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Music Academy Faculty Gives Vigorous Nod to Modernism
In for a penny; in for a pound. It seems as if, suddenly, the Music Academy of the West faculty has made a separate peace with contemporary music. Not content to slip one or two distinctly modern works into a summer’s worth of “Tuesday @ 8” concerts, they have managed to put one or two works — some of a fairly uncompromising austerity — into each program.
That is not to say they have all bunkered themselves somewhere to the left of the Kronos Quartet and declared war on nostalgia and sentiment. For any artists, that would be a very risky move; for musicians it would be suicide. What the academy faculty has apparently chosen to do is use modern music as a kind of piquant spice for their programs — as an accent, that is, rather than as a dominant flavor. I think this is a good plan, and as long as they keep the Benjamin Britten to an absolute minimum, they’ll get nothing but cheers from me. Opportunities to hear live the music of Paul Hindemith and Leoš Janáček are rare enough, still rarer are chances to hear that of György Ligeti or Witold Lutoslawski.
Thus, in the first “Tuesday @ 8” — 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Lobero Theatre — we will hear Jean Françaix’s “Wind Quintet” (1948) performed by Timothy Day (flute), David Weiss (oboe), Richie Hawley (clarinet), Dennis Michel (bassoon) and David Jolley (horn); Ligeti’s “Five Pieces for Piano Four Hands” with Jonathan Feldman and Jerome Lowenthal; Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Piano Trio in D Minor, Hob. XV:23,” played by Lowenthal (Piano), Jeff Thayer (violin) and Alan Stepansky (cello); Frank Bridge’s “Phantasie Quartet for Piano and Strings in f-sharp minor, H. 94,” by John Churchwell (piano), Thayer (violin), Donald McInnes (viola) and Stepansky (cello); and Richard Strauss’ “Sonata for Violin and Piano in E-flat Major, Opus 18,” by Kathleen Winkler (violin) and Margaret McDonald (piano).
From his dates (1912-1997) we must certainly call Françaix a 20th-century, maybe even a “contemporary,” composer, yet he settled early in his career in the territory staked out by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel and never ventured further. The “Wind Quintet” comes from 1948; it could as easily have been written in 1918 or even 1908. It is light and pleasant, mildly satirical, and imbued throughout with an almost generic French elegance.
Like just about everybody else, at least in this country, I know the music of Ligeti (1923–2006) mainly from its use on the soundtracks of three films directed by Stanley Kubrick: “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “The Shining” and “Eyes Wide Shut”. Born in Hungary, of Jewish parents, Ligeti was mugged several times by history. He studied with Zoltán Kodaly, began composing under the sign of Béla Bartok, and was later influenced by the electronic music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, although he produced very little electronic music himself. His music is impossible to describe, although it is always interesting and frequently moving.
Bridge (1879-1941) is everybody’s favorite overlooked composer; he’s mine, too. To hear his music is to wonder why you don’t hear it more often. It is passionate, romantic, shapely and coherent. A pupil of both Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry, his only compositional student was Britten — although we should not hold that against him. He excelled in chamber compositions — he played violin and/or viola in three famous string quartets — and he was an accomplished conductor. The “Phantasie Quartet for Piano and Strings” was written in 1910, one of three stunning chamber works with the name “Phantasie” (the other two are the “Phantasie String Quartet in f-minor” of 1905 and, arguably his best-known work, the “Phantasie Trio in c-minor, for piano, violin, cello,” of 1907).
Tickets to this “Tuesday @ 8” are $33, and can be purchased from the Lobero box office at 33 E. Canon Perdido (805.963.0761) or by calling the Music Academy hotline (805.969.8787). Click here to purchase tickets online.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributor.
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