Yesterday afternoon Nicholas Phillips presented his second solo piano recital in the fifth annual season of the San Francisco International Piano Festival (SFIPF). While the first recital was devoted entirely to three works by Charles Tomlinson Griffes, the second showcased works by eight composers, all born during the second half of the twentieth century. Furthermore all the music had been composed during the current century, the oldest having been written in 2009. Finally, the program concluded with selections by three composers involved with the Bay Area, Mark Winges, Sahba Aminikia, and Gabriela Lena Frank. The host for this performance was Old First Concerts, allowing Phillips to perform for both the audience in Old First Presbyterian Church and those viewing the video stream.
Winges was one of three composers on the program whose music was given its world premiere performance. His piece was entitled “Year End Nocturne;” and, as might be guessed, he worked on it at the end of last year. I must confess that this was my first encounter with Winges’ solo piano music, since my primary exposure to his work has been through the Volti a cappella vocal ensemble. More recently I had written about the world premiere of his “Spun Light,” an ingenious conception of a “distanced concerto,” scored for violin accompanied by flute, viola, cello, bass, and piano. Presented by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, this involved separate recordings (video as well as audio) made by all six performers, which were subsequently mixed and presented through split-screen displays.
In such a context I was curious as to how Winges would approach solo piano music, composed under the same pandemic conditions that had inspired “Spun Light.” The music definitely took its own unique approach to the “nocturne” title, which has allowed for considerable flexibility where genre is concerned. Winges’ own note for the program book described the piece as “a hopeful contemplation of the year’s turning;” but, from the listener’s point of view, the music established itself through a subtle rhythm of quietude, which served effectively to calm the mind in the midst of tumultuous thoughts about dealing with COVID.
Winges’ “Year End Nocturne” was followed by Aminikia’s “Lullaby,” a perfect successor in an overall context of such quietude. However, Aminikia’s piece was longer in duration. Thus, he could take a single dispositional stance and then unfold a variety of thematic settings, each of which “examined” that stance from a different “point of view.” As a result, the juxtaposition of these two pieces had all the aesthetic judgement of a fine wine-pairing.
Frank’s “Karnavalito No. 1” then concluded the program with a livelier rhetoric. In her note for the program book, Frank declared her interest in cultures that “can co-exist without one subjugating another.” My favorite metaphor is that of a well-cooked gumbo in which one can recognize every contributing flavor while also appreciating the overall blend. Since Frank’s background is Andean, I realize that she might object to gumbo-as-metaphor. However, the virtue of that metaphor is that mind is required to tease out the individual flavors in gumbo; and the same can be said of recognizing the different layers of expression in Frank’s score. This is music that deserves multiple listening experiences and a freshness of attention not worn down by an entire concert program.
The other premiere offerings were not quite as engaging as “Year End Nocturne.” One was the recently completed “Sonata ’21” by Quinn Mason. Mason’s program note suggested that this was a response to the challenge of composing a piano sonata for the current century in the context of a genre that emerged in the eighteenth century. Personally, I found little to engage in Mason’s contemporary perspective. It seemed as if he was more interested in the legacy of durational scale than in guiding the attentive listener through the resulting durations of the individual movements.
The other premieres involved three short pieces by Mark Olivieri, all of which were probably composed under pandemic conditions. Here, again, there was little to draw or cultivate attention, although, to be fair, this music may hold up when one has the luxury to listen to it more than once. More appealing were the first two selections by Reena Esmail and Mary Kouyoumdjian, respectively. Each of these involved a personal reflection on the composer’s cultural background. In both cases that reflection emerged through well-defined thematic material and easily appreciated development techniques. I suspect that a similar cultural background sustained the Appalachian-inspired “She Steals Me” by Carter Pann; but the nuts-and-bolts of his own development techniques were never as engaging as the selections by Esmail (“Rang De Basant”) and Kouyoumdjian (“Aghavni”).
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