Last night’s recital in the Old First Concerts series held at Old First Church featured the ZOFO “20FingerOrchestra,” the one-piano-four-hands duo of Keisuke Nakagoshi and Eva-Maria Zimmerman. The title of their concert was Sushi-Fondue, reflecting their respective countries of origin, Japan and Switzerland. The program consisted of six works divided equally between composers from each of these two countries, although in the latter case this involved composers who lived in Switzerland after having been born elsewhere. In addition each country was represented by the American premiere of a work by one of its composers.
Before the concert began Nakagosghi requested a moment of silence from the audience to acknowledge the tragedy and suffering in Japan in the wake of yesterday’s earthquake and tsunami. It was sadly ironic that the composer of the Japanese piece receiving its first American performance, the opening work on the program, was from Sendai, the city hit hardest by both natural disasters. However, music was the order of the evening; and these are performers who have always been consistently focused on their work.
The composer in question was Masao Honma, who died in 2008; and his composition was entitled “Sound Shift No. 4,” completed in 1988. As one might guess, Honma worked on a series of pieces in which progression of sonority was more important than harmonic progression. The basic strategy in this case seemed to involve assigning each of the four hands its own portion of the keyboard with its own distinctive set of sonorities. The sense of progression then came down to the ways in which foreground activity would shift from one hand to another. The work was relatively brief but intriguingly effective in pursuing this strategy, and the duo honored that strategy with the usual intricacy of their coordination.
The other two Japanese offerings were about ten years older. “An ancient five-storied pagoda,” by Toshimitsu Tanaka was completed in 1977. The title refers to a major landmark in Tokyo; and the music depicts a motorcycle ride through Tokyo city streets, one of the composer’s favorite recreations. The work has a driving energy, which amounts to a musical interpretation of this verbal play on words. Equally energetic was Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 1978 “Tong Poo;” but this energy came from its pop-like sense of rhythm and its synthesis of concert and jukebox sensibilities. “Tong Poo” was the final offering on the program; and it was the sort of programming decision guaranteed to end the evening in upbeat spirits (and a standing ovation).
The Swiss offerings covered a much broader range of music history. The earliest work was the Opus 17 sonata, composed in 1865 by Hermann Goetz, a German who moved to Switzerland. This music had much of the energetic spirit one finds in the piano works of Felix Mendelssohn, but with an inclination for less conventional rhythmic gestures that arrest the listener’s attention from the very opening gesture. Goetz died of tuberculosis a few days before turning 36, meaning that he was even younger than Mendelssohn when he died. However, he produced a substantial repertoire; and, if this sonata is representative, then he certainly deserves more attention.
The twentieth century was represented at opposite ends of its duration. First was a performance of Arthur Honegger’s “Pastorale d’été,” composed in 1920. Honegger was born in France, but his parents were Swiss. His attachment to Switzerland was strong; and the “pastoral” setting of this music was inspired by the Swiss Alps. ZOFO performed a four-hand arrangement of the work, originally composed for chamber orchestra.
The most recent work on the program was “Regard sur les traditions,” composed by Dieter Ammann in 1995. This was the Swiss composition receiving its American premiere. It is decidedly tongue-in-cheek, since those “traditions” do not cover the full scope of music history but dwell instead on Olivier Messaien and György Ligeti. The very title is a sly nod to Messaien, but the keyboard technique seems to reflect more on Ligeti’s tendencies towards prankishness in both the eleven solo piano pieces of his Musica Ricercata from the early fifties and the highly personal two-piano pieces he composed in 1976. ZOFO had no trouble summoning the requisite sense of humor for the proper execution of Ammann’s composition.
Comments