<>                MODERN MUSIC JUMPING INTO SAN FRANCISCO BAY
                            And Earplay's Other Californian Delights  
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of March 23-30, 2010
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 81
            The compact ensemble and concert series known as Earplay is 25 years old this season, squeezing all its modernisms into just three programs, fortified by commissions and premieres.
            The eminent Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola once told me, “Music is not mathematics,” refuting the mid-20th-century trend of producing and playing scores as if done by machines. Even one of the most de rigeur composers, Arnold Schoenberg, took a turn from his ultra-precise, austere, and dissonant 12-tone creations subsequent to his severe heart attack at age 72, right after the end of World War Two. He would have been the last one to acknowledge that he had mellowed, either musically or psychologically. But mellow he did, as is evident in his String Trio, Op. 45, completed just after the attack. His 12-tone had softened---you no longer encountered grating near-octaves of C-vs.-C-sharp of the earlier music. This one is downright lyrical and expressive, along the lines of Alban Berg’s 12-tone work, as Earplay’s trio brought out very convincingly at the March 22 concert in Herbst Theatre.
            I found it immensely moving. There are many shifts of gears (i.e., moods). There are rather sweet muted sections, swooping slides, and eerie harmonics that tantalize the ear. This meticulously organized piece has passion, intensity, affection---what more can you ask for? Any one accustomed to denouncing all 12-tone music needs to hear this one, especially as interpreted by Terrie Beaune, Ellen Ruth Rose and Thalia Moore.
            Elsewhere, pianist Karen Rosenak brought personal commitment to solo pieces in an eloquent way. There was a very good piece with a off-putting title, “The Art of Touching the Keyboard,” by Judith Weir (a prolific Scottish opera composer, mostly known over here for her “A Night at the Chinese Opera” at Santa Fe Opera). This was a lively consonant run, rolling up and down the keyboard in merry fashion and punctuated by big chords here and there. It is a music in stops and starts, quite original and highly animated.
            The most dazzling work by far featured an electronic dinosaur, the theremin, invented by the Russian Leon Theremin in 1919---unique, in that you need not touch the instrument in playing it. Its electronics respond to proximity of the two hands---one, to control pitch and vibrato, the other to control volume. Making this a unique experience was theremin virtuoso Carolina Eyck from Berlin, the finest such performer you will likely ever run into. Eyck converts the theremin’s vague ooh-aahs too often heard in bad science-fiction movies into a medium for precise tones, sounding like an accomplished lyric soprano doing vocalise on pitch. Eyck was on loan from her San Francisco Ballet gig, where she is currently performing underwater, so to speak, in “The Little Mermaid.”
            Eyck was the lead in Jan Bilk’s “Stigma integrum,” backed by a string quintet that sounded too much like Brahms or Richard Strauss. But the 10-minute work was not just electronic---it was magnetic in impact.
            Then, too, a world premiere, apparently inspired by San Francisco Bay. How Lori Dobbins’ “Through the Golden Gate” relates to the latter, I haven’t the foggiest idea (no pun intended). It’s a brief exercise in understatement, with tremolo effects, mystical soft meanderings, and bass notes plucked on the piano strings. The sextet is led by the flute (Tod Brody), sometimes with only the sound of wind---which I can indeed relate to the reality of S.F. Bay! But clearly Dobbins wanted a very different approach to the sea than predecessors like Debussy, Wagner and Britten, who had covered the subject long ago very eloquently, thank you. 
            The program also included a rhythmic exercise for mixed trio by Jonathan Harvey, “The Riot,” ending with a measure of humor.
            All these works, apart from the Schoenberg, stem from the period 1983-2009.
            Earplay, a concert series and a variable ensemble for modern music. Final concert: May 24, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco. For info: (415) 58/5-9776, or go online. 
        ©Paul Hertelendy 2010

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           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 books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
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