The concert started with a piece called Flowergazers, written by the DMA comp guy. It was 3 separate pieces, each based on a Japanese haiku from the 17th century. Maybe I should preface this by saying I am not a huge fan of postmodern or experimental classical music. This concert pretty much confirmed my distaste. I occasionally like Phillip Glass, I think Steve Reich has done some interesting stuff, but the bulk of what I've seen at the grad school level is kind of self-indulgent John Cage ripoff stuff. (Yes, I understand the irony of using a blog - perhaps the most self-indulgent invention of the last 50 years - to complain about the self-indulgence of a genre of music) At any rate, it seems to me that this type of music frequently degenerates into an atonal mess played by a fairly random collection of instruments, but most notable for the disproportionate number of percussion players who appear to be under instructions to strike whatever they can find with mallets. At some point it does not seem particularly interesting to me to strike the frame of a harp or the case of a piano with an object when the sound it produces is pretty much exactly the same sound as striking a wood block. That just seems gimmicky and pointless to me. So in the course of 25 minutes, 3 percussion players and a guy on marimba managed to hit pretty much everything on stage with something else.
I also really objected to this composer's use of his singers. The haiku cycle had a soprano who was mostly singing in the meat of her range at full voice. However, there were several phrases that were either set so low she could not actually sing them or were meant to be spoken word. It was impossible to tell which because they were way too low for her so it was barely audible. If you're going to compose something like that, then it seems like either you should have a very rangy singer in mind whom you write it for, or you should keep the vocal parts in the fach of the singer you are selecting. If you want a lyric soprano (and this girl was almost a Soubrette) don't write something that would be better suited to the range of a mezzo or a Wagnerian soprano.
He then proceeded to abuse two male singers in a later piece which was obnoxious on several levels. He used some 14th century motets by a French composer and had a bass and baritone sing them in isolation while he had a strange ensemble (again heavy on percussion) deliberately squeaking instruments and hitting "wrong" notes (he mentioned this in the program notes), thereby producing what he referred to as a "derrangement" of the motet that held true to what the original composer wanted. Personally my guess is Monsieur de Vitry would have been rather mortified by the end result, but whatever. The first motet was actually meant for a bass and baritone, or rather probably for a bass-baritone and a low tenor voice, but the baritone was rangy and lyric and handled it fine. The rest of the piece, however was clearly written for either a boy soprano or countertenor so he had these poor men sing for 20 minutes completely in falsetto. It was painful to listen to. They did the best they could with it and honestly the baritone had a pretty nice and pure falsetto, but their voices were clearly shot by the end. It was just wrong.
So, bizarre atonal percussive disasters aside, we were treated to some truly fantastic piano playing by Sam. He played some pieces that he wrote, including some 8 hands pieces that were very charming. He also played the hell out of Liszt's Dante Sonata. I hadn't seen Sam perform before so it was a treat, but also surprising because I wouldn't have anticipated his playing style. There are a lot of variations on how pianists LOOK while they play. There are the real technical types that are very very still except for their hands and arms. Very little head or body movement. It's a very sterile sort of performance quality and I think the music tends to follow suit emotionally. Then there are the Martha Argeriches of the world who look like they are trying to beat the piano into submission every time they play. I think Lang Lang falls into this camp as well. Then there are the dancers. Sam is a dancer. They seem to be almost in a musical trance and they move with the piece in kind of strange ways. Sometimes it can be really powerful to watch, other times distracting. Then there are the people who appear to play effortlessly, Horowitz jumps to mind. He just looks very relaxed and mellow when he plays, even during really violent sections of music.
I asked Cora what she liked and didn't like about the concert. Surprisingly (to me), she said she liked the haiku pieces best. I asked her what she thought about them and she said they sounded like "people running in grass. They are playing tag but never catch each other," which is almost a haiku in itself. Apparently this guy succeeded wildly with Cora and missed completely with me. It made me marvel at how very different the experience of any music can be even for two people sitting next to each other. She fell asleep during the Liszt.
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