AN ANOREXIA OF
INVENTION AT THE SYMPHONY
With a Conductor Living on the
Fringe
By D. Rane Danubian
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of April 9-16, 2010
Vol. 12, No. 86
Conductor Edwin Outwater is a
self-styled guru of musical unorthodoxy. The question:
is he on the fringe, or over the edge?
Back on the S.F. Symphony podium,
he served up one of the most threadbare programs in memory, greeted by
rafts of
empty seats at Davies Hall April 7. He provided two ballet
entertainments best
suited for pops concerts, plus an experimental modernism along
with songs from a very boring new musical “Whisper
House.” Clearly Outwater had opted
for surprise over content and substance, one of the surprises being the
boos
ringing out behind me after the “Whisper House” songs, which were
rendered on
stage by the song-writer himself, Duncan Sheik.
Sheik was a
supremely dull choice
to serve as the half-hour-long centerpiece of the program; he subbed
for the
originally programmed world premiere by composer-vocalist Rufus
Wainwright, who
had his concurrent London
opera opening to tend to. The problem lies in large part because of the
malaise
of the American (or Broadway) musical; apart from whiffs of nostalgia,
a “Sweeney
Todd,” or European imports, the modernBroadway musical as genre has
gone nowhere in producing
lasting impact over the past generation.
Sheik’s endless parade of contrived rhymes
and
rainbow-shaped musical phrases covering about an octave was a paragon
of
repetitiousness. He’s an appealing singer with his cherubic smile,
shoulder-length hair and baritone voice, but a limited one. His anorexia of inventiveness was built around
narrative poetry of ghosts inhabiting a lighthouse. He was assisted by
guitarist Gerry Leonard and backup song stylist Holly Brook, neither
one credited on the program.
There followed
an experimental
piece by the late Canadian Claude Vivier called “Zipangu” for a small
antiphonal
string ensemble. Its lack of structure was compared by Outwater to a
Jackson Pollock painting. A variety of effects for violins involving
furious bowing, tremolo, glissandi and deliberate bow scrapes, often
confined
to repetitions of two notes, predominate, with Vivier seeking out
unusual
sonorities. There are elements of Japanese music, though Vivier himself
was
Canadian. If there was an underlying structure, it has not yet bubbled
to the surface.
The rest of
the odd evening was
devoted to two French ballet suites from Gounod’s “Faust” and Poulenc’s
“Les
Biches.” These lighter confections in another era would have been saved
for
pops-concert programming, in the idiom of Boston or Cincinnati. But
since pops concerts
have long since been discontinued here, Outwater retrieved these from the dust-caked musical attic to serve as
his bookends,
for better or worse.
THE
END---Vivier joined the list of
composers who died a violent early death when he was stabbed by a man
just short of
his 35th birthday in 1983. That unfortunate list also
includes Enrique Granados (1916
ship-sinking), George
Butterworth (also in 1916, while serving the military), Jean-Marie
Leclair (stabbed, most likely by his wife), and
Anton
Webern (shot by occupation troops after World War Two).
These
San Francisco Symphony concerts continue through April 10 at 8
p.m. For
info: (415) 864-6000, or go online.
Broadcasts on KDFC-FM (102.1) at 8 p.m. on the second Tuesday following.
©D. Rane Danubian 2010
#
D. Rane Danubian 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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