Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Last Night at Ojai: In the Country

Last night�s concert was planned around the idea of Oliver Knussen conducting music about being in the country. But Knussen was hospitalized for an operation so Grant Gershon, conductor of the Los Angeles Master Chorale stepped up for the program, conducting the �Ojai Chamber Music Ensemble�, a group of pros from various jobs around the area, including the Phil. I had to shove my eyebrows back in place after reading that the second half of the concert would be devoted to the music of Percy Grainger, but I did learn something: Grainger was more than sweetened-up folk songs. Among other things, he knew how to operate the publicity machines of the twenties: his wedding (to his �Nordic princess�) was held in the Hollywood Bowl and was accompanied by the premiere of his work in her honor, with an orchestra of 126 plus a choir, for his closest 20,000 friends.

The Ojai concert began with Grainer�s Molly on the Shore (1907/1911) in a setting for string quintet, then to Lisbon (1906/1937) for wind quintet, and on to some of his more innovative music which I had never heard before. He experiemented with rhythm, but went in a different direction from Stravinsky by writing works which eliminated rhythm, in what he called �beatless� music. (Somewhat like Noncarrow, he felt that his music was too complex to be realized by other musicians, so he paid for an experimental mechanical organ.) The group played three of these, Sea Songs (1907), washes of attractive sound. Later yet he tried to remove the limitations of pre-determined pitch and conventional tones so he worked on �free music� to do away with all limitations on the composer. Attracted by the theremin, he composed one work for six theremins, the sound of which can only be imagined, possibly after a bad meal. We heard a version he wrote for strings, in which the strings were instructed to play without vibrato and to glide between conventional notes, producing arcs of sound. He also invested in trying to develop what would have become the first synthesizer, but technology and his ideas didn�t permit success. So there was much more to Grainger than Country Dances or Handel on the Strand. But while interesting, and pleasantly engaging, I didn�t hear anything approaching greatness.

The concert began with Mauricio Kagel and his (intentionally mis-spelled) Kantrimiusik � A Pastorale for Singers and Instruments (1975). This is music about music in the country and about folk music. The lyrics are sounds without meaning, in imitation Spanish, French, German, Russian, and English. The styles of the serial music shift to imitate sounds typical of the language being imitated. The three singers (soprano, mezzo, tenor) accompanied an ensemble of violin, three winds (clarinet, trumpet, tuba), two guitars, and piano. Further, each instrumentalist was to introduce additional instrumentation and additional sounds. To further confound the ears, taped recordings of external sounds (barking, mooing, a tractor, a person imitating a rooster, etc.). Fittingly, in Ojai�s outdoors atmosphere, the initial overlay of sound came from a firetruck siren as it traveled past the park. Well, I got the jokes pretty rapidly and I didn�t need this Darmstadt cynicism for forty minutes.

The morning concert, in contrast, was great. Peter Serkin gave us a lovely concert in which each half of the concert began with clear lines of early music and then jumped to music of today. In the first half, Serkin started with a Josquin Desprez Ave Christie (c. 1500) as converted for piano in 1988 by Charles Wuorinen, in a lovely realization. Then a Bach chorale (c. 1725) in a keyboard setting. And then Toru Takemitsu�s Far Away (1973), in which a few notes in the center of the piano gradually rippled and grew across the range of the keyboard. Serkin then played the four elements, of water, earth, air, and fire from Six Encores (1965 � 1990) of Luciano Berio. Feuerklavier was written for Serkin in 1989 and is the longest of the elements in its suggestion of flames flickering in the darkness. Serkin closed with another work written for him, Variations, op. 24 by Oliver Knussen. Knussen�s recent work, A Fragment of Ophelia�s Last Dance (2004), written in commemoration of the lateSue Knussen of Los Angeles came in the second half of the concert, following a set of pieces by Bull, Dowland, and Byrd. The concert closed with a great performance of Messiaen�s Le Moqueur Polyglotte (1974), his homage to a mockingbird. This is the movement for solo piano that forms the ninth of twelve movements of Des canyons aux �toiles which he last heard at Ojai four years ago. As an encore, Serkin gave us Stravinsky�s Piano Rag (1919), in all of its splash and fun.

Life is good.

posted by Jerry Zinser 6/12/2005