E4TT: A Disappointing Evening at SFCM

Last night in the Barbro Osher Recital Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), Ensemble for These Times (E4TT) presented its latest program, entitled Expression:Ism. The program was described as “a multimedia dialogue between music by the Second Viennese School triumvirate of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern and contemporary pieces by composers inspired by their groundbreaking work.” The evening was visual as well as auditory, working with the SFCM Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) Department to present images by Schoenberg himself and various Expressionist painters, along with videos by Stephanie Neumann, making for real-time processing of a rich “media mix.”

Lylia Guion, Dale Tsang, and Amy Brodo playing David Garner’s second piano trio, with projected “video enhancement” (screen shot from the video stream of last night’s performance)

At the end of the day, however, what mattered most was the music; and the music was at its best at the end of the program. Following the interleaving of Second Viennese School and contemporary programming, the evening concluded with the world premiere of the second piano trio composed by David Garner, a co-founder of E4TT. This was performed by three artists appearing as guests for E4TT, violinist Lylia Guion, Amy Brodo on cello, and pianist Dale Tsang (E4TT emerita). There was just the right blend of commitment and technical capabilities to bring this music to life with a spirit that was sorely lacking in all the preceding selections on the program.

Sadly, the Second Viennese School did not fare as well. Tsang seemed to be too preoccupied with getting all the notes in the Schoenberg solo piano pieces (from his Opus 11) in their proper place to endow the music with any expressiveness. Taylor Chan fared somewhat better with the rondo that Anton Webern composed for solo piano, given the title “Sonatensatz” and not published during his (short) lifetime. On the other hand, TJ Martin’s instrumental arrangement of Alban Berg’s Sieben Frühe Lieder, scored for cor anglais (Laura Reynolds), vibraphone (Elizabeth Clark Hall), and cello (Amy Brodo) muddled the interplay between voice and accompaniment, rather than enhancing it.

On the contemporary side, the “Mystic Trio” by SFCM graduate Valerie Liu, with Chan at the keyboard performing with Reynolds and Brodo, had little to offer other than tolerable brevity. Reynolds and Brodo performed in another trio with Guion, “unmute,” by Britney Dawn Do, which was similarly unimpressive. The program began with Chan playing “Olive Orchard,” one of the movements from Adam Schoenberg’s Picture Etudes, which seems to have been included for the composer’s name, even though (to the best of my knowledge) he is not related to the Second Viennese School composer!

I experienced this performance through the SFCM livestream. I have never found the Osher Recital Hall to be a particularly conducive setting for listening. However, readers know that many of the livestreams of Chamber Music Tuesday programs have been as satisfying for the video work as for the music. Sadly, last night’s video fell distressingly short of that previous high standard. This may have been due to the visual side of how the space was used, for which the video crew might have been unprepared. As a result, almost the entire evening was unsatisfying until the more straightforward presentation of Garner’s trio at the conclusion.