One Found Sound: Intensity Rules

Last night at Heron Arts, One Found Sound (OFS) presented the second program in their tenth anniversary season, modestly (note the lower case) entitled x. OFS programs, on the other hand, are rarely modest. They are cultivating many fruitful relations with up-and-coming composers, as well as more mature composers that tend to break down the conventional social barriers one encounters at more “established” concerts. Nevertheless, the high point of last night’s program, entitled formation, came from the darker times of the last century.

This was the performance of Rudolf Barshai’s transcription of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 110 (eighth) string quartet in C minor. Barshai arranged this quartet for chamber orchestra, and that arrangement is known as the Opus 110a chamber symphony in C minor. (This was one of several Shostakovich quartets that Barshai reworked. He also prepared similar arrangements of quartets by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Alexander Borodin.)

As was observed in the introduction to last night’s performance, Opus 110 was composed in the year in which, after decades of avoidance, Shostakovich joined the Communist Party. Ironically, the quartet was given the title “To the victims of fascism and war,” a text ambiguous enough for Party hacks to interpret as a reference to the Nazis, while those acquainted with the composer could see how those words hit closer to home. Nevertheless, the music itself draws upon thematic materials that Shostakovich had previously used in music he composed during the darkest years of World War II.

OFS delivered a suitably intense account of Barshai’s arrangement. Drawing upon the words of Dylan Thomas, they did not “go gentle” into the dark night of Shostakovich’s thematic material. The performance itself preceded the intermission. Wandering around the audience space during that interval, I found it easy to eavesdrop on observations about how unexpected the listening experience was, along with a deeply satisfying impression of the intense moods that emerged from the OFS interpretation of the score.

The “bookends” for the program were new and recent compositions by two composers that were in the audience. The program began with the world premiere performance of “Mi Cultura Lejana” (my distant culture), composed by Estevan Olmos, who was this year’s Emerging Composer Award winner. At the other end the program concluded with Michael Gilbertson’s “Graffiti,” a “concerto for chamber orchestra,” which had been given its first performance at the University of California at Berkeley. Both of these offerings yielded richly engaging thematic material and sonorities. They were complemented by the music of Gabriela Lena Frank, who practically has “elder statesman” status among living composers. Her offering was “Elegía Andina” (Andes elegy), an unabashed reflection on her South American roots.

Taken as a whole, this could easily have been more than mind could manage. However, OFS knows how to take the nuts and bolts of a score and turn it into a highly engaging listening experience. Furthermore, as everyone probably knows by now, they do this without a conductor. Indeed, one of the interesting aspects of “Graffiti” was to watch the interaction of the first-chair occupants for both violin and cello, who served as equal partners in leading the entire ensemble.