Delightful Novelties from Friction Quartet at O1C

Friction Quartet members Kevin Rogers, Lucia Kobza, Doug Machiz, and Otis Harriel (from their Old First Concerts event page)

Last night the Friction Quartet returned to the Old First Concerts (O1C) series at Old First Presbyterian Church. This ensemble has firmly established itself as a vehicle for the exploration of novelty, introducing San Francisco audiences to any number of previously unfamiliar composers. Last night the program offered two world premiere performances, both by composers whose work is already part of the Friction repertoire, Piers Hellawell and Max Stoffregen. The other significant novelty was the debut of the quartet’s new violist, Lucia Kobza, performing with violinists Otis Harriel and Kevin Rogers and cellist Doug Machiz. Finally, the evening was marked by the appearance of a special guest artist, pianist Sarah Cahill, who joined Friction for the debut performance of the Stoffregen composition.

Stoffregen’s last piece for Friction involved a musical interpretation of a hike along the coast of the Pacific Ocean. In Stoffregen’s new work, he shifted his attention from the West Coast to the Southwest of the United States. The title of his latest composition is “The Gila: River, Mesa, and Mountain,” inspired by the Great Enchantment Trail, which follows the Gila River from outside Phoenix, Arizona through to its origins in the Black Range of mountains in western New Mexico. The subtitle denotes the three sections of the work, beginning in the flatlands of central Arizona, ascending through the tablelands to the east and culminating in a mountain range.

Musically, the attentive listener could clearly “follow the journey” through the shifts in both thematic content and rhetorical delivery. Stoffregen was clearly working with his familiarity with what Friction could do and how they could do it. While there were times when it seemed as if the piano was there for “continuo” purposes, one gradually and clearly became aware of Cahill’s contributions to the overall texture.

One interesting point, however, concerns the opening. Anyone familiar with what we tend to call the “standard classical music repertoire” is probably familiar with the Prelude that begins Richard Wagner’s opera Das Rheingold. Many wags like to describe this as Wagner playing God by giving his own account of creation; but that does not detract from the impact of a sustained tone (E-flat), which gradually unfolds into a chord, which becomes a motif, which then weaves itself into a rich polyphonic fabric. Stoffregen’s introduction of the Gila River is not as monomaniacal in rhetoric as Wagner’s Rhine, but he found his own way to introduce the river through its elemental origins. Through that introduction, he could then prepare the attentive listener to the journey that lay ahead, beginning by introducing the strings players one-by-one and then adding the first chords from the piano to the mix. The result was a thoroughly satisfying new point of view, both honoring and contrasting with Wagner’s way of doing things.

Hellawell was present last night to offer introductory remarks about his own new composition, “Family Group with Aliens.” He was inspired by the proposition that a single musical idea could be expressed in several different durational scales. The collection of those different approaches to expression constituted what he called a “family group;” and the members of that group were identified by the length of the duration. Thus, there was the “Small” section, half a minute in duration, a “Medium” prolongation of the content to two and one-half minutes, and a “Long” version lasting six minutes. The “Alien” sections are called “Reflectaphors.” John Briggs coined this synthesis of “reflection” and “metaphor” to denote an object recognized for both similarities and differences to other objects.

The entire composition consists of the three pieces in the “family group” and three Reflectaphors. Order is left to the performers, the only constraint being alternating the “family group” and Reflectaphor sections. The audience was informed in advance of the ordering that Friction would follow, and I have to confess that much of my attention was devoted to parsing the overall structure. The truth is that this is music whose appreciation depends on multiple listening experiences. Even the most attentive listener needs to grasp the underlying grammar before venturing into the more inventive territories of semantics and rhetoric. Thus, my strongest impression at the conclusion of the performance was a strong desire to encounter several more performances of the piece.

The one work on the program that was not a premiere dated all the way back to 2012. The title of Geoffrey Gordon’s piece, Abaciscus, is an archaic term to denote a single tile in a mosaic. The composition is a four-movement suite with each movement inspired by a mosaic the composer encountered in Europe. The first three date from fourth-century Italy, while the last comes from a twelfth-century monastery in Athens.

To some extent Abaciscus can be interpreted as a contemporary take on Ottorino Respighi’s suite Vetrate di chiesa (church windows), drawing upon mosaics rather than stained glass. Indeed, while Respighi drew upon Gregorian chant for thematic material, Gordon turned to the twelfth-century polyphony of Pérotin for his final movement. On the other hand, the third mosaic seems to represent some ancient predecessor of volleyball, leading Gordon to appropriate bits and pieces from The Beach Boys, specifically, their hit song “California Girls.” Equally engaging (with no explicit appropriation) was Gordon’s depiction of a mosaic of Orpheus, which seemed to invoke not only his lyre but also his agonizing death brought on by the Thracian Maenads.

Finally, it is worth noting that Kobza’s debut last night was a smooth one. The viola is never neglected in the Friction repertoire, and the attentive listener had no trouble grasping and appreciating her contribution to the mix in each of the three selections. Her execution was consistently clear, and her ear for matching the intonation of her colleagues was right on the money. As always seems to be the case, Friction left this listener looking forward to the next recital encounter.