The last two chamber music recitals of the semester at the San
Francisco Conservatory of Music took place yesterday at 4 PM and 8 PM.
Both were in the String and Piano Chamber Music division, although the
piano appeared only once. The 4 PM concert consisted entirely of the
music of Ludwig van Beethoven, traversing his early, middle, and late
periods in three works. The 8 PM concert moved forward in time to the
turbulent transition from the nineteenth century to the twentieth with
two compositions by Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg, respectively.
Yesterday's review concluded with the somewhat wistful observation that "We'll always have Beethoven;" but the real issue is whether we shall always have performers that will keep the experiences of listening
to Beethoven rich and alive. On the basis of yesterday afternoon's
recital, it would be fair to say that the San Francisco Conservatory is
one of the institutions that will assure us of having at least one more
generation of such performers. The program was cleverly structured as a
précis of the development of Beethoven's "chamber music voice,"
beginning with the rather non-standard Opus 25 serenade in D major for
flute, violin, and viola and proceeding through two string quartets, the
first in the "Razumovsky" set, Opus 59, Number 1 in F major, and Opus
132 in A minor (which, in the wake of a rather extraordinary performance
in New York earlier this week, may now deserve to be called "the Four Quartets quartet," in recognition of its impact on T. S. Eliot).
Recently,
Conservatory students have been encouraged to preface performances with
some remarks about the music. Because the recital program is almost
always a single sheet of paper providing nothing more than the
compositions and the performers, this provides an alternative to a
program book and prepares students for the sometimes challenging task of
accounting verbally for what they are doing. The introduction to Opus
25 emphasized the uniqueness of the flute-violin-viola combination but
mistakenly situated the work's historical context between the first two
symphonies. While the music was published in 1802, Thayer puts its
composition in either 1795 or 1796, which would mean not too long after
the Opus 2 piano sonatas. This was a time when Beethoven acknowledged
the inventive wit of his teacher, Joseph Haydn, usually by trying to do Haydn one better.
The serenade is thus a product of Beethoven at his most genial; and,
while the remarks made no mention of his wit, the performance certainly
demonstrated awareness of the sense of play with which Beethoven
approached this rather traditional (if not outmoded) structural form.
By
the time we get to the Opus 59 quartets, we are well into the Beethoven
of energetic and emphatic expressiveness. (He had only recently
completed his third "Eroica" symphony, Opus 55.) This work was
presented without remarks but with a raw and gruff energy that well
illustrated Beethoven's sometimes tense relationship with polite
society. This made for a valuable perspective in the context of the
many performances these quartets receive that are far more polished and
polite. Opus 132, on the other hand, is a highly introspective work.
Personally, I do not find Eliot's use of the noun "gaiety" particularly
apposite; but his phrase about "the fruits of reconciliation and relief
after immense suffering" are most perceptive, particularly in light of
the central role of the extended middle movement, the Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart.
One might argue that this is a work that demands far more maturity than
one can expect from students; but, while that maturity may have been
missing in the prefacing remarks, the students brought far more than
sufficient music understanding to the performance itself.
The evening recital began with Debussy's only string quartet in G minor. This work is frequently compared or coupled with Maurice Ravel's F major quartet;
but the two are markedly different, particularly on rhetorical
grounds. Ravel greets you with an accessible affability, which better
disposes your receptivity to the subtleties that shimmer beneath the
surface. Debussy begins with sharper edges; and, while his Andantino
movement is "doucement expressif," the tone of the entire work is
entirely assertive. This is not to say that his rhetorical stance is
hostile, but it is not afraid to show little tolerance for traditional
conventions. To a great extent the Conservatory students caught this
rhetorical spirit; and, while it was not as rough-and-ready as the
approach taken by the "Razumovsky" students, it certainly did justice to
Debussy's spirit.
The major evening event, however, was Schoenberg's Opus 21, Pierrot Lunaire,
which was also the only occasion for a piano. In this case spoken
remarks were replaced by a silent PowerPoint Slide Show of background
text supplemented by appropriate images. The PowerPoint projection then
remained to provide English translations of the German texts (which, in
turn, had been translated from Albert Giraud's French poems). This
work was conceived as a cabaret-style performance with the texts
delivered in the Sprechstimme
style by a soprano accompanied by five instrumentalists, the pianist, a
string player alternating on violin and viola, a cellist, and two wind
players, one for flute and piccolo and the other for clarinet and bass
clarinet. Schoenberg described the work as "three times seven poems,"
meaning that it has three major sections, each of which presents seven
poems. The first may be loosely described as a celebration of moonlight
that descends from the manic to the depressive. The second takes place
in the darkness of night as a venue for crime and punishment. The
final section is an awakening from the nightmare of its predecessor with
the moon serving as a reminder of a sense of loss.
This is
clearly not your usual cabaret entertainment. Indeed, it is more a
grotesque reflection on such entertainment; and the capturing of that
grotesque was probably the most salient element of the student
performance. The text was delivered with all of the wild emotional
swings demanded by the score, all of which were firmly reinforced by the
rich diversity of Schoenberg's instrument technique. (No two movements
use the same combination of instruments.) Taken as a whole, the
composition is a major and ambitious journey; but the students were not
daunted by that journey. Those of us in the audience were thus the
benefactors, receiving the gift of an opportunity to hone our Schoenberg
listening skills.
Readers will note that none of the students
participating in these recitals were referred to by name. These are
free events that are not announced on the printed Conservatory
Calendar. Those of us who sit in the audience do so as guests of the
Conservatory, invited to observe the work-in-progress that is the daily
activity of those students. These performances have clearly progressed
beyond the early rehearsal stage; but they are not necessarily offered
as finished products or "professional" ones. Thus, the Conservatory is a
"safe place" in which the exploratory processes of discovering a
performance may be conducted. It would be unfair to any student to call
out any false moves and attach them to specific names, and it seems
just as appropriate to refrain from calling out those whose moves are
more positive. I can only hope that those who find their way to
particularly effective performance will be able to bring their results
to a more public venue.
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