Chamber
Music Northwest
festival: schedule
and ticket information.
Twentieth-century classical music is supposed to be difficult.
We hear of 12-tone works, awash in unmelodic dissonance, that
have season subscribers running for the aisles and executive
directors wringing their hands as they try to balance the
checkbook. While smaller groups like Third Angle and Fear
No Music have made this edgier music their home, one doesn't
expect the tradition-oriented Chamber Music Northwest festival
to devote four of its 14 programs to the allegedly unprogrammable.
But that unprecedented move is exactly what CMNW artistic
director David Schifrin has done this year, in a bold tribute
to the century that was.
"To begin with, the 20th century is now 100 years old,"
says Schifrin, "and if it's taught us anything, it's that
you cannot tell much about a work by the date it was written.
There are so many influences and valid approaches to composition
that a fine or great composer now has at his disposal."
Schifrin has been the 29-year-old festival's programmer
since 1980. Since '94, he's also been artistic director
of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a
position he accepted at a time when, because of a decline
in subscriptions, the organization was thinking of cutting
back its presentation of contemporary works. Schifrin, however,
quietly pursued Lincoln Center's mission statement--"offering
the cornerstones of chamber music literature, lesser known
works by great composers, and great works by lesser known
composers"--by adapting it to 20th-century pieces, as well
as earlier work.
He's brought the same balance to CMNW. A case in point
is one of the four "all 20th-century" concerts that CMNW
will present this season. In the program "20th Century American
and English Music," Schifrin groups Aaron Copland's Vitebsk,
a stirring and somber early work steeped in the Jewish folk
tradition (this isn't pop Copland à la Rodeo
or Appalachian Spring), with a fun, frantic sonata
by the largely forgotten American composer George Antheil
and a world-premiere performance of Alvin Singleton's Fifty
Times Around the Sun for Clarinet and Piano.
In addition to the Singleton commission, this year's festival
features the West Coast premiere of English composer Nicholas
Maw's Piano Trio and the world premiere of Ezra Laderman's
Duetti for Flute and Clarinet. How do audiences react to
these new works? Schifrin enthusiastically cites the opening
night acceptance of the Laderman work. "The duetti was
so wonderfully embraced by our audience," he says. "Paired
with a work by W.F. Bach, it showed that we can program
this music alongside the past." He is quick to note, however,
that the CMNW audience is by no means typical. "It's rare,"
says Schifrin. "More often, organizations say: 'Give us
the Schubert, Beethoven and Bach, but our audience is not
ready for your new works.' At CMNW, we have developed a
wonderful relationship with our audience over the past 30
years. There's this tremendous trust that allows us to bring
in the new."
It's this audience trust that allows him the freedom to
liberally pepper this season's concerts with the century's
best offerings and, for the first time, devote four entire
programs to the music. In addition to the American-English
showcase, there's an all-French program pairing Debussy
and Fauré with the jazz-inflected freshness of the
little-known André Jolivet. In the first of the festival-closing
"Landmarks of the Early 20th Century" concerts, Schifrin
and company present Schoenberg's monumental Sprechgesang
(spoken song cycle) Pierre Lunaire, one of the most
eerily beautiful musical expressions in the modernist oeuvre.
It's paired with works by Schoenberg's intensely political
musical disciple Hanns Eisler (who was thrown out of both
Nazi Germany and the United States for his Communist beliefs)
and his French contemporary Ravel. In the second concert,
CMNW presents Stravinsky's justly famous rhythmic masterpiece
L'Histoire du soldat (The Soldier's Tale), along
with works by Poulenc and Martinu from the same post-World
War I period.
"These pieces were all affected by early globalization,
multinationalism and multiculturalism," Schifrin says. "After
World War I, the world got smaller."
With these programs, Schifrin has highlighted some forgotten
works by the century's great composers and rescued some
lesser-known composers from the rubbish heap of music history.
And in closing this year's festival with new presentations
of the Stravinsky and Schoenberg pieces, he is presenting
the finest chamber pieces of two of the century's greatest
musical minds, works that undoubtedly will be played 100
years hence. But hearing them now has a significance of
its own. As Schifrin notes, "This is the last time we'll
be able to hear these as works of this century."
Chamber
Music Northwest
"20th
Century French Music" July 8-9
"20th Century American & English Music" July
15-16
"Landmarks of the Early 20th Century I" July 19-20
"Landmarks of the Early 20th Century II" July 24
July
8, 15, 19 and 24 performances at
Reed College, Kaul Auditorium, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd.
July
9, 16 and 20 performances at
Catlin Gabel School, Cabell Theater, 8825 SW Barnes Road
All
programs begin at 8 pm.
Tickets are $16-$29 and available from the CMNW box office,
294-6400.
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Willamette Week | originally
published July 7, 1999
|
