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Nothing ominous going on around here, just my first concert review of the year.
Dined beforehand at this Moroccan restaurant downtown. Attentive but rather leisurely service, better suited to an evening when dining is the main event rather than a prelude to a concert, did not detract from excellent food and truly memorable mint tea in one of those tiny silver pots that Turkish coffee comes in. Best tea I've had since the Good Earth shut up shop around here, really.
Then down the street to le petit Trianon for not one but two hot-off-the-press world premieres. You take your life in your hands with these things, really, especially when the composer is capable of anything from bouncing off the walls to wallpapering them. That's the case with Pablo Furman, prof at the nearby state university and well-known locally; fortunately he hit a winner this time. His Paso del Fuego is a substantive and thoroughly crafted Blochian neo-Baroque concerto grosso for string quartet (the locally ubiquitous Cypress Quartet) and string orchestra. It also kept reminding me of works like Dag Wiren's Serenade for Strings and a bit of good old Henry Cowell. In short, this is music of the day, if the day is the 1920s. And that's the day for me.
On to Anica Galindo, a young woman who studied locally before transferring to USC to learn to write film music, it says here, though she has no credits yet that I could find. But learn it she has. Her Trinitas II is featurelessly consonant music firmly designed to stay in the background; fortunately it did not wear out its welcome too badly in ten minutes. Some may cast their minds back to the likes of Max Steiner or Alfred Newman in reading a description of such music (please don't mention Korngold), so I made a point of naming in the review two noted current practitioners of the beleaguered art of traditional orchestral film music, as more like unto what Galindo is doing. Pure coincidence that SFCV's feature article this week discusses film music and James Horner in particular, really. I hadn't known a thing about it.
That's half the concert. The other half: no orchestra, just the quartet, playing Beethoven's Op. 135. Nice to be reminded that Beethoven wasn't always pushing the edge, either; or if he was, doing so in other ways than being aggressively experimental. A touch of heavy expressionism in the interpretation brought my mental image up to the 1910s, within hailing distance of where Furman took me back: thus my description of the composers shaking hands over the gap of two centuries.
I still have something to learn about this auditorium, especially with an orchestra in it, which I don't often hear here. My reviewer's seat was way in the back; but the two living composers took their applause from the row behind me. So I guess that's what SJCO considers the best seats in the house. Interesting.
Dined beforehand at this Moroccan restaurant downtown. Attentive but rather leisurely service, better suited to an evening when dining is the main event rather than a prelude to a concert, did not detract from excellent food and truly memorable mint tea in one of those tiny silver pots that Turkish coffee comes in. Best tea I've had since the Good Earth shut up shop around here, really.
Then down the street to le petit Trianon for not one but two hot-off-the-press world premieres. You take your life in your hands with these things, really, especially when the composer is capable of anything from bouncing off the walls to wallpapering them. That's the case with Pablo Furman, prof at the nearby state university and well-known locally; fortunately he hit a winner this time. His Paso del Fuego is a substantive and thoroughly crafted Blochian neo-Baroque concerto grosso for string quartet (the locally ubiquitous Cypress Quartet) and string orchestra. It also kept reminding me of works like Dag Wiren's Serenade for Strings and a bit of good old Henry Cowell. In short, this is music of the day, if the day is the 1920s. And that's the day for me.
On to Anica Galindo, a young woman who studied locally before transferring to USC to learn to write film music, it says here, though she has no credits yet that I could find. But learn it she has. Her Trinitas II is featurelessly consonant music firmly designed to stay in the background; fortunately it did not wear out its welcome too badly in ten minutes. Some may cast their minds back to the likes of Max Steiner or Alfred Newman in reading a description of such music (please don't mention Korngold), so I made a point of naming in the review two noted current practitioners of the beleaguered art of traditional orchestral film music, as more like unto what Galindo is doing. Pure coincidence that SFCV's feature article this week discusses film music and James Horner in particular, really. I hadn't known a thing about it.
That's half the concert. The other half: no orchestra, just the quartet, playing Beethoven's Op. 135. Nice to be reminded that Beethoven wasn't always pushing the edge, either; or if he was, doing so in other ways than being aggressively experimental. A touch of heavy expressionism in the interpretation brought my mental image up to the 1910s, within hailing distance of where Furman took me back: thus my description of the composers shaking hands over the gap of two centuries.
I still have something to learn about this auditorium, especially with an orchestra in it, which I don't often hear here. My reviewer's seat was way in the back; but the two living composers took their applause from the row behind me. So I guess that's what SJCO considers the best seats in the house. Interesting.
