Friday, January 16, 2015

Juilliard Chamberfest 3: Sondheim, Schnittke and Schoenberg

Yesterday's Chamberfest recital at Paul Hall was as an eclectic a mix as any audience could hope for - works by Schnittke and Schoenberg, and in between an improvisation on popular twentieth century American songs.

After having attended the Chamberfest recitals for several seasons, I've found that the real draw, for me at least, is not the performance of the acknowledged masterpieces but rather that of the more recent and lesser known works that offer their audience a genuinely new experience.  Such was definitely the case in the first half of yesterday evening's program.

The first work performed was entitled Improvisation and Reflection on American Themes and involved a reworking of famous pieces from the American songbook.  Violinist Johnna Wu described the presentation as follows:
"Once again, the theme is improvisation in the context of chamber music, but this time we are re-creating songs by American composers Carter, Ives, Gershwin, and Sondheim. Our composition is inspired by Sondheim's character George Seurat in his musical 'Sunday in the Park with George' and seeks to emulate a day in his life."
I had attended a similar improvisation at last season's Chamberfest, that one based on the music of Piazzolla, and thought this new effort equally good if not better.  While I have the highest regard for all the featured composers' works, my favorite passage here turned out to be the toe tapping interpretation of Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm."  Yi Hsuan Chiu on bass and Brandon Ilaw on vibraphone, together with Chi Wei Lo on piano, were very effective in creating an authentic jazz atmosphere.  For Carter's "Dust of Snow" and Ives's "Shall We Gather at the River" the ensemble emphasized the dissonance inherent in these pieces.  Johnna Wu shone here on violin.  When it came to the Sondheim, the singing of Jay Dref was a big plus.  He was so convincing that one would have thought he was singing from a Broadway stage rather than the much smaller platform available to him at Paul Hall.

On one level, of course, this was all incredibly entertaining.  Still, while listening, I could not help thinking how difficult it must be for four instruments to improvise among themselves let alone with voice added to the combination.  And yet it was impressive how deceptively easy these talented students made it seem.  No doubt the coaching of Noam Sivan helped a great deal.

The next work on the program was Schnittke's String Trio (1985).  What a contrast from the preceding piece!  Never had the Soviet composer's work appeared so relentlessly dark as it did now.  

I had already been an admirer of Schnittke for quite some time when I attended last January a Juilliard Focus series curated by Joel Sachs that explored his oeuvre in greater depth.  That provided me with my first chance to hear two of his rarely performed symphonies (the Fourth and Eighth), and I've since sought out every opportunity to become more familiar with his music.  Most recently, I attended last month a recital at Mannes where Vladimir Feltsman took part in a brilliant performance of the Piano Quintet.

By the time Schnittke composed this trio he had already begun to move away from the polystylistic technique he had advocated in his 1971 essay and in its place to develop a more classic style.  Indeed, this new approach could already be detected in the earlier Piano Quintet (1972-1976) and its implementation may be one cause of that work's long gestation.  Whatever the source of this new direction - whether Schnittke had acquired greater access to Western music as Soviet censorship eased, or whether his vision had simply matured over time - there is a sense that the composer was now attempting to work within an accepted tradition rather than as an outsider to it.  That's not to say this dense music is not filled with its own brand of dissonance.  Significantly, Schnittke dedicated the trio to Berg, one of the most influential members of the Second Viennese School.

The three string players - Ravenna Lipchik, violin; Jacob Shack, viola; and Keiran Campbell, cello - kept the demanding piece tightly under control throughout.  They were coached by Joel Sachs.

In attempting to research the trio online, I came across what I thought was an excellent article by Kenneth Woods complete with audio excerpts.  I found his comment on Schnittke's  musical influences particularly interesting:
"He shared with Berg a sense of fascination with decay: 'I set down a beautiful chord on paper—and suddenly it rusts,' he said of his own music.  The String Trio shows the searing influence of late Shostakovich, but also Schnittke’s deep absorption with the Viennese masters, particularly Mahler and late Schubert, an affinity shared with Berg, who according to Adorno 'assumes a position in extreme antithesis to that which the musical tradition calls healthy, to the will to live…'"
After intermission, there was a sense of anticlimax as the program concluded with a performance of Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 (1899) for string sextet (two violins, two violas and two cellos).  This is the composer's most accessible and therefore best known work, a favorite of those non-musicians who find his later twelve tone technique too difficult to appreciate.  And this short tone poem, based on verses by Richard Dehmel, is in fact a haunting and evocative piece that is quite affecting to hear.  It is difficult today to comprehend how controversial it must have seemed at its premiere in 1902, both for Dehmel's then explicit references to sexuality and for Schoenberg's own infamous use of the "nonexistent" inverted ninth chord.  My own problem with the sextet is that it has become overly familiar.  Last season alone I attended four performances of this work.  Nonetheless, the students who played it yesterday evening deserve every credit for having rendered the piece so expertly.  They handled the delicate ending flawlessly.  Their coaches were Ida Kavafian and Fred Sherry.

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