Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Viva Mexico!

After hearing the Orquesta de Baja California (it's really more of a chamber symphony, a little bigger than the London Sinfonietta) play an all Mexican composer concert at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido (about 30 miles north of downtown San Diego), I realized that when it comes to North and South American music from the 1920s to the 1940s, I've heard more orchestral works from that period by Mexicans than by U.S. composers. I don't know how much Mexican music you hear in symphony concert halls outside of Southern California, but we hear a lot, especially in San Diego.

Sure, we get the Copland ballet scores, and a Barber composition from the period every couple of years, and I'm not counting Gershwin. But the other American symphonists? Where are they? Sessions, Piston, Schuman, Harris, Thomson. I can't think of a single performance of their orchestral music in the past five years (some of them I've never heard in San Diego--for instance, Harris, Piston, or Thomson--and I've lived here 20 years). And as might be imagined, don't wait around for any Varese, Riegger, Ruggles, Seeger. (Hey, that rhymes!) Oddly enough, Cowell's more consonant scores get performed here, although again, not as much as Chavez or Revueltas.

It always infuriated me that American orchestras didn't play American repertory. The typical American conductor's response (and the typical conductor in the U.S. was not born and raised here) is, "I program the best music, regardless of nationality." Come down off your high dead German horse, Fritz! You're in the U.S. now--play some American composers!

I don't think anyone in Orquesta de Baja California is going to argue that Chavez or Revueltas are greater composers than Mozart or Beethoven or Bach, or even Stravinsky and Schoenberg to use examples from the last century. But they're a Mexican orchestra, so they take pride in playing Mexican composers. It's part of their cultural heritage. Why can't American orchestras feel the same way???

Heard on the concert was a killer piece by Leo Brouwer, unfortunately not recorded. Here's what I had to say about it:

The other discovery of the evening was Cancion de Gesta, by the Cuban Leo Brouwer. Brouwer is probably the most revered living composer for classical guitar. His other music, though, rarely appears in San Diego. Cancion de Gesta was originally written for a wind quartet, piano, harp and five percussionists. You wouldn�t have guessed its origins, though, as the writing was completely idiomatic for chamber orchestra.
Brouwer�s reputation in the U.S. as a composer may well have been hurt by his Cuban origins, and from being pigeonholed (at least by American academics) as a reactionary tonal composer. How else to explain the neglect of this amazing work? Written in 1978, Brouwer used the repetitive melodic patterns of minimalism, but cast them in a form where sudden shifts of tempo and emotion interrupt the static processes. If I didn�t know anything about this work, I�d guess it was composed this year by an American or Danish composer in his or her 30s or 40s. To put Brouwer�s innovative use of minimalism in context, in 1978, America�s greatest postminimal composer, John Adams, finished Shaker Loops, which was hailed as a breakthrough work for demonstrating a way to meld the repetitive materials of minimalism with a more traditional sense of large-scale form.

There's probably more Revueltas played in Southern California than anywhere else in the country. In addition to the ubiquitous Sensemaya (I swear, it gets performed more than Appalachian Spring here), there was also the lesser-known, but delightful, Alcancias. Alcancias translates as "Piggy banks." Anyone know why Revueltas gave it this title? Post an answer!

The thing that's great about writing for the internet (as opposed to a newspaper) is that I get to say things like: "If Varese, Ives, and Stravinsky had a four-way with Frida Kahlo, the offspring might have been Revueltas," and it doesn't end up censored.

Fantastic compositions. Read my whole review here.

posted by Christian Hertzog 10/11/2005