Evening Concert series, each work demonstrated a different way this tug-of-air might communicate meaning; some works focused inward at the sonic material itself while others gazed outward towards their reflection in the world. The program impressed on me how sound, like dirt and water, can be molded to convey simplicity of form while its inner makeup remains impenetrably intricate—sound soil patted into a castle whose form can be either admired or subjected to the impending tide. What the hell am I talking about? I have no idea. But I left Monday’s program, New Voices IV: Untitled School, with a renewed sense of wonder at the aural sludge we work with as composers and musicians.
This isn’t to imply that the evening’s entertainment was messy or monochromatic or tracked itself halfway across my apartment before I thought better of it and took off my boots. In fact, the program was exquisitely designed and brilliantly performed—ambitious and hip and carefully paced. New York-based piano and percussion quartet, Yarn/Wire, were not just instrumentally virtuosic, but musically virtuosic. Consisting of Laura Barger and Ning Yi on pianos with Ian Antonio and Russell Greenberg on percussion, Yarn/Wire’s dozen years together has yielded a savviness for new music which bathed each work with a sense of proud ownership. In Thomas Meadowcroft’s Walkman Antiquarian, their playful ensemble work intertwined with nostalgic electronics in child-like exploration, punctuated by moments of breathtaking, reflective stillness. As Paul Griffith puts in his program notes, “Memory is coming to us from several angles and at different removes, in a form that proceeds with the necessity of a ritual.” This reminiscent quality is partially an artifact of the form, but is also illuminated by Meadowcroft’s orchestration. Resonances are disembodied and passed around the ensemble with the saccharine distortions of memory: Vinyl crackles become beads dancing on a speaker cone, melodic episodes reverberate eerily from the harp of the piano. Textures dissolve with a casual inevitability in the way that memories softly, if persistently, return to reality.
The more inward-focused works were Catherine Lamb’s Curvo Totalitas and Johannes Kreidler’s Scanner Studies. Where Meadowcroft’s work attended to sound’s referential (and so, emotional) potential, Lamb’s contribution was one of austere magnification of sound itself. Waves of metallic rumbling respirate slowly, almost imperceptibly, gradually unveiling a world of spectral details and transformations. Yarn/Wire’s performance was patient and deliberate, elegantly unfolding subtle shifts of timbre to stunning, pulsating, effect. Scanner Studies (numbers 1 and 2 were performed) were equally concise in concept: images are sonified in the manner of a simple grahic score before parameters are expanded to the point of absurdity. But beneath the amusing exercises is Kreidler’s always keen eye for musical potential in the mundanely ordinary, and a profound awareness of dramatic, rhetorical and comedic form.
The title work of the program, Torvund’s Untitled School, was a massive, seven-movement audio-visual exploration of scales, chords and textures that closed the evvening. Clever and driving, its later movements traverse imitations of various styles and textures before landing in the chirping soundscape of “Jungles.” This dramatic shift begged the question of how (or where) the work might progress—serene landscapes quivering with life amid dimming lights might well have concluded the piece. But then came the mud.
The final two movements, “MudJam” and “Campfire Tunes,” were set apart in several ways. There were no accompanying images. The stage lights were dimmed. There was no formal separation starting or ending either movement. All of this amplified a sense of arrival: Now, we listen rather than watch. Returning to sound(s) from the world rather than the brain, Yarn/Wire summoned a hell-raised, raucous rumbling, only loosening its grip for the flickering, smokey tranquility of “Campfire Songs.”
If anything fell short in the program’s careful design, it was the occasional awkward trappings of traditional concert format: The space, balance and performers were all on-point, but some pieces needed time for digestion afterwards. Jonathan Hepfer exuded calm, considerate intelligence and I could imagine him and/or members of the ensemble saying a few words about each piece during stage changes. Certainly program notes can provide helpful context, but with new music the context is unclear at best, and usually still in-development—brief discussions might serve (or supplement) this sort of series well. Still, Paul Griffiths’ program notes were beautiful (“scanning geometries in a thundercloud?” Be still my chart…), and the program held my interest throughout. Needless to say, this will be the first of many Monday Evening Concerts for me; I’ve already marked the remainder of this season’s offerings in my calendar.