In last week's Project San Francisco concert, the second movement of George Benjamin's Dance Figures played with the technique of achieving a particular sound quality by orchestrating the physical overtones of that sound, an effect that Maurice Ravel had experimented with in his "Bolero." This idea that a sound could be mimicked by analyzing it for its component frequencies and then assigning the pitches of those frequencies to instruments with appropriate acoustic properties came to be known as the theory of "spectral music," particularly by those occupied with it in France. Unfortunately, as I have previously observed, what seems like a fascinating approach to composition in theory does not always play out very well in practice.
From this point of view alone, Benjamin's 2008 "Duet" for piano and orchestra, one of two of his compositions being performed at this week's Project San Francisco concert by the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall with Benjamin himself conducting, is an awesomely successful effort that not only demonstrates his keen understanding of "the sound itself" but also colorfully honors the influences of both his teacher, Olivier Messiaen, and Ravel, who happens to be one of his favorite composers. In the program notes provided by Thomas May, we read that Benjamin opted for the title "Duet," rather than "concerto," to address the contrast between piano and orchestra, as opposed to an integration of soloist and accompaniment. However, Benjamin also chose to omit violins from this "contrasting" orchestra because (as he explained in last week's pre-concert interview) he did not want the sustained sounds of the violin's upper register to conflict with the rapid decay time of those pitches on the piano. Instead, he chose to deploy his remaining orchestral resources to mimic many of the most salient properties of piano sounds.
The result was stunningly effective, not to mention a bit eerie. At the front of the stage one heard sounds coming from the piano performed by soloist Nicolas Hodges; but distributed across much of the stage one heard another "disembodied" piano, implemented through Benjamin's command of orchestral mimicry. The program book mentions that "Duet" has not yet been recorded; and this may be just as well. It is hard to imagine that not only the subtle play of sonorities of this composition but also they way in which those sonorities have been spatially deployed could be captured adequately by current recording technologies. Thus, "Duet" is very much a "must hear" event this week at Davies; and Friday and Saturday evenings are the only remaining opportunities!
Benjamin also conducted his own music in a performance of "Ringed by the Flat Horizon." This is a much earlier work (1980); and it has been recorded by Mark Elder and the BBC Symphony. I discussed it briefly in my preview piece for Benjamin's Project San Francisco visit; but what is most important about this composition is that it, like Dance Figures, takes its own approach to the exploration of the physical properties of sounds. On the one hand it deploys percussion to evoke the sense of a thunderstorm, since the title is drawn from "What the Thunder Said," the final section of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land; but at the same time it explores the ability of the wind instruments to reflect, if not mimic, a broader variety of percussion sounds that "encircle" the composition as a whole. "Ringed by the Flat Horizon" may lack much of the "acoustic precision" that characterizes "Duet;" but it is still an intensely expressive mood piece.
In his role as conductor, Benjamin devoted the rest of his offering to those two aforementioned influences, beginning and ending with Ravel and situating Messiaen's "Oiseux Exotiques" in the center of the program. This composition, for piano (again performed by Hodges) and eighteen performers on wind, brass, and percussion instruments, is not interested in the physical reproduction of the sounds of the 48 species of birds that it catalogs. It would be more appropriate to regard the work as a collection of ornithological notes (with a double meaning intended for that noun) that evokes the experience of hearing birds in the wild, just as "Ringed by the Flat Horizon" evoked the experience of a thunderstorm in a vast outdoor space. As was the case with "Duet," the work is conceived not only in terms of its rather unique instrumentation but also in the spatial deployment of those instruments. This work has been recorded several times; but, again, it is music best appreciated in a setting where those spatial qualities can be apprehended.
There is also a brief avian presence in the Ravel composition that began the program, the 1911 orchestral version of his Ma Mère l'Oye (Mother Goose) suite. In the second "Tom Thumb" movement we encounter the birds that ate the bread crumbs dropped by the children to find their way out of the forest. This is but one of the many colors in Ravel's highly diverse instrumental palette. Benjamin clearly has a keen ear for Ravel's instrumentation, always finding the right balance for each sound to play its proper role without intruding on the presences of the other sounds. The five movements of this suite are all brief. (The entirety tends to run about a quarter of an hour.) Except for the exchange of voices in the "Conversations of Beauty and the Beast," the movements are almost like frozen moments, which is one reason why this particular composition is sometimes associated with the impressionist movement in painting; and Benjamin summoned just the right touch to bring that "impression of impressionism" to the Davies stage.
The 1908 Rapsodie Espagnole suite, which concluded the program, is also, in many respects, a series of impressions. However, in this case those impressions are linked by the recurrence of the four descending pitches that serve as the "theme" of the first movement, "Prélude à la Nuit." Thus, the entire suite of a prelude and three dances is very much a nocturnal affair and may very well have been Ravel's "reply" to the suite of three orchestral nocturnes that Claude Debussy had completed in 1899. In many respects this conclusion of the entire concert provided the one opportunity for the entire orchestra to erupt with the most familiar sounds, and Benjamin was admirably skillful in finding just the right pace to build up to that climax. However, while the ending may have been familiar, the many new experiences that preceded it were responsible for a sense of wonder that is achieved all too seldom in so many concert occasions. Benjamin has been a most welcome guest!
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