concert review: Sitkovetsky Trio

[calimac]

This was a challenging concert to review, because I realized as I sat down to write that I didn't have much to say about it. It was a decent performance. I settled on emphasizing that I thought some of the pieces worked better than others.

My editor had alerted the staff not to waste space on long explanations of the California Festival that many of this and next week's concerts that we're covering are part of. We've published some feature articles about the festival and people seeking details can go there. Basically it seems to be a designation dropped on any concert this month with music associated with California in it.

And this one got it, despite 3/4 of it being the usual 19C European stuff, because the fourth work is by the contemporary Julia Adolphe. She wasn't born or raised in California, she doesn't live here now, but she was in LA for a few years when at grad school at USC, and that seems to make her enough of a Californian to make it worth slapping a California Festival label on this concert.

I didn't mention it at all.

Comments

[sartorias]

Reaching in to pluck a note. Odd.

[calimac]

Not at all unprecedented. Composers have occasionally written hands-on piano string music ever since Henry Cowell wrote a piece in the 1910s calling for the performer to stand over the string bed and brush the strings with their hands, while a confederate sat at the keyboard and held down the sustain pedal. The type of sound produced is reflected by the piece's title: "Aeolian Harp."

[sartorias]

Oh that sounds like an interesting piece!

[calimac]

Here's Aeolian Harp.

I misremembered the playing: this one can be done from the keyboard. The one that requires two people is considerably weirder, and is called The Banshee.

[sartorias]

The Aeolian Harp piece reminds me strongly of kids playing around with the classroom autoharp when we were kids. Kids who had no idea how to play it, but liked ripping their hands along the strings. The Banshee one was just really weird. I didn't hear it as music at all, so much as background noise for a horror movie.

[calimac]

Considering what a banshee does, that's appropriate. Cowell was of Irish descent and often reflected Irish folklore in his early music.

[sartorias]

Oh, that's interesting!