A Showcase of the Music of David Conte

Last night at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, composer David Conte presented his Faculty Artist Series program surveying his recent works and concluding with a sonata that dates back to 1981. The concert took place in the Barbro Osher Recital Hall and was very effectively live-streamed. Conte compiled a diversity of genres, the most interesting (at least for me) being a four-movement partita for marimba and piano, completed last year.

Pianist Kevin Korth performing with Jonas Koh on marimba (screen shot from last night’s streamed performance)

Two students shared the marimba performance with Brandon Topolski playing the first two movements (“Prelude” and “Canon”) and Jonas Koh playing the conclusion (“Chorale Prelude” and “Gigue”). I have to confess that I was a bit skeptical about bringing a piano into the mix. However, I have heard Kevin Korth on many occasions performing with a wide variety of instrumentalists and vocalists; and he had clearly found just the right dynamic range to fit in with the marimba. Fortunately, the video stream provided an excellent view of the marimba players, allowing one to appreciate the extent of which performance is a matter of not only musicianship but also “whole body management” of the sort one is more likely to encounter in ballet and modern dance.

Korth also served as pianist for the premiere performance of Two Winter Scenes, settings of texts by Walter de la Mare and Adam Christensen sung by soprano Hailey Gutowski. The instrumentation also included a cello performed by Emil Miland. The other vocal offering was the opening selection, “Charm Me Asleep,” performed by the San Francisco Choral Artists led by their Music Director Magen Solomon but originally composed for the fifteenth anniversary of Chanticleer.

The “Elegy” movement from Conte’s second piano trio was performed by students: Ericsson Hatfield on violin, Kyle Stachnik on cello, and Oliver Moore on piano. The other pianist for the evening was Dale Tsang, who accompanied Jerome Simas in a performance of the second (Lento molto) movement of a clarinet sonata completed in 2019. At the conclusion of the program Korth and Tsang joined forces for the first two movements of the 1981 sonata for two pianos.

The result was a program that was relatively brief but engagingly imaginative for the breadth of resources required for the selections being performed.