concert review: Chamber Music Silicon Valley

The recently re-dubbed CMSV, the result of adding to the annual late-June Silicon Valley Music Festival a spread-out year-round season, held its official launch on Friday in Santa Clara University's strange little recital hall. Though the auditorium is small, it wasn't close to being filled. That's a pity, as there's good stuff in here, and I know from seeing Bing sold out that there's an audience. What CMSV needs is more publicity, and I wish I had the magic wand to give it. At least I can link to their next concert and the Festival in June.

The highlight of this program was its conclusion, a trio for flute, cello, and piano by Weber, one of his few chamber works, with a really bang-up scherzo and finale, especially in this performance by Ray Furuta, Jonah Kim, and Christina Dahl (respectively). The rest of the concert sort of unpacked this ensemble. Kim played a Beethoven cello sonata with a lovely textured tone, but not as entertainingly as in the Weber. Furuta was joined by his one-time flute teacher, Carol Wincenc, for a two-flutes and piano suite by the contemporary Japanese composer Yuko Uebayashi, a tremendously impressive little piece, enough to crown its author as the best composer I know to begin with a U. It alternates quiet Debussyean impressionist harmonies, long a Japanese specialty, with a lively, bouncy style strikingly reminiscent of mid-20C Japanese composers like Hashimoto or early Akutagawa. (I love throwing these names around!) Wincenc also played a couple characteristic pieces by Casella.

All these were with piano accompaniment played by Dahl. The composers often kept her in a self-effacing role, but her rhythmically energetic playing did much to keep the music going. She got one solo spotlight, William Bolcom's entrancing Graceful Ghost Rag.

Nice little concert with some pleasant surprises.

unposted comment

I couldn't get the Atlantic's website to accept my commenter registration, so I couldn't post what I had to say about an article titled "Why God Will Not Die."

Oh, there's lots that could be discussed here, but what attracted my attention was an offhanded incidental remark, asking incredulously, "Does anyone really believe that all men - and women - are created equal?"

That one's a bug of mine, so I wrote:

Of course I do, and you do too, it's just that's it's now so self-evident you don't know what it means. Do you believe in universal adult suffrage? Do you believe that everyone, no matter what their race or sex or religion or wealth or IQ, has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Do you believe that anyone, in all the above categories, should have a fair say and representation and consideration before the law?

If so, then you believe that all men and women are created equal.

That doesn't mean that they're created the same whether in wealth or IQ or anything else. But nobody ever claimed that they were. Jeffersonian equality was still a radical notion in 1776, but it is now so burned into our system that violations of it shock us and it's hard to believe he had to say that, so people cast around for something else he could have meant and come up with something ridiculous.