Haimovitz Concludes SFP Sanctuary Series

Last night in St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco Performances (SFP) concluded its Sanctuary Series with a solo recital by cellist Matt Haimovitz. The title of the program was Primavera (the Italian word for “spring”), which is named after a commissioning project that Haimovitz initiated, which will result in 81 new solo cello works, each around five to seven minutes in duration. Last night four of those works were given world premiere performances as follows:

• Nico Muhly: Spring Figures
• Tomeka Reid: Volplaning
• Philip Glass: Philip’s Song
• David Balakrishnan: Themes and Variants

These were interleaved with three other commissioned works, which had already been premiered:

• Missy Mazzoli: Beyond the Order of Things
• Gordon Getty: Spring Song
• Vijay Iyer: Equal Night

As was the case in the previous two Sanctuary concerts, the program also included music by Johann Sebastian Bach. Haimovitz opened his program with the Prelude movement that begins the BWV 1008 solo cello suite in D minor. Towards the end of the program he played play the C major suite, BWV 1009, in its entirety. Some readers may recall that this was the opening selection performed by violinist Johnny Gandelsman to begin the second Sanctuary Series program last week.

Those that recall my annoyance with Gandelsman’s approach to Bach will be happy to learn that Haimovitz was far more convincing in his selections. Most important was that he treated all the movements named after dance forms as if they were dances. However, he knew how to allow the pulse to vary in such a way that each dance had its own approach to expressiveness, rather than providing a routine account of familiar (at least in Bach’s time) steps.

Similarly, the BWV 1008 prelude basically served as an “overture.” One might almost imagine that Haimovitz selected this music to introduce the entire evening, almost as if he were saying, “This is my cello, and this is what I can do with it.” He could then chart the course of “what he could do” through the new and recent works he had commissioned.

Charline von Heyl’s “response” to the “call” of Botticelli’s Primavera (from the home page for the Primavera Project)

The works created for the Primavera Project all take the visual arts as a point of departure. The “foundation” of the project is the massive canvas of Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera painting. This work inspired contemporary artist Charline von Heyl to respond with a large-scale painting of her own. All of the composers that Haimovitz commissioned were instructed to take both of these paintings as a common point of departure. Given that “first contact” encounters tend to be fleeting, Haimovitz has created a Web site for listening to his recordings of all of the results of his commissions.

This made for a wise strategy. While the program Haimovitz prepared for last night was relatively short (there being no intermission), the attentive listener definitely had to deal with “content overload.” Thus, as I am writing this morning, I have to confess that memories of last night dwell more on the Bach selections than on the Primavera compositions. To some extent I was drawn to Tomeka Reid’s contribution, “Volplaning;” but that was probably because I had seen the online cello recital she had performed at Mills College back in September of 2020.

However, if memory falls short of most of the details from last night, the overall upbeat rhetoric of the evening can still be recalled. Haimovitz never let ego get in the way of providing a clear and engaging account of the seven composers whose works were showcased. Coupled with just the right balance of technique and invention in the Bach performances, the spirit of the evening remains vividly memorable, even if the details of the new works require further acquaintance.