If, as I tried to argue
on my Rehearsal Studio blog on Friday, much of the power of music has
to do with the significance of the sonorous moment, then this
afternoon's San Francisco Symphony Chamber Music Series concert at
Davies Symphony Hall had as great an abundance of sonorities as had been
encountered in the first concert in the Dawn to Twilight Schubert/Berg Festival
this past Wednesday. Covering a period from the mature Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart of 1786 to the emerging Christopher Rouse of 1978, those
sonorities were dominated by strings and percussion, the only exception
being the presence of the clarinet in Mozart's K. 498 trio. However,
while Béla Bartók had been a master of string-percussion interactions
(adding a celesta into the mix), in this recital the percussionists were
segregated into two all-percussion works by Rouse; and the strings
ruled over the rest of the program.
The sonorities were by far
at their most interesting in Camille Saint-Saëns' A major fantasy for
violin (performed by Diane Nicholeris) and harp (Douglas Rioth). The
interplay of these two radically different string instruments is so
effective that it is a pity this work is not heard more often,
particularly when a major episode of the composition falls back on
highly familiar material. In the program book James Keller identified
that material as a paraphrase of Claudio Monteverdi's madrigal "Lamento
della Ninfa;" but this overlooks the fact that for this madrigal
Monteverdi had drawn upon the so-called Andalusian cadence,
which is in all likelihood the most popular riff in Flamenco music.
There is thus a strong ethnic element to this episode that is explored
by both solo instruments, giving the work a decidedly popular flavor.
Ethnic
roots also provided foundations for the two Rouse percussion
compositions. "Ogoun Badagris" was inspired by Haitian drumming, while
"Ku-Ka-Ilimoku" claims Hawaiian inspiration. Where large numbers of
percussion instruments are involved (as they were for both of these
compositions), effective performance depends on strategic layout of the
many resources and a strong sense of choreography. Since the layout had
to be changed between the two works, the wait time was filled with an
impromptu tour of the instruments, helping the audience to discern which
sounds came from where. Percussion music depends, for the most part,
on a journey through different rhythms and the differing sonorities of
the instruments. Rouse's two compositions were relatively brief and
took journeys appropriate to their durations. By the time they were
composed, the all-percussion experiments of Edgard Varèse and John Cage
(who, by some accounts, was inspired by hearing Varèse's "Ionisation"
one evening at the Hollywood Bowl) had achieved a level of acceptability
in the general repertoire; so neither of Rouse's works had the shock
value of their forebears. Rather, they constituted yet another take on
the adoption of folk material in a concert setting. That the material
had nothing to do with Rouse's own ethnicity was secondary; the
exploration was still a fascinating one.
Mozart's K. 498 is
interesting for his decision to accompany the clarinet (Carey Bell) with
piano (Marc Shapiro) and viola (Katie Kadarauch), rather than cello.
Nevertheless, this role was not a new one for Kadarauch, since she had
been required to serve "continuo duty" in a recent Symphony performance
of Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons concertos.
She could thus apply the same laws of logic and rhetoric to
accompanying Bell as she had to accompanying the solo work of violinist
Alexander Barantschik; and she did this very well while, at the same
time, taking pleasure in performing a part that Mozart himself had
performed when the work was first presented.
Ironically, the
sonorities were at their most conventional in the first string quartet
(Opus 50 in B minor) by Sergei Prokofiev. Indeed, the most striking
thing about this work was not in its sonorities but in the composer's
decision to conclude it with an Andante movement. Keller's program
notes observed that Prokofiev had "immersed himself in the scores of
Beethoven's string quartets;" but the results of that immersion surface
primarily in formal structural plans, such as the way in which the
Andante molto introduction to a Vivace in the second movement reflects
the final movement of Beethoven's Opus 135 quartet. This appeal to
Beethoven for such "high-level decisions" surfaced throughout
Prokofiev's life. When the London Symphony Orchestra visited in March,
we heard it in both his second symphony (whose "plan" follows that of
Beethoven's Opus 111 piano sonata) and his seventh symphony (which
shares both opus number and key with Beethoven's Opus 131 quartet).
Thus, as was the case with the compositions of Saint-Saëns and Rouse,
Prokofiev's quartet had its roots in a somewhat unlikely place; but it
also grew from those roots in a direction decided of Prokofiev's own
invention.
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