My second encounter with a video archive of one of this season’s concerts at the Ojai Festival turned out to be far more satisfying. Much of that satisfaction involved John Adams presiding as conductor, rather than another program of chamber music. However, there was also more substance to the music itself, which covered a span of time from 1720 to 2019.
Indeed, one of the factors that made the program interesting was the bridge that was constructed between 1720 and 2018. The former was the year in which Johann Sebastian Bach completed the composition of six sonatas and partitas for solo violin. It was represented by violinist Miranda Cuckson playing the Prelude movement of the BWV 1006 partita in E major, involving one of the most familiar themes in the Bach canon.
Indeed, that familiarity is due, at least in part, to other composers appropriating it, going back at least as far as Eugène Ysaÿe. On this particular program the appropriating composer was Esa-Pekka Salonen, whose “Fog,” composed for chamber orchestra, was inspired by architect Frank Gehry and his design of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Salonen took the pitches based on the letters of Gehry’s two names to create a countersubject to complement the Bach theme he had appropriated.
The result amounted to a roller-coaster ride with abrupt twists and turns each time one of the two themes was introduced by one of more members of the orchestra. Adams negotiated all of those references and cross-references with the agility of a traffic cop managing a busy intersection in Times Square. One could thus relish the diverse techniques that Salonen summoned in developing his thematic material while enjoying the overall listening experience as a wild ride. (Given the context, the Mr. Toad ride at Disneyland would seem appropriate.)
This also turned out to be “Father and Son Night” at Ojai. Adams conducted the West Coast premiere of the five-movement chamber concerto composed by his son Samuel. This was also Cuckson’s other appearance on the program, serving as concerto soloist. One has to wonder whether the younger Adams decided to compose a chamber concerto because his father had composed two chamber symphonies. Indeed, the title of the second movement, “Lines (after J),” suggests a connection from son to father. However, as the thematic material unfolds, one encounters traces of at least two other “J’s,” Bach and John Coltrane. (As an aside, I have to scowl at bit at Thomas May, whose program notes refers to “Coltrane’s bebop revolution,” suggesting considerable unfamiliarity with both bebop and Coltrane!)
This program also left me with better feelings about Timo Andres, first as the piano soloist in Ingram Marshall’s “Flow” and then (immediately following) as the composer of “Running Theme,” the final work on the program. Both of these compositions abounded with upbeat rhetoric, and Adams clearly knew how to bring life to the many marks on the score pages. One even got the impression that Adams’ satisfaction with performing this music was reflected in the faces of all the performers.
The one piece that felt a bit out of place was the opening selection, Claude Debussy’s L. 113 consisting of two movements entitled “Danse sacrée” and “Danse profane.” Debussy had composed this piece for the cross-strung harp (with “black keys” and “white keys” on separate but intersecting planes); but Emily Levin played the more familiar pedal harp. However, Adams never seemed to home in on balancing his resources to reflect the subtle sonorities that the composer had scored.
To be fair, however, that problem may not have resided with Adams. Instead it raises the one issue that threatened to spoil the experience of viewing the entire performance on video. Over the course of the program, the musicians performed on stage in a diverse variety of different configurations. Unfortunately, it did not seem as if much thought had gone into how to place the microphones for recording, let alone how to relocate them from one selection to the text. On the other hand, any of the work at the mixing panel was so unaware of what was going on in the score for each of the selections that microphone placement was merely the tip of a more menacing iceberg.
Back in the days when Jordan Whitelaw used to direct telecasts of live performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, his motto was that people will only hear what they see. That meant that, as a video director, he was as familiar with the score as the conductor was. I fear that, where video production of the Ojai concerts were concerned, it is unlikely that anyone on the technical team took the time to consult the scores, let alone use them to facilitate calling the cues for the individual cameras and balancing the microphones appropriately.
If a musical ensemble wishes to use video to increase interest in the works they are performing, they should begin by asking what will make that video interesting and use the answer to develop effective video direction.
