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.