More Chamber Music for Low Strings from SFS

It took longer than I had anticipated, but this afternoon I finally had the opportunity to listen to the last of the four chamber music compositions being streamed by SFSymphony+ in the Chamber Music Series. This was another duo performance by members of the San Francisco Symphony (SFS), cellist Amos Yang and bassist Charles Chandler, the same musicians that had performed the second offering in this series, Shinji Eshima’s “Bariolage.” The fourth program consisted entirely of “Synchronicity,” composed by another bassist, Andrés Martin.

Some readers may recall that Eshima’s title was named after a highly energetic bowing technique that dates back at least as far as the Baroque period. Martin’s composition is equally energetic. In this case, however, the foundation is one of a steady rhythmic pulse against which thematic motifs emerge. Those motifs alternate across the two instruments, often playing in the same register. As a result, it is almost always the case that listening can only resolve which instrument is playing which motif with visual assistance involving both the fingering of the strings and the rhythms defined by bow movements.

A “dissolve moment” during the performance of “Synchronicity” (screen shot courtesy of the San Francisco Symphony)

This makes for more than the usual demand on sensory attention. However, because the music itself is less than ten minutes in duration, the shared effort of ears and eyes is never overloaded. Furthermore, the eyes are guided by highly attentive video capture, occasionally resorting to dissolve techniques to allow the eyes the benefits of multiple perspectives (see above). My guess is that the music would be just as exhilarating in a “physical” performance; but this video version will probably still be more informative for the attentive listener.