music

Newly commissioned works featured at Herbst

A celebration of diversity

Classical musicians can’t always express their darker impulses with the “grunge” such impulses deserve. But a concert by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players at Herbst Theater Nov. 1 had several darkly expressive candidates. Three of the four pieces on their Made to Order program had been commissioned by the SFCMP and two of them were World premieres.

Despite a descent into the world of extended techniques, the material was often conceptual and calculating, balancing experimental forays and a sense of discovery against ideology.

Donnacha Dennehy is a minimalist composer who brings an elegant World sound to his composition, As An Nós. The bright melancholy of Irish airs—skipped fourths and flattened sevenths—often infuse his hypnotic material, but Monday night’s offering added rhythms that partook of urban rock and Greek cafes. Groups of three and four notes alternated for a driving beat, with bass drum adding insistence. Violin bowed short sharp Morse code fragments, then handed the development to guitar. The work simplified into intertwining fugal lines, clarinet and then flute playing with the themes. Dennehy writes about As An Nós (out of a habit), “The piece is a poetic attempt to maintain andKen Uenoyet escape (maybe even transcend) its own habit.” I don’t know if it escapes itself, but it certainly brought a gentle liveliness, and even moments of joy, to the audience.

The other treat was Ken Ueno’s Archaeologies of the Future, stylistically opposite: internal sounds, powerful silences, and disturbing vocalizations marked this premiere. Ueno growled into the mike with a Heavy Metal rasp that made my throat hurt in sympathy. Long pauses demarcated each statement. Sharp brake drum and cymbal, played by Daniel Kennedy, added an explosive quality. Or plosive. Ueno’s segments interpret as phonetic elements. Hisses and scratches of viola and cello were sibilants, and Tod Brody’s bass flute breaths were unvoiced vowels. Nanci Severance referred to her viola part as “…sad and moving,” as she slid the bow gently at an angle across the neck strings to draw slithering harmonics from her instrument. Steven Harrison followed suit on cello, and then bore down to turn pitch into grating non-sound, the epitome of affricate consonants.

Ueno’s hisses and Tuvan throat singing, with long pauses between lines, emphasized the emergent and self-created quality of the sound. Beforehand he spoke to the audience, quoting architect Louis Kahn, who admonished builders to let the brick define its arch, and also paid tribute to composer Morton Feldman, whose work was performed last month (Oct 14 Piedmont Post). Ueno spoke to “honesty” in sound. “It’s like sashimi: don’t add béchamel sauce. Just let it be.”

Ronald Bruce Smith rounded out the evening with Five Pieces for Guitar and Electronics (2007), performed by gifted guitarist David Tanenbaum. “Echoes” was cool and gave an impression of deep distances, while in “Lachrymose” airplane-deep bass sounds interrupted a drunken guitar line, which wandered Varèse-like. “Brunete” held the abrupt jangle of flamenco, and in “Saudade” Tanenbaum toyed with harmonics. He brought a golden edge to his notes, a posterized reverie with Hawaiian slides.

The Players finished with Philippe Leroux’s De la texture, a quirky piece that puzzled the audience but delighted the musicians. Its multiple layers may require several hearings to decipher.

SFCMP returns to Herbst Jan 25 in “Natural Phenomena,” promising an evocative and subtle concert. Program notes and sound clips are available at www.sfcmp.org.

—Adam Broner

This article originally appeared in the Piedmont Post.

Photo: Ken Ueno was composer and performer…and even the photographer.