The Sierra Ensemble at the Center for New Music

The Sierra Ensemble performing at C4NM (screen shot from the video being discussed)

Last night the Center for New Music (C4NM) hosted a live-streamed performance by the Sierra Ensemble. This group is a horn trio with hornist Janis Lieberman joined by Matthew Vincent on violin and Marc Steiner on piano. The layout of space at C4NM allowed the three of them to respect social distancing in a triangular array. Steiner’s piano was in the center and farthest to the rear, while Vincent and Lieberman were forward and against the left and right walls, respectively. The program was recorded and can now be viewed as a Facebook video.

The title of the program was A Frozen Shimmer in the Summer Sun. This referred to a pair of short pieces by Andrés Carrizo being given their San Francisco premiere: “Like a Frozen Silver Shimmer” and “Of Frozen Resonance.” The pieces may not have been consistent with the summer season, but they involved a rich diversity of sonorities from all three of the instruments.

The composition of the ensemble is most usually associated with Johannes Brahms’ Opus 40 trio in E-flat major. The opening selection, composed by Eric Ewazen in 2012, amounted to a “response” to the “call” of that trio. The layout of its four movements paralleled Brahms’ tempo selections and prevailing rhetoric. The only significant exception involved some fugal writing in the final movement. Ewazen’s trio was given an attentive performance convincing enough to hold up, at least potentially, to subsequent listening experiences.

The trio that concluded the program, “And Ezra the Scribe Stood Upon a Pulpit,” was far less convincing. Composed (also) in 2012 by Brian Wilson, the title refers to the return on the Torah scroll to the Temple in Jerusalem following the Jews’ Babylonian Captivity. The program note by the composer suggested that the music had been equally inspired by Hebraic sources and Duke Ellington. The former involved direct quotation, which sounded out of place in the score’s overall texture. In spite of the size of my Ellington collection, I was unable to establish where the Duke had been situated.

That final offering was preceded by a duo performance by Vincent and Steiner. They prepared Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 454 sonata in B-flat major. This is probably the most familiar of the many sonatas that Mozart composed for this instrumental pairing. Vincent was consistently capable on technical grounds, but he and Steiner never really homed in on the prankish rhetorical gestures that make this sonata so engaging.

In fairness to the performers, however, last night’s concert had to contend with more technical problems than usual. The “usual” involves deploying microphones that adequately capture all of the instruments and render the spoken introductions all but inaudible. (One basically needed a “Spinal Tap amplifier” cranked up to eleven to hear anything spoken.) Furthermore, towards the end of the program, there was an intrusion of white noise that seemed to increase in amplitude as the music grew louder. Both Mozart and Wilson had to contend with this difficulty.

Clearly, this is not “plug-and-play” technology; and there are procedural details that still need to be mastered if these live-streamed events are to continue to serve as an adequate substitute for “being there.”