“Spooky” SFP Program Deflated by Timo Andres

Last night San Francisco Performances (SFP) celebrated Halloween with a program entitled, appropriately enough, Spooky. The first half of the program was performed by the Kronos Quartet, which is still led by violinist David Harrington. All of the other members are recent “updates” to the ensemble: violinist Gabriela Díaz, Ayane Kozasa on viola, and cellist Paul Wiancko.

1904 photograph of Leoš Janáček (photographer unknown, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)

The second half of the program began with a solo piano set by Timo Andres. The world premiere performance of Gabriel Kahane’s “A Gorey Nocturne” was followed by an interleaving of “Monk Nocturnes,” Andres’ arrangement of three Thelonious Monk standards (“Crepuscule with Nellie,” “Misterioso,” and “Round Midnight”) with three selected movements from Leoš Janáček’s solo piano cycle On an Overgrown Path. The evening then concluded with an “all hands” performance of Philip Glass’ Dracula Suite, which he composed for Kronos.

The overall experience was more than a little frustrating, since the program was not easy to follow. It began with six movements extracted from George Crumb’s “electric string quartet” Black Angels, beginning with the five movements of the opening “Departure” section, followed by “God-music,” the first movement of the third “Return” section. This was followed by John Oswald’s “Spectre,” Jacob Garchik’s arrangement of “Tashweesh” by Ramallah Underground, Krzysztof Penderecki’s first string quartet, and a piece by Nicole Lizée entitled “ZonelyHearts: PhoneTap + CCTV.” The first half of the program concluded with Kronos’ arrangement of the shower scene music that Bernard Herrmann composed for Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho. All this was too much to negotiate, but one could still just sit back and let the ride go where it chose.

Andres’ set did not fare much better. Kahane’s premiere was “too much of not very much” (which did not surprise me in the context of previous encounters with his music). If that were not enough, the “Monk-Janáček partnership” was hammered out so brutally that neither of the composers was even barely recognized. That left the Glass suite in 26 movements, which, in the setting of more of Andres’ hammering technique, could barely be negotiated by even the most attentive listener.

Taken as a whole, this was a Halloween without any treats!