Naama Liany’s Old First Concerts Recital

The cover of Naama Liany’s Daydream album, which includes most of the selections she performed (from The Origin Music Group Web page for the album)

Late this afternoon, mezzo Naama Liany finally (after a month’s delay) brought her Daydream program to Old First Presbyterian Church for the final Old First Concerts program of the month. She performed works by five twentieth-century composers setting texts in four languages. The program began with Francis Poulenc’s Banalités, drawing upon five poems by Guillaume Apollinaire. This was followed by “Heimlich zur Nacht,” taken from the radio opera The Piano Blue composed by Albena Petrovic-Vratchanska. The first half of the program then concluded with the first and last songs from the collection Combat del somni (dream combat) by Federico Mompou.

The second half of the program was “all American.” It began with the five songs in Samuel Barber’s Opus 41 Despite and Still. This was followed by the wittier I Hate Music! by Leonard Bernstein. Liany then took two encores, neither of which were announced. I drew a blank on the first one, but she wrapped things up by going back to Bernstein with his operetta Candide. He wrote his own lyrics for the song “I Am Easily Assimilated,” given tango treatment.

Liany’s delivery was consistently solid. She knew just how to tune her disposition to the semantics behind each of her selections. She kept any talk to a minimum, allowing the full panoply of her selections to speak for themselves. Mind you, not all of her selections were my personal favorites. Nevertheless, for all of my misgivings about Bernstein, I was more than a little impressed by how she nailed her sense of pitch during the “I Hate Music!” song. I was also amused to hear the voice of her pianist Christopher Koelzer, covering for the chorus response (so to speak) in “I Am Easily Assimilated.”

Sundays have been consistently busy for me over the course of this new year, but I was glad to settle down in front of my television late this afternoon to view the Old First Concerts livestream.

SFP: “Back-to-Back” Recitals in November

Pianist Stephen Hough (photograph by Sim Canetty-Clarke, courtesy of SFP)

At the middle of this month, San Francisco Performances (SFP) will provide its contribution to the California Festival with two back-to-back recitals, both featuring British performers. The first will be a solo piano recital by Stephen Hough, whose program will include one of his own compositions. The following evening will see the return of the Castalian Quartet, which made its SFP debut in November of 2021. Their new offering will be “Awake,” recently composed for them by Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Both of these performances will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Herbst Theatre, which, as most readers know by now, is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. This venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. Program specifics for the two dates are as follows:

Tuesday, November 14: The title of Hough’s own composition is “Partita.” The rest of the program will be devoted to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. “Partita” will be followed by a set of compositions by Franz Liszt, beginning with the Tre sonetti di Petrarca (three sonnets of Petrarch) and concluding with the “Dante Sonata,” taken from the second “year” of the Années de pèlerinage (years of pilgrimage) collection. Most likely, these five pieces will constitute the second half of the program. The first half will provide the twentieth-century selections, beginning with the Cant màgics (magic songs) collection compiled by Federico Mompou in 1920. This will be followed by Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 53 (fifth) piano sonata, composed in 1907. This marked the beginning of his composing single-movement sonatas without an overall key specification. The first half of the program will conclude with Claude Debussy’s three-movement Estampes (prints) suite, completed in 1903.

Ticket prices are $80 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $70 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $60 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony); and they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. As available, single tickets will be sold at the door with a 50% discount for students and a 20% discount for seniors. Single tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.

Wednesday, November 15: Both violinist Sini Simonen and violist Ruth Gibson are currently on maternity leave. They will be replaced by violinist Sean Lee and violist Natalie Loughran, performing with Castalian Quartet members Daniel Roberts on violin and Steffan Morris on cello. “Awake” will be the central work on their program, which will begin with Leoš Janáček’s first string quartet, given the name “Kreutzer Sonata,” since it was inspired by the narrative of Leo Tolstoy's novella The Kreutzer Sonata. The second half of the program will be devoted entirely to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 130 quartet in B-flat major, concluding with the Opus 133 “Grosse Fuge.” For this program ticket prices are $70 (premium Orchestra and front and center Dress Circle), $60 (remainder of Orchestra, all Side Boxes, and center rear Dress Circle), and $50 (remaining Dress Circle and Balcony); and they may again be purchased through an SFP secure Web page.

Piano Talk: Carl Blake

Carl Blake seated at the instrument he played for his Piano Talks recital (screen shot from the video being discussed)

Last night the Ross McKee Foundation presented the November installment in its monthly Piano Talks series. Carl Blake presented a solo recital entitled Jazzed Classics, a survey of composers influenced by Black cultural and musical traditions. Blake’s credentials include a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Cornell University, serving as Artistic Ambassador for the United States Department of State, and currently Director of Music of The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples here in San Francisco. He also taught piano and performance at The Music and Arts Institute when McKee served as Director. Last night’s offering was live-streamed and has now been archived as a YouTube Web page.

The scope of last night’s program was impressive. The earliest composer on the program was Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, son of his father George Bologne by an African slave. He served as a colonel in the Légion St.-Georges, fighting on the side of the Republic in the first all-back regiment in Europe. He is currently considered the first known classical composer of African ancestry. He does not appear to have composed much for solo piano; and Blake’s selection, an adagio movement in F minor, was not performed until 1977 when Natalie Hinderas played an edition prepared by Dominique-René de Lerma.

More interesting were the selections of familiar composers from the early twentieth century that revealed an interest in jazz. The more familiar of these is Claude Debussy, represented by “Minstrels,” the final piece in his first book of solo piano preludes, completed in February of 1910. This was preceded by “Granen” (the spruce), the final composition in Jean Sibelus’ Opus 75 set of five pieces given the title The Trees. While there were definitely jazzy qualities to Sibelius’ use of seventh chords, it is unclear that he was aware of emerging jazz practices as keenly as Debussy was. Similar doubts may be applied to the Cançó opening of the sixth of Federico Mompou’s Cançons i danses series. I tend to side with the Wikipedia author that attributed this music to influences from Cuba, Argentina, and Brazil, which may or may not have been racially based.

Blake seemed more in his comfort zone in approaching music by more recent Black composers based in America. These include Calvin Taylor’s arrangement of “This Little Light of Mine” from his Spirituals for Worship collection for solo piano, Jacqueline Hairston’s ode based on “Great Day,” “Jesus Walked this Lonesome Valley,” and “Every Time I Feel the Spirit,” Robert Nathaniel Dett’s “As His Own Soul,” and the last of Richard Thompson’s set of six preludes for piano.

Blake was clearly comfortable with the breadth of his repertoire. His verbal introductions, on the other hand, tended to be awkward, perhaps because he was too occupied with reading a prepared text. Nevertheless, there was a diversity in his program that is seldom encountered in piano recitals. As a result, there is much to be gained from becoming better acquainted with all the the music he presented.

Edward Simon Revisits his Mompou “Salon”

Edward Simon performing in St Stephen’s Church (courtesy of San Francisco Performances)

This past January San Francisco Performances (SFP) revived its intimate and popular Salon Series of recitals, relocated from the remodeled Hotel Rex to the Education Studio of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera. The plan was to present four programs all curated by Edward Simon. While Simon is best known in the jazz domain as an improviser, composer, arranger, and band leader, he chose to begin the series with a solo piano recital of a program consisting entirely of compositions by the twentieth-century Catalan composer, Federico Mompou.

There are many that dismiss Mompou as too simple-minded to deserve much attention. It is definitely the case that one will not encounter sophisticated development techniques in most of his compositions, particularly the ones that are brief in duration. However, if he favors repetition over development, that allows the performer freedom to distinguish the repeated passages through different nuances in execution. This was how Simon approached the selections he played in January, and the results could not have been more engaging.

The SFP Front Row Web page now has a video of the fourth and last of the Sanctuary Series concerts available for streaming. This is a video made at St Stephen’s Church in Belvedere of a solo piano recital presented by Simon. For the most part Simon reproduced his Salon program, including the nine pieces in the first volume of Mompou’s Música callada (silent music) collection and the eighth, ninth, and tenth of his collection of twelve preludes. He also played the five Cançons i danses (songs and dances) compositions that he had played at the Wilsey Center: the first (1921), the second (1923), the sixth (1943), the eighth (1946), and the twelfth (1962). To these he added the third (1926).

The entire video is a little less than 45 minutes in duration. Simon never speaks through the entirety of the recording. Fortunately, there is a downward-pointing arrow below the video frame on the Front Row Web page, which opens a window that lists the entire program. (There is also a hyperlink for getting a copy of the program as a PDF file.) Because all of the pieces are relatively short in duration, many listeners may feel a need to tick off the individual entries in the program as they occur. However, as one becomes more familiar with the Mompou catalog, one begins to appreciate the uniqueness of each of the little gems he has composed; and I agree with Simon that listening to these pieces is more important than listening to someone tell you about them.

SFP Salons Return with Delightful Mompou Program

1980 photograph of Federico Mompou (photograph of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de la Presidència, from Wikimedia Commons, used with permission)

Yesterday evening the Education Studio of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera saw the return of the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Salon Series. The entire series will consist of four programs curated by Edward Simon, best known in the jazz domain as an improviser, composer, arranger, and band leader but equally well-versed in classical practices. Each program will showcase a different aspect of his approaches to making music, and two of the programs will involve guest artists.

Last night, however, the series began with a one-hour solo recital entirely devoted to a single twentieth-century composer, Federico Mompou. Mompou was born in Barcelona in 1893 and was trained as a classical pianist at the Barcelona Conservatory. However, a recital performance by Gabriel Fauré inspired him to study composition. He travelled to Paris with a letter of recommendation from Enrique Granados but was too shy to meet with Fauré. As a result, his approaches to composition tended for follow his own intuition.

As a result, almost all of his compositions are miniatures. The most notable of his longer works is his set of variations on the seventh (in A major) of Chopin’s Opus 28 preludes, which Daniil Trifonov played in Davies Symphony Hall back in October of 2017. Most of Mompou’s collections were written over the course of his life. The best-known of these are the fourteen Cançons i danses (songs and dances), thirteen of which were written for solo piano, which were composed between 1921 and 1979. Simon played five of these from different periods in Mompou’s life, the first (1921), the second (1923), the sixth (1943), the eighth (1946), and the twelfth (1962).

Similarly, Mompou composed a set of twelve preludes between 1927 and 1968. Simon selected three of these from a much narrower interval of time than that of his Cançons i danses choices. The eighth prelude was composed in 1943; and it was followed by the ninth and tenth, both composed in 1944. Mompou’s largest collection was Música callada (silent music), consisting of four volumes composed, respectively, in 1959, 1962, 1965, and 1967. Simon played all nine of the pieces in the first of these volumes.

This made for a rather generous collection of short pieces. However, there was considerable diversity across that collection, and Simon definitely knew how to give each piece its own sense of individuality. This was definitely music for the intimacy of a salon setting (even if the Education Studio was significantly larger than the previous venue in the Hotel Rex). From a technical point of view, Simon was consistently focused on the music itself, always finding just the right rhetorical stance to capture the uniqueness in the gestural nature of each of Mompou’s works.

When I decided to try to play some of Mompou’s music on my own, one of my colleagues sneered, “Why would you want to play around with his music?” He was clearly one of those academically-minded pianists that felt that anything that lacked sonata form was not worthy of attention and that the only “legitimate” miniaturist was Anton Webern! To be fair, it is certainly true that Mompou wrote melodies that are unabashedly tonal and not subjected to sophisticated development techniques.

Nevertheless, there is a somewhat remote connection to Webern’s teacher that is worth considering. It is that text reference to “air from another planet” that is sung in the final movement of Arnold Schoenberg’s second string quartet. For all their brevity and simplicity, it is the unique air surrounding each of Mompou’s miniatures that makes listening such an absorbing experience, and Simon knew how to fill the Education Studio with that air last night.

Katarzyna Musiał Surveys Five Spanish Composers

from the Amazon.com Web page for the album being discussed

According to my records, it has been almost five years since I last wrote about Polish-Canadian pianist Katarzyna Musiał. That would have been back when I was writing for Examiner.com, producing an account that now “belongs to the ages.” At the beginning of this year, the Polish Dux label released a new recording of her solo performances; and I feel more than a little sheepish about another uncalled-for lapse of time. The title of the new album is My Spanish Heart; and, like the last album I discussed, Come Dance With Me, it is a survey of offerings all organized around a common theme.

My Spanish Heart focuses on music composed during the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth. It is structured around selections by five composers. In “order of appearance” these are Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, Joaquín Turina, Federico Mompou, and Manuel de Falla.

The Falla selections are taken from two of his ballet scores, “The Three-Cornered Hat” and “El amor brujo” (love, the magician); but the piano versions of these pieces were all prepared by Falla himself. In the current political climate, I suspect there are many who would prefer to describe Mompou as Catalan; and, to be fair, I am one of them. Nevertheless, I welcomed his appearance on this recording, even if he is not, strictly speaking, Spanish.

To be fair, I approached My Spanish Heart with much more familiarity of the repertoire than I had done with Come Dance With Me. Indeed, one of the things that drew me to the earlier recording was the presence of two of Mompou’s “Cançó i dansa” (song and dance) compositions. These were the first and sixth from a collection of fifteen (the last being written for organ, rather than piano); and I was delighted to encounter them again on My Spanish Heart, this time in the company of the second and fifth of the pieces. I was equally pleased to see that the track listing took the trouble to identify the original sources for the first two pairings in the collection, information that had not been included on my sheet music copies but which can easily be found on the Wikipedia page for this collection.

I also welcomed the fact that the booklet notes by Agnieszka Jeż shared one of my favorite Falla anecdotes. This concerned the “Danza ritual del fuego” (ritual fire dance) from “El amor brujo.” Apparently, after seeing the ballet, Arthur Rubinstein was so impressed with this episode that he asked Falla for a piano version. Falla provided one but doubted that a piano solo could have the same impact as the orchestral score. The selection turned out to be one of Rubinstein’s favorite encore choices, always greeted with enthusiastic audience applause!

Indeed, Rubinstein’s interest in Spanish composers whose music was popular in his own time can be found in the impact of that interest on his recording sessions with RCA. The limited edition Rubinstein Collection, which documents all of his RCA recording sessions, has a Music of Spain CD, which accounts for all of the composers surveyed by Musiał except for Turina. Indeed, one will find Rubinstein’s interpretations of two of the Albéniz selections, one of the Granados pieces, two of the Mompou “Cançó i dansa” compositions, and all of the Falla selections. This is not to suggest that Musiał was trying to compete with Rubinstein. Instead, I view this new recording as her effort to demonstrate that works that enjoyed considerable popularity during the last century still deserve it during this one.

Nevertheless, I do not think My Spanish Heart should be dismissed as a selection on “encore hits.” Indeed, assuming that Musiał was not trying explicitly to follow in Rubinstein’s footsteps (which I fell is a legitimate assumption), preparing the overall “program” must have been a bit of a challenge, since all of the composers were so prolific in their output. As a result the greatest virtue of the album is the balanced fairness that guided Musiał’s overall programming. No composer overstays his respective welcome, and Musiał’s interpretations go a long way to finding the appropriate “voice” behind each composer’s rhetorical strategies. Those who have followed my writing for some time probably know that, where recordings are concerned, I tend to prefer “deep dives” into the works of a single composer. Nevertheless, Musiał’s “programming skills” are sufficiently perceptive that I am likely to return to this new recording many times.

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli on Profil

Photograph of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli at the keyboard taken in December of 1960 (photographer unknown, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

A little less than a month ago, Profil released another album in its series of archival recordings. This one is a ten-CD album of concert performances by the Italian pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli in both solo recitals and concerto offerings. Michelangeli is one of those pianists better known for his reputation than for recorded evidence of that reputation. His Wikipedia page describes his concert repertoire as “seemingly strikingly small” but also cites his reputation as a perfectionist, suggesting that he preferred getting few things exactly right over playing many pieces “merely” well. As a result his studio recordings were relatively few, and many of the recordings of his concert performances were unauthorized.

How many of the recordings in this Profil collection were made without Michelangeli’s approval is unclear. Indeed, there are five tracks that contain no information regarding date or venue; and they definitely sound like pirated sources. Of course one of his great admirers was the Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache, who thoroughly abhorred any form of recording until the very end of his career. It is therefore no surprise that Celibidache does not appear on any of the concerto recordings. On the other hand, given the rather generous share of concerto performances, it was a surprise that only three of the conductors could be recognized as familiar: Rafael Kubelik, Hermann Scherchen, and Carlo Maria Giulini (who conducted three Mozart piano concertos on a single concert date in Rome: K. 415 in C major, K. 466 in D minor, and K. 488 in A major).

That same Wikipedia page also cites David Dubal’s book The Art of the Piano describing Michelangeli’s approach to Johannes Brahms Opus 35 set of variations on the final caprice in Niccolò Paganini’s set of 24 (composed for solo violin) as “demonic.” For the most part, those who enjoy this composition reacted with annoyance to the way in which Michelangeli omitted some of the variations and reordered others. (Yes, I am one of those annoyed parties!)

The fact is that, having given each of the ten CDs in this collection due attention, I cannot recall any of the selections that really made me sit up and take notice. Mind you, I was more than a bit touched to encounter the first of the pieces in Federico Mompou’s collection of fifteen Cançons i danses (songs and dances) compositions; but that was only slightly more that three minutes of music! Perhaps, ultimately, Michelangeli’s reputation had a greater impact than his actual achievements; and, given how few opportunities there were to listen to him in performance, we may just have to live with this unfortunate state of affairs.

A Broad Scope of Modernist Perspectives

Don Byron at the Unterfahrt jazz club in Munich, Germany (photograph by OhWeh, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license)

Almost exactly a month ago the Zürich-based Intakt Records released a debut album that reminded me of why that label has become one of my favorites for adventurous jazz modernism. The debut is that of the duo that brings veteran clarinetist and saxophonist Don Byron together with Cuban pianist Aruán Ortiz. Since Ortiz is about fifteen years younger than Byron, their performances arise from not only a meeting of minds but also an imaginatively productive bridging of generations. At the same time it is worth noting that Byron was born on November 8, 1958, meaning that the release of the new album, Random Dances and (A)tonalities, could be taken as an “overture” to his 60th birthday.

The title is clearly a playful one, which sets the overall tone for the listening experience without necessarily requiring literal interpretation. Thus, the oldest track on the album goes all the way back to Johann Sebastian Bach with the second movement from the BWV 1002 solo violin partita in B minor, the “Double” variation on the Allemande of the first movement. Whether or not the Double is as danceable as the music in the first movement is left for an exercise for the listener. Byron plays this as a clarinet solo, which is true to the notes set down in the score but definitely has its own way with both phrasing and rhythm, making the music more suitable for modern dance than Baroque tradition!

At the other extreme of the time-line, the final track is a joint composition by both Byron and Ortiz; but it is also a “spiritual collaboration” with a third composer. As a latter-day reflection on a major bebop tradition, “Impressions on a Golden Theme” is an invention based on what Frank Tirro calls a “silent theme.” That theme is the tune “Along Came Betty,” composed by saxophonist Benny Golson, whose last name is cryptically encoded in the composition’s title. This is a case in which the theme could not be more “silent,” with only the most perceptive beboppers likely to mine it from the fragmentary nature of the Byron-Ortiz “impressions.” Indeed, one might be forgiven for taking those impressions as reflections on Anton Webern, rather than Golson! Even if there is a clear sense of progression in Ortiz’ accompanying chords, this is one of those tracks for which the “A” in the album title does not have to be hidden with parentheses.

By the time Byron was coming into his own, of course, he had progressed quite some distance from bebop traditions. Indeed, he was studying with George Russell at the New England Conservatory of Music at a time when the Third Stream “school” was seeking out ways in which jazz practices could build on the Second Viennese School and its calculated efforts to depart from the need for a tonal center. Third Stream never got very far, but Byron found his own voice by negotiating the influences of both Russell and Gunther Schuller (also at the New England Conservatory). As a result, any intimations of Webern among the “(A)tonalities” of this album are far more than merely coincidental!

Ortiz, on the other hand, cites Byron himself as a significant influence as he was finding his own modernist approaches to jazz piano. As a result, there is a certain evolutionary quality that emerges as one listens to side-by-side tracks of compositions by Byron and Ortiz. Furthermore, three tracks reflect on key pianists from the past, each with his/her own unique approach to modernism. The jazz influences come from Duke Ellington (“Black and Tan Fantasy”) and Geri Allen (“Dolphy’s Dance,” citing yet another jazz player not afraid of atonality). However, there is also a performance of one of the movements from Federico Mompou’s Música callada (silent music) collection. Mompou tended to be unabashedly tonal; but the first volume (of four) of Música callada was published in 1959, long before anyone in “serious music” was talking about “minimalism,” the most salient quality of Mompou’s rhetoric.

Taken as a whole, this new album is impressive for how much ground it covers; but the content is so rich that every track will continue to disclose new discoveries, even after several listenings.

Oscar Levant in the LP (long-playing) Age

The Fifties was the decade in which Columbia Records phased out all media for recordings of pianist Oscar Levant other than the long-playing (LP) vinyl disc. The seventh CD in the eight-disc anthology A Rhapsody in Blue; the extraordinary life of Oscar Levant brings together the first two vinyl-only albums that Columbia released. These were Oscar Levant Plays Liszt (released on May 21, 1956) and Some Pleasant Moments in the 20th Century (released on November 3, 1958), both of which happened to have exactly the same portrait photograph of Levant taken by Dan Weiner, albeit in different sizes.

The original cover of Oscar Levant’s second vinyl-only release (from Amazon.com)

By the time of that first release, LeRoi Jones (who had not yet changed his name to Amiri Baraka) had declared his fierce opposition to “middle-brow” tastes; and an album entitled Some Pleasant Moments in the 20th Century must have driven him up the wall. I have no idea whether Levant was a subscriber to Down Beat, but I would be surprised if he did not read that journal regularly. My guess is that he sympathized with Jones and probably groaned long and hard (a familiar personality trait) when he learned what the title of that November album would be.

More likely, Levant intended that album to provide an introduction to the general public of a composer who was not receiving very much attention, the Catalan Federico Mompou. Departing from the predominance of “short takes” encountered on most of his earlier releases for Columbia, this album allowed him to give a performance of the suite Scènes d’enfants (scenes of children) in its entirety. Admittedly, Mompou was most comfortable as a miniaturist; and each movement of this suite is a model of highly-expressive brevity. Nevertheless, the fact that Levant wished to approach the suite as a whole made for a welcome episode in surveying the contents of this eight-CD collection.

One consequence, however, is that, on that second album Mompou gets more attention than the other composer included, Maurice Ravel. As a result, only two of the movements from his suite Le tombeau de Couperin are included; and the other selection is the relatively brief “Pavane pour une infante défunte.” That makes the entire album a rather modest offering; but, from my own personal point of view, giving Mompou the spotlight overrides the other speed-bumps that must have been inevitable in most of Levant’s recording projects.

Where the Liszt album is concerned, he certainly catches the spirit of the four Hungarian rhapsodies included on the album. (Both Levant and Columbia also score points for that fact that the notorious second of those rhapsodies was not included. Here, again, discovery of the unfamiliar seems to have been one of Levant’s priorities.) The other selections are the “Sonetto 104 del Petrarca,” from the second “year” of the Années de pèlerinage (years of pilgrimage) collection, and the first, in F-sharp major, “Valse oubliée.”

Note that neither of these “long playing” albums is particularly long; but they both hold up very well to sustained listening.

Palmertree’s Imaginative Schwabacher Recital

Toni Marie Palmertree (courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

Last night in the Taube Atrium Theatre of the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera, the third of the four programs in the 35th anniversary season of the Schwabacher Recital Series was a solo recital by former San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow and alumna of the 2015 Merola Opera Program Toni Marie Palmertree. This past November Palmertree demonstrated to those fortunate enough to have attended her Salon series concert for San Francisco Performances (SFP) that she was as comfortable in a recital setting as she was on the opera stage. Indeed, she displayed a taste for departing from familiar paths to explore more adventurous domains of repertoire.

For last night’s recital, Palmertree returned to a composer-author pairing that had been a high point of her Salon performance, Benjamin Britten setting poems by W. H. Auden. For her Salon program, appropriately enough, she sang three of the four poems from Cabaret Songs. Last night she turned to On this island, which was Britten’s first song cycle for voice and piano.

Auden tends to be a poet of elegant opacity, more talked about than read. Britten selected five poems from a collection whose typescript title was simply Thirty-One Poems. Auden’s publisher, Faber & Faber, wanted him to provide a more engaging title but could not reach Auden while he was traveling in Iceland. So the poems were published under the title Look, Stranger! without his permission. Because Auden disliked the title, he asked Random House to call the American edition of the book On This Island.

Does it matter that we have no idea what island Auden had in mind? Not really. The five poems in Britten’s set (from which Palmertree selected four) each have a distinctively individual voice. Each of those voices tends to be elegantly convoluted, each an example of that aforementioned opacity. Leonard Bernstein even admitted that his “The Age of Anxiety” symphony never took in much more than the title and the general plan of Auden’s poem of the same name. Britten, on the other hand, had a keener sense of using music not only to establish the context of each poem but also to provide a vocal line that would negotiate some of the more peculiar twists and turns of the content.

By the time the listener has come to the final song in On this island, (s)he has become familiarized with Auden’s way with words and Britten’s way with Auden. The reward for that endurance is a setting of “As it is, plenty” that bops along with a jaunty pop rhetoric that one seldom encounters in Britten. Auden’s words for this poem were clearly playful, but Britten turns them into an almost raucous romp. Palmertree could not have been more comfortable with this “surprise ending,” just as she had been in following the path of the more serious poems leading up to this conclusion; and that journey through different spirits was perfectly matched by her accompanist, pianist Mark Morash.

The remainder of the program was just as adventurous with a series of selections one rarely encounters in recitals. Morash even went as far as to provide a bit of background about Federico Mompou, although similar preparations probably would have helped for Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Fernando Obradors, and John McCabe. Even the selection by Claude Debussy ventured down a rarely-traversed path; and Morash made it a point to observe that he was setting his own texts.

Nevertheless, each of Palmertree’s selections had its own cache of features to be treasured. The Debussy selection was a set of four songs entitled Prose lyriques; and, while each of them looked like a poem on the printed page, it did not take long to realize that these were prose sentences with line-breaks appropriately inserted. As with the Britten set, each text had its own distinctive mood; and some of Debussy’s turns of phrase with the words were as convoluted as Auden’s. Yet Palmertree’s delivery consistently guided the listener through all of the text’s twists and turns, turning unfamiliar music by a familiar composer into an engaging journey of discovery.

Mompou’s Combat del somni (dream combat) may have been the first time many of us had to follow texts in Catalan, three poems by Josep Janés. Palmertree seemed perfectly comfortable with negotiating Janés’ texts, as well as the dark perspective on dreams established by both poet and composer. The same could be said of her approach to the Spanish texts set by Obradors, whose musical rhetorical drew upon more familiar Spanish tropes.

The remaining selections on the program were trio performances with the participation of clarinetist Jose Gonzalez Granero. Griffes’ Opus 11 setting of three poems by Fiona MacLeod (the pen name of William Sharp) was originally written for voice and piano and then orchestrated. A single clarinet could not make up for full orchestral textures, but Granero’s clarinet work enhanced the Scottish rhetoric behind the texts Griffes had set. The same could be said for the folk-like qualities of the three folk songs set by McCabe.

As if the perspectives of her recital were not already expansive enough, Palmertree turned to Cole Porter for her encore. She had sung Porter (as well as Hoagy Carmichael and Kurt Weill) at her SFP Salon. This time she sang “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.” As is necessary in delivering a Porter song, she made every word count, reminding all in the audience of just how much artistry Porter could put into a song that seems to straightforward on the surface.

Foglesong’s Heavy-Handed Suites Recital

Yesterday afternoon in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, Scott Foglesong gave his annual Faculty Artist Series piano recital, providing oral commentary in the absence of program notes. The overall topic for the program involved short-duration compositions and the collections of those pieces into suites. He began with Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 816, the fifth of the six suites that would be published collectively as his “French” suites. Foglesong then assembled a suite of his own, drawing upon the short pieces that Johannes Brahms composed near the end of his life, which were collected and published as his Opera 116, 117, 118, and 119. The program concluded with Children’s Corner, the six-movement suite that Claude Debussy dedicated to his daughter (who was three years old at the time).

Foglesong’s oral commentary is always engaging and informative. Yesterday afternoon, however, he was hampered by a poorly-placed wireless microphone, which made thundering noises whenever he moved. (Foglesong can be very active in his oratory.) There was also some sense that he may have been stretching some points while short-changing others. No mention was made of any intentions (or speculations about same) behind Bach’s suites. (Those who have been following my writing for a while know that I personally place a lot of value on pedagogy having been one of Bach’s major objectives. I would even go so far as to say that the only “audiences” that concerned Bach were church congregations and those attending public ceremonies for which some of the secular cantatas were written.)

It may be that, as a result of being off his oratorical game, so to speak, Foglesong’s keyboard work also suffered. Many of his tempo choices bordered on the frenetic, and his approach to sorting out voices in counterpoint could be idiosyncratic. His comfort zone for the afternoon seemed to be the Debussy collection, perhaps for its inherent playfulness but also perhaps because the program was drawing to a close. At the other extreme, much of the Bach was weak for being hammered out, often concealing any trace that each of the suite’s movements was based on a dance form. The Brahms was more subdued; but it was also labored, often giving the impression that these “short” pieces were overstaying their welcome.

The one lengthy composition was the set of variations that Federico Mompou wrote on the seventh (in A major) of Chopin’s Opus 28 preludes. Foglesong confessed that he decided to learn to play this piece after having written the program notes for the Great Performers Series recital given by Daniil Trifonov this past October. Mompou’s comfort zone was actually in the domain of the sorts of shorter pieces that occupied the rest of yesterday’s program, so this set of twelve variations is actually somewhat idiosyncratic.

It also has a sense of humor seldom encountered in Mompou’s music. He probably could have called this piece “Chopin Variations,” since the Chopin sources go far beyond the A major prelude. The quotation from the Opus 66 “Fantasie-Impromptu” is the most explicit; but just about all of Chopin’s other short-piece genres show up at some time or another. There is also at least one vigorous evocation of Sergei Rachmaninoff; and, in one of the variations, Mompou cannot resist throwing in a reference to at least one of his own shorter pieces. Foglesong delivered this abundance of content with all the clarity it deserves, but the idea that Mompou was having fun that he wished to share with his listeners seems to have eluded Foglesong’s rhetorical stance.

Nevertheless, considering that Mompou’s music is played so seldom, there is no denying that having two occasions to listen to this set of variations in a single season was a real treat.

Chopin Evocations Fare Better than Chopin

Last night in Davies Symphony Hall, the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) hosted the latest installment in its Great Performers Series, a solo recital by Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov. Trifonov made his debut in Davies during two concerts given by the Russian National Orchestra (also through the Great Performers Series) in February of 2013; and the following year he made his SFS debut under the baton of visiting conductor Osmo Vänskä as a Shenson Young Artist. Last night was his recital debut in Davies.

The visit was part of a six-city tour of the United States during which Trifonov has been playing selections from his latest album, Chopin Evocations, released by Deutsche Grammophon at the beginning of this month. The idea behind the album was to juxtapose selected works by Frédéric Chopin with reflections on Chopin’s music by other composers. Those composers included Chopin’s contemporary, Robert Schumann, composers from the transition from the nineteenth century to the twentieth (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Edvard Grieg), and even two composers from the middle of the twentieth century, Federico Mompou and Samuel Barber. (The Barber contribution was actually a homage to John Field, who was one of Chopin’s influences, particularly where the nocturne was concerned.) The album also included Chopin reflecting on another influence in his early Opus 2 set of variations on the seduction duet “Là ci darem la mano” from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 527 opera Don Giovanni. In addition to these pieces, Trifonov’s program concluded with Chopin’s Opus 35 (“Funeral March”) sonata in B-flat minot.

Last night’s performance was thus the realization in concert of an ambitious undertaking. The approach to preparing the program was a bold one, but it was also uneven. The good news is that things got off to a first-rate start with the set of variations that Mompou wrote on the seventh (in A major) of Chopin’s Opus 28 preludes. It is more than a little unfortunate that the program book did not allow space for enumerating these twelve variations (one of which was explicitly called “Évocation”) and their tempo markings, although Scott Foglesong’s notes for the program book did call out the fact that the tenth variation appropriated Chopin’s Opus 66 “Fantasie-Impromptu.”

Fortunately, the music itself more than compensated for the words that had been omitted. The attentive listener quickly recognized how many of the variations (even before that tenth one) were making reference to genres associated with Chopin, such as the mazurka and waltz dance forms. Mompou also derived many distinctively different ways of restructuring the notes of the theme itself to arrive at new thematic material that was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

Most importantly, it quickly became clear that Mompou had approached the writing of these variations with a playful spirit. The theme itself probably has the lightest rhetorical touch of any of the Opus 28 preludes. Mompou derived any number of different and distinctive ways to play with that light touch. By the time he had progressed through about half of the variations, Trifonov began to let a faint smile show while he was performing, conveying that he clearly “got” that sense of play that seems to have motivated Mompou’s approach to writing variations.

The opening selection was followed by the four short pieces by Schumann, Grieg, Barber, and Tchaikovsky (in that order), played without any pause for applause. Unfortunately, the program sheet did not indicate that Trifonov would play them this way (although Foglesong grouped them in a single section in the program notes). This led to a certain amount of confusion on audience side, particularly among those unfamiliar with the music. This led to uncertainty among those confused as to when the final selection for the first half, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 22 set of variations, composed in 1902 and based on another one of the Opus 28 preludes (the twentieth in C minor), had gotten under way.

That confusion may have been exacerbated by the fact that the Rachmaninoff selection was the weakest part of the first half of the program. Those who know their Rachmaninoff can easily appreciate just how far his craft as a composer had advanced in the thirty-odd years between this set of variations and his Opus 43 “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.” Opus 22 almost comes across as a struggle, both “in the small” at the level of how each variation is shaped and “in the large” with respect to the overall plan of the composition. Both of those logical challenges were met with far more confidence in Opus 43; and last night Opus 22 served only to top off the influenced-by-Chopin theme of the program. (That composition is not included on Trifonov’s recording.)

Unfortunately, the second half showed no signs of things getting better. Like Rachmaninoff’s Opus 22, Chopin’s Opus 2 variations are the product of an early effort. There are signs of wit, which Trifonov managed to convey effectively; but the statement of the theme is preceded by an introduction that is laborious unto an extreme and has absolutely nothing to do with Mozart. It almost seemed as if Chopin wished to delay Mozart’s appearance as long as possible, perhaps under the assumption that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

From that point of view, there was no room for any kind of fondness in Trifonov’s approach to the Opus 35 sonata. The good news was that he could sustain passages of very soft material as well as he could belt out the loud stuff. However, there was no sense of overall rhetorical shape, either within or among the sonata’s four movements. The Funeral March itself was taken at an exaggeratedly slow tempo, providing plenty of time for the informed listener to dwell on how Chopin had written the final movement to flash by like a bolt of lightning. Taken as a whole, the reading was one of self-indulgent rhetoric that allowed no room for either the syntactic details of harmony and counterpoint or an overall logic for the entire sonata.

DG to Release Trifonov’s “Chopin++” Album

 courtesy of Verve Label Group

This coming Friday (October 6) Deutsche Grammophon (DG) will release their latest album featuring Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov. This will be the latest addition to a series that has included not only solo piano performances, but also concertante work and chamber music. As usual, the album, which is entitled Chopin Evocations is currently available for pre-order from Amazon.com.

This is a two-CD album in which each of the two CDs begins with one of the concertos by Frédéric Chopin. However, on each CD the concerto is followed by what may, for the most part, be called “latter-day influences” of Chopin on other composers. Those composers are Robert Schumann, Edvard Grieg, Samuel Barber, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on the first CD and Federico Mompou on the second. The first CD also includes two examples of early Chopin, the Opus 2 set of variations on the seduction duet “Là ci darem la mano” from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 527 opera Don Giovanni and the posthumously published Opus 73 rondo in C major, composed in 1828. Chopin wrote this in versions for both one and two pianos; and Trifonov performs the latter with his former teacher, Sergei Babayan.

Two unique factors distinguish the concerto recordings. The first is that the ensemble is the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, which consists of only 45 players (who happen to be from twenty different nations) and therefore brings an intimacy of scale that is not always encountered when either of the two concertos is performed. The second is that conductor Mikhail Pletnev has prepared his own orchestrations for this group. Few would question that Chopin was far from his best in writing for orchestra, so this may be taken as an act of good intentions to present the contributions of the solo piano in a better light.

Given what we all know about good intentions, my personal opinion is that Pletnev has done an admirable, if not excellent, job. Both of the concertos are relatively early works, and they both entail significant departures from the shorter pieces that define Chopin’s comfort zone so well. Pletnev’s rearrangement of Chopin’s score evokes (to draw upon the album’s title) a more intimate context than we tend to find in most concert performances and recordings. Trifonov seems to be well aware of that intimacy and does an admirable job of reflecting it back into his solo passages. The same can be said of the other Chopin selections involving both solo and duo work. I feel it important to make this observation, since my early contact with Trifonov left me with the impression that he was all about bombast and little else.

Similar intimacy can be found in the work of those composers reflecting on Chopin. The most interesting of these is probably Barber’s Opus 33 nocturne, which is actually a homage to John Field. This short piece is rich with the composer’s characteristically angular approach to thematic exposition; but, at least through Trifonov’s execution, it never loses sight of the rhetorical stance associated with the early nineteenth century. I also must confess to having a great interest in the set of variations that Mompou wrote using the seventh (in A major) of Chopin’s Opus 28 preludes as a point of departure. Like Chopin, Mompou was most in his element when working on scales of short duration; so it is no surprise that he selected one of the shortest preludes in the set. As a result, the variations unfold as a sequence of miniatures; and, in many ways, they come off as more compelling than Chopin’s Mozart variations. There is also a clever sideways glance at Chopin’s Opus 66, which he called “Fantasie-Impromptu,” in the tenth variation. By way of response, Trifonov plays Opus 66 in its entirety after the Mompou selection.

The result is an album that provides us with new ways of listening to (and therefore thinking about) Chopin.

It is also worth noting that on October 25 Trifonov will be embarking on a six-city tour, which will involve selections from his new album. As was the case with George Li, whose new album was discussed yesterday, that tour will take him to San Francisco, where he will give a solo recital in the Great Performers series presented by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) in Davies Symphony Hall. Trifonov’s tour will also include Ann Arbor, Michigan, New York, New York (like Li, at Carnegie Hall), Davis, California, Detroit, Michigan, and Washington, DC. Trifonov’s program will begin with five of the “evocation” tracks by other composers taken from his new album. Those composers will be, in order of presentation, Mompou, Schumann, Grieg, Barber, and Tchaikovsky. However, Mompou’s set of variations will be complemented by Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 22 set of variations, which is also based on one of the shorter Opus 28 preludes, the twentieth in C minor. The program will conclude with Chopin’s Opus 35 (“Funeral March”) sonata in B-flat minor.

This concert will be given Monday, October 30, at 8 p.m. Ticket prices range from $36 to $109. They may be purchased online through the event page for this program on the SFS Web site, by calling 415-864-6000, or by visiting the Box Office in Davies Symphony Hall, whose entrance is on the south side of Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street. Those planning to purchase online should know that the Web page provides an interactive seating chart to facilitate seat selection, but this chart requires that Flash be installed and activated. The Box Office is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from noon to 6 p.m. on Saturday.

The Second New Piano Collective Inaugural Concert Offers “Magical” Diversity

The title of the second “inaugural concert” of the New Piano Collective, given yesterday afternoon in the Old First Concerts series at Old First Church, was Black and White Magic. Since Founder and Artistic Director Jeffrey LaDeur offered up a deft exercise in deconstruction to link the music of Claude Debussy to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Castor et Pollux, it is tempting to take a similar approach to the title for the entire event. Over the course of the program, at least two different “readings” of “Magic” were explored. The one that was most explicitly acknowledged was that of illusion; and the title of the final selection on the program was Piano Illusions, involving an ambitious effort to interleave piano performance with magic acts. However, for those who try to take their Harry Potter books too seriously (not to mention Lev Grossman’s more adult The Magicians, which has been adapted for television broadcast on Syfy) magic involves the transcendence of physical reality. In this latter reading the adjectives “black” and “white” tend to refer to the nature of that transcendence or the intentions behind it, which can be either malicious or beneficent. Presumably this was the distinction that motivated Alexander Scriabin to give the names “Black Mass” and “White Mass” to two of his sonatas. On the other hand the adjectives are also simply the colors of the keys on a piano keyboard, with no contingent implications for either good or ill!

Piano Illusions is actually the title of a full-length program conceived by Igor Lipinski (making his San Francisco debut) in which he synthesizes a classical piano recital with a series of acts in the arts of illusion (i.e. a magic show). Yesterday afternoon Lipinski concluded the program with three such acts entitled “Card fugue,” “Tempo rubato,” and “Piano variations,” respectively. The first of these worked a rather standard trick of identifying all the cards in a shuffled deck with the fugue movement that concludes Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 914 keyboard toccata in E minor. The second involved an imagined visit to Buenos Aires as an excuse to play an arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s “Milonga del Angel.” Finally, “Piano variations” involved a “transformation trick,” turning the variations in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 43 rhapsody based on Niccolò Paganini’s 24th violin caprice into the final (“Turkish March”) movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 331 piano sonata in A major.

All this was clever enough, but it overstayed its welcome. Ultimately, the music got in the way of the magic; and the magic got in the way of the music. Lipinski was clearly impressed enough with how Victor Borge could turn a “serious” piano recital into a night club act to write a doctoral dissertation entitled From Liszt to Victor Borge: A Legacy of Unique Piano Performances. However, when it comes to turning theory into practice, Lipinski has not yet nailed down the timing; and this was particularly evident when he based his encore on Borge playing Frédéric Chopin’s “Minute” waltz (Opus 64, Number 1 in D-flat major) while blindfolded. Lipinski’s keyboard technique may have been up to snuff, but he still needs a lot of work on his verbal and physical delivery.

Far more interesting was LaDeur’s transformation trick involving Rameau and Debussy. As was recently reported, LaDeur is currently preparing all of Debussy’s piano works for performance in time for the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death on March 25, 2018. Yesterday’s contribution to that effort was the first book of three pieces that Debussy titled Images. LaDeur’s “trick,” so to speak, was to make the case that these three pieces were not only a unified whole but an encapsulated summary of the plot for Rameau’s Castor et Pollux opera. “Reflets dans l’eau” (reflections in the water) introduces the two twins, one mortal and the other immortal (presumably the less “embodied” reflection of physicality). “Hommage à Rameau” then deals with the death of the mortal Castor and his descent to the Underworld, while the joyous concluding “Mouvement” depicts Jupiter elevating the two of them to the stars in the sky in the form of the Gemini constellation.

LaDeur provided context for his argument by first playing his own transcription of “Tristes apprêts, pâles  ambeaux” (mournful solemnities, pale torches), Telaira’s aria upon leaning of the death of Castor, from Rameau’s opera score. Furthermore, he made the transition from Rameau to Debussy without interruption, thus providing no time for disruptive applause. However, this had a curious effect on the entire set. Rameau’s arias are almost always tightly compact in their brevity; and “Tristes apprêts” is a perfect example of this technique. As a result, the three Debussy pieces, which would not be taken as long by just about any other standard, came across as unduly lengthy. Thus, while one could appreciate the impressive intellectual grounds behind LaDeur’s presentation, the visceral impact of Rameau, Debussy, and the relationship between them never quite registered.

Nevertheless, the idea of conjoining shorter selections was a good one; and it was also taken up in the first half of the program by Paul Sánchez (also making his San Francisco debut) and Jiyang Chen. Sánchez began the program with that more transcendent reading of the noun “magic.” He began with Federico Mompou’s Cants magics (magic songs), a suite of short movements, each almost haiku-like in its brevity but each basically a distillation of two contrasting perspectives. Sánchez quoted Stephen Hough calling Mompou’s work “music of evaporation;” but, in terms of connotations of that noun “magic,” the evaporation amounts to a detachment from all impediments of physical reality. These were followed, without interruption, by a transition to Franz Liszt’s second Ballade in B minor, whose own transcendence involved rising above the restrictive limitations of the piano itself with little regard to the mortal coils of either space or time.

Chen’s portion of the program consisted of six transcriptions covering traditional Chinese music, songs by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Mompou, chamber music by Rachmaninoff, and an except from Tchaikovsky’s score for the ballet The Nutcracker. The Chinese transcription was by Chen Pei-Xun. Those of the songs were by Arcadi Volodos, except for the Rachmaninoff song, which was transcribed by Jiyang Chen himself. The Nutcracker transcription was the work of Mikhail Pletnev. Several of these ventured into the more innovative realm of paraphrase, but Volodos’ approach to Mompou captured the same sort of crystalline brevity that Sánchez had brought to his reading of Cants magics.

The Nutcracker excerpt was particularly impressive. Tchaikovsky pulled out all of the stops of his instrumental resources (so to speak) for the pas de deux near the end of the ballet; however, as a conductor, Pletnev has acquired considerable expertise in grasping Tchaikovsky’s command of those instrumental resources. All of that expertise translated impressively into his transcription, creating the “illusion” that more than one performer was involved with a truly “transcendental” effect. All of the semantic baggage of “magic” was assembled in a single “package” in this impressive transcription that concluded Chen’s set.

The New Piano Collective will Present its Inaugural Performances Next Month at Old First Concerts

The New Piano Collective is an approach to artistic alliance bringing together alumni of the Eastman School of Music. Jeffrey LaDeur, founding member of the Delphi Trio, is both Founder and Director of the group. The pianist members have established reputations as soloists, chamber musicians, and pedagogues; and they are all familiar with a repertoire that has Jean-Philippe Rameau at one end and Frederic Rzewski at the other. However, each member has established a unique area of interest that distinguishes him as an authority in the profession.

As may be deduced from the pronoun in that last sentence, all of the founding members are male. LaDeur is already well known in the Bay Area through his solo recitals and his performances with the Delphi Trio. As a soloist he is currently involved in an ambitious project to prepare all of the solo piano music of Claude Debussy for performance in time for the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death on March 25, 2018. Two weeks ago LaDeur played the second book of preludes for a Noontime Concerts recital. The other founding members of the New Piano Collective are as follows:

• Igor Lipinski, who has developed a unique approach to synthesizing a magic show with a classical piano recital
• Johnandrew Slominski, who is currently an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Eastman and matches his skill for performing music with a skill for talking about it
• Owen Zhou, who combines performing with his work at Opus Zero Recording & Audio, which he founded and where he is Chief Executive Officer
• Bobby Mitchell, whose keyboard skills include historical, as well as modern, instruments
• Paul Sánchez, the only American concert pianist to earn a Master of Spanish Music degree under Alicia de Larrocha
• Jiyang Chen, who is equally at home with the piano concertos of Johannes Brahms and George Gershwin

The New Piano Collective will give two inaugural concerts during a single weekend next month. The first recital will take place at 8 p.m. on Friday, August 12, when LaDeur will be joined by Slominski, Mitchell, and Zhou. The selections will be Franz Schubert’s D. 760 “Wanderer” fantasy in C major, George Tsontakis’ “Ghost” variations, and Robert Schumann’s Opus 17 fantasy in C major. This will be followed by a recital at 4 p.m. on Sunday, August 14, when LaDeur will be joined by Sánchez, Chen, and Lipinski. The latter will demonstrate his magic skills by performing his own piece, “Piano Illusions.” In a similar vein the program will also include Federico Mompou’s “Cants magics” (magic songs). Other works for solo piano will include Franz Liszt’s second ballade, in the key of B minor, and the three pieces in Debussy’s first book entitled Images. There will also be an arrangement of the aria “Tristes apprêts” from the second act of Rameau’s opera Castor et Pollux, as well as transcriptions of works by Mompou, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Both of these recitals will be presented by the Old First Concerts series. These events all take place at the Old First Church, located at 1751 Sacramento Street on the southeast corner of Van Ness Boulevard. General admission is $20 with a $17 rate for seniors and a $5 charge for full-time students showing valid identification. Tickets purchased online in advance receive a $2 discount. The first and second concerts each have a separate event page for online ticket purchases. There is also a discount available for those parking at the Old First Parking Garage at 1725 Sacramento Street, just up the street for the church.

Information Content in Grieg

John Cage once said that, in his youth he had decided he would dedicate his life to learning and performing the piano music of Edvard Grieg; and we also get suggestions that he made this decision because he found the music of Beethoven too challenging. My own experiences with Grieg were heavily influenced by the (probably familiar) high school experience when any piano student with an ounce of either talent or ambition would take a crack at the first movement of the piano concerto. This saturated me with so many mediocre performances that I quickly became sick of the damned thing (except in the treatment given by the Hoffnung Festival Orchestra); and that feeling percolated into the rest of the Grieg repertoire.

Nevertheless, when I was living in Santa Barbara a little less than thirty years ago, I had this absolutely wonderful piano teacher, who believed that, since I was not out to be a professional pianist, I should take the time to explore just about anything the repertoire had to offer, ranging from the downright impossible (such as the fourth movement of Ives' first piano sonata) to the (deceptively?) simplistic (such as Mompou's "Charmes").

Actually, I think she gave me the Ives to see how I would approach it, since she was trying to prepare it herself at the same time. Looking back on my copy, I see that I meticulously marked out all the "1 & 2 &" beats on the first two pages, making particular note when these fell between the beats of the triplets, quintuplets, and septuplets in the notation. I seem to have done this only on the first two pages. I think this is because my first "assignment" was limited to those pages. However, after concentrating on those pages, I began to develop a feel for the rhythms and did not have to mark those "training wheels" on the remaining pages.

It was with this attitude of exploration that I found sheet music for the first three sets of Grieg Lyric Pieces at a friend's used book store and decided to buy them (in spite of the somewhat disparaging look on my friend's face). (This was the same friend who had taken the late Steven De Groote to task for including the Liszt "Dante" sonata on the program for a recital he gave in Santa Barbara, as if Liszt was just too vulgar to receive serious attention.) Like much of the music I purchased at that time, it then just sat in a pile, waiting for the "right time" when I would give it some attention.

I cannot remember when I decided to look at the first set (Opus 12 from 1867). I remember that it was more challenging than Mompou, but it also had a tendency to be tediously repetitious. Nevertheless, I was amused that the "Watchman's Song" had been inspired by Macbeth, particularly since the mood was so much more sober than the character it was supposed to invoke. This was my first clue that there was probably more to this music than what I was reading on the surface.

Ten years later I was living in Los Angeles, taking piano lessons from a promising young composer, who decided to put me on the "Berceuse" movement at the beginning of the second set (Opus 38, 1884). The two of us never communicated very well (which is probably why, to this day, I do not think very much of his work, which puts me at odds with much of the listening public for "serious" music); so I did not make very much further progress with Grieg. I do not think I returned to that second set until I had also returned from Singapore (now about ten years ago) and was no longer taking lessons, just using my time on my own as best as I could. By this time I think I had acquired the full CD set of Grieg's piano music, released by BIS with pianist Eva Knardahl. I was not sure what to make of Knardahl, beyond her achieving the ambition that Cage had set for himself and never fulfilled; but, if nothing else, she made me aware that the Lyric Pieces were embedded in a cultural context that I did not understand very well. I was thus willing to admit that I had not really "gotten" either of the first two sets and that I was not sure what it would take to "get" them.

What probably turned the trick for me was the decision of the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) channel to run a "focus series" on the work of Carl Theodor Dreyer, which included a documentary about the man made by Torben Skjødt Jensen in 1995. I had known about both his Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath from my student days but had never given very much thought to his Danish nationality and the impact it had on his talents as both writer and director. Nevertheless, I consumed the entire TCM series voraciously, thinking little about it until I decided to return to Grieg a couple of months ago and take on the last of the Lyric Pieces sets I had in sheet music.

This time I was more interested in getting beyond the simple repetitions; but what really turned me around was the "Erotic Piece," which is the fifth composition in that third set (Opus 43, 1886). My immediate impression was that this was not particularly erotic; but then, with an impact not that different from that of Proust's madeleine, my memory flashed back to Dreyer's Gertrud and I realized that this was an eroticism that had more to do with sexual frustration than with consummation. This, in turn, led me to approach the other pieces in the set as growing from a soil rich with sadness, however upbeat the surface structure may have been. From this vantage point I could listen to Knardahl with "fresh ears," more aware of the ways in which those seemingly tedious repetitious were actually fraught with emotional intensity.

This throws a new light on my recent attempt to home in on the "right" way to invoke information theory in the study of music. If we just look at the notes in the Lyric Pieces compositions, we find a relatively low level of information content, by virtue of all the repetition. However, as I have tried to argue for some time, information content resides only partially in the notes; one must also take the performance of those notes into account. Because Knardahl was so good at finding the right ways to play the repeated passages without having them sound "repetitious," she was intuitively raising the information content of the listening experience to a very high level, obliging us to (almost literally) hang on every note summoned from her keyboard. From a point of view of historical irony, it is interesting to note that Cage eventually moved to an aesthetic in which notation could be almost incidental to the acts of performance.

Now my challenge is on the other foot, so to speak. My guess is that my technique will never be up to conveying the subtleties through which Grieg really "works;" but I have finally come to a point where I am no longer dismissive of the man's compositions. At that point I have also decided to trade in my sheet music for the Dover publication of all of the sets of Lyric Pieces, because I expect them to occupy me for several years to come!