SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE
June 6, 2002

BluePrint: Accessible, Not Pandering; Lovely, Not Derivative
By Benjamin Frantzel

The San Francisco Conservatory's BluePrint concert series continued last Friday with a beautifully prepared and deeply satisfying sample of new and recent music. This was aided by the intimacy and warm acoustics of the Shrine of St. Francis. Highlighting two excellent soloits, mezzo-soprano Wendy Hillhouse and guitarist David Tanenbaum, conductor Nicole Paiement led her Parallèle Ensemble in works that were accessible without pandering, lovely without being derivative. Each succeeded on its own terms.

Dusan Bogdanovic's Games, an intriguing new song to seven poems by the Yugoslavian poet Vasko Popa. Bogdanovic has a strong feeling for these texts and gave great care in mirroring their humour and plain-spoken yet surrealist beauty. A striking element of the performance was the clarity of the text, even in its most flexible settings, for which both the composer and Hillhouse deserve great credit. Hillhouse's rich mezzo shone in both lyrical passages and in wide, leaping figures that matched the surprising turn in the text.

Tanenbaum was the preeminent voice in the chamber ensemble, a constant in an instrumental sequence that gradually and deftly added flutee, double bass, and two players on a set of ceramic gongs. The relationship between the voice and guitar was a most compelling element, as the guitar's complex, searching figures underscored the flowing vocal melody, acting like the subconscious mind beneath the surface of the poem's language. Only a few of Bogdanovic's more theatrical effects, such as a sudden reversion to speaking or unexpected melodic leaps to end a movement, seemed forced. These crossed the line from enigmatic to cute without warning and broke the spell of the text. Otherwise, this is a valuable new piece and it received the fine performance it deserved.

A retrospective work

The program reached back to 1949 for Lou Harrison's Suite for Cello and Harp, performed by cellist Dana Putman Fonteneau and harpist Jennifer Cass. The Suite is full of the lengthy, song-like melody in which Harrison has always excelled, and the duo's performance eas lovely, a graceful journey through the work's pensive modal language. Its fourth movement, drawn from Harrison's twelve tone period, with chromatically evolving harmony and fluid lines, stood out as one of his few works that bring the Romantic period to mind,both palyers summoned a gorgeous sound for this and found a way to express its dreamy quality with no loss of the subtle momentum that carried through the entire Suite.

Hillhouse returned to the stage for a superb performance of Luciano Berio's Folk Songs, his 1968 chamber setting of folk songs from around the world. With a voice as varied as it was rich, Hillhouse embodied the spirit of each song, from the haunting loneliness of American tunes, "Black is the Colour," and John Jacob Niles' "I Wonder as I Wander," to the exuberance of the concluding "Azerbaijan Love Song" and several of the Italien songs. Particularly in moments like the joyful la-la-las of "Ballo" from Italy, she struck the ideal balance between the earthiness and the transportation beauty of the tunes. Even Berio's most modern extensions of the folk context, like the eerie percussion effects in the Italian "Motettu de Tristura," seemed to spring from the songs' original forms. Paiement summoned an excellent performance from the ensemble.

Both Tanenbaum and Lou Harrison's music received more than a spotlight tha planned, as Harrison's Scenes from Nek Chand replaced the scheduled vocal work by the young composer Dmitry Yanov-Yanovsky. This is a solo work for National steel guitar, the resonant metal-bodied instrument popular in jazz and country music in the 1920s and '30s. It draws inspiration from the found-object sculptures created by Nek Chand in the Indian city of Chandibarh.

Ambience to the rescue

At its premiere at the Other Minds festival in March, Scenes from Nek Chand seemed a bit lost in the cold atmosphere at the Palace of Fine Arts, but in the sanctuary of the Shrine of St. Francis, its soulful and meditative character founds its proper home.
Tanenbaum was in tune with the work's spirit through its three movements, from the spaciousness and gentleness pf the first movement to the vigor of the second. The music recalled the Indian inspiration with expanding figures circling in a central tone, and droning highly ornamented figures of the final movement. All was made vibrant by Tanenbaum's driving performance.

The evening concluded with another substantial work, Hans Werner' Henze's An eine Aolsharfe (To an Aoelian Harp), a 1986 concerto for guitar and chamber orchestra. Henze has worn many compositional faces during his career, but I think the one on display in this work, the lyrical seeker of beauty, is his most genuine and produces the most memerable music. His imagination worked at its highest level in the work's harmonies, colors, and evolving textures as the orchestra shifted its timbres and thickness constantly but remains beautiful throughout.

Created for Tanebaum, An eine Aolsharfe made the most of his penchant for dramatic contrasts of moodand color, as well as his musical focus and direction. Even with the moderate amplification Tanenbaum used, balancing guitar and orchestra is always tricky. Paiement did a marvelous job of that while mastering the shifting internal balances of the full ensemble.

(Benjamin Frandzel is a Bay Area musician and writer. In addition to writing concert music, he has collabored with dance, theater, and visual artists, and musical organizations. He is currently a graduate student in composition at San Francisco State University>)

©2002 Benjamin Franzel, all rights reserved.