Julia Den Boer’s Impressionist Abstractions

Yesterday evening the fifth annual season of the San Francisco International Piano Festival continued with the second of two concerts presented as part of the Piano Break series under the auspices of the Ross McKee Foundation. The pianist was French-American Julia Den Boer, who specializes in challenging modernist compositions, a far cry from the first Piano Break recital, which was devoted entirely to Charles Tomlinson Griffes. Considering Den Boer’s adventurism, it was a bit ironic that all of her selections were taken from the twentieth century. Nevertheless, each of them was decidedly adventurous in its own way.

Indeed, her most enigmatic offering is now over a century old. Leoš Janáček’s In the Mists is a cycle of four “misty” compositions that was composed in 1912. That “misty” trait is reflected by key signatures with five or six flats; but the enigmatic qualities are further enhanced by the almost fragmented approach that the composer took to phrasing. The Wikipedia page for this composition notes that Janáček wrote this music “while his operas were still being rejected by the Prague opera houses.” Those familiar with his operas will probably recognize many of their rhetorical devices in this piano cycle, possibly even reflecting on how they might be orchestrated. This left me wondering if those operatic influences may have guided Den Boer through her interpretation of the enigmas in this piece.

The early twentieth century was also represented by “Oiseaux tristes” (sad birds), the second of the five movements in Maurice Ravel’s Miroirs (mirrors) suite. This is also the shortest movement, and Den Boer’s reading seemed to endow it with the quality of a passing moment. The referential qualities of Ravel’s title situated the piece following a much later compositions, Rebecca Saunders’ “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,” composed in 1994.

The other selection from the second half of the twentieth century was Anthony Braxton’s “Composition No. 5,” completed in 1969. This is a collection of three pieces, published along with a composer’s note and instructions. The instructions are meant to guide the performer through the more enigmatic aspects of Braxton’s approaches to notation:

I am more familiar with Braxton’s work in different genres of jazz. This composition clearly does not fit into any of those genres. Indeed, the “composer’s note” refers to the last of the three pieces as “a sound arrangement that I devised.” This does not give the performer very much guidance, leaving me wondering whether Den Boer interprets the ambiguity of the score pages the same way with every performance or allows herself to take a freer approach to “sound arrangement” from one occasion to the next.

Through my familiarity with Braxton’s recordings, I found I could establish a receptive frame of mind for Den Boer’s performance. Sadly, I could not say the same for the Saunders composition. One could appreciate her efforts to explore different approaches to piano sonorities, but there was an opacity in Den Boer’s interpretation that almost suggested that the mirror Saunders had in mind did not admit of clear reflection. To be fair, this was my first encounter with anything that Saunders had composed; and I suspect that adjusting to her mind-set is going to take some time.