Musical cross-references

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music "officially" launched its 2010–11 season last night in its Concert Hall with a Faculty Artist Series recital by violinist Ian Swensen. Last year the focus of his recital involved the juxtaposition of two partitas separated by about a quarter of a millennium, the earlier by Johann Sebastian Bach and the later by Witold Lutoslawski. This year Swensen arranged a program of similar temporal breadth, ranging from an early eighteenth-century sonata by Jean-Marie Leclair to Toru Takemitsu's 1973 "Hika" (Japanese for "elegy"). The twentieth century was also represented by Lukas Foss' Three American Pieces; and the nineteenth filled the second half of the program with Ernest Chausson's Opus 21, which he called a concerto and instrumented for violin, piano, and string quartet.

As interesting as this diversity may be, even more interesting to the attentive listener was the ability to detect approaches to material shared across such differencing compositions (just as last year's recital offered different perspectives on the shared concept of the partita). Regardless of whether Swensen prepared his program with such interrelationships in mind, the cross-references made for an engaging listening experience. For example, in the final movement of Leclair's sonata, the composer departs from the usual approaches to sonata movements and dance forms in favor of a tambourin, a fiery duple-time folk dance from Provence, whose name also refers to the long narrow Provençal drum used to beat out the rhythm. The wild abandon of this kind of folk music resurfaced in "Composer's Holiday," the third of the Foss pieces, with the Provençal accent transposed into the twang of a somewhat jazzy hoedown. Similarly, while all four movements of the Chausson concerto are intensely emotional, the third (Grave) movement may best be described as elegiac, thus complementing Takemitsu's Japanese take on the same genre and perhaps the influence of Claude Debussy on his studies. (The Wikipedia entry for Debussy includes an 1893 photograph of him playing piano with Chausson by his side listening.)

As he did last year, Swensen demonstrated that he could be equally comfortable at all "stops" along this extensive temporal scan. This also applied to his approach to performing with others. For the Leclair sonata, his continuo was provided by faculty Baroque specialists Corey Jamason on harpsichord and Elisabeth Reed on cello. For the twentieth-century selections his pianist was Keisuke Nakagoshi, who was equally attuned to the sharply contrasting moods established by Foss and Takemitsu. Finally, all other performers in the Chausson concerto were Conservatory students.

It is also worth noting that Chausson's concerto made for a fascinating experience, which, hopefully, was shared equally by both listeners and performers. Like many of my generation, I came to know this music through an early (1941) recording that Jascha Heifetz made for RCA; and I suspect that I was not the only listener having trouble sorting out the voices. Last night was my first opportunity to hear the concerto in performance, and even the stage layout deserved attention. Swensen was at the front, pretty much "playing the role" that one would expect of a concerto soloist in the nineteenth century. The string quartet sat behind him in a broad semicircular array, a bit like a mini-orchestra; and the piano was situated behind them. While this may have seemed odd for the "second soloist," there is so much energy in the piano part that it runs a serious risk of becoming overbearing. Placing the instrument at a greater distance improved the overall balance without ever detracting from the major contribution that the piano makes to this composition; and the result was a spatial experience that still eludes even the best recording technology. Once again, the Conservatory offered an evening that made the strongest of cases for preferring performance to recording; and it was a perfect way for them to begin their new season.