Rat­ing: 3 stars out of 5

sfSound’s lat­est con­cert on Sat­ur­day 23 Jan 2010 was head­lined by Ligeti’s well-known Cham­ber Con­certo, which closed the con­cert, and was pre­ceded by 10 shorter pre­mières by up-and-comping Bay Area com­posers, mainly stu­dents, but also includ­ing some inter­est­ing other per­spec­tives, like Deer­hoof drum­mer Greg Saunier. This con­cept has some def­i­nite advan­tages. It affords oppor­tu­ni­ties to a lot of less expe­ri­enced com­posers in a rel­a­tively eco­nom­i­cally way, while at the same time ensur­ing an audi­ence for them by pro­gram­ming a new music “hit” like Ligeti’s Cham­ber Con­certo.

How­ever, the for­mat also presents some chal­lenges to audi­ence and ensem­ble, because a lot of rel­a­tively diverse music is pre­sented in the course of an evening. Unfor­tu­nately, this aspect didn’t receive the atten­tion it should have, so while there were some great moments, there were also stretches of generic music that marred the evening and cre­ated the impres­sion that we were some­how required to “earn” the Ligeti, as opposed to enjoy­ing a well-rounded con­cert that built up to it.

To start, the Ligeti was very well done. This is a hard piece, full of micro­tones and del­i­cate bal­ances that require intense con­cen­tra­tion and prepa­ra­tion on the part of the ensem­ble, and it was clear that their hearts were into it. It came off well and was a sat­is­fy­ing end to the con­cert, and there’s not much else to say about it. Prop­erly done, this piece is always a win­ner and it was a good choice for sfSound.

There were also a cou­ple of gems within the pre­mières. David Coll’s Unti­tled II par­tic­u­larly stood out as a com­pe­tent and inter­est­ing piece. He man­aged to bal­ance extended mul­ti­phonic tech­niques in the clar­inet with the vio­lin and piano in a way that sounded whole; the clar­inet didn’t sound like it was doing some­thing unre­lated to the other instru­ments, as is often the case when using mul­ti­phon­ics in an ensem­ble set­ting. And the musi­cal form was con­vinc­ing and elegant.

Sim­i­larly, Pen and Pen­cil Drawer by the com­poser going by the pseu­do­nym of Can­ner MEFE was a strong piece, and man­aged to cover a lot of ground for a duet between oboe and clar­inet. Most of the piece con­sisted of dis­con­nected lines that met in dis­so­nant rhyth­mic unisons at irreg­u­lar inter­vals, but what really made the piece stand out was that it didn’t com­mit too dog­mat­i­cally to this prin­ci­ple. Can­ner MEFE allowed him-/herself to stray musi­cally as dic­tated by the mate­ri­als, and this led to a rich devel­op­ment that was inter­est­ing from start to finish.

In con­trast, many of the other pieces had a dis­tinc­tive student-y flavour. Most stuck reli­giously to a pet tech­nique or con­cept, giv­ing the impres­sion of etudes or com­po­si­tion exer­cises more than con­cert works. Trag­i­cally, a lot of these pieces can be summed up using a sin­gle new-music label each: sparse Weber­nesque Klang­far­ben­melodie, or post-minimalist melod­i­cism, or air sounds, or extended trills, etc etc. In fair­ness, all com­posers learn by imi­ta­tion and exper­i­men­ta­tion, but plac­ing these works-in-progress next to a mas­ter­piece like the Cham­ber Con­certo was not really fair either; they couldn’t pos­si­bly compete.

Another draw­back of the for­mat is that works by less expe­ri­enced com­posers require more rehearsal and effort, because often the score trans­lates the composer’s inten­tions imper­fectly. By doing 10 such works, the ensem­ble set for itself a her­culean inter­pre­tive task. And on top of that, sfSound clearly had to do a good job of the Ligeti—that was what was draw­ing the crowd. So they were really stuck between a rock and a hard place.

New music pro­gram­ming is one of the trick­i­est things out there, but get­ting it right is essen­tial to the art form. Per­haps a bet­ter approach would have been to do a sim­i­lar con­cert with­out the Ligeti, and then on a later con­cert repro­gram the more suc­cess­ful stu­dent works again. That way, young com­posers get a chance to work with a high-calibre group, but they also don’t have to stand in the shadow of giants. And then the suc­cess­ful pieces can be pre­sented again, later, in a con­text where they will shine, and where they make up part of a uni­fied pro­gram. After all, the real test of a new piece is not whether it gets played, but whether it gets played more than once.