Telegraph Quartet to Return to Noe Valley

Telegraph Quartet members (clockwise from upper left) Eric Chin, Jeremiah Shaw, Pei-Ling Lin, and Joseph Maile (photograph by Lisa Marie Mazzucco, from the TicketSource Web page)

Some readers probably know already that I have been following the Telegraph Quartet since its inception in 2013 and continue to do my best to keep up with them. Indeed, I was delighted to declare, about half a month ago, my delight at the fact that all four of the performers are still the founders: violinists Joseph Maile and Eric Chin, Pei-Ling Lin on viola, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw. Currently, they are the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan; but their touring schedule will take them back to San Francisco early next month. They will be joined on that tour with five selected Michigan students.

That tour will take them back to San Francisco. More specifically, all nine performers will visit the Noe Valley Ministry to present a program of chamber music from the early twentieth century (almost). That parenthesis accounts for the fact that the final work on the program will be Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 4, “Verklärte Nacht” (transfigured night). Schoenberg completed it in 1899, but it was not given its first performance until March of 1902, This will be complemented at the beginning of the program with Anton’s Webern’s Opus 5 string quartet, given simply the title “Fünf Sätze” (five pieces). This piece, which is almost microscopic, will be followed by the lengthier three-movement string quartet, Béla Bartók’s Opus 27 (Sz. 67), the second of the six that he composed.

The performance will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 6. The venue will be the Noe Valley Ministry, which is located in Noe Valley at 1021 Sanchez Street, just south of 23rd Street. There will be no charge for admission, but reservations are advisable. TicketSource has a created a Web page for making those reservations. As of this writing, over 50 tickets are available.

Horszowski Trio to Return to Noe Music

Horszowski Trio members Jesse Mills, Rieko Aizawa, and Ole Akahoshi (from the ThunderTix Web page for purchasing tickets)

The founding members of the Horszowski Trio were the husband-and-wife duo Jesse Mills on violin and Rieko Aizawa on piano joined by cellist Raman Ramakrishnan. They last visited Noe Music in 2019, giving a sold-out performance. Since that time cellist Ole Akahoshi replaced Ramakrishnan, and the three of them will return to the Noe Valley Ministry and the end of next week. They have prepared a program that promises to be an engaging interplay of old and new.

The program will begin with the oldest selection, the Hoboken XV/12 piano trio in E minor by Joseph Haydn. The most recent offering will begin the second half of the program. This will be William Bolcom’s “Introduction and Rondo - ‘Haydn Go Seek,’” the piano trio he completed in 2008. The second selections for both halves will be particularly engaging. The Haydn trio will be followed by Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 19, a set of six “Little Pieces” for solo piano. Aizawa has arranged these pieces for piano trio. Finally, the program will conclude on the most familiar ground Antonín Dvořák's Opus 81 piano quintet. They will be joined by Owen Dalby playing second violin and violist Meena Bhasin.

As usual, the performance will take place at 4 p.m. on a Sunday, March 16. The venue will be the Noe Valley Ministry, located at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. Open seating tickets may be purchased with prices of $45 for general admission and $15 for students. As in the past, there will be a limited number of reserved seats in the first few rows, which will be sold for $60. (Each price also has a modest handling fee.) All available tickets may be purchased through a single Web page.

SFP to Present Recital Debut of Fleur Barron

Mezzo Fleur Barron (from the SFP event page)

Mezzo Fleur Barron will probably not be a stranger to those that partake of performances in the Civic Center. According to my records, her most recent appearance took place in Davies Symphony Hall, when she sang the title role in Kaija Saariaho’s opera Adriana Mater, with the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and staged for the limited available space by Peter Sellars. At the end of this month, she will return to San Francisco, this time making her recital debut with San Francisco Performances (SFP), joined by pianist Kunal Lahiry.

She has prepared a program entitled The Power and the Glory. According to the advance material I received from SFP, the program was conceived to “explore the impacts and legacies of colonialism throughout the world, highlighting songs that reflected the attitudes of their times, and may now be appreciated in an entirely new light.” When I read that material, my first impulse was to raise my left eyebrow à la Spock (if anyone still remembers Star Trek)! Nevertheless, I find it hard resist a program in which Carl Maria von Weber will be rubbing shoulders with Gustav Mahler, not to mention Arnold Schoenberg and Kurt Weill, who probably never rubbed shoulders with each other!

This performance will begin, as usual, at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 26. Also as usual, the venue will be Herbst Theatre, which is located at 401 Van Ness Avenue, on the southwest corner of McAllister Street and directly across Van Ness from City Hall. SFP has created its own Web page for further information. Prices range between $70 and $50. Those wishing to attend can also call 415-677-0325 to make purchases.

Two Earplay Concerts Added for This Month

Some readers may have noticed that my efforts to keep up with the Earplay chamber ensemble tend to be (in the immortal words of Ira Gershwin) “a sometime thing.” Last year around this time, they began the 2024 season at the Old First Presbyterian Church, presenting a program entitled The Poetry of Physics. This year they will be presenting two different program during the month of February at two decidedly different venues. Specifics are as follows:

Saturday, February 15, 1 p.m., Noe Valley Ministry: The first program has a title that speaks for itself: Chamber Music of Peter Josheff. Those familiar with Earplay probably known that Josheff is not only the clarinetist but also a founding member. For this performance, he will be joined by Earplay colleagues Tod Brody on flutes and pianist Brenda Tom. Cellist Thalia Moore will also participate, but only as a narrator! Baritone Wilford Kelly will also perform as a special guest artist. Titles and dates of pieces to be presented are as follows:

• Sutro Tower in the Fog (2011)
• Root Cellar (2024)
• Air (originally entitled “Big Brother”) (2014)
• Caught Between Two Worlds (final version, 2009)

There will also be selections from longer works. Between 2018 and 2023, Josheff composed four books of “songs” for spoken voice and piano: Images from the Past, Warped Oracle, Rag Wrung Dry, and Exquisite Corpus. The texts are drawn from Josheff’s own poems, dreams, nature writing, stories, and journal entries. Finally, there will be two excerpts from 3 Hands, based on a libretto by Jaime Robles about three hands of poker played by six “cheerful good-natured guys.” The selections will be the overture and the “Ice Cream” aria.

The exterior of the Dandelion Chocolate factory on 16th Street (from the Tock Web page for the venue)

Saturday, February 22, 7:30 p.m., Dandelion Chocolate: The title of this program will be Schoenberg…and Chocolate; and, as can be seen above, the performance will take place in a chocolate factory. It has been prepared by composer Ben Sabey, who is also a member of the Earplay Board. The program will be organized around two string trios. Moore will return to her usual position as cellist, performing with Terrie Baune on violin and violist Ellen Ruth Rose. The program will feature Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 45 string trio. This will be coupled with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 563 in E-flat major, a six movement divertimento composed in 1788 (the year in which he composed is last three symphonies).

Most readers probably know by now that the Noe Valley Ministry is located at 1021 Sanchez Street, between 23rd Street and Elizabeth Street. Dandelion Chocolate, on the other hand, is less familiar; and the factor is located at 2600 16th Street on the northeast corner of Harrison Street. (I see it every week when I have a medical appointment at UCSF in Mission Bay.) Information about ticketing will be found through the above two hyperlinks.

Napolitano’s Third “Progressive” Brahms Release

It has been a little over a year since my last opportunity to write about the Italian pianist Pina Napolitano. I tend to follow her as faithfully as possible to keep up with the repertoire she has organized around the Second Viennese School composers Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. My last encounter with her took place early in November of last year, not long after the release of the album Kammerkonzert: Music of Arnold Schoenberg. However, what has particularly interested me in her recordings is the series of releases entitled Brahms the Progressive, which has that late nineteenth-century composer “rubbing shoulders” with all three of those Second Viennese School composers.

In the past two volumes, the composer that received the most attention was Webern. Indeed, in the second volume Webern’s Opus 24 three-movement “Concerto for Nine Instruments” joins the piano with flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, and viola. This serves as a “warm-up” for Brahms’ Opus 83, his second piano concerto in B-flat major. The contrast could not be greater, but one might argue that the note-by-note impressions of Webern prepare the ear for the rich diversity of phrases in Opus 83.

The first volume, on the other hand, suggests an overall structure of “boxes within boxes.” It both begins and ends with two late collections by Brahms, the Opus 118 and Opus 119 Klavierstücke compositions. Opus 118 is followed by two short Webern pieces, while Opus 119 is preceded by his brief “Klavierstück – Im Tempo eines Menuetts” and the Opus 27 “Variations.” These, in turn, enclose the “core” of the album, Alban Berg’s Opus 1, a single-movement solo piano sonata.

Pina Napolitano at her keyboard performing with violinist Franco Mezzena (photograph by Tommaso Tuzj, courtesy of Odradek Records)

Having performed both solo and with orchestra, Napolitano has devoted her third album to duo performances with violinist Franco Mezzena. Brahms now accounts for his two late violin sonatas, Opus 100 in A major and Opus 108 in D minor. These are separated by Schoenberg’s first appearance in this project, his Opus 47 “Phantasy for violin with piano accompaniment.” He also introduces the album with a 1928 sonata fragment. This is only about four and one-half minutes long, which is also roughly the duration of the concluding selection, Webern’s Opus 7 set of four pieces, each somewhat longer than a single minute.

Personally, I was particularly glad that Napolitano finally brought Schoenberg into her fold, so to speak. After all, “Brahms the progressive” was the title of an essay that Schoenberg wrote. It began as a radio talk that he gave in 1933. He then revised that script in to the essay that now can be found in Style and Idea, a collection of fifteen essays edited and translated by Dika Newlin. The essay version of “Brahms the progressive” was completed in 1947. With such a rich background, I can only wonder with no shortage of anticipation where the concept of “Brahms the progressive” will next lead Napolitano.

SFCM Highlight: December, 2024

Parker Quartet musicians Daniel Chong, Kee-Hyun Kim, Jessica Bodner, and Kent Hamao (from the SFCM event page)

Because the fall term will conclude next month, there will be only one highlighted event at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). This will be the final Chamber Music Tuesday of the year. As usual, there will be a “guest appearance,” this time by the members of the Parker Quartet: violinists Daniel Chong and Kent Hamao, Jessica Bodner on viola, and cellist Kee-Hyun Kim. Following up on their masterclasses with SFCM students, they will share the program with chamber music that forms a bridge between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The program will begin with Alexander von Zemlinsky’s first string quartet, His Opus 4 composed in the key of A major. This will be followed by Johannes Brahms Opus 25, the first of his three piano quartets composed in the key of G minor. The program will then conclude with the original string sextet version of Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 4, “Verklärte Nacht.”

As usual, the performance will take place in the Barbro Osher Recital Hall, which is on the eleventh (top) floor of the SFCM Bowes Center at 200 Van Ness Avenue. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, December 10. There will be no charge for admission, but reserving seating in advance is encouraged. The SFCM event page has a hyperlink for arranging seat reservations.

Late Celebration of Major Schoenberg Birthday

Arnold Schoenberg was born on September 13, 1874. This means that, a little less than two months ago marked the 150th anniversary of his birth. Sadly, this passed, for the most part, with little (if any) notice. The only sign of attention seems to have come from Pentatone, which announced the “forthcoming” release of a commemorative (of sorts) album. “Forthcoming” means that the album is scheduled for one week from today. However, Amazon.com has already created a Web page which will accept pre-orders.

Conductor Rafael Payare on the cover of the album being discussed (from the Amazon.com Web page)

That album consisted of two performances by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal led by its Music Director Rafael Payare. Considering the many stages in Schoenberg’s life in which he explored imaginatively different approaches to composition, this “commemorative” album confined itself to the first of the composer’s three principal explorations. This was the period in which Schoenberg took the sprawling expressionism of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler as a point of departure and decided to distill it into shorter (and, therefore, more intense) durations.

Payare selected two of those “distillations” for his album. The better known of them is the Opus 4 “Verklärte Nacht” (transfigured night), a tone poem composed in 1899, first conceived as a string sextet, which was then “extended” into a full string orchestra. The composition took its title from a poem of the same name by Richard Dehmel. This involves a man and woman in a dark forest lit only by the moon. She confesses that she is carrying the child of a previous lover; but her new companion is sympathetic, vowing to treat the child as his own. The nighttime setting is thus “transfigured” as is expressed in the final line of the poem, whose English translation is “Two people walk on through the high, bright night.”

I suspect that many listeners know Schoenberg only through this one composition. It was followed by the Opus 5 tone poem “Pelleas und Melisande,” whose narrative is based on the full-length play Pelléas and Mélisande by Maurice Maeterlinck. When Schoenberg began work on this piece in 1902, he was unaware that Debussy was composing an opera based on Maeterlinck’s play.

If the protagonists in “Verklärte Nacht” advance into a “high, bright night,” the “Pelleas” narrative is an unremitting descent into darkness that concludes with Melisande’s death. In Opus 5 Schoenberg departs from the usual path of a narrative with thematic progressions that “stray from the path” and wander into ambiguity. While the ambiguity of the narrative is resolved when Melisande dies, the “thematic defocusing” persists in the music.

My guess is that Opus 5 took a lot out of Schoenberg. I would further guess that many listeners come away from the experience with the same feeling. That may explain why, on this new Pentatone album, Payare decided to have Opus 5 precede Opus 4. Opus 5 is the more unsettling of the two, both in narrative and in the ambiguous harmonic progressions. Perhaps because it is more familiar to more listeners, Opus 4 is there to “smooth things out” after all that ambiguity in both music and narrative.

On the personal side, however, I think that, in spite of my interest in Schoenberg’s music from all of his periods, this was my first encounter with Opus 5. As a result, it provided what amounted to “a new light” on the composer’s earliest published efforts. I salute Payare for selecting his for this “anniversary” album; but I must confess to being more than a little disappointed that other albums have not emerged reflecting the other stages in Schoenberg’s journey as a composer.

LCCE to Celebrate Schoenberg’s 150th Birthday

Arnold Schoenberg at work (photograph provided courtesy of LCCE)

Arnold Schoenberg was born on September 13, 1874, meaning that his 150th birthday was celebrated last month. Jonathan Khuner marked the occasion with a Celebrating Schoenberg concert series, which included a performance by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE) of a melodrama, whose full title is “Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds ‘Pierrot lunaire’” (three times seven poems from Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire). Next month LCCE will begin its own 2024/25 season, and the title of the first program will be Fall Cabaret: Pierrot Lunaire.

The entire program was conceived to explore the extremes of drama and poetry within the intimate setting of chamber music. The texts for Schoenberg’s score will be delivered by soprano Nikki Einfeld, but they will not be sung in the conventional sense of the word. Rather, the texts are delivered in a style called Sprechstimme (spoken singing). Schoenberg wrote his own foreword for the published score, in which he tried to explain the vocal technique as follows:

The goal is certainly not at all a realistic, natural speech. On the contrary, the difference between ordinary speech and speech that collaborates in a musical form must be made plain. But it should not call singing to mind, either.

By way of disclaimer, I should make it clear that I am no stranger to this technique or to how it is performed. This was due primarily to the commitment of six students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, who prepared a performance for the end of the fall semester of 2009. Their performance of Schoenberg’s score was so successful that they remained as a group after graduating, calling themselves Nonsemble 6.

For next month’s performance, Einfeld will be joined by Stacey Pelinka on flute, Jerome Simas on clarinet, Anna Presler on violin, Tanya Tomkins on cello, and pianist Eric Zivian. Matilda Hofman will conduct. The second half of the program will offer two selections. The first of these will be Five Haiku, the LCCE 2022 Composition Contest Winner composed by Tomàs Peire-Serrate. The program will then conclude with “Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories,” scored for soprano and chamber orchestra by Maria Schneider with English translations of the texts by Mark Strand.

The San Francisco performance of Fall Cabaret will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 2. The venue will be the Noe Valley Ministry, which is located in Noe Valley (of course) at 1021 Sanchez Street, just south of 23rd Street. General admission will be $35 with a $15 rate for students and $5 for those affiliated with Arts Access. All tickets may be purchased online through a single TIX Web page. They may also be dowloaded and printed at home at no extra charge.

Another Not-So-Fine Mess from Peter Sellars

Last night Peter Sellars returned to Davies Symphony Hall for his latest effort with the San Francisco Symphony, led by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, to wreak havoc on a narrative composition of music. This year that composition was Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 17, a one-act monodrama (performed by a single vocalist) entitled “Erwartung” (expectation). It was composed in 1909 but was not premiered until 1924, when Alexander Zemlinsky conducted it in Prague.

The narrative is as straightforward as it is spooky. It is the middle of the night in a forest, and a woman is searching for her lover. The music unfolds in a series of episodes, each a different stage in her search. Ultimately, she finds him or, more specifically, his corpse. Recovering from the shock of discovery, she wanders off into the night.

The Woman in “Erwartung” (Mary Elizabeth Williams) with the body bag containing her lover (courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

For reasons unknown (possibly because I missed the preconcert discussion) Sellars tried to turn this into a police procedural. The cast was extended to account for two policemen without speaking roles (Pierre Jones and Pedram Razavi), who are preparing the Woman (soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams) for an interview. In front of her is a body bag. In other words, the performance begins after all the events in Marie Pappenheim’s libretto have taken place, turning the sung role into a reflection on what has just happened. The good news was that this did not involve very much staging, allowing for an excellent account of musical interplay between the vocalist and the orchestra. Nevertheless, Sellars’ prologue did little more than undermine the impact of that Woman’s shock of discovery in Pappenheim’s text.

The first half of last night’s program was devoted entirely to the one-act ballet version of Maurice Ravel’s suite Ma mère l’Oye (Mother Goose). This began as a set of five short pieces based on fairy tales and scored for four hands on a single keyboard. It was composed in 1910 (one year after “Erwartung”); and the original “four hands” were those of Mimi and Jean Godebski, aged six and seven, respectively. Ravel subsequently orchestrated the music and expanded it for a ballet by adding a prelude and interludes between the original piano movements.

In last night’s program Alonzo King provided choreography for this extended version performed by the members of his LINES Ballet. Sadly, that choreography had absolutely nothing to do with any of the narratives that had inspired Ravel’s original score; and, while the overall score was relatively short, the dancing was so repetitive that felt like it was going on forever. Those familiar with the music and the tales behind the core movements were thus free to imagine relevant choreography for themselves.

To be fair, Salonen did his best to provide engaging accounts of both compositions; but both of the selections would have fared much better had the music been allowed to speak for itself.

Simon Rattle in Berlin: Schoenberg and Stravinsky

Simon Rattle on the cover of one of his Stravinsky albums (from the Amazon.com Web page for the single-disc release)

Readers familiar with the history of music in the twentieth century may accuse me of being a bit prankish in my decision to couple Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky in a single article accounting for performances by the Berlin Philharmonic led by Simon Rattle. Both of them spent the last years of their lives in Los Angeles County. However, as far as I can tell, the two of them were never in the same place at the same time (at least knowingly)! Indeed, the closest they ever came involved the fact that Robert Craft worked with both of them and may well have engaged in conversations in which each asked about the other! Thus, in accounting for the new Rattle anthology released by Warner Classics, I decided to take a compare-and-contrast approach to the two individuals that were clearly leading figures in the history of twentieth-century music.

Sadly, the grounds for comparison are more limited than I would have wished. Stravinsky is represented by only two CDs, while Schoenberg has three, one of which includes music that he arranged, rather than composed. Furthermore, each composer went through a series of stages, each of which involved a different approach to composition; and, in neither case, is the full extent of those stages given a fair shake. However, as is always the case where “the business” is concerned, one must work with what one has; and I shall try to do my best in accounting for both of these “rival” composers on this new anthology.

As is often the case such anthologies, I tend to follow where my strongest memories lead me. Therefore, I would like to begin with Stravinsky’s rather innovative approach to composing symphonies. After his initial undertaking, the 1905 symphony in E-flat (sometimes identified as his Opus 1), Stravinsky put the very idea of a symphony aside for over a decade. After that, each of his compositions had its own unique qualities, which reflected what he thought a “symphony” should be. The first of these was the 1920 “Symphonies of Wind Instruments.” Ten years later he composed the “Symphony of Psalms;” and, in the following decade, he composed the “Symphony in C” (1940) and the “Symphony in Three Movements” (1945).

In the Warner collection, the “Symphonies of Wind Instruments” is situated between “Le Sacre du printemps” and “Apollon musagète.” All three of these were recorded in concerts on dates very distant from each other; and my guess is that the producers (Stephen Johns and Christoph Franke) had a “compare and contrast” album in mind. Nevertheless, these are all early compositions, even though the two ballet scores were recorded using their respective 1947 revisions. (Stravinsky seems to have known how to keep his checkbook healthy when a copyright was about to expire!)

The other three symphonies are grouped on a separate CD but not ordered chronologically. Nevertheless, they do account for the composer’s “later thoughts” about what he wanted a symphony to be; and I, for one, enjoyed listening to how they had been grouped when the CD was pressed. On the other hand, where the ballet scores are concerned, I think that I still prefer listening to the recordings that Stravinsky himself made.

Schoenberg is represented by only three original compositions. However, the first of these is also his longest! Gurrelieder requires both solo vocal and choral resources, and its full duration requires two CDs. I actually purchased this as a two-CD set when it was first released. I felt that listening to this music frequently would be the only way I could get my head around what had struck me as a sprawling undertaking. I never quite succeeded, but there are definitely moments that still send a chill down my spine, particularly when they are sung by Karita Mattila!

Another work that requires a fair amount of exposure before the listener begins to appreciate the content is the first (Opus 9) chamber symphony. This was subsequently rescored for a full orchestra (still keeping “chamber” in the title), published as Opus 9b. Personally, I still prefer the original version; but Rattle seems to have found just the right way to guide the attentive listener through the orchestral version’s plethora of enigmatic cadences. Where that genre is concerned, I was far more satisfied with Opus 34. The full title of this composition (including the parenthesis) is “Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielszene (Drohende Gefahr, Angst, Katastrophe),” which translates as “Accompaniment Music for a Light Play [as in “the interactive play of lights] Scene (Threatening Danger, Fear, Catastrophe).” All of those parenthetical qualities are clearly evident, and one does not need visual stimuli to reinforce them!

The remaining Schoenberg selection is his orchestration of Johannes Brahms’ Opus 25 (first) piano quartet, composed in the key of G minor. Schoenberg clearly had fun in deploying instrumental qualities that one would never encounter in Brahms’ own orchestral undertakings. Nevertheless, it is clear that, in composing the concluding “Ronda alla Zingarese” movement, the composer wanted to have some fun; and I always break out in a grin when Schoenberg deploys a xylophone to add to the “fun factor!”

Schoenberg really did have a sense of humor. (The family car had a horn that was tuned to play the opening motif of his second string quartet.) On the recordings that he made in Berlin, Rattle seems to have an effective grasp on the composer’s full extent of dispositions!

E4TT: A Disappointing Evening at SFCM

Last night in the Barbro Osher Recital Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), Ensemble for These Times (E4TT) presented its latest program, entitled Expression:Ism. The program was described as “a multimedia dialogue between music by the Second Viennese School triumvirate of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern and contemporary pieces by composers inspired by their groundbreaking work.” The evening was visual as well as auditory, working with the SFCM Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) Department to present images by Schoenberg himself and various Expressionist painters, along with videos by Stephanie Neumann, making for real-time processing of a rich “media mix.”

Lylia Guion, Dale Tsang, and Amy Brodo playing David Garner’s second piano trio, with projected “video enhancement” (screen shot from the video stream of last night’s performance)

At the end of the day, however, what mattered most was the music; and the music was at its best at the end of the program. Following the interleaving of Second Viennese School and contemporary programming, the evening concluded with the world premiere of the second piano trio composed by David Garner, a co-founder of E4TT. This was performed by three artists appearing as guests for E4TT, violinist Lylia Guion, Amy Brodo on cello, and pianist Dale Tsang (E4TT emerita). There was just the right blend of commitment and technical capabilities to bring this music to life with a spirit that was sorely lacking in all the preceding selections on the program.

Sadly, the Second Viennese School did not fare as well. Tsang seemed to be too preoccupied with getting all the notes in the Schoenberg solo piano pieces (from his Opus 11) in their proper place to endow the music with any expressiveness. Taylor Chan fared somewhat better with the rondo that Anton Webern composed for solo piano, given the title “Sonatensatz” and not published during his (short) lifetime. On the other hand, TJ Martin’s instrumental arrangement of Alban Berg’s Sieben Frühe Lieder, scored for cor anglais (Laura Reynolds), vibraphone (Elizabeth Clark Hall), and cello (Amy Brodo) muddled the interplay between voice and accompaniment, rather than enhancing it.

On the contemporary side, the “Mystic Trio” by SFCM graduate Valerie Liu, with Chan at the keyboard performing with Reynolds and Brodo, had little to offer other than tolerable brevity. Reynolds and Brodo performed in another trio with Guion, “unmute,” by Britney Dawn Do, which was similarly unimpressive. The program began with Chan playing “Olive Orchard,” one of the movements from Adam Schoenberg’s Picture Etudes, which seems to have been included for the composer’s name, even though (to the best of my knowledge) he is not related to the Second Viennese School composer!

I experienced this performance through the SFCM livestream. I have never found the Osher Recital Hall to be a particularly conducive setting for listening. However, readers know that many of the livestreams of Chamber Music Tuesday programs have been as satisfying for the video work as for the music. Sadly, last night’s video fell distressingly short of that previous high standard. This may have been due to the visual side of how the space was used, for which the video crew might have been unprepared. As a result, almost the entire evening was unsatisfying until the more straightforward presentation of Garner’s trio at the conclusion.

Sticking it to Milton Babbitt?

In 1958 the popular magazine High Fidelity published an article by the highly intellectual composer Milton Babbitt. Babbitt had entitled the article "The Composer as Specialist;" and it addressed the mindset gulf between many composers following in the footsteps of Arnold Schoenberg and most audiences. (Schoenberg himself had addressed this topic.) Without Babbitt's knowledge or consent, High Fidelity changed the title to "Who Cares if You Listen?;" and Babbitt has been living with the consequences of that decision ever since. However, even if he found the title "offensively vulgar," there remains that connotation of detachment in his "specialist" stance.

I have no idea if Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson intentionally decided to exploit this stance and twit Babbitt at the same time, but they definitely found an amusing and clever way to do so. Here is the BBC News account of their project:

US rock star Lou Reed and his artist wife Laurie Anderson are to stage a "high-frequency concert" for canines in Australia.

Music for Dogs, to be held outside the Sydney Opera House, is billed as "an inter-species social gathering on a scale never seen before in Australia".

The bizarre recital in June will be largely inaudible to the human ear.

The couple said they have experience making music for at least one dog - their rat terrier, Lollabelle.

"She likes things with a lot of smoothness but with beats in them,'' Ms Anderson told the Sydney Morning Herald.

She said the inspiration for the performance at the Vivid Live festival in Sydney came while she was backstage at an event and thought: "Wouldn't it be great, if you were playing a concert and you look out and you see all dogs?"

The show, created by Ms Anderson, will last for 20 minutes as she says "dogs don't have a giant concentration span".

The sounds will be played at high frequency like a dog whistle, setting dogs' ears twitching but barely audible to their owners.

It is billed in the festival programme as "an absolute must for any dog and their two-legged friends".

The link to Babbitt is delightfully obvious: Now we have "Who cares if you can't listen?" However, even if Babbitt was not the intended target, this is clearly aimed at those who tend to get excessively serious about concert attendance, particularly in an opera house. It takes a certain level of chutzpah to break with such a strongly-held social tradition; and I would say that the level is high enough for Reed and Anderson to share the Chutzpah of the Week award!

Rodziński and the Cleveland Orchestra

In April of 2021, I wrote about the Sony Classical release of sixteen CDs covering the complete recordings of Artur Rodziński leading the New York Philharmonic for Columbia Masterworks. Rodziński was appointed Music Director of the Philharmonic in 1943 and held that position for four years. Prior to that appointment he served as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra, beginning in 1933; and, during that tenure, he visited the Philharmonic podium on several occasions (one of which happened to be the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor).

Tomorrow Sony Classical will release the collection of recordings that Rodziński made in Cleveland (with one slight, but significant, exception). This is a box set of thirteen CDs; and, for those that cannot wait, Amazon.com has created the Web page for processing pre-orders. The parenthesis applies to the final CD in the collection, whose first three tracks do not involve Rodziński. They account for a recording of Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 36 violin concerto with Louis Krasner as soloist. However, the performance is conducted by Dmitri Mitropoulos leading the New York Philharmonic.

When this recording was released as an LP, the “flip side” was of Krasner performing the Alban Berg violin concerto; and for that recording Rodziński conducted the Cleveland. Both of those recordings are on that final CD along with Rodziński conducting Nathan Milstein in a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Opus 64 violin concerto in E minor. I am not going to quibble with the content of this CD, since I enjoyed many hours of listening to the Schoenberg-Berg LP during my student days!

Sadly, Amazon did not take the trouble to provide the track listing for all thirteen of the CDs. Fortunately, the Presto Classical Limited Web page does account for all of the tracks; but it does not provide the “boundaries” that define which tracks are grouped on each of the thirteen CDs! For the most part the repertoire is familiar. Of greatest interest, however, is that the collection includes two symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Opus 10 (first) symphony in F minor, composed during his student days, and the Opus 47 (fifth) symphony in D minor, which was the one that received the most attention during my student days!

I was also pleasantly struck by the inclusion of Jean Sibelius’ Opus 82 (fifth) symphony in E-flat major. The coda of this symphony’s final movement is one of the great mind-benders in music history, significant enough that the Wikipedia page accounted for the piano reduction of those critical nine measures. In that context it is worth recalling that the Philharmonic collection includes the Opus 63 (fourth) symphony in A minor, which is another mind-bender.

Rather unique is the appearance of Jerome Kern. His “Show Boat: A Scenario for Orchestra” amounts to a “tone poem” based on the themes of the more familiar songs from the original musical. It is also worth noting that Show Boat was performed by the San Francisco Opera in June of 2014 with staging by Francesca Zambello and John DeMain as conductor. Thus, while, for the most part, Columbia wanted to take a “back to basics” approach in recording Rodziński’s work with the Cleveland Orchestra, the conductor still managed to provide listeners with several less-familiar compositions in his repertoire.

More Schoenberg from Pina Napolitano

One of the performers I have been particularly interested in following, even if I am limited to recordings, is the Italian pianist Pina Napolitano. During my tenure with Examiner.com, I was drawn to her work when I learned (and wrote about) the CD she released of the complete piano music of Arnold Schoenberg. Since that time her recordings have provided a broad account of repertoire, including two Brahms the Progressive albums on which the solo piano music of Johannes Brahms rubs shoulders with piano compositions by Alban Berg and Anton Webern.

Cover of the album being discussed (from the Amazon.com Web page)

At the end of last month, Odradek Records released Napolitano’s latest album, whose full title is Kammerkonzert: Music of Arnold Schoenberg. The first three of the four compositions on this album consist of arrangements that involve the piano. The first of these is the Opus 42 piano concerto, originally composed for full orchestra accompaniment, which was subsequently reworked by fifteen solo instruments by Hugh Collins Rice. That arrangement happens to be the instrumentation for Schoenberg’s Opus 9, his first chamber symphony, which is the final composition on the album.

The second arranged composition is the Opus 22 set of four orchestral songs, originally composed for soprano and large orchestra. Felix Greissle arranged all four of these songs for a baritone voice singing with a chamber ensemble consisting of a piccolo, a flute, a clarinet, a bass clarinet, a violin, a viola, a violoncello, and a piano. The final arrangement is by Schoenberg himself, who reworked the “Wood Dove’s Song” from his Gurre-Lieder oratorio for mezzo-soprano with violin, viola, cello, bass, flute, three clarinets, one E-flat clarinet, one bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, two horns, harmonium, and piano.

I have spent a fair amount of my life trying to get my head around the Opus 9 chamber symphony. Most recently, I have moved away from focusing on the “atonal logic,” preferring to enjoy the music for the transparency of its diverse instrumental sonorities. Where this new album is concerned, it seems as if Napolitano was similarly drawn to those transparencies and invoked them for her arrangements of piano work. The transparencies are particularly effective in providing context for the vocal music in both baritone Christoph Filler’s account of Opus 22 and mezzo Ida Aldrian’s performance of the “Wood Dove’s Song." The instrumental parts are performed by members of the Wiener Concert-Verein, led by conductor Michael Zlabinger.

Ironically, I found myself approaching the three arrangements as a “warm-up,” preparing my “listening chops” for my latest encounter with Opus 9; and, in the course of listening to this album, I realized that the final track on the album was finally beginning to make sense!

Telegraph Quartet Couples Ravel and Schoenberg

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

This past Friday Azica Records released its first recording of performances by the Telegraph Quartet. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area with connections to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) as Quartet-in-Residence, the ensemble consists of violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Maille (who share first chair), violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw. The title of the new album is Divergent Paths, and it is the first in a series entitled 20th Century Vantage Points. The album title refers to the decidedly different directions followed by the two composers represented. The first four tracks present Maurice Ravel’s only string quartet in the key of F major. The remaining tracks account for Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 7, his first “numbered” string quartet in the key of D minor.

By way of disclaimer, I should confess that I was in the audience at SFCM for the first time that Telegraph performed each of these selections at that venue. The first of those recitals took place on December 9, 2017 with a program in which the Schoenberg quartet was preceded by the fifth (in A major) of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 18 quartets. The Ravel quartet was then performance at SFCM on April 4, 2018, the earliest composition on a program that showcased Robert Sirota’s third string quartet and John Harbison’s sixth string quartet.

In terms of the “historical time-line,” these two quartets are very close to each other. Ravel completed his quartet in 1903, having begun it the previous year. Similarly, Schoenberg worked on his Opus 7 between 1904 and 1905. However, where listening is concerned, there is a wide gulf between the two compositions. My guess is that almost everyone that goes regularly to chamber music recitals has become familiar with Ravel’s quartet. On the other hand I would be surprised if I could count the number of readers that have encountered the Schoenberg quartet (either in recital or on recording) on one hand. Nevertheless, this was not my first opportunity to experience that quartet in performance, since I had the good fortune to listen to the Kronos Quartet perform it at the University of Southern California when I was living in Los Angeles.

The morning after Telegraph’s Beethoven-Schoenberg program I found myself writing at great length about the Schoenberg portion. This amounted to an exercise in “sense-making through writing;” and, when I go back to read through that article, I have to confess that I had not made very much progress towards making sense of it all. On the other hand, I can appreciate Telegraph’s own approach, which is to liken the score to that of an opera by Richard Wagner. This is not just a matter of extended duration but also an appreciation of thematic material endowed with narrative qualities. To be fair, however, Schoenberg himself wrote that he began work on Opus 7 after having “abandoned program-music.” One might say that, while there may not be an underlying “story,” one can still approach a performance as an “act of narration.”

At the end of the day, my best guide to understanding the nuts and bolts of Opus 7 came from that rather generous booklet that accompanied the Neue Wiener Schule box set of performances by the LaSalle Quartet released by Deutsche Grammophon. In that booklet the background material about Opus 7 was by Schoenberg himself. Sadly, I have no idea whether or not that booklet was included when Deutsche Grammophon reissued this collection in August of 2013. The good news is that the new Telegraph album comes with a booklet of its own, which includes an essay by Kai Christiansen. That essay is much shorter than Schoenberg’s account, but it still lays the basic background for those who approach the quartet as serious listeners.

I suspect that any reader that has made it through all of the above paragraphs may wonder whether or not this is a trip worth taking. When listening to Telegraph’s recital performance of the Schoenberg quartet, I found that the experience was not only worthwhile but downright absorbing. For that matter, the Ravel quartet allowed me to settle in to an appreciation of Telegraph’s expressiveness; and that appreciation continued into the Schoenberg recording. Given that my previous recital encounter with Kronos traversed all four of the Schoenberg quartets, I would hope that Telegraph will extend their appreciation of Schoenberg into the remaining quartets.

The Mathematician’s Ballet

After having kept the book on a shelf for far too long, over the last several months I have been working my way through Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans. This effort was probably motivated by the recent appearance of Homans’ second book, which is devoted entirely to George Balanchine. It would be fair to cite Balanchine as the  pioneering force in the development of American ballet, distinguishing it clearly from much of European ballet tradition. For the most part, Apollo’s Angels has made for a consistently enjoyable reading experience; but things became interesting for me when the timeline arrived at Balanchine’s achievements. Reading Homans evoked distant memories of the period when I took out my first subscription to New York City Ballet (NYCB) performances in Lincoln Center.

At that time I was an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in mathematics and taking as many electives as I could manage in music courses. As I have previously observed on this site, my spare time (such as its was) was spent working at the campus radio station, devoting much of my time to programming twentieth-century music. As might be guessed, the mathematician in me was particularly drawn to techniques pursued by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern that involved permutations of pitch classes, leading eventually to what became known as the twelve-tone technique.

In that context I became totally hooked on Igor Stravinsky’s “Agon,” which he composed for a Balanchine ballet with the same title. For the better part of his life, Stravinsky wanted nothing to do with Schoenberg. However, after Schoenberg’s death, Stravinsky took an interest in atonal technique, possibly as a result of the influences of Robert Craft.

“Agon” fascinated me for the ways in which atonality rubbed shoulders with tonal traditions, traditions that, in this case, reflected back to the seventeenth century of René Descartes, Étienne Pascal, and particularly Marin Mersenne, whose Harmonie universelle treatise was published in 1636. It was the bold rhetoric of “Agon” than convinced me that I had to see how Balanchine had created a ballet for it. So it was that I began following Balanchine’s choreography both at Lincoln Center and in works that were performed by the Boston Ballet.

Thus, after about 500 pages of reading, I found myself scribbling no end of marginal notes when Homans wrote about “Agon.” She cited the ballet as the third part of a “Greek trilogy” of Balanchine working with Stravinsky’s music. The first two ballets, “Apollo” and “Orpheus,” were grounded in familiar narratives. In sharp contrast, “Agon” was inspired by a seventeenth-century treatise on the dance. What was important, however, was that such dances were intended for “recreational activities” taking place in the setting of a royal court; they were not created to present narratives.

In that context “Agon” had less to do with ancient myths and drew, instead, upon Balanchine’s abstract approach to Paul Hindemith’s composition for piano and strings involving a theme with four variations, given the subtitle “The Four Temperaments.” Balanchine’s choreography realized each of the dispositions associated with those variations (melancholy, sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric). However, there was also an underlying “vocabulary” for the entire ballet; and all of the elements of that vocabulary were assembled into the choreographic interpretation of Hindemith’s coda. As a result, it was no surprise to me to observe that the choreography for “Agon” also wraps up with a coda that reflects on the opening measures of Stravinsky’s score.

All this should reflect back on the thoughts about “Agon” that I documented back in June of 2020 when, due to pandemic conditions, I had turned to YouTube when I was unable to attend “physical” performances. At that time I had discovered that John Clifford had uploaded digitizations of films of NYCB performances. The “Agon” film had no end of technical shortcomings; but I made it a point to cite “the rich interplay of abstraction and expressiveness.”

Because of the close partnership between Balanchine and Stravinsky, one could appreciate the many intricacies of abstraction based on how Balanchine chose to interpret Stravinsky’s music. At the same time there is an underlying foundation of expressiveness coming from all of the dancers, reflecting not so much on Stravinsky’s music as on a rich understanding of what it means to bring Balanchine’s choreography to life through the act of performance. From my own point of view, I feel that mathematics provided me with a platform on which I could grasp the elements of of abstraction; and those elements, in turn, provided a second platform from which I could view the “parallel” elements of expressiveness.

This may well be the only setting in which mathematics can serve as a prerequisite for appreciating a ballet!

Alpha to Release New Benjamin Appl Album

A little over a month ago, San Francisco Performances concluded its 2022–23 season with a recital by baritone Benjamin Appl accompanied at the piano by James Baillieu. This was a themed program, given the title Nocturne. I had a bit of fun writing about this performance, giving it the title “Benjamin Appl’s Long Night’s Journey into Day.” To be fair, however, I would not accuse the event as being overly long, even with the spoken introductions by both Appl and Baillieu that accounted for the progress of the journey.

from the cover of the Forbidden Fruit album on its Presto Music Web page

This coming Friday Alpha will release an album entitled Forbidden Fruit. Like Nocturne, this amounts to another themed recital, this time based on one of the earliest narratives in the Book of Genesis. The program is structured around 28 songs by eighteen composers. The earliest offering is an anonymous folk song; and the one living composer on the album is Jake Heggie, represented by his song entitled “The Snake.” As is often the case, the album is currently available for pre-order; but the most reliable site is a Presto Music Web page, which accounts for both download and CD offerings.

One can probably guess from the album title that the narrative for this album is that of the Garden of Eden. The folk song that beings the album has, as its first line, “I will give my love an apple;” but those that know their British folk songs will know that this song has nothing to do with temptation, let alone an idealized Eden. So it goes as the cycle progresses, in which the narrated phrases have much more to do with temptation and the resulting Fall from Grace than do the selections sung by Appl. For that matter, the first selection to follow that folk song is the “In Paradisum” antiphon that concludes Gabriel Fauré’s setting of the Requiem Mass (which is performed as a piano solo by Baillieu). However, that first word translates as “into,” rather than simply “in,” since the Mass concludes by the soul entering heavenly Paradise (as opposed to the earthy Paradise from which Adam and Eve are expelled).

All this is a long-winded way of saying that listening to the songs as individual entities is likely to be more satisfying than trying to string them all into a coherent narrative structure. Personally, there are any number of tracks that provide pleasure on their own merits. One of my favorites is Kurt Weill’s “Youkali,” which is more lusciously exotic than any Biblical account of Eden! Also, since I have so few opportunities to listen to the songs composed by Arnold Schoenberg, I was particularly delighted to encounter “Arie aus dem Spiegel von Arcadien,” which was given the title “Langsamer Walzer” in his Brettl-Lieder collection. Finally, there is Hanns Eisler’s vicious account of bureaucracy his setting of  Bertolt Brecht’s poem “Ballade vom Paragraphen 218,” summoning a voice more vicious than anything Eden’s serpent could have mustered.

Both Appl and Baillieu serve up convincing accounts of all of those songs (and, for that matter, all of the songs on the CD); and, as far as I am concerned, their efforts are more important than whether there is an underlying Biblical narrative!

LCCE to Conclude Season with World Premiere

The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE) will conclude its 2022–2023 season with a program entitled Starry Night. As might be guessed, the program will include Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 4 string sextet entitled “Verklärte Nacht” (transfigured night). In addition, flutist Stacey Pelinka will be soloist in “Night of South Winds,” a new flute concerto by Josiah Catalan. The other works on the program will be “Bedtime Stories” by Nina Shekhar and “Sleepless Night,” by Bay Area composer Marty Rokeach.

The San Francisco performance of this program will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, June 5. The venue will be the San Francisco Conservatory of Music building at 50 Oak Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni station. Tickets are being sold for $35 with a $10 rate for students. A Web page has been created for purchasing both categories of tickets. The charge for tickets purchased at the door will be $38 with a $15 rate for students.

Mitropoulos and American Composers

My journey through Sony Classical’s Dimitri Mitropoulos: The Complete RCA and Columbia Album Collection concludes with an account of his performances of music composed in the United States. Note that I did not write “music by American composers.” Thanks to Adolf Hitler, the United States saw a significant influx of European composers trying to escape the Nazi juggernaut. Many of them were particularly forward-looking, and I am one that believes that our country was very fortunate enough to have Arnold Schoenberg as one of them.

I might even go as far as to say that Schoenberg was as prolific after arriving in the United States as he was before leaving Europe. Indeed, one the best examples of how he applied his twelve-tone technique is his Opus 36 violin concerto. He dedicated this concerto to his former student Anton Webern (who did not make the “transatlantic move” and suffered the consequences).

The concerto was given its world premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The soloist was Louis Krasner, who had worked closely with Alban Berg on the composition of his violin concerto. Mitropoulos recorded this concerto with the New York Philharmonic, and Columbia released it on an album that also included the Berg concerto. Krasner was the soloist for both concertos, but the Berg concerto was performed by the Cleveland Orchestra led by Artur Rodziński. This is definitely a must-listen album for those interested in the work of Schoenberg and his students (even if Mitropoulos occupies only half of the CD).

A related composer from Schoenberg’s time in Vienna, who also made the move to the United States, is Ernst Krenek. While Krenek was never part of the “Schoenberg school,” he had his own approaches to innovation. Mitropoulos recorded his “Symphonic Elegy,” which was composed in memory of Webern’s tragic death and was scored for string orchestra. Columbia coupled this with Schoenberg’s Opus 17 “Erwartung,” which had been previously performed in Europe. Mitropoulos recorded the performance with soprano soloist Dorothy Dow, making this CD another “must listen” album.

There is also an opportunity to listen to the work of one of Schoenberg’s finest American pupils. Leon Kirchner studied with Schoenberg at the University of California in Los Angeles. After his graduate studies at the Berkeley campus, he pursued both composing and an academic career. He composed his piano concerto on a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation, and he completed it in 1953. The recording was made with support from the Naumburg Foundation. Kirchner himself performed the solo piano part with Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic.

Curiously, there is only one other American-born composer that seems to have attracted much of Mitropoulos’ attention. That is Morton Gould, who composed the music for Agnes de Mille’s ballet about Lizzie Borden, which was entitled “Fall River Legend” and was first performed by American Ballet Theatre in April of 1948. Gould extracted a suite from his score, which Mitropoulos recorded with the New York Philharmonic. Mitropoulos also recorded two “singles” of Gould’s music. “Philharmonic Waltzes,” which (obviously) was performed by the New York Philharmonic, was also composed in 1948. (The CD couples this with Roger Sessions’ second symphony and Elie Siegmeister’s suite Ozark Set.) However, there is also an earlier (1946) Gould composition entitled “Minstrel Show,” which Mitropoulos recorded during his tenure in Minneapolis.

The other American-born composer of significance is Samuel Barber. Mitropoulos conducted the premiere of Barber’s Opus 32 four-act opera Vanessa, which was performed by the Metropolitan Opera. This opera has enjoyed several revivals, one of which I remember seeing on television. Still, this “original cast” recording remains refreshing with Eleanor Steber in the title role and Nicolai Gedda as Anatol.

Finally, it is worth noting that Mitropoulos shared an album with Gunther Schuller entitled Music for Brass. The selections on this album were performed by The Brass Ensemble of the Jazz and Classical Music Society, reflecting Schuller’s interest in a synthesis of the two genres. Mitropoulos contributed to the album by conducted Schuller’s “Symphony for Brass and Percussion.” The result was not particularly jazzy, but the production of the album provided a platform for forward-looking jazz players such as Miles Davis and J. J. Johnson.

Yuja Wang: No Longer Consistently Satisfying?

Pianist Yuja Wang last appeared in Davies Symphony Hall this past January, when she performed as concerto soloist with Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) conducting the San Francisco Symphony. Over the quarter-century of following Wang’s concert appearances, I had found her to be one of the most consistently satisfying performers I had encountered. Sadly, that consistency was shattered by a slam-bang approach to Franz Liszt’s first piano concerto in E-flat major for which Wang and MTT were partners in crime.

Last night I returned to Davies for Wang’s solo recital, and I regret to report that the listening experience was equally dissatisfying. This was more than a little ironic in light of the imaginative attention that went into the program she prepared. Each half of the program consisted of three compositions, the first from the nineteenth century, followed by two from the twentieth. Furthermore, the nineteenth-century offerings were stretched across a wide distance, with the third of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 31 sonatas in E-flat major, composed in 1802, at one end and Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 23 (third) piano sonata in F-sharp minor, composed in 1898, at the other. The twentieth-century composers in the first half were Arnold Schoenberg and György Ligeti, and those in the second half were Isaac Albéniz and Nikolai Kapustin.

The Scriabin sonata was probably the one selection that offered more than a few glimpses of sensitivity. This is the only four-movement piano sonata that Scriabin composed, and there was no break in the transition between the third and fourth movements. (After the fourth sonata, Opus 30 in F-sharp major, the remaining six sonatas were all single-movement without key specification.) Wang was not shy in approaching the intensity of Scriabin’s rhetoric, but there was a sense of keen focus on the music guiding her interpretation that made this an absorbing and satisfying listening experience.

Sadly, the rest of the program tended to be dominated by dispositions at their most extreme, more often than not overshadowing any expressiveness residing in the marks on paper (or, in Wang’s case, images on the screen). Where the Beethoven sonata was concerned, one might have been able to imagine that the composer himself may also have exaggerated expressiveness in his own interpretation for performance. Indeed, as deafness began to overcome him, such exaggeration may have been his only remaining connection to the music. What motivated Wang to pursue similar extremes is anyone’s guess.

The work on the program that probably suffered the most was Schoenberg’s Opus 25 suite, which is probably one of the better examples of the composer’s most disciplined approach to his twelve-tone technique. However, as Virgil Thomson once observed in an article for The New York Review of Books, the real music in Schoenberg’s compositions emerged from his rhythms, rather than his pitch selections. Opus 25 is an excellent case in point, since it reflects on those dance forms that were so familiar to Johann Sebastian Bach in his suites. Sadly, there was no sense of expressive rhythm in Wang’s performance, let alone any suggestion that most of the movement titles referred to dance forms. Her focus seemed to be entirely one of which keys were depressed at which times; and, as might be guessed, any sense of emotional dispositions had vanished entirely.

The closest those dispositions had come to the surface were best found in the final work on the program, two of the movements from Kapustin’s Opus 53, entitled 24 Preludes in the Jazz Style. This was clearly also a nod at Bach. However, there was more than enough expressive rhythm in Kapustin’s “jazz style” to blow away the dust that had accumulated over Wang’s approach to Schoenberg. One could also tell from her physical disposition that she was much more “at home” with Kapustin than she had been with Schoenberg; and, in that comfort zone, she even allowed a few shadows of Bach to be cast over her keyboard.

Almost as engaging was her approach to two of the études selected from the set composed by Ligeti. Her intense focus on getting every note in its proper place was appropriate for her second selection, “L’escalier du diable” (the devil’s staircase, an imaginative attempt to turn an optical illusion into music). On the other hand, the “Automne à Varsovie” (autumn in Warsaw) movement was far more expressive in Ligeti’s conception; but Wang seemed to care about little more than making sure that every note was in its proper place. Nevertheless, her account of Ligeti’s Polish impressions was more convincing than the Spanish sentiments found in the “Lavapiés” (named after a neighborhood in Madrid) movement from Albéniz’ Iberia collection.

I must confess that I lost count of the number of encores Wang took. None were announced. My guess is that, except for one of the Philip Glass études, all of the selections were bravura arrangements of familiar sources. The one for the final movement (Badinerie) of Bach’s BWV 1067 orchestral suite may have deserved a price for “furthest over the top;” but it was quickly lost in the shuffle through the other encores.

Nevertheless, Wang played to a full house. The majority of the attendees seemed to have loved every minute of it. Who am I to complain?