A feast of first impressions

Poster for last night's sfSoundGroup concert featuring György Ligeti with his 100 metronomes
(from the sfSound home page)

Imagine moving to a town where you know exactly one person.  So, because he has a large house, that person decides to throw a party at which he will introduce you to everyone he knows.  This turns out to be such a large number of people that the entire evening is filled with introductions, all of which are so brief that, by the time you get home, you barely remember anyone you have met!

This is a bit like the situation I encountered last night at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Concert Hall, where the members of sfSoundGroup presented a program entitled Small Packages.  The metaphorical host for the evening was György Ligeti, whose four-movement "Chamber Concerto" for thirteen instrumentalists concluded the evening.  The "guests" were ten composers, each of whom had been commissioned to write a short piece for the ensemble.  (In his brief introductory remarks Matt Ingalls noted that he felt it appropriate to call these "commissions," even though none of the artists were paid!)  It would be fair to say that each of these "guests" could claim some acquaintance with the "host;"  but those acquaintances were established in a variety of ways, including novel approaches to eliciting sounds from conventional instruments, innovative strategies for establishing the underlying grammar of the composition, and unconventional styles of performance.

Most interesting, perhaps, was that each composition seemed to have its own characteristic approach to seizing the attention with its very first gesture;  and, because all of the works were brief, none of them overstayed their welcome.  Indeed, if one can resort to old-fashioned terminology in the face of so much modernism, it was almost as if each composition provided an exposition for which development was still waiting to occur.  The result was rather like the ongoing chain of introductions in that party I hypothesized;  and, as the helpless (or hapless) guest, my recollection of any single encounter is modest at best.  Nevertheless, the experience as a whole was fresh and exciting.  So the best way to do justice to it is probably to credit the contributing composers, the names of their works, and the instrumentation required:

1. Mauricio Rodriguez, fluere, for violin, viola, cello, and piano
2. Tom Dambly, the second movement of "Chamber Concerto" (Opus 3), for solo trumpet and seven instruments
3. David Coll, Untitled II, for clarinet, violin, and piano
4. Maggi Payne, Shh, for English horn, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, violin, viola, and cello
5. Nick Bacchetto, String Trio, for violin, viola, and cello
6. Canner MEFE (digital alias), Pen and Pencil Drawer, for oboe and clarinet
7. Dan Becker, Gobble, for bass clarinet, saxophone (alternating between alto and baritone), piano, violin, and cello
8. Theresa Wong, Casting, for English horn, alto saxophone, and piano
9. Greg Saunier, Secret Mobilization, for English horn, alto saxophone, violin, viola, and cello
10. Heather Frasch, to disassemble and reconstruct, for English horn, bass clarinet, baritone saxophone, viola, and cello

Note, in particular, the diversity of approaches to instrumentation, which contributed significantly to each new "introduction" of the evening being a fresh one.

Prior to last night I had known Ligeti's chamber concerto only through recordings.  However, Ligeti was such a master of fine detail in both the grammar of his scores and the interplay of sonorities in his instrumentation that even the best of recordings barely begin to do him justice.  sfSoundGroup brought a disciplined approach to what is basically a highly transparent conception.  Every voice is very much an individual one, and five of the performers alternate between two instruments.  Some (if not all) of the individual movements were longer than the commissioned works that preceded its performance, making this the one offering in which exposition proceeded into development.  For those unfamiliar with Ligeti, it would make an excellent introduction, while those more knowledgeable can easily recognize how it fits in with the rest of his body of work.  From either point of view, sfSoundGroup reminded us that there are far too few occasions to hear Ligeti's work in concert;  and he deserves more performances such as the one given last night.