Earplay: Answering the Unanswered

Yesterday evening saw the beginning of Earplay’s 41st season, entitled Answering The Unanswered Question. The season was inspired by Charles Ives’ enigmatic orchestral composition, “The Unanswered Question” with the intention that each of the three programs of the season would also feature a new composition serving as an “answer.” Last night’s “response” was provided by Emma Logan, whose “What Lies at Dream’s End” was performed immediately after Bruce Bennetts’s arrangement of “The Unanswered Question” scored for flute (Tod Brody), clarinet (Peter Josheff), violin (Terrie Baune), viola (Ellen Ruth Rose), cello (Thalia Moore), and piano (Keisuke Nakagoshi).

In Ives’ original score, the “question” was posed by a solo instrument. Ives’ preference was a trumpet using a mute “unless playing in a very large room, or with a larger string orchestra.” The “response” was provided by a woodwind quartet, preferably four flutes but with possible substitutions of oboe and clarinet. Last night the exchange was performed by Josheff posing the question and Nakagoshi taking on attempts to answer.

My acquaintance with Ives’ music goes back to high school days. Unless I am mistaken, Eugene Ormandy introduced his second symphony to the Philadelphia Orchestra with a broad variety of responses from the audience. My work at the campus radio station of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave me the opportunity to get to know many of that composer’s works. I discovered that most of my professors (including Elliott Carter during a term as Visiting Professor) did not know what to make of him; but I had no trouble taking his raucous rhetoric at face value!

“The Unanswered Question” is far from raucous, but it still mystified just about anyone that tried to explain it. Personally, I have no trouble just taking the question-response structure at face value. If the question is never answered, I can still enjoy the music itself.

I would not be surprised if Logan adopted the same attitude. “What Lies at Dream’s End” is a trio for flute, viola, and piano. I came away with the impression that her music amounted to personal reflections after her encounter with Ives. Her music did not necessarily reflect Ives, but “The Unanswered Question” probably triggered her own personal thoughts. Personally, I cannot think of a better approach to “answering” Ives!

Terri Baune, Thalia Moore, Keisuke Nakagoshi, Peter Josheff, and Tod Brody playing John Harbison’s “Prelude-Variations” (screen shot from last night’s YouTube’s feed of the Earplay recital)

The first half of the program concluded with “Prelude–Variations,” composed by John Harbison in 2024. Given its West Coast premiere, this music was scored for flute, clarinet (doubling on bass clarinet), violin, cello, and piano. Unless I am mistaken, Harbison arrived at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shortly before I left with my doctoral degree in hand. My encounters with him were brief, and our differences in opinion were immediately obvious! Earplay provided a solid account of this piece, but it had little impact on me.

The second half of the program was devoted entirely to Roger Reynolds’ “Shadowed Narrative.” Unfortunately, the audio on my live YouTube feed mysteriously vanished. Fortunately, I still have his For a Reason album in my collection!

A Little Over Half a Century of Chamber Music

As programs go, the final Chamber Music Series concert, presented by the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall, filled a relatively narrow temporal window. At one end was a piano trio by the Armenian composer Arno Babajanian, which was given its world premiere in 1952 and was performed this afternoon by violinist David Chernyavsky, cellist David Goldblatt, and pianist Yana Reznik. At the other end was the “Fantasy Duo” scored for cello and bass by Fred Bretschger, performed by Goldblatt and Scott Pingel on bass. Between these was situated a horn trio, somewhat in the spirit of the Opus 40 trio by Johannes Brahms, composed by John Harbison in 1985. This was performed by Dan Carlson on violin, Mark Almond on horn, and Marc Shapiro on piano.

Since this trio was a substitute for the originally-scheduled fifth string quartet by Béla Bartók, the original window of the program would have been decidedly wider. Nevertheless, the first two works on the program would have provided excellent preparation for listening to that Bartók quartet. Bretschger’s duo was the opening selection, and it did not take long to recognize that he was very fond of the harmonic tetrachord, whose intervals are one half-step, three half-steps, and one half-step. This has a very “Hungarian” sound; and the scale that consists of two harmonic tetrachords separated by a whole step is sometimes called the “Gypsy major” scale. Mind you, the Hungarian influence on Bretschger is not particularly strong; but it is strong enough to suggest a nod or two to Bartók.

Similarly, Babajanian’s Armenian rhetoric, which probably owes much to the mentorship of Aram Khachaturian, also draws heavily on the harmonic tetrachord. However, while that tetrachord weaves its way in and out of Bretschger’s duo, Babajanian’s trio is much more explicitly ethnic. This clearly reflects influence from Khachaturian, which, in turn, was probably motived by the desire to bring a distinctive “Armenian voice” to the concert hall. Nevertheless, it is interesting to speculate how that one tetrachord could establish an “implicit bond” between the two opening selections, which would have then prepared listeners for Bartók’s quartet.

Instead, Harbison’s trio was “something completely different.” Mind you, the notes he prepared (which were not provided as an extra sheet for the program book) never say anything about Brahms’ trio. Rather, he plays up the significant differences between horn and violin. However, if his goal was to guide the listener through a path of distinctively different sonorities, he never seemed to deploy his content in ways that would both seize and maintain listener attention. Instead, it almost feels as if, relatively early in the score, listeners might decide “Yep, those sure are different sounds! What else do you have to say?” That is the moment when even the most attentive and well-intentioned listener is likely to break with a composition that borders on the tedious (if not crossing the line).

Telegraph Quartet’s Weekend at 405 Shrader

Telegraph Quartet members Eric Chin, Jeremiah Shaw, Pei-Ling Lin, and Joseph Maile (photograph by Lisa Marie Mazzucco, courtesy of Jensen Artists)

Readers that follow events at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music probably know that today is Chamber Music Tuesday. This is a monthly series of side-by-side performances of students in the Chamber Music Program with faculty members. Tonight the participating faculty members will included three members of the Telegraph Quartet, violinist Eric Chin, violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw.

Towards the end of this month, violinist Joseph Maile will join his three colleagues when the Telegraph Quartet will perform two different programs over the course of a weekend at 405 Shrader. The first program will be a two-centuries-of-string-quartets offering. The first selection will be Grażyna Bacewicz’ fourth string quartet, written as her entry for the 1951 Concours international pour quatuor à cordes, held in Liège, which won the First Prize. This will be followed by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 132 in A minor, one of his ambitious “late” string quartets, which he composed in 1825.

The second program will begin with John Harbison’s sixth quartet, which was jointly commissioned by Telegraph, along with the Lark Quartet and the Tanglewood Music Center. The quartet was given its world premiere by Lark on April 29, 2017 in Columbia, Maryland; and, two days later, the ensemble gave the New York premiere performance at Carnegie Hall. Telegraph performed the quartet for the first time on October 27, 2017 as part of the chamber music recital series presented by San Francisco State University. The remainder of the program will be devoted to two decidedly different twentieth-century compositions. The first of these will be Florence Price’s Five Folksongs in Counterpoint, which will be followed by Maurice Ravel’s only string quartet, composed very early in the twentieth century.

As might be guessed, 405 Shrader is the address of the venue, located at the corner of Oak Street near the Panhandle. Both performances will be part of the series called Aperitif Concerts for the Neighborhood, because all events begin at 7 p.m. (the aperitif hour), last about 50 minutes, and are followed by hosted aperitif service. These two concerts will be held on Friday, April 22, and Saturday, April 23, respectively. Accommodations are modest, usually admitting only 30 guests; so the only way to guarantee a seat will be to make a reservation. Tickets may be purchased through the 405 Shrader home page, which has a Concerts button that enables secure credit card transactions through Merchant One.

Jennifer Koh Concludes her Bach++ Series

Cover of the recording being discussed

The first recording sessions that violinist Jennifer Koh made for her Bach & Beyond project for Cedille Records took place in November of 2011. As can probably be guessed, the “Bach” portion of the project involved recording the six compositions that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for unaccompanied violin, three four-movement sonatas and three partitas, based almost entirely on dance forms. The “Beyond” portion involved three albums, each of which began and ended with a Bach composition framing works composed in the twentieth century or later. The last of those three albums was originally scheduled for release this past September, but that release was delayed until approximately a month ago.

On this final release the “frame” is provided by two sonatas, BWV 1003 in A minor at the beginning and BWV 1005 in C major for the conclusion. Within that “frame” Koh performs one of the most significant and challenging pieces to be composed for solo violin during the twentieth century, the seventh piece in Luciano Berio’s Sequenza series. This is followed by the world premiere recording of John Harbison’s “For Violin Alone,” which he composed for Koh in 2019 under a commission from the 92nd Street Y.

Between 1958 and 2002 Berio wrote fourteen Sequenza compositions, each for a different “instrument” (scare quotes because the third of these was written for female voice). The pieces are best known for exploring new sonorities, often requiring the performer to master certain extended techniques. Berio himself likened his violin piece to the Ciaccona that concludes Bach’s BWV 1004 partita in D minor; but the “ground” for his chaconne involves only two notes (selected, perhaps playfully, as A and B).

I have been fortunate enough to see this work in performance several times. On all of those occasions the violinist set up a row of music stands so that the entire score was spread out horizontally. (I have never experienced the piece being performed without the score.) What was particularly interesting about this approach is that, by observing the performer, one could determine how far the performance had progressed from beginning to end. This has led me conjecture that each of these pieces amounts to a “sequence” of episodes whose architecture has more to do with each episode exploring different sonorities rather than the development of any overarching framework. On the basis of that conjecture, I would note that experiencing the piece is as visual as it is auditory, meaning that listening to a recorded performance may put the listener at an undue disadvantage.

Harbison’s piece, on the other hand, is likely to strike most listeners as a reflection on the multi-movement partita structure that figured so prominently in the Bach catalog. In that context the listener to this recording may approach the piece as a “partita spacer” between the two sonatas, consistent with the Bach publication in which the sonatas and partitas alternate. That said, I have to confess that I am still getting my ears around Harbison’s score, so to speak; but I definitely look forward to forming a better acquaintance with the music!

As far as the Bach selections are concerned, I have always found the fugues in the second movements of the sonatas to end up as my primary focus of attention. What particularly interests me is how the durations of those fugues get longer from one sonata to the text. On Koh’s recordings the BWV 1001 fugue has a duration of five minutes and eighteen seconds. BWV 1003 extends that duration to one second short of eight minutes. The final fugue then leads the pack with a duration of ten and one-half minutes. Of course we all know that Bach was a prolific composer of fugues for many different instruments (and vocal ensembles); but in these three sonatas it also seems as if he is playing with how “the art of fuguing” can extend to lengthier durations as one acquires greater mastery of the compositional technique.

John Harbison’s Requiem Setting: For Our Times?

courtesy of Naxos of America

Today Naxos released a recording in its American Classics series devoted entirely to John Harbison’s setting of the text for the Requiem Mass. This is a world premiere recording, even though Harbison completed the composition in 2002. The back cover of the album of the CD describes the piece as “Completed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks;” but I feel this is not particularly fair to Harbison, his work practices, or the mindset behind the work’s creation. As we learn from Harbison’s contribution to the accompanying booklet, he began work on the idea of setting the Requiem text in 1985, a time when the very thought that any foreign power might bring destruction and fatality to our own country was, for all intents and purposes, beyond reason of all but a relatively small coterie of strategic analysts.

More interesting is how an undertaking, which proceeded in fits and starts over the course of sixteen years, came to take shape and what that resulting shape was. The more useful content on the back cover concerns how structure that emerged, which is basically a division of the Requiem text into two parts. In the final paragraph of his booklet notes, Harbison distills his thoughts on the nature of that text down to a single sentence:

An accidental collection of words about mortality (part I) and continuity (part II), to be shaped into a purposeful collection of sounds.

My guess is that those for whom the Requiem text has deep religious significance might be put off by this description. On the other hand those who are seriously devout about celebrating the Requiem Mass are as likely to be put off by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Hector Berlioz, and Giuseppe Verdi as they would be by Harbison’s choice of words. What strikes me as most interesting about Harbison’s composition has less to do with any article of faith than with his approach to giving his work and overall logic. Each of those two parts is conceived as a continuous whole, thus departing from pretty much every musical setting of the text that those familiar with the repertoire are likely to encounter.

On the other hand, from a strictly musical point of view, this piece comes across as a decidedly contemporary approach to past traditions encountered in earlier settings of the text. Thus, both harmonic progression and richly woven polyphony signify as the underlying concepts as each of the two parts of structure unfold. Modernist approaches to both of those disciplines often mask the words themselves; but there is nothing wrong with Harbison making the assumption (correct, for the most part) that listeners already know the words. More important is that those words are delivered through an ongoing flow of changing sonorities, and it is that flow of sonorities that realizes Harbison’s score as a “purposeful collection.”

On the performance side Harbison’s score benefits significantly from its interpretation. This begins with all four soloists providing compelling realizations of Harbison’s vocal lines: soprano Jessica Rivera, mezzo Michaela Martens, tenor Nicholas Phan, and baritone Kelly Markgraf. For that matter, Giancarlo Guerrero’s efforts in conducting the Nashville Symphony and the Nashville Symphony Chorus, as well as the soloists, did much to bring a convincing overall coherence to a musical plan based on an “accidental collection of words.” The result may not be the “spirit of a Requiem;” but the attentive listener will find much to engage the mind in the “flesh of the music.”

Three Approaches to a Violin-Cello Concerto

This Friday Sony Classical will release a new CD entitled Double Concertos. The recording provides a platform for the husband-and-wife duo of cellist Jan Vogler and violinist Mira Wang. The idea of a “double” concerto for both violin and cello is best known through Johannes Brahms’ Opus 102 in A minor; and this work, composed in the summer of 1887, is the central piece on the album. It is flanked on either side by a 21st-century approach to the same genre, beginning with a single-movement concerto composed by Wolfgang Rihm in 2015 and concluding with a three-movement concerto by John Harbison composed in 2010. For all three concertos Wang and Vogler are accompanied by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Peter Oundjian. As usual, Amazon.com is taking pre-orders prior to the forthcoming release date.

I must confess that I have a weak spot for the Brahms concerto, because its second movement, in D major, serves up a particularly satisfying case of ambiguity. The movement is written in 3/4 time, and the pulse is established by both soloists playing (an octave apart and with accompaniment in the string section) a theme whose opening measure consists of three pairs of eighth notes. However, that measure is introduced by a slower account of its first four notes, two pairs of rising fourths. The first, A rising to D, is played only by a pair of horns. The horns are then joined by flutes, clarinets, and bassoons for the second fourth, E rising to A. In both of these introductory fourths, the second note is sustained by a fermata.

The opening measures (without the string section) of the second movement of Brahms Opus 102 concerto (from IMSLP, public domain)

Those opening measures lay the groundwork for the ambiguity. Both of them basically sound like a perfect cadence without full chords. Thus, in the first measure the tonic D is established by the A that rises to it. Then the dominant is established by a similar pattern. Put another way, in both of these intervals the first note sounds like an upbeat affirming the downbeat of the second one.

However, when the theme itself is introduced in the third measure, those roles are reversed. Both the D following the A and the A following the E are on decidedly weak beats (not even on the pulse); and that first A is now firmly established as the downbeat! Those who have listened to even a few of the many recordings of this concerto know that there is little agreement among conductors as to just how that ambiguity should be handled; and, without naming any names, I would suggest that more than a few of those conductors just muddle their way through, figuring that things will take care of themselves by the time they get to the end of the first score page.

In this context I am happy to report that Oundjian is no muddler. He knows that the ear is going to be deceived by those opening measures. However, he seems to have found just the right amount of stress to make it clear that the third measure is the one responsible for the definitive downbeat. I have no trouble fantasizing an image of Brahms’ ghost nodding in delighted approval!

I wanted to start by calling out this ambiguity because so much of the “new music” that comes our way involves whole new breeds of ambiguity that can be exploited in many different ways. In Rihm’s case that exploitation involves not only rhythm but also the very sense of progression in a rhetoric in which dissonance has been emancipated. In such a situation the idea of harmony may be abandoned in favor of thinking strictly in terms of a polyphonic fabric in which the overlay of multiple voices no longer adheres to traditional “point-against-point” rules. This is one way to approach listening to Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 42 piano concerto (which was performed here in San Francisco this past January); and, for that matter, it also serves listening to Alban Berg’s violin concerto. Indeed, I would even go so far as to say that the Berg concerto is a bit like a ghost lingering in the shadows behind Rihm’s concerto.

Harbison’s concerto is another matter. One might say that it is inhabited by two ghosts. It was written in memory of violinist Roman Totenberg (whose students happened to include Wang). However, Totenberg’s own studies included working with George Enescu, whose work as a composer tended to draw more upon Eastern European folk styles than on the practices of harmonic progression that prevailed during the nineteenth century. Enescu’s music does not get the attention it deserves, but he is far from the only composer to have drawn upon such folk sources. Thus, those familiar with even a few of the compositions of Béla Bartók are likely to feel his ghostly presence in Harbison’s concerto.

To be clear, neither Rihm nor Harbison should be accused to trying to channel either Berg or Bartók, respectively, in their concertos. I refer to these as ghostly presences because they provide a baseline through which the mind of the listener can begin to orient itself and become better disposed to follow the originality of each composer. Through such orientation the attentive listener is likely to come away with a solid feeling of satisfaction with all three of the concertos on this recording, rather than just enjoying the familiarity that comes with listening to Brahms!

Telegraph Quartet to Play More Modernists

This past December, in their capacity as Quartet-in-Residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), the Telegraph Quartet organized their fall-term recital around the pioneering music of Arnold Schoenberg. This included not only highly perceptive interpretations by the quartet members, violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw, but also some highly useful commentary prepared and delivered by Maile. This month the ensemble will give its spring-term recital; and the programming promises to be just as ambitious, if not more so.

The major work to be performed will be Robert Sirota’s third string quartet, entitled “Wave Upon Wave.” Sirota’s first three quartets, composed over a span of fifteen years, constitute a trilogy. He began in 2002 with an extended meditation on 9/11 entitled “Triptych.” This was followed by “American Pilgrimage,” expanding the scope of the first settlers to the broader diversity of American spirit across the continent, completed in 2016. “Wave Upon Wave” was commissioned by the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation; and it was given is premiere on February 6, 2018 in Carnegie Hall by the Telegraph Quartet in their capacity as winners of the 2016 Naumburg Competition. While the first two quartets reflected on past and present, respectively, the third quartet looks to the future through, in Sirota’s words, “our fears, our hopes, and our prayers that we will triumph over the forces of darkness which threaten to overwhelm us.”

Robert Sirota (photograph by Brian Hatton, courtesy of Jensen Artists)

The program will also offer John Harbison’s sixth string quartet. This four-movement composition was commissioned by the Tanglewood Music Center through the generous support of the Merwin Geffen, M.D. and Norman Solomon, M.D. New Commissions Fund, with additional commissioning support from a consortium of three string quartets, one of which was Telegraph. The other two were the Lark Quartet and the Ariel Quartet, the latter through support from Ann and Harry Santen and the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music. Lark gave the world premiere on April 29, 2017, followed by the New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on May 1. Telegraph gave the West Coast premiere this past October 27 in their Morrison Artists Series recital at San Francisco State University.

The remaining work on the program will offer modernism from the preceding century. This will be Maurice Ravel’s only string quartet. It was completed in 1903, which is about two years earlier than the completion in 1905 of Schoenberg’s (first) quartet in D minor, the major work on Telegraph’s fall program. The program will thus offer complementary perspectives of modernism at the beginning of this century with the modernist rhetoric from about 100 years earlier.

This concert will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 26. The performance will be free of charge, and reservations will not be required. The SFCM building is located at 50 Oak Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni Station. Readers are encouraged to consult the Performance Calendar Web page at the SFCM Web site for the most up-to-date information about this event.

Fascination with Lady Day

This morning, while preparing my Examiner.com preview piece for the first BluePrint concert at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, I noticed that, while John Harbison’s song cycle North and South is based on six poems by Elizabeth Bishop, it is framed by a “Ballad for Billie.”  This is not the first time that Lady Day honored a piece of “serious” music with her presence.  Leonard Bernstein’s score for Jerome Robbins’ ballet “Fancy Free” was sort of a symphonic meditation on her recordings, one of which is heard on the jukebox when the curtain first rises.  The difference, however, is that the song is "Big Stuff," which Bernstein had composed for Billie Holiday prior to working on the ballet score, meaning it really was a "ballad for Billie!"  One can only wonder (or perhaps one never knows) how the Lady would have reacted to this latter-day impact on the modern classical repertoire.