Themes and Elaborations from LCCE

The title of last night’s program, the second in the 2020–2021 season of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE), was Please Elaborate. The program was structured around two composers, Benjamin Britten and Eleanor Alberga, and music they wrote to “elaborate” on earlier works. The program was a live-streamed video capturing performances in two different venues, along with some explanatory background presented by the performers. The entire video has now been uploaded to YouTube for subsequent viewing.

The entire program was framed by the two Britten selections, both of which “elaborated” on songs by John Dowland. The first of these was Britten’s Opus 70 “Nocturnal,” composed for solo guitar (and guitarist Julian Bream) in 1963. Bream had been one of the earliest “regulars” to perform at Britten’s Aldeburgh Festival, which was founded in 1948; and one of his recitals may well have inspired Britten to compose the Opus 70 for him.

Soprano Nikki Einfeld singing “Come Heavy Sleep” with guitarist Michael Goldberg (screen shot from the video being discussed)

The Dowland song that inspired Britten was “Come Heavy Sleep.” The result was an engagingly elaborate example of what is sometimes called “reverse variation form,” since the theme is not stated until the very end of the composition. Guitarist Michael Goldberg decided that familiarity with the tune would probably facilitate listening. So he preceded his performance by accompanying soprano Nikki Einfeld in a performance of “Come Heavy Sleep.” (It would not surprise me to learn that tenor Peter Pears sang his Dowland selection at Aldeburgh, probably accompanied by Julian Bream.)

Unless I am mistaken, I have heard Goldberg play Opus 70 on a previous LCCE program. He clearly enjoys both the music itself and rising to the challenges that must be met in performing it. The clarity he brought to presenting the rhetorical qualities of each of the variations could not have been more informative; and, for all of its modesty, this composition has become one of my favorites in the Britten canon.

The program then concluded with Britten’s other major nod to Dowland. Scored for viola and piano, the Opus 48 “Lachrymae,” composed in 1950, is based on Dowland’s “If my complaints could passions move,” along with a passing reference to his instrumental “Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares.” Once again, the performance was preceded by Einfeld singing “If my complaints” accompanied by Goldberg. Violist Phyllis Kamrin was accompanied by Eric Zivian at the piano in the performance if Opus 48.

Kamrin delivered a compellingly intense account of both the source material and Britten’s “elaborations.” As in past LCCE concerts, Zivian failed to check himself against over-emoting many of Britten’s more intense passages. Nevertheless, Kamrin held her own, allowing the listener to appreciate Britten’s skills in composing viola without having to deal with too much distraction from the piano. (The camera’s account of Kamrin’s performing skills also facilitated the listening experience.)

Unfortunately, Zivian was pretty much “in charge” for Alberga’s portion of the program. Sadly, he never seemed to grasp what Alberga was doing in her scores, particularly for those of us that had listened to the Telegraph Quartet play her string quartet about a month ago at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Alberga called her “Oh Chaconne!” a “re-composition” of the Chaconne movement that concludes Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 1004 solo violin partita in D minor. This was clearly in contrast to the way in which Ferruccio Busoni turned virtuosic music for the violin into even more virtuosic music for solo piano. Unfortunately, Zivian’s physical style seemed to be trying to out-Busoni Busoni, making for frustrating distractions from what Alberga’s own music was trying to do.

The other Alberga composition was “No-Man’s-Land Lullaby,” scored for violin (Kamrin again) and piano. This was an intensely ironic evocation of the carnage of World War I in which “Wiegenlied” (lullaby), the fourth song in Johannes Brahms’ Opus 49 (and probably the most familiar lullaby tune), provided a thematic spinal cord. Einfeld sang the Brahms selection, accompanied by Zivian, to “introduce” Alberga’s composition. The attentive listener could easily recognize Alberga’s ironic twists; but, taken as a whole, the composition never quite registered the same level of coherence that Telegraph had brought to their Alberga performance.

Nevertheless, after having enjoyed Telegraph’s introduction of Alberga to its audience, the opportunity to listen to more of her music only a month later was most welcome.