Revisiting Dutilleux and Queyras

Conductor Gustavo Gimeno and cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras on the cover of their new Dutilleux album (courtesy of PIAS)

This past Friday, harmonia mundi released a new album showcasing the music of the twentieth-century French composer Henri Dutilleux. This composer displayed a rich command of instrumental sonorities, reflected in this album by his first symphony, composed in 1951, and “Métaboles,” composed in 1964. On the album these works serve to frame a cello concerto, completed in 1970 and given the title “Tout un monde lointain….” (a whole distant world). This is decidedly an “other worldly” composition, with movement titles that evoke enigmas, mirrors, and cosmic swells. Gustavo Gimeno conducts the Luxembourg Philharmonic in all three of these selections, and the concerto soloist is Jean-Guihen Queyras.

That cellist is probably no stranger to those that have followed this site for some time. They are likely to recall him as a member of a piano trio, performing with pianist Alexander Melnikov and Isabelle Faust on violin (all three of whom have a distinctive presence on the harmonia mundi label). According to my records, however, I have not had an opportunity to write about Dutilleux’ music since March of 2017. Nevertheless, with this “return visit,” I easily settled back into the imaginative sonorities that this composer could evoke, while having another rich opportunity to appreciate Queyras enjoying the advantages of a solo turn.

Nevertheless, I must confess that I tend to be more content with “occasional visits” to the Dutilleux repertoire, rather than taking “deep dives.” It is easy to delight in the composer’s prodigiously extensive imaginative qualities in seeking out innovative sonorities. However, when I listen to an album in its entirety, I find myself reflecting on Archy’s cautious warning to Mehitabel about being “too toujours gai!” In other words, over the course of this writing career, I have acquired more than a few Dutilleux albums, all of which amounted to “first contact” experiences. However, after becoming familiar with the content, I almost never returned to it in later periods!

That said, anyone interested in an engagingly imaginative approach to instrumental coloration deserves at least one encounter with Dutilleux’ compositions; and this new album provides an excellent opportunity to get to know at least a few samples from this repertoire.

New Improvisations by Lechner and Couturier

Anja Lechner and François Couturier (photograph by Lolo Vasco, courtesy of ECM Records)

This past October ECM released a new album featuring two of the members of the Tarkovsky Quartet. The album, entitled Lontano, consists of fourteen relatively short tracks performed by the quartet’s founder, pianist François Couturier, and its cellist Anja Lechner. Improvisation is at the heart of all the tracks on this album, several of which are listed as joint compositions, while, on other tracks, one of the two of them provides the point of departure. A few of the tracks involve reflections on other composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach, Henri Dutilleux, Giya Kancheli, and Ariel Ramirez. There is also one track, “Tryptic,” which seems to involve Couturier haunted by the ghost of Maurice Ravel, who is, in turn, haunted by the ghost of François Couperin.

Couturier has his own particular command of a rhetoric of stillness. This may well have emerged from his interest in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, most of which involve a dream-like detachment from both space and time that requires considerable patience on the part of the viewer. This is a disposition that has served Manfred Eicher well in the many albums that he has produced on the ECM label. The tracks for Lontano were recorded in October of 2019, affirming that Eicher’s aesthetic stance is as firmly planted in this “rhetoric of stillness” as it has been for several decades.

This time, however, that rhetorical stance had to contend with a major change in world-view that took place this past March. Around the world major performance venues had to face the imposition of shelter-in-place orders. A “brave new world” emerged in which performers could draw upon the Internet to continue their work; but the very nature of performance no longer involved those performers sharing physical space with their audiences. For some this involved new approaches to creativity, which often involved reflecting on that detachment. Readers may recall that, when Summit Records released its Inside album of music by Scott Routenberg, my own reaction was to push back against such reflections when they were based on “a uniform rhetoric of blandness.”

While I would not accuse Couturier and Lechner of such blandness, I would still argue that their rhetoric does not always stimulate the beneficial aspects of “positive thinking.” Mind you, their two-part double improvisation “Solar” is refreshingly energetic in the context of the other fourteen tracks on Lontano. Nevertheless, under prevailing conditions, I would have preferred a bit more of that vigorous stimulation. Of course the musicians could not have anticipated the value of such stimulation when they recorded their tracks a year before the album was released. However, the subsequent twist of time has not served them (or, for that matter, Eicher) very well; and, as a result, I will probably not return to any of their albums until I feel that I have not only emerged from the current tunnel but put a generous distance from it behind me.

Next Week Naxos will Release a New Album of Orchestral Dutilleux

One week from today Naxos will release an album of three orchestral compositions by Henri Dutilleux. As is usually the case, Amazon.com has created the Web page for this recording and is currently processing pre-orders. Dutilleux has not gotten as much exposure in the United States as he deserves. Fortunately, San Francisco has been kind to him, although performances of his music by the San Francisco Symphony seem to have been attributed pretty much to soloists and conductors visiting from Europe. This May, however, our local Left Coast Chamber Ensemble will be including his music on their Francophilia program.

One of the interesting aspects of Dutilleux’ career is that he seemed willing to give almost anything a try. This meant that he could claim “hands-on” experience with most of the approaches to making music that prevailed during the twentieth century. His eclectic attitude may have been connected with his having served as Head of Music Production for Radio France for eighteen years. It also meant that he could be a sympathetic and encouraging teacher to a wide diversity of students.

However, in my own listening experiences what stands out most is Dutilleux’ consummate skill in creating impressively innovative sonorities with the instruments in a conventional ensemble harnessing conventional techniques. He was no stranger to the theoretical foundations behind the synthesis of sounds. (Gérard Grisey was one of his students.) However, when it came to practice, rather than theory, he seemed to have the same remarkable skill set that his predecessor Maurice Ravel could command so masterfully. If one thought of Dutilleux as a Ravel willing to let go of the tonal center, one might not be too far off the mark.

Each of the three selections on this new album provide excellent examples of just how imaginative Dutilleux could be with instrumentation. He gave his second symphony the title “Le Double;” and the music almost amounts to a dialectic give and take of contrasting sonorities. Those contrasts, in turn, arise from not only the instruments themselves but also his ability to achieve subtle effects by varying the numbers of instruments involved, from solo “punctuations” to “massive blocks” of large ensembles.

If the symphony is a study of the abstraction of sonorities, “Timbres, espace, mouvement” (timbre, space, movement) amounts to an instrumental denotation (rather than connotation) of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night canvas. Over the course of the three movements (which do not correspond one-to-one with the three nouns in the title), one appreciates how both the objects and the moods of van Gogh’s painting emerge through Dutilleux’ rhetoric of sonorities. The album then concludes with “Mystère de l’instant” (mystery of the instant), a series of ten movements each of which has been distilled down to the shortest possible duration. With apologies to Wallace Stevens, one might call this piece “ten ways of listening to an instant.” The “essence of instant,” so to speak, is highlighted by judicious use of a cimbalom, whose decay time is particularly rapid.

All three pieces are performed by the Lille National Orchestra conducted by Darrell Ang. Given how few opportunities there are to listen attentively to Dutilleux’ music, it is hard to compare one ensemble with another. Suffice it to say that the performances on this album provide an account of several of Dutilleux’ techniques effectively enough that the sympathetic listener can appreciate those characteristics that distinguish him. When one is just getting to know a composer, does one need any more?

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble Announces its 2016—2017 Season

Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (LCCE) has announced the program details for the five concerts it has planned for its 2016—2017 season, which will run from this October through June of next year. San Francisco performances will be divided between the Concert Hall and Recital Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) and the Dennis Gallagher Arts Pavilion. The first three will take place on Mondays and the remaining two on Tuesdays. All performances will begin at 7:30 p.m. As in the past, each concert will be organized around a particular theme with a title to match. Details are as follows:

Monday, October 24, SFCM Concert Hall, A Close Correspondence: The theme of this concert will be letter writing. Because this is a text-based topic, San Francisco’s premiere new music chorus Volti will appear as special guest artists for the occasion. Authors will include Leoš Janáček, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Virginia Woolf, and others. In Janáček’s case those texts are implicit in an instrumental composition, his second string quartet, to which he gave the title “Intimate Letters.” Volti will present world premiere performances of two compositions for string quartet and chorus by Onur Türkmen (“but for you alone”) and Mark Winges (“Letters”), respectively. In addition Volti will give an a cappella performance of David Lang’s “A Father’s Love.”

Monday, December 5, Gallagher Pavilion, Brilliant Palette: At the end of last season, LCCE announced that both percussionist Loren Mach and soprano Nikki Einfeld would become members of the ensemble. The title of this concert thus reflects the broader ranger of sonorities afforded by the addition of these two performers. Both of them will perform George Crumb’s first book of madrigals, which he scored for soprano, vibraphone, and bass. Mach will also perform Martin Matalon’s vibraphone solo “Short Stories” and Caroline Shaw’s “Boris Kerner,” which she scored for cello and flowerpots. Einfeld will contribute to two chamber pieces, Ernest Chausson’s “Chanson Perpétuelle” (Opus 37) for soprano, string quartet, and piano and Gabriel Fauré’s “La Bonne Chanson” (Opus 61) for soprano, string quintet, and piano. There will also be a surprise new work that Einfeld and Mach will perform as a duo.

Monday, February 6, SFCM Recital Hall, House of the Beehives: This is the title of a major work on the program by Melody Eötvös, winner of the 2016 Composition Contest. It is inspired by a story by Italo Calvino of the same name, and it will be receiving its West Coast premiere. There will also be a world premiere performance of David Coll’s “Ghost Dances.” In addition the “broken consort” theme of one of last season’s programs will be continued by a sextet for flute, oboe, violin, cello, and two guitars by Sebastian Currier titled (appropriately enough) “Broken Consort.” This will be complemented by two more “integrated” duos, the sonata by Maurice Ravel for violin and cello, and Dusan Bogdanovich’s “Canticles” for two guitars.

Tuesday, March 21, SFCM Concert Hall, Brahms through the Looking Glass: This will be a call-and-response program in which Johannes Brahms’ very first piano trio, his Opus 8 in B Major (which he revised significantly later in life) will be reflected by the world premiere of a new work for piano trio by Kenneth Lim.

Tuesday, May 30, SFCM Recital Hall, Francophilia: This program will be a study in influence, pairing compositions by Ravel (Chansons madécasses), Claude Debussy (Chansons de Bilitis), André Caplet, and Henri Dutilleux, with those by Americans who lived and/or studied in Paris, Aaron Copland (selections from his songs based on poems by Emily Dickenson) and Ned Rorem. The program will also include the world premiere of a new work by Kurt Rohde setting texts by Michel Foucault, “Power is Everywhere,” scored for soprano, flute, cello, and piano. This will be the synthesis of an American composer setting the words of a French philosopher translated into English.

Subscriptions for the full season are currently available for $125 for general admission and $105 for seniors. This amounts to a savings of up to $70 if tickets are purchased individually. There is open seating for all concerts. Tickets may be purchased online through a Vendini event page. Student subscriptions are available for $50. These apply to currently enrolled high school and college students. School representatives may contact Managing Director Nick Benavides for further details. Information is also available by sending electronic mail to the Box Office. Single tickets are not yet available for advance purchase, but they will be sold at the door for $35 for general admission and $17.50 for those under the age of 35.

All Varèse?

I could not resist the temptation to read Ivan Hewett's account of Varèse 360, a series of three concerts at the Southbank Centre in London presenting the complete works of Edgard Varèse. I was particularly fascinated to discover that this was the second "outing" of such a "festival," the first having been given a year ago in Amsterdam. Independent of Hewett's critical observations, I found myself wondering if this was yet another piece of evidence to support the premise that our own reactionary tastes will always keep us behind Europe when it comes to "thinking out of the box," as the innovation evangelists like to put it. Varèse, after all, not only excelled in "thinking out of the box" but also seemed to aspire to blowing up the box after leaving it.

Reviewing my records both here and on Examiner.com, I see that I have had only one substantive occasion to deal with a concert performance of Varèse's music; but that turned out to be an excellent data point. It was the BluePrint Project concert given this past February at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; and the program was conceived with Varèse as the "framing" composer. The evening began with "Density 21.5" and concluded with "Déserts;" and I think it is fair to say that these two works very much set the context for the experience of listening to the other compositions on the program. However, this supports my skepticism over this idea of a complete-works event. We can now begin to apply the longue durée thinking of the Annalistes to the history of music in the twentieth century; and, from that point of view, we need to think about Varèse not only in terms of the music he composed but also in terms of whom he influenced, perhaps the most interesting section of the Wikipedia entry created for this composer. This season, for example, that influence may have been most evident in the performance Henri Dutilleux' "Métaboles" when Semyon Bychkov visited the San Francisco Symphony (although, by way of a disclaimer, I should mention that Dutilleux' name does not appear in that Wikipedia entry).

Thus, I would suggest that taking such a two-pronged approach to Varèse might deal with what Hewett felt was the biggest problem with the idea of a complete-works festival:

Small but perfectly formed, the complete life's work of that great musical visionary Edgar Varèse sits comfortably inside just three concerts. But would one want to hear those three concerts back to back? Though the music has a visionary splendour and literally cosmic ambition - Varèse wanted to write music for mankind's future, when he would be roaming among the stars - its vocabulary of brazen fanfares and thunderous polyrhythms can seem correspondingly small. The air becomes thin at such altitudes.

One could imagine a series of concerts in which selected Varèse compositions would be performed alongside works that show his influence. For example one would have the opportunity to listen to John Cage's "First Construction (In Metal)" in the context of a performance of "Ionisation;" and one could conceivably apply the same strategy to most (if not all) of the other works in the Varèse canon. This would probably require more than three concerts, but the air would not be quite as thin because there would be greater breadth in the listening experiences. Would this not be an excellent opportunity for one of the American performing arts institutions to demonstrate that we can keep up with the Europeans?