Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

The composers (for so it will be convenient to speak of them) are expounding a recondite matter to us.

Harkening back to the second concert of the Cabrillo music festival, there were three excellent pieces besides the Puts Percussion Concerto (Sunday, August 6th post) that I did not have a chance to review at the time. Here they are now.

First on the concert was a piece by Laura Karpman, who has been highly active in the film and television industry. In this piece, entitled the Transitive Property of Equality, she has taken a group of famous themes and used her own music to ‘remix’ these themes together. She seeks and finds relationships between Mozart, Wagner, Rossini, and many others. Despite what you might think about mashes (and believe me, there are few greater skeptics than myself) there is no doubt of Karpman’s skill. She refuses to let the piece be solely funny or serious. Rather, she places juxtapositions that work humorously, and then takes the theme and develops it as if it were her own. I did have one ‘issue’ with the piece. I felt that her development of the themes was remarkable, but she had too much thematic material to develop it all to its fullest potential. But overall I greatly enjoyed the piece as did the audience.

After intermission was a second percussion concerto, this one for snare drum. Just snare drum. Solo snare drum above the orchestra. While it is easy to believe that such a piece would be dull (the soloist can only play themes that are solely rhythmic in nature) this is one of the most fascinating pieces I have ever heard. It is amazing how many sounds you can get out of a snare drum, most interestingly (to me) the various pitches that the sticks evoke from the instrument. While I think that the piece was excellent, I admit that I was so fascinated by the extended double-stroke crescendos and decrescendos with audible, pitched harmonics that my ears were often following the individual sounds rather than the form of the piece. But I think it was more important that it was Evelyn Glennie playing. Wowza.

The final piece on the program was by Michael Daugherty. His fun nature showed through in a programmatic piece partially based on H. G. Wells novel, The Time Machine. The piece is in two movements with the orchestra divided into three parts, each with its own conductor. The first movement takes place in the past, and alternates gentle rocking in the strings with dance music evoking the early Renaissance. The second movement takes place in the future of the H. G. Wells. Opening with a harp passage representing the time traveler’s idyllic beliefs about the future, but the beauty of the harp is quickly dropped as the traveler reaches the future. It is not long before he realizes that one of the two sentient species is planning to eat the other. The piece is a rollicking journey, and has many excellent moments and passages (the shaking of Bamboo bones and the climbing of Timpani towers being particularly memorable). However, I did feel that the three conductors were frequently doubling one another, and wished were sometimes as independent as in Stockhausen’s Gruppen. The overall effect of the piece was incredibly fun and passionate, and the concert was one of the most enjoyable orchestral recitals I have been to at least since last year’s Cabrillo Festival.

Unfortunately I must traverse the seas to the horrible pain that is Hawaii. Ack! No more Cabrillo! Those that are left behind will hear the music of Ades, Brewbaker, Kernis, Gatonska and Salonen. Go Cabrillo Festival! Das Vidanya.
—Matthew Cmiel, finally, out—

posted by Matthew Cmiel 8/08/2006