The first time I had the opportunity to listen to a recital by ZOFO, they were performing Igor Stravinsky's own four-hand version of The Rite of Spring. As I explained at the time "ZOFO" is a "clever typographical twist," which stands for "20FingerOrchestra;" and it is the San Francisco-based musical partnership of Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi, an Accompanist for the Performance Departments at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (from which he received a Master's degree in Chamber Music), who recently performed in violinist Ian Swensen's Faculty Artist Series recital. On October 23 ZOFO will return to the Conservatory; and this time they will play Stravinsky's four-hand version of his earlier ballet, Petrushka. This ballet may lack the notoriety of The Rite of Spring; but, like the later ballet, it showcases Stravinsky's ear for complex polyphony distributed over a broad palette of orchestral voices. Unlike The Rite of Spring, on the other hand, Petrushka has a significant piano part of its own; so a four-hand reduction needs to capture not only the overall sense of the orchestra but also Stravinsky's intended interplay between piano and orchestra. On the basis of their approach to performing The Rite of Spring, ZOFO's programming of Petrushka promises a stimulating listening experience.
The overall theme of the program is PHANTASMA: The Dark Side of Fairy Tales; and Petrushka will serve as the foundation for this theme. Alfredo Casella’s Pupazzetti, five caricatures of marionettes, although written in his own distinctive style, are inspired by Stravinsky's ballet. In "The Milky Way" by Estonian composer Urmas Sisask, one of the performers is mostly working inside the piano, creating percussive sounds that, paired with a continuously spiraling melody, draws the listener into the fantasy of an outer space world. Tomohiro Moriyama's "Let’s play a duet!" evokes the fantastic through visual means. The acrobatic hand and arm crossings required for its execution make the performers seem like some peculiar species of magician, perhaps remotely related to the Charlatan in Petrushka, who bring puppets to life by playing his flute. The program ends with a four-hand transcription by Léon Roques of Paul Dukas' "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice," one of the rare pieces that survived the composer's unforgiving perfectionism and best known for the performance by Mickey Mouse in Walt Disney's Fantasia.
ZOFO's PHANTASMA recital will take place on Saturday, October 23 at 8 PM in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Recital Hall; admission will be free.
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