The end-of-term String and Piano Chamber Music series of concerts at
the San Francisco Conservatory of Music would be a "best buy"
opportunity for hearing chamber music in this city; but these concerts
are all the better for being free. This afternoon's 4 PM concert was a
perfect case in point. While the first work on the program had to be
dropped, the remaining two offered an excellent example of the perfect
combination of diversity and quality performance that the Conservatory
presents so reliably.
The first half of the program consisted of the cycle of Santa Fe Songs,
which Ned Rorem composed in the summer of 1980 when he was
composer-in-residence at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
Originally composed for baritone, string trio, and piano, the work was
performed this afternoon by a soprano. The songs are settings of poems
by Witter Bynner, the earliest published in 1916 and two apparently
published for the first time after his death in 1968. To call this set
"A New Yorker in Santa Fe Two Times Over" might be a bit of a stretch;
but, to a great extent, both poet and composer are celebrating the
exoticism of Santa Fe from a somewhat more urbane point of view. Bynner
was born in Brooklyn, but his travels took him to both Japan and
China. The Jade Mountain is a collection from the Chinese poems of Kiang Kang-hu; and The Way of Life According to Laotzu is presumably a translation of the Tao Teh Ching.
So by the time Bynner settled in Santa Fe (and fell in with the likes
of D. H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen), he had seen quite a bit of
the world. Nevertheless, Santa Fe was probably about as exotic to
Bynner as it was to Lawrence.
Rorem, on the other hand, was born in Indiana; but his music education included Julliard. His
world travels took him primarily to Morocco and Paris; but, by the
time he received his invitation to Santa Fe, he was well settled into
New York life. My guess is that this invitation provided him with his
first exposure to Santa Fe.
Having spent a fair amount of time in
Santa Fe in several different seasons, I could appreciate the ways in
which both poet and composer succumbed to its exotic lure without
necessarily "getting it." Similarly, I am not sure to what extent the
Conservatory students really latched onto the spirit of the place that
had inspired Bynner's texts and then hooked Rorem into setting them. On
a more positive side, I do not think that the performance of these
songs suffered from substituting a soprano for a baritone; but, having
recently heard the impeccable diction of Stephanie Blythe,
I found myself wondering if Rorem's approach to these texts tended to
force the listener's eyes into a printed copy of the words.
The
intermission was followed by a performance of Robert Schumann's Opus 47
piano quartet in E-flat major. This work appears frequently at
Conservatory recitals, but Schumann put so much into it that it always
deserves another listening. The pianist offered a very informative
introduction, comparing it to the Opus 44 piano quintet, thus winning my
approval, since I have considered that comparison
myself! This was definitely chamber music as it should be heard, with
all four voices rich and well-balanced, providing the perfect setting
for all the intricacies that made Schumann's inventions so worthy (even
if some would say notorious).
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