CONTEMPORARY MUSIC: A FRENCH CONNECTION
By Paul Hertelendy
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
and dance
Week of April 1-8, 2009
Vol. 11, No. 85
It was a French
connection
predominating at the concert of the respected grand-daddy of the Bay
Area’s new-music
groups, the S.F. Contemporary Music Players, with a vintage silent film
and
musical tributes to composers Gérard Grisey (1946-98) and
Olivier Messiaen
(1908-92), both of them notable for work in their contrasting
short-and-long
careers. The concert mined the element of spectral music (visceral
sonic
brilliance that fascinates the ear) not just in these two, but also in
the
followers Alessandro Solbiati and Tristan Murail, respectively.
It’s a time of
multiple change
and transition. The March 30 concert was the finale for the
group's 39th year. It was given
at the
Yerba Buena Gardens Forum, the 325-seat SFCMP home which will shift
much of next season
to the roomier Herbst Theatre in the Civic Center.
And it marked the
end of the 18-year tenure of Adam Frey, one of the most diplomatic (to
say
nothing of patient) executive directors in the Bay Area performing
arts, now
moving on to other challenges.
Two solo piano
pieces by
Murail were the jewel of the evening, before a full house of 325
listeners. The
overt Messiaen tribute “Bells of Farewell and a Smile" as well as “The
Mandrake” both dwelt high in the treble clef with bell-like sounds and
rivulets, with ethereal, contemplative images in refreshing contrast to
the disciplined,
goal-driven performances in the rest of the program. Much of this
subtle fine-spun-web
éclat was the result of auras
conjured up by veteran pianist Julie Steinberg, one of the most
sensitive souls
around in this esoteric new-music world.
None of this
music spanning
1992-2006 is easy, which may account for the grit-your-teeth
determination of
the SFCMP ensembles elsewhere. The most unusual was the “Sextet for
Gérard” by
Solbiati, where some piano strings are muted, and all three string
instruments
are retuned—e.g., for the cello, to B flat, F, E and B instead of
C-G-D-A. The
piece was notably for the strings, soft-scudding and muted in an
ultra-Debussyan haze until breaking out in exuberant percussive
fashion, all
with a spectral intent. Solbiati took bows after his U.S.
premiere.
The most
conventional was
Philippe Hurel’s “Loops IV” for solo marimba, with rainbow figures
ranging up
and down the keyboard and a shifting minimalism.
The crowd was
surely
attracted to the vintage surreal silent film by Jean Vigo, “À
propos de Nice”
(1930), satirizing the high-society figures drawn to the beachside
Corso
(promenade) in Nice, France, wearing their finest, sunning themselves
despite
the elegant hats. François Paris created a score for octet by
the same name,
which paled beside the rough-hewn vigor of the film made on the run
with
hand-held cameras. Music Director David Milnes conducted accurately,
but drew
little eloquence from the live-music group.
S.F. Contemporary Music
Players, San Francisco. Next concert: Oct. 4. For info: (415)
278-9566 or go online.
©Paul Hertelendy 2009
#
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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