concert review: San Francisco Symphony

[calimac]

Yesterday's concert included satisfying performances of two works deserving of their status as established masterpieces: Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony, led briskly by David Robertson with a combination of courtliness and vehemence; and a more leisurely ramble through Brahms's Second Piano Concerto, played with gratifying lightness and grace by the Ursa Major of pianists, Yefim Bronfman, with luminous accompaniment from the orchestra.

Also on the program, however, was Carlo by Brett Dean, a "young" (said the pre-concert lecturer: he's 48 this month) Australian composer, for small string orchestra and recorded voices on tape. It begins with the tape singing a Renaissance madrigal by Don Carlo Gesualdo; gradually the strings take over, in a manner as if your car radio were slowly losing Gesualdo's signal and picking up a station playing Ligeti. As the Gesualdo finally disappears, the strings extend its harmonic line for a bit, mixed with their Ligetian keening in a manner akin to Luciano Berio rubbing his grubby hands all over Schubert. Then the tape comes back, the voices loudly amplified but whispering, like something out of George Crumb. Then the strings give out low agonized rumblings from Penderecki, then drones from Giacinto Scelsi. And it goes on like that for twenty minutes, reminding me by turns of all the late 20th-century composers I least want to be reminded of. Later on the voices howl like dispirited dogs.

By any standards I can comprehend by which the Haydn and Brahms are "great music," this piece was "worthless crap." So what was it doing there? If Robertson has standards by which he considers Dean's work worth putting on this concert, it suggests that he values Haydn and Brahms too not for their beauty or majesty or depth or subtlety, but by standards I cannot comprehend, rather like the people who seem to think the value of The Lord of the Rings lies in its ability to inspire dull, overlong war-fantasy-adventure movies.

Comments

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

You could find out why the Dean was on the program, through the simple expedient of emailing the SFS press office, identifying yourself as an SFCV writer, and asking for Robertson's comments. But trying to guess at the particular standards involved seems to me not so useful beyond acknowledging that any one of us might value different composers for different reasons.

Your description of the Brett Dean piece certainly interests me in hearing it, though. ;-) A couple of years back I heard an amazing program of works by Stefano Scoddanibio, a living Italian composer/double bass virtuoso, that included a string quartet that quite clearly had roots in Renaissance music. Very curious what Dean does taking off from Gesualdo.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Leaving aside the fact that I do not wish to wave around my press credentials for the benefit of my private blog ...

What do you think I would get if I asked the press office why this work was considered worthy of the program? What I'd get is more of the same descriptive drivel filling the program book, which already considers itself an adequate answer to that question. Do you not think that, in forty years at the coalface of modern music, I have not read reams of nonsense about how various pieces of worthless crap were The Great Music Of Our Time? My entire aesthetic of modern music has been formed in reaction to having been spoon-fed this stuff in my youth.

Only a close in-person conversation with Robertson himself, not so much about Dean but about Haydn and Brahms, would have a hope of answering this question, and not much of one. I once had a chance to have a talk with Andrew Imbrie, in which I tried delicately to dance around finding a polite way to pose the question, "Why can't you find a way to both address your aesthetic concerns and needs and speak to a wider audience? Centuries of your predecessors could." But there was no way he could address this question, dismissive at it was of his entire oeuvre: the gap of understanding between us was just too wide.

At the end of my post I compared this dilemma with another one. I have had numerous no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle, knock-down arguments with people on the other side of this latter question over the last ten years, and I am still no nearer to understanding what it is that they see in Tolkien that makes them think the films are even remotely comparable in aesthetic quality.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

I have made inquiries in connection with my blog and wouldn't call it "waving around." My blog is also under my name and more directly connected with my music writing than yours is.

The answer to the question you didn't ask Imbrie directly is that some composers are not concerned with speaking to a wider audience. That's their prerogative. From what I've heard of Imbrie's music, however, I'd say that there was a richer musical language inside him trying to get out. I would guess he did feel constrained by the general mid-century musical aesthetics of austerity.

Yes, there does seem to be a wide gap of understanding between you and some composers (and conductors, given that so many conductors champion music you dislike). I feel strongly that composers are entitled to their own aesthetic paths, whether I understand them or not and whether or not I like the music.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Composers and conductors are entitled to write or program whatever they want, and I am entitled to criticize them for it, if that is my reaction. Nobody is stepping on anybody else's rights here.

If that ever happens, it comes from those who complain that not enough modern or American music is programmed by major US orchestras. These complainers seem to think that some kind of moral responsibility is not being met. (My own position on this question is highly mixed and conditional.)

As for the other question, that position was nonsense when an editor put the title "Who Cares If You Listen?" on Milton Babbitt's article in 1958, and it's still nonsense fifty years later. Again: do you think I've not heard this before?

[(Anonymous)]

As someone who likes Gesualdo as well as Ligeti, Penderecki, and Scelsi (and Berio and Crumb less), your description of Dean's piece 1) made me giggle 2) made me want to hear the piece and make up my own mind.

My conclusion after a lifetime of listening to all kinds of music is 1) every style is capable of producing masterpieces 2) every style is capable of producing drivel 3) the difference is often subjective.

I.e., the Dean piece =might= be "worthless crap," or it might be an OK minor work in the Ligeti/Penderecki/Scelsi style (corresponding to a lesser contemporary of Beethoven, say). The proof would be in the listening.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

In this case, it was drivel.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

What I find most interesting is that your description was vivid and interesting enough to make me and Anonymous want to hear the piece to see whether we agreed with your "it was drivel" conclusion.