CONTEMPLATIVE MODERN MUSIC, AND THE
PHANTOM OF THE OTHER MINDS
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
Week of Dec. 4-11, 2005
Vol. 8, No. 46
The death of classical music? It happened quite a while ago, contends
the prominent Russian symphony conductor and pianist Mikhail Pletnev.
The last of the last, he says, came 34
years ago with the final symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich, No. 15. He
may be exhibiting a Russian bias while shooting himself in the foot, as
leading symphonies with a classical repertoire is now his bread and
butter, and he has been highly successful at it.
Regrettably, he is selling short some
notable composers of our times, including Adams, Carter, Golijov, Chen
Yi, Paert, Bolcom, Corigliano, Saariaho and a few others.
But his point is intriguing, and not
without evidence. Some of our orchestras have died off, some classical
radio stations have defected, and premieres don't get the attention
they deserve with either the public or the media.
To give just one example, each of the major orchestras in
Sacramento, San Jose, Oakland and San Diego have gone under in a
pile of debts and empty seats at least once over the past 20 years.
The inventive orchestras scale back
their modern programming. The San Francisco Symphony, which featured
one bracing modern work on every subscription program last year, has
backtracked perceptibly this season.
And San Francisco's own Other Minds
Festival of innovative music, formerly held over several days in venues
of 750-1,000 capacity, this month is cut back to a single day (Dec. 3)
in a small church with 111-seat capacity, presumably because of
shrunken sponsors' funding. And instead of multiple ensembles, it
consists mostly of a single extraordinarily resourceful solo pianist,
Sarah Cahill.
Now in its 14th season, Other Minds is
a local festival blooming from Director Charles Amirkhanian's
imagination and enterprise. It avoids academic music in favor of
the theatrical, the innovative, the experimental, the accessible.
And credit him for panache, successfully passing off this mini-event
(total attendance: circa 350) as a festival.
This particular one had
ambiance up to the elbows---over 50 candles lighting the scene in a
Swedenborgiam church, consistent with the founder's mystical
inclinations. Between selections, the audience spoke in reverent
whispers, fearful of breaking the spell. The aura was somewhere between
celestial and funereal, as if the ghost of Charles Ives, the
grand-daddy of all these avant-gardists, might waft smokily over the
proceedings.
The upshot was that if
classical music is dying, there are truly amazing, creative outpourings
during the death throes when the emphasis is on quality rather than
quantity. Given the impetus of the Cahills and Amirkhanians of this
world, a Lazarus-like revival of the medium is not at all impossible.
Cahill's
feat in this "New Music Seance"---the first such triple-concert
marathon in any one's
memory---was outstanding. She and two colleagues
presented three
concerts featuring over 30 works
from a half-dozen countries by 23 composers, at least three
of whom
were in attendance. Despite stiff ticket prices---$20-$50---each of the
three concerts was jammed, with standees to boot.
Cahill, a striking East Bay redhead who
attracts visual as well
as auditory interest in her frequent recitals, is a sparkplug who leads
the league in projecting modern music. She also
annotates an
excellent program of recordings and composer interviews in
her
Sunday-night radio stints (KALW, 91.7 FM).
The first and third concerts were
sprinkled with familiar names---Ives, Adams, Ornstein, Cage, Cowell,
Harrison, Dane Rudhyar (yes, the late philosopher, the very same), so I
attended the second, which proved rewarding. The most arresting by far
to these ears was the complex, virtuosic Etude No. 1 by the
Italian Andrea Morricone. Its delectable cross-currents, at times
rhythmically disconnected, were a revelation. Morricone used minimalism
in a resourceful way, using repetitive phrases and glissando-like
rivulets of notes in scales, on the verge of improvisation. Written in
2002, this grand opus received its US premiere.
Another piece was so
virtuosic, no human can play it, so the Yamaha Disklavier---a
modern-day player piano, with a computer memory---did the honors in
Kyle Gann's "Nude Rolling Down an Escalator." Gann truly sowed a wild
oat here, with notes flying by at supersonic speed, sometimes eight or
more notes struck at once and trilling to alternate chords, all in a
thoroughly tonal way. It was a piano run amok, doing a furious
virtuoso turn in a superhuman manner. I found it exhilarating,
disappointing only when the Disklavier failed to stand and take a bow.
A grand piano playing, and keys
depressing? Kudos to The Invisible Man! This was truly the finest
seance phantom of all!
The oldie on this program was a
pair of preludes by Berkeley's Ruth Crawford Seeger from the 1920s,
effective enough atmospheric pieces suffused with the whiff of
Scriabin. I'd like to hear more of her work.
Among the most contemplative
selections was "Simone's Lullaby," where once again Terry Riley found
felicity in
simplicity.
Other pieces were
trivial, interspersed with fun and games.
Other Minds Festival, an annual
event, held Dec. 3 at
the Swedenborgian Church, 2107 Lyon St., San Francisco. For
info: (415) 934-8134, or go on-line.
©Paul Hertelendy 2005
#
Paul Hertelendy has been
covering
the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with
relish
-- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never
weakly)
will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with
forays
into recordings by local artists, books (by authors of the region) and
theater as well.
#
Return to main menu.