Yo-Yo Ma & Kathryn Stott

Oh, shut up- you already know what he looks like. Besides, doesn't the background in this photo of Kathryn Stott by Lorenzo Cicconi look like a Gerhard Richter painting? 

A couple of weeks ago I saw Yo-Yo Ma and Kathryn Stott perform together in UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall. I can't decide if being Yo-Yo Ma would be a wonderful or terrible thing. I do know it sort of sucks to write about one of his performances. What can one say that hasn't been said already? Is possible to separate the man's abilities on a given night from his aura and reasonably critique his performance at this point in his career? To say something negative, anything at all, would make one appear petty, spiteful and small, because not only is Ma such an extraordinarily gifted performer, but his spirit and sense of generosity toward the audience, and his fellow artists, pervades every moment he's onstage.

Even if it were true there would be very few people who would even believe you if you ever said, "Yo-Yo Ma? He was just okay." I wonder when the last time was when that was actually true. He's gotta have an off night too, right?

Maybe. Maybe not. Because Yo-Yo Ma is just a little bit different that you, I or your everyday classical musician. I suspect he knows this to some extent, and it's how he wears this knowledge like a loose garment that is so incredibly damn flattering. What I find complelling about the world's most famous and recognizable classical musician is he is always willing to share the spotlight. He knows he can't avoid it, he can't escape it, so he might as well share it. And that's the mark of a uniquely confident and generous soul. And a class act.

Because Stott and Ma have a long history together, she seemed as comfortable as one could be for being in the decidedly unenvious role of the musician no one is paying to hear. However once the music started none of that really mattered and if one couldn't quite view them as equals on the stage, they were certainly peers and partners, which yielded a number of rewards since it never felt like "The Yo-Yo Ma show, accompanied by Kathryin Stott." Credit the canny selections performed by the duo, beginning with Stravinsky's Suite Italienne, which allowed Stott ample time to ingratiate herself with the audience before Ma tore into the Tarantella and reminded everyone who they came to see.

Of the three pieces which followed, all from the Latin world, only Piazolla's Oblivion stood out to me as particularly noteworthy, perhaps because none were originally scored for the cello, though the mournful craving of Piazolla's tango-infected music is perfectly suited for the instrument's voice.

That same lack of conviction was felt in Manuel de Falla's "Siete Canciones Populares Espanolas," but only when it came to the cello. Stott was fantastic with these songs, especially in Seguidilla Murciana and the Albeniz-flavored Asturiana. Ma appeared to become almost giddy as he watched her dominate the songs- not ceding the stage to her, but happy to let her take the wheel and drive the performance.

After the intermission came what was for me the highlight of the scheduled programming, Louange al'Eternite de Jesus from Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time (Quatuor pour la fin du Temps), which was followed by the evening's most traditional selection, a Brahms sonata (No. 3 in D Minor for those of you keeping score). There's not much to say about either except they were exceptionally played. If you thought my earlier comments were some sort of intimation on my part that Ma was "just okay," well, no- he was as wonderful as we all expect him to be.

Yet for all that, the best part of the concert was still to come during three generous encores. The first was "The Last Song" by Clarice Assad, whose father was in the audience and graciously introduced by the star. Next came Ma's own Cristal, which felt like straight-up Brubeck and found him fiendishly following Stott's own alternating lead hands on the piano's keys like a leopard chasing down a gazelle.

The final piece of the evening was Saint Saen's The Swan, and even this familiar, gorgeously decadent piece, which the pair have performed numerous times together, had an air of freshness and possibility. The sold-out house departed happy, dazzled and delighted once again by the classiest man in the business. The concert was presented by Cal Performances, who have a number of noteworthy concerts coming up, including a recital by the magnificent bass Eric Owens this coming Sunday, and especially the upcoming solo recital next Tuesday by the white-hot violinist Christian Tetzlaff, which promises to be a highlight of the year.

Chamber music with Fima and SFS musicians

Once in awhile I'll attend a concert, thoroughly enjoy it, and find that I have little to say about it beyond "yeah, that was really good (or great, or [even] wonderful)." I'm not alone here- Patrick and I have discussed this at length, and thankfully it doesn't happen to me very often. However,  I felt this way about what will end up being the last performance I'll have attended this year- an excellent chamber music concert featuring Yefim Bronfman and ten members of the San Francisco Symphony.

I don't regularly attend these concerts because it feels unnatural to me to sit in a theater or auditorium in the middle of the afternoon, unless it's raining or something. And when it's raining, and I'm looking for something to do indoors, I typically think about going to the movies, because the chamber music series isn't regularly scheduled for every Sunday afternoon. One must pay attention, or make arrangements in advance. I know I miss out on a lot of good stuff with this attitude, including the longstanding Saturday morning performances of the Alexander String Quartet and SF Opera's Tosca and Rigoletto this year, but it has to be someone or something I really want to hear to make me want to take that seat on a Sunday afternoon. Something rare, or something special. That was the case a couple of weeks ago for this particular concert because of Bronfman's presence- I've mentioned before he's my favorite pianist- and I was all the more intrigued to hear him because the Emperor he'd performed a couple of nights before with the orchestra wasn't bad but it certainly wasn't a highlight of the season, or even of that particular concert.

That Sunday I arrived at the hall late, barely making it into my seat on time, on what turned out to be an unexpectedly nice day, because I had been arguing with a horrid and dreadful woman, which was to be expected because it seems she and I can't not argue on a Sunday morning. Some people go to church. We go at each other. Thankfully that weekend seemed to be the last of the Sunday morning arguments (as of this writing). But I've digressed. Walking into the hall, I was pleased to see the orchestra section nearly full, and a couple of familiar faces in the audience, one of whom went on to provide a much more detailed account of the music than what you're going to get here.

The first selection of the afternoon was John Harbison's Twilight Music- a trio for horn, violin and piano. Maybe it's just because I'm paying more attention in light of the local performance earlier this year of his opera The Great Gatsby, but it seems to me we've seen Harbison on a lot more programs than usual this year, which is all to the good. Twilight Music, written in 1984, has four movements. In the program notes for the piece Harbison is quoted from a few years earlier talking about intervallic this and that, which makes sense if you want to listen music that way, but I usually don't (click here to listen to the piece performed by the Chicago Chamber Musicians in 1993). But two elements really drew me into the piece: first, Harbison's writing for the piano here is pretty much straight ahead jazz, and it was fascinating to hear Marc Shapiro weave this element seamlessly into a classically dressed costume; the second point of interest was Nicole Cash and her horn.

Cash joined the orchestra in 2009 as associate principal after a few years with the Dallas Symphony. She always piques my interest when I see her onstage (she's a very attractive woman) but I had yet to hear her solo for an any extended period of time. She drew a range of sounds from her instrument I didn't even know were possible, and between her wonderful playing and Shapiro's excellent jazz performance, poor Dan Carlson on the violin seemed almost like an afterthought in the mix, as I found myself paying little attention to that part. At the end of the fourth movement's Adagio a two note motive faded away to create one of the most gorgeous conclusions I've heard all year.

Next came the trio of Yukiko Kurakata on violin, Sebastien Gingras on cello, and Katie Kadarauch on viola to perform Ernst von Dohnányi’s Serenade in C major. The entire five movement work was charming, but I was especially impressed with the Romanza, which reminded me of a late Beethoven quartet, possibly Op. 130, and the exuberant Rondo of the finale. I have to admit to also being distracted by Kadarauch, who was a stunning figure onstage in her red chiffon, halter-top gown.

Both of these performances were satisfying to the extreme, but the main event followed the intermission when Bronfman strode onstage with Nadya Tichman, Dan Smiley, Jonathan Vinocour, and Amos Yang to perform Brahms' Piano Quintet in F Minor. Bronfman blended seamlessly into the group of the orchestra's top tier musicians, neither dominating nor holding back in anyway, but rather through his own forceful performance engaged the other players and the entire ensemble gave an indelible performance, completely erasing the mediocre taste left by the Emperor a few nights before.

About last weekend...

Anastazia Louise

Last weekend actually began on Thursday night and pretty much ran all the way through Sunday evening. I don't recall ever cramming so much into so little time. Besides the Mavericks concerts on Thursday and Sunday, Jeremy Denk and I had cocktails on Friday night. Denk is a charming and funny guy, full of anecdotes, gossip, and questions. More I'll save for another time, but it was serious fun chatting with him. After taking my leave of him at Jardiniere I met up with Isabella and headed over to Herbst to attend the Cypress String Quartet's Call and Response program, which featured the world premiere of Phillipe Hersant's String Quartet No. 3, a piece I'm sure is going to be featured on many future programs. Cypress also performed a Haydn Quartet and Beethoven's Op.127, but Hersant's work was the highlight of the concert.

The next morning I met up with Chip Grant (founder of Urban Opera) and Barnaby Palmer over breakfast to discuss the upcoming SF Lyric Opera production of David Lang's "the little match girl passion" and from there I went with them to observe a rehearsal. The production has a palindrome structure, which the audience will be able to follow by listening to the different voices and noticing the lighting by Matthew Antaky, who recently did exceptional work on Ensemble Parallele's The Great Gatsby. I also had a chance to meet the very intriguing Anastazia Louise of Bad Unkl Sista and watch as she rehearsed her Butoh-style performance with the singers present for the first time. She said she's been absorbed in little but this project lately and it showed. She's an intense performer and I think this is going to be a moving performance. All four singers are excellent- I've heard Eugene Brancoveanu numerous times and every time I do I wonder how much longer Bay Area audiences will get to see him in small, intimate productions like these before he completely succumbs to the temptation of the larger houses for which he seems destined. Ann Moss is an exceptional soprano, and Celeste Winant, a chorale member of Philharmonia Baroque as well as Volti, also possesses a gorgeous voice. But I was particularly curious about Eric Maggay Tuan, who seems to be capable of singing almost anything. There are only three performances at the ODC theater in the Mission this weekend, and though the scale is small (the four singers double on instruments and it will run less than an hour) the return of San Francisco Lyric Opera is a major event on the local arts scene.

Later in the afternoon I attended the American Orchestra Forum at Davies, where a group of panelists including composers John Adams and Mason Bates and San Francisco Symphony's General Director Brent Assink helmed a three-hour chat on creativity in the arts, focusing on classical music, current culture, and especially, delivering content to audiences online. I didn't plan on staying for the whole thing, but it was so interesting that I did just that. They'll have another one on May 13th featuring Alan Gilbert discussing audiences (which should be highly interesting in light of the recent I Phone incident), while the NY Phil is in town for the American Orchestras series. The event is free.

Afterward I went over to the Paramount in Oakland to hear Chrissette Michelle's SFJazz gig, a show that was so poorly mixed I left my seat in the seventh row to go sit in the very back near the sound board, which only helped a little. I left after an hour, dismayed about so many things I don't even want to write about it. Making my way home through the throngs of amateurs celebrating St. Patrick's Day, I was immensely pleased not to be in a bar on this night, or even worse, to be one of those idiots actually lined up outside of a bar waiting to get in- in San Francisco (where there is a bar on practically every corner).

Sunday afternoon was the last concert of the American Mavericks Festival, which ended at 4:20, leaving me just enough time to make it a few blocks down the street to hear "A Celebration of Bay Area Music"- a concert organized by clarinetist Brenden Guy featuring musicians mostly from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (as well as Sarah Cahill, Miles Graber and Barnaby Palmer) performing a diverse program. Cahill performed John Adams' China Gates, a work dedicated to her and she brought along the original score. Also on the program were two delightful works by composer David Conte, including a highly engaging sextet. Although everyone onstage possessed a high level of talent, the show was stolen by the extraordinary violin playing of Kevin Rogers, whose solo in Ernest Bloch's Nigun- No. 2 (from the Baal Shem Suite) was stunning.

You don't really want to know what I did after that, do you? I didn't think so.

Tákacs Quartet in Berkeley

We were lying on the bed, trying to get in a brief a nap before heading over to Berkeley to hear the Táckas Quartet perform at Hertz Hall. Isabella was tired- she had been up since a quarter to six that morning, a Saturday, first finishing some work for a client and then doing a seven-hour rehearsal for a play in which she was recently cast.  She wasn't really complaining, but simply talking about what a long day it had been so far, and how little sleep she had gotten the previous night, when I said, "Sush- at least you got shtupped last night."

"Speaking of shtupped," she replied, "your mother called me yesterday."

"Eww... oh god, why are you bringing my mother into this conversation?" and we both broke into laughter. 

Later that night, as we were riding home on BART, I started snickering and found I couldn't stop. I pointed toward the front of the car, telling her to look at the poster in front of us.

She started laughing too, and this went on for quite awhile. I know it's horribly juvenile to laugh at such a thing, but the graffiti perp did seem to be on to something: 

Anyway.

The concert began with a clean, bright performance of Schubert's Quartettsatz in C minor- the first movement of a quartet which the composer never bothered to finish since he couldn't figure out a way to match the brilliance of the first part. It's a nice bit, but there's something decidedly unsatisfying about hearing only the first movement of a work that by definition of form should have more to it. If Schubert couldn't be bothered to finish it, why should anyone bother to play it?

Next came Dvořák's Quartet in E-flat major, written after the composer had begun to meet with much success. Táckas caught all of the work's folk ballads and dances with aplomb, the first two movements led off by cellist András Fejér who played with a jaunty tone which was eagerly matched by second violin Karoly Schranz. The third movement Romanze closed with beautiful precision from all four players.

Táckas Quartet. Photo by Ellen Appel.

At intermission we stepped outside since it was an unusually warm and clear night.  Isabella decided it was time to disclose yet another in her seemingly never-ending list of talents and experiences by naming off a dozen constellations, including some I'd never heard of before. Later in the evening, walking down Bancroft, we spotted an exuberant party taking place inside a church, where it looked like dozens of people were dancing to House of Pain's "Jump Around," she would tell me about the time she met Timothy Leary and what a jerk she found him to be.

The second half of the concert was Beethoven's Opus 131 string quartet- the main attraction for me and probably most of the almost-full house. They began the first movement with a quickness I found a bit much, as it emphasized melody over drama and buried many of the conversational elements in the work. This continued into the second movement, and I noticed it was Schranz who seemed to be driving the tempo to a sprightly level. Still, principal violin Edward Dusinberre had many fine moments in these opening sections and violist Geraldine Walther reminded me of what a pleasure she was to hear when she performed with the San Francisco Symphony.

The quick pace continued to distract me, and then Fejér encountered a problem in the part of the fourth movement where the cello plays five notes in rapid succession (a motive which occurs repeatedly through the piece in different modes). He couldn't seem to get the last note off, and each time the cluster repeated he hit the same snag. This happened three times, I think. The group played through it, and I became more interested in the mechanics of it all- how the whole keeps it together when a part goes off the rails, than in following the music itself, until a simply ghastly sound came from the cello during the final allegro, which seemed to propel Dusinberre to a heightened intensity- his high notes just started to pour out with an emotion not evident in the earlier movements. That's when my attention somewhat left the music altogether and began to focus on execution, wondering and waiting for what came next while admiring Fejér's (and the others), ability to play through it all.

They received an enthusiastic standing ovation from many in the house, though there wasn't an encore. The concert was presented by Cal Performances.

More, please! Joyce DiDonato, Jake Heggie, & the Alexander String Quartet perform Camille Claudel: Into the Fire

Camille Claudel

The Alexander String Quartet celebrated their 30th anniversary by sharing the limelight with others- a trait that probably plays no small part in their longevity as a performing ensemble. Long considered something of a "house band" for San Francisco Performances and San Francisco State University, they marked the occasion at a concert last night at the Herbst Theater which was simply brilliant. In the program notes Jake Heggie, composer of Dead Man Walking and Moby-Dick among other works, relates the story of how SF Performances' Ruth Felt asked him about composing a piece to mark the quartet's upcoming anniversary and how he then managed to involve mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and librettist Gene Scheer in the creation of a song cycle based on the story of Camille Claudel, about whom Heggie has been interested in creating an opera.

That was a fortuitous bit of networking, judging by last night's resulting program.

It began with Heggie accompanying DiDonato in Reynaldo Hahn's Venezia song cycle, which I heard Christopher Maltman perform just two weeks ago in the same theater. My thoughts on Maltman's recital were mixed, perhaps unenthusiastic, for a performer of obvious vocal abilities and for awhile I wondered if I had been unduly critical of the performance. DiDonato's performance re-assured me I was not- in fact after watching and hearing her sing the same material I think I may have been more generous to Maltman than his performance merited. DiDonato was completely engaged, continuously making eye-contact with seemingly everyone in the house from the moment she began, performing each song with a unique and distinct character, alternating between tenderness in one to bright sass in another. And her voice? Splendid. The last long, lovely legato note of "La Primavera" was gorgeous. Heggie looked like he enjoyed every moment of accompanying her, but more than that I can't say about his performance because DiDonato was so mesmerizing to watch and hear all I really noticed was his ear-to-grin at the conclusion of each song. There's a reason it's recently been said she's at the apex of her career and last night was evidence of it.

Then the Alexanders came onstage to perform Debussy's Sting Quartet in G minor. On paper this seemed like almost too-safe of a choice for the occasion, but they managed to uncover new tones within the familiar territory and delivered an impressively thoughtful performance. Cellist Sandy Wilson brought the morose tone of the first movement to the forefront and it colored everything in its wake. Violist Paul Yarbrough picked up the thread from Wilson in the second movement, adding a quizzical element, and the violins of Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz performed the pizzicato ending with exceptional finesse.

As a unit, they seemed intent to remove the "impressionist" sheen off the composer's reputation, especially in the Scherzo, which sounded uncharacteristically Romantic, and the fourth sounded almost Modernist. But every movement was performed with its own distinct emotional current, with the players cognizant of the themes occurring in each, yet treating each one as a unique entity. It's also the only time I've ever heard it where parts reminded me more than just a little of the late Beethoven quartets.

L to R: Zakarias Grafilo, Frederick Lifsitz, Jake Heggie, Joyce DiDonato, Paul Yarbrough, Sandy Wilson. Photo by Brian Byrne.

While the first half of the concert had been quite good to this point, what followed was truly exceptional. DiDonato and the Alexanders returned, with DiDonato placed in the center of the strings. Camille Claudel: Into the Fire is a song cycle which takes place on the day the title character is taken away to an asylum.  However, it feels much larger than that due to the brilliance of Gene Scheer's lyrics, which manage to convey a complete character arc in just six songs spread over thirty-five minutes (the seven songs include an instrumental). Each song title refers to a sculpture by Claudel (yes, she was a real person) except the last one, which is an epilogue to what's come before.

The devotion to inhabiting the lyrics she exhibited in the Venezia song cycle turned out to be just an appetizer compared to the fully developed character DiDonato brought to Camille Claudel. It made me long to see this work developed into a full-length opera as a vehicle for her.  Beginning with "Rodin," who was Claudel's lover and perhaps artistic rival, Heggie and Scheer have created a portrayal of a woman undone by her lover's abandonment and its subsequent destruction of her mind and soul. "La Valse" and "Shakuntala" carry the narrative forward, the first as lament and the second turning into a mini "mad scene" with an acapella ending which was chilling.

"La Petite Chatelaine" has Claudel turning the anger and rage of "La Valse" upon herself, her own identity cracking under the weight of remorse for the child she aborted at Rodin's request. The song is imbued with conflicted penitence, and while it's impressive on many levels, perhaps its most amazing quality is how the pleas of Claudel over her lost child never become maudlin. Instead, a moment of distinct discomfort is felt through the audience- as if we're complicit in the tragedy by being observers of the result.

Musically, "The Gossips" take the work to a heightened level of intensity as rivulets of notes descend like so many false accusations against Claudel's resigned admissions of "I know. I know." The drops keep falling, and the song closes with a sense of irretrievable loss.

Heggie wisely takes a step back emotionally at this point with an instrumental, "L'age Mur (Maturity)," a fugue begun by the viola, followed by cello, then the violins, evolving into one of the most memorable themes I've heard from a contemporary composer. The theme returns in full at the conclusion of the final song, "Epilogue: Jessie Liscomb visits Camille Claudel, Montevergues Asylum, 1929," which begins with a sprightly dance containing fragments of the theme weaving underneath. The lyrics of the song, and DiDonato's singing of them, are the inevitable conclusion of all that's come before as Claudel, now old and alone, happily receives a visit by an old friend which gives her an opportunity to reminisce, remember, and finally, to regret and submit.

Fantastic. Now can someone please commission an entire opera of this brilliant beginning?

Heggie, DiDonato and the Alexanders returned for an encore of Richard Strauss' "Morgen"- beautifully performed, but also a nice touch given that Heggie noted in the program how he remembered the superb performance of the piece given by this same quartet when he saw them perform for the first time twenty years ago.

The debut of Eco Ensemble

Eco Ensemble rehearsing Edmund Campion's Flow. Debris. Falls. Photo by Peg Skorpinski (Bay Citizen, New York Times)

The music department of UC Berkeley unveiled a new house band last night in Hertz Hall called Eco Ensemble, whose mission is to perform works by contemporary composers, including professors and grad students of the university. The group is led by David Milnes, music director of the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and conductor of the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players. But it's not all about the local angle- the group will be performing pieces by eleven composers including Nico Muhly, Magnus Lindberg and  Kaija Saariaho during three concerts, the first of which took place last night before a well-attended house.

The program began with Gérard Grisey's Talea (ou la machine et les herbes folles), a piece for five players- piano, violin, cello, clarinet and flute. Written in 1986 while he was teaching composition at Cal, the piece has two sections which examine speed and contrast of sound. Talea begins with a jolting buzz followed by sounds played so quietly they could be easily be missed. For the next seventeen minutes they expand and contract like a slinky designed by Ligeti.

Tristan Murail's L'Esprit des dunes, written in 1994 and dedicated to Giacinto Scelsi and Salvador Dali, is influenced by the sounds and sights of the Mongolian desert, a recurring inspiration of the composer's. Of the four works performed, Murail's was the one I found decidedly difficult to follow as its constantly shifting, electronically enhanced soundscape took me one place and left me there until I was suddenly jolted from it by a harsh note from a triangle or the introduction of another sound suddenly bursting forth from the musicians, often the percussionist. Here is a sample of it.

Edmund Campion, a current faculty member of the music department and instrumental in getting Eco off the ground, was introduced by Cal Performances director Matías Tarnopolsky. Campion describes his piano concerto/not a piano concerto, entitled Flow. Debris. Falls (2010) as "the musical equivalent of a B-movie developed under the radar of the censor-prone larger Hollywood studios. In these B-movie scenarios, stories that on the surface appear to be genre conforming, become subversive vehicles, sites for the creator's imagination to run without censure. It would please me if David Lynch like the title, as it is meant to evoke a location in America where normality exists mostly as an ornamental feature masking a more sinister underbelly."

That's actually not a bad description of the three movement work for ensemble and two pianos. The subversive element is twofold. First, the pianist's performance is analyzed by a software program hooked up to the instrument and fed to a player piano, which then performs an improvisation based on what's being played. Avatar, ghost in the machine, what have you, it's an interesting concept which worked really well, though I found the computer-generated parts often to be more forceful and interesting than what Joanna Chao was playing. Perhaps that's the intent, but it ultimately left me wanting to know if that was by Campion's design or if the software was capable of creating music more dynamic than that of the composer who created it. Truly, it's a musical Frankenstein and quite a fun little monster in both implication and reality. The second subversive element is the use of amplification at varying levels which also featured additional electronic elements. The ideas forming the basis of Campion's work would likely offend a lot of musical purists, but I find this transgression of tradition to be liberating and I'd like to see more works incorporating technology find their way into "mainstream" concert halls.

The last piece was Marc-André Dalbavie's In advance of the broken time (1994), a composition which wonderfully examines the shape and structure of sound and its movement as seven musicians take a single note on an extended journey which concludes where it began. It was a fitting end to the performance.

The program notes for the performance made it impossible to identify the musicians performing each piece- something I hope is remedied for Eco Ensembles upcoming performances on February 11 and March 24, as many of them merited individual praise.

Here's the program for those concerts:
Feb. 11: Saariaho: Ballade, Prelude/ Lindberg: Corrente/ Bedrossian: Swing/ Saariaho: Trios Riviers
March 24: Matalon: Tunneling/ Muhly: Clear Music/ Lim: Songs Found in Dream/ Einbond: What the Blind See

Kronos Plays Reich

Sunday was a difficult day. Amid the glory of the weather and the Blue Angels thundering overhead across the City, I was just trying to sort out the pieces of something smashed and move forward, knowing I wasn't going to be able to put it back together. I was glad when the day began to dim and the time came to make my way to the BART station to meet Chad Newsome in Berkeley to see the Kronos Quartet perform an all Steve Reich Program. The streets were clogged with people who had come into the City for the airshow. Cars filled the streets and the sidewalks were full of people who have no idea what to do with themselves outside of their cars, exposed in the big city where everything is dirty and noisy. They looked warily at all the other people. I just wanted them to get out of the way

Down in the station, the platform was packed, as were the cars, but everyone seemed relaxed about it all and I thought it ironic I was going to hear "Different Trains" in a couple of hours.

Chad and I met at the Berkeley station and walked through campus, up to the the Bear's Lair, and had Lagunitas IPAs before the show. I think in the back of both our minds lurked thoughts of how different our lives seemed when we were students there, and what now seems, to me at least, like another life altogether.

Kronos Quartet: Photo by Michael Wislon

A full house showed up to the unusually dark (and pleasingly so) Hertz Hall. The performance began with 1999's "Triple Quartet," dedicated to Kronos. The title refers to the whole being comprised of three distinct quartets, the second and third playing "interlocking chords" in a "kind of variation form" off one another, while the first "plays melodies in canon between the first violin and viola against the second violin and cello" according to Reich's own program notes. The second and third quartets were pre-recorded by Kronos, so in essence they were playing with themselves, though not in the way usually commonly assumed. The work's movements alternate fast-slow-fast and unless one had a deep familiarity with it, or was distinctly trying to parse out the differences between each quartet, I think it would have been hard to follow which quartet was playing what by listening to a recording, so being able to watch the musicians was immensely helpful. It was an impressive performance.

Excerpts from "The Cave" came next, which left me feeling like I was back in the Middle-East, wandering through Wadi Rum, as Reich's music fully evoked the hard realities of the region. As Kronos played the slow, agonized score, the taped component featured people answering basic questions on their thoughts of biblical characters. The words don't come through necessarily, but become a wall against which the musicians constantly push against through the work's three movements. It was the least impressive score of the night, perhaps because it was the quietest, but it was still quite effective,

"WTC 9/11" begins with the disturbing, highly amplified sound of a phone off the hook. It's the sound of something dreadful, and it sets the tone for what's to come for the next fifteen minutes. I find something incredibly powerful about this piece, though at times I've wished it was longer and at others shorter. Live, it's even more powerful, as Kronos played bathed in deep blue and red lights, a projection on the wall behind them of two massive forms colliding. Again, with two recordings accompanying their own amplified instruments. The three sections move from panic of the first with its voices of air traffic controllers and fire department archives, with the musicians performing jagged, piercing lines, reminding me of a cross between the soundtracks for Psycho and Requiem for a Dream (which Kronos recorded and was heavily influenced by Reich). In the the second the tempo slows as the voices of Reich's friends and neighbors recollect the day, haltingly and repeatedly, as if no one can really even believe their own words, while the sound of the phone off the hook pulses in quietly in the background, performed by the viola.  Certain phrases are punctuated with sharp jabs from the violin, the words elongated into notes performed by the instruments. The third part is evocative of loss and remembrance, slower still, featuring more recollections and closes with a cantor singing prayers before the musicians bring a sense of halting confusion before the amplified phone returns to bring it back to its terrible beginning. It's an incredibly effective work.

The second half of the performance was the brilliant "Different Trains," a meditation on destiny developed in a sound prism of trains carrying people to their destinations- in this case out west to Los Angeles and to the gas chambers of the concentration camps. Kronos performed it with an urgency which brought a thrilling pulse to it all, even during the slower passages, creating a hypnotic effect.

There was an encore of a work by Perotin, an 11th Century composer Reich admires, entitled "Viderunt omnes." It sounded amazingly fresh for something composed 900 years ago.

Afterward we walked back through campus with Patrick, who was unusually seated in the rear of the house. We discussed the idea of using tapes and if that negated the authenticity of what constitutes a live performance. Patrick and Chad felt this was the case. I disagreed and though I didn't quite realize this part  at the time, have come to find it largely beside the point, because what we had just experienced wasn't something I could recreate at home. And that's why I wanted to get out of the house to begin with.

A final on thought on the Kronos Quartet: in the last year and a half I've seen three performances by them and each one has been radically different than the others, including one of the best shows I've seen all year (which, damn, I never posted about)- their concert with Wu Man for her hyper-creative "A Chinese Home." Always adventurous and into doing something new, stretching way beyond the traditional confines of chamber music, these are brilliant, exciting musicians. If you've yet to see them, make it a point to attend one of the upcoming concerts. Cal Performances will bring them back in February and they'll be in Santa Rosa on December 2nd with another interesting program featuring "WTC 9/11" and other works by Jewish and Muslim composers. They are also in a residency with YBCA, so there are plenty of opportunities in the months ahead.

All of the Reich compositions mentioned in this post can be heard on MOG.

Adès in San Francisco & Berkeley

Thomas Adès: photo by Maurice Foxall

Both the San Francisco Symphony and Cal Performances presented concerts this weekend featuring the music of Thomas Adès, as composer and performer, and the results were splendid on both counts. After leaving Hardly Strictly Bluegrass early Friday evening (missing the last half of Robert Plant's pleasing, surprising set) I rode over to Davies to meet Axel Feldheim, whom I found sitting patiently in the Grove Street lobby reading the program notes. Scheduled along with the premiere of Adès' Polaris was Mozart's Haffner Symphony in D major (No. 35, K.385) and Stravinsky's Petrushka. A lack of connecting threads between the pieces didn't prevent the concert from being a memorable one.


If you've read this blog awhile you may remember that I'm not a huge fan of Mozart's music. That's not to say I dislike it in anyway (that would be ridiculous- akin to saying one dislikes a blue sky) but his symphonies and operas mostly leave me indifferent. Aside from Cosi, the Jupiter, and the piano concertos, I wouldn't make much of an effort to hear it. For me Mozart is mostly background music- something to listen to when I want to hear pleasant music which doesn't distract, require much attention or any direct engagement, like when I'm cooking breakfast on a Sunday morning. That's heresy to most people but it's where I stand. However, this didn't prevent me from enjoying an exceptionally lush treatment of the Haffner under MTT's fluttering hands, which I truly enjoyed but realized while it was unfolding the reason I'm indifferent to Mozart is because his music just doesn't pull me in emotionally. Mystery solved.


Composed in 2010 on commission from the New World Symphony (and other orchestras) to be the premiere work at their new Frank Gehry-designed hall, Polaris features music by Adès accompanied by Tal Rosner's video. Rosner's imagery reminded me too much of Bill Viola's work for The Tristan Project and I found myself distracted by the extremely large feet of one of the two women who roam about a deserted English seashore, apparently waiting for their men to return, or perhaps they're beckoning sirens. Shown on a three-panel screen as a triptych, it probably had a greater impact in the Gehry hall for which it was conceived. After a few minutes I stopped watching it, my attention absorbed by the music, though I did notice the conclusion was well choreographed with the music- both stopped suddenly in a final moment.


Adès' music for Polaris was truly something special and I'm pleased there were many microphones set about the stage to capture it all. The brass were staggered in the terrace seats above the stage, grouped by instruments, four trumpets on the far left, tuba far right, three trombones flanked by low and high horns in the center, while the stage held an enormous group of musicians. The title refers to the North Star, and the music bears a relation to how the sea is moved by its relationship to the stars. Beginning quietly, the work's three sections build to a tremendous climax only to subside again into murmuring bubbles before becoming another swell of sound in which everything seems to drown in extraordinarily complex precision. The program notes mention the instruments always play in canon and I tried to follow this but soon lost my was as MTT created thrilling crescendos in which the brass just exploded within the melodic score, rendering my attempt to follow the intricacies a pointless exercise on an initial hearing. It's only a fourteen minute work and when it was over I wanted more of it. Or at least a repeat of what we had just heard.


The concert concluded with a terrific performance of Stravinsky's Petrushka, with MTT and the orchestra giving an almost delirious account of its many delights. Having not heard it in years, I'd forgotten how much I like the music of this ballet score. Flutist Tim Day and first trumpet Mark Inouye had especially fine moments, but what struck me was how the orchestra appears to be playing at an entirely new level during this Centennial Season. For the third time in as many weeks, I can say I've never heard them sound this good. 

On Sunday over at Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus, Adès performed with the Calder Quartet. We arrived late and missed the opening piece, Stravinsky's Three pieces for String Quartet, but took seats in the gallery as Adès performed his own Mazurkas for Piano. Mazurkas always remind me of Chopin of course, but I couldn't detect any strains of it in Adès' piece, though I was quickly absorbed by the work's complexity- Adès played with a score, which I found interestingly strange. Still, with our late arrival it took a few minutes to mentally shift gears and pay close attention to what he was playing. It was only then I noticed how delicately Adès performs.

The Calder Quartet returned to the stage to perform Adès' seven-part Arcadiana. The sections alternate between evocations of water and land, creating a sense of Arcadia lost. Complex and challenging, the Calders performed it with an impressive precision. 

Adès returned after the intermission for what turned out to be the afternoon's highlight, Liszt's Petrarch Sonnet No. 123. His pedal work brought out odd, dark tones in the piece (performed without a score) and the delicacy he exhibited in the Mazurkas took on an even greater depth here with its much softer passages. The final note was the softest thing I think I've ever heard. It was a completely unassuming performance, yet masterful.

The next piece brought the Calder Quartet back for Adès' The Four Quarters. The first two movements in end a similar, perhaps identical, exciting swoosh of a climax- a composing trick that might have come across as gimmicky is less-sure hands, played with perfection by the quartet. There are some more unusual touches- the second movement is almost entirely played in furious pizzicato and the last movement is in 25/16 time, which is rather difficult to follow- you just have to roll with it.

The concluding work was Adès' Quintet for Piano and String Quartet, Op. 20- a fascinating 20 minutes that reaches back to late Beethoven for inspiration. Adès starts breaking down the walls of what the listener expects to hear as he pushes out the boundaries of the format. There was a long exposition section for the piano that traveled pretty far afield before returning to a point that seemed inevitable if never obvious. Adès literally pounded the keys of the piano with the force of a hard rock drummer in opposition to the strings during this section and the effect was startling and thrilling. All five musicians seemed incredibly in-sync with one another throughout the complex work, playing competing themes which only merged together toward the conclusion, but not in any tidy way. It was an appropriate conclusion to an afternoon of wickedly cerebral yet accessible music, played with heart.

On Friday night Axel and I talked with Lisa Hirsch during the intermission and when I told her I had heard little of his work (somehow forgetting this performance completely) she listed a couple of works she really liked and kept on going before finally recommending that one should just "get everything." I'm starting to think that's some pretty decent advice.

LIVE: Barber, Strauss, Mahler

Sometime in late November publicists for the New Century Chamber Orchestra asked if I would be interested in reviewing the orchestra's new CD. I immediately responded yes- no one's ever asked me to review a classical CD before and having recently seen them perform I thought it would be an interesting challenge. A day or two later I received the CD in the mail and when I opened it and looked at the titles I thought to myself this is too close to the holidays to listen to this and have any sort of response that won't be maudlin at best, suicidal at worst.

So I placed it in a corner along with the PR materials and let it sit. Through Thanksgiving, through Hanukkah, through Christmas, through New Year's. The guilt compounded. Such nice folks to send me a copy and here I am, afraid to listen to it, just waiting for the right moment. Finally I decided this was the week. Well, yesterday I heard a 40 year-old neighbor of mine was found dead in her apartment, then came news Gerry Rafferty died, reminding me a certain girl from my long-lost-youth, and more directly of my long-lost-youth having sex with this particular girl, and then the Femme Fatale gets all jittery on me and so I come home after a trip to BevMo and decide tonight's the night (the poor people at NCCO are probably never going to ask me to attend or review anything again after this but they should have known what they were getting into- this isn't your average classical music blog- but you can go here and here if you want a more straightforward review).

After pouring a stiff one, I insert the disc, which is a live recording of Barber's Adagio for Strings, Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen for 23 Solo Strings and Mahler's Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony. If you already know this music, and surely you know the Barber at least (and you do even if you think you don't), you can easily understand why this bunch didn't exactly leap out and say "play this and get in the mood for the holidays!"

Barber's Adagio suffers from the overexposure weighing down a select, though large, group of classical compositions that makes it difficult to separate what we've been culturally bludgeoned to associate it with upon hearing from how the work actually makes us respond to it on its own terms. This recording remedies that to certain degree, though I can't tell if it's by design or just fortuitous good luck. It's Barber alright, and of course its painful and beautiful, but it's also a bit raw and in your face- as if to say "yes, you've heard this a thousand times but pay attention to this." What that is, in the hands of this orchestra, is an Adagio resisting the maudlin, intent on drawing out the pathos of the piece. If it's not beautiful in certain moments, it certainly in an arresting performance that grabs one's attention, making me feel as if I was hearing this overly familiar work from someone who didn't want it to sound reassuring or even worse, sad, but wanted the listener to feel it resonate within them. It forsakes prettiness for potency- and in these times that's a welcome substitute.

Strauss' Metamorphosen for 23 Solo Strings, written during WWII when the composer was nearing 80 years old, is a threnody for what was lost at the hands of the Third Reich. At least that's always been my take on it- I don't care if you disagree. It has a unique structure- a work for 23 strings which rarely play together in anything resembling a melody you might expect. Broken down into various groups and combinations, this is serious regret writ large upon Beethoven's, not Hitler's corpse. It's also the recording which inspired this disc, according to Nadja Salero-Sonnenberg, for which she sought other performances/pieces to match it (hence my holiday aversion). The opening is beautiful, evoking a sense of loss and bewilderment- a tone which NCCO carries throughout the piece as it winds its way between the influence of Beethoven and Wagner before traversing a more modernist path, ending in ambiguous notes suggesting what lies ahead remains unable to be seen, perhaps best not to think about, like an inconclusive conversation between lovers at a crossroads.

I recently saw NCCO  give an impressive performance of  the Adagietto, which worked incredibly well in a live setting, but taking a single movement from a larger work is tricky business in a recording. These 10 minutes of Mahler leave me wanting what comes before and after, something beyond what NCCO can deliver.

The New Century Chamber Orchestra will begin a national tour on February 1st, with a local performance at Herbst on Saturday, January 29th, featuring the tour repertoire, including audience favorite Four Seasons of Buenos Aires by Astor Piazzolla and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. Tickets can be had here.

An Evening of Beethoven

As part of the Great Performers Series, the Mutter-Bashmet-Harrell Trio took the stage at Davies last night and gave a memorable performance of three of the five Beethoven trios. In a sense there's little I can say about the evening. It was accepted as a given that this trio, comprised of Anne-Sophie Mutter on violin, Yuri Bashmet on viola and Lynn Harrell on cello would deliver a world-class performance of this material and that's precisely what they did. The two hour concert featured the String Trio in C minor, Opus 9, No. 3; the Serenade in D major for Violin, Viola, and Cello, Opus 8 and the String Trio in E-flat major, Opus 3.

Bashmet/Mutter/Harrell

Mutter, looking ravishing as usual in black slacks and an orange top (I'd like to think that's a nod to the world series champs, though I have a difficult time seeing Anne-Sophie as a baseball fan), performed with her usual exquisite control and tone, with a willingness to give it a rough edge where it needed one. She performs with such precision it becomes a task to watch and listen to her at the same time. I actually found it easier at points to close my eyes in order to focus on her playing.

Bashmet is the opposite- sitting almost motionless in his chair throughout the evening, he made his smooth but lush style of playing look not only effortless, but he gave off an air of serenity while performing. Harrell, seated in the middle, was the genial center, at times shooting a playful glance over at Mutter, waiting for her cues, or sometimes just smiling for no reason at all, except that he too, was listening to all of this. Harrell's approach at times mirrored Mutter's aggression, especially in the scherzo of the Op. 8 trio. There was a definite playfulness between Harrell and Mutter, both in demeanor and playing, to the extent the audience tittered more than once during the performance. Charmers, indeed.

Some members of the audience were exceedingly ill-behaved as far as talking, zipping purses, unzipping those same purses and talking some more. Yes, I'm about you in orchestra row O, seat 15- peasant! Other than these annoying people, this was a splendid evening of music- as was to be expected. Now isn't nice to know that there are some things you can always count on? Come back soon Anne-Sophie.

The Janus Project

Renowned violinist Robert McDuffie is currently touring the country with the acclaimed Venice Baroque Orchestra performing a program call the The Seasons Project, which pairs Vivaldi's The Four Seasons with a new violin concerto by Phillip Glass, written for McDuffie, called The American Four Seasons or Violin Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra.

The first half was the Vivaldi we all know and love and to put it bluntly, it was an ugly massacre. Vivaldi should never sound like a Bernard Hermann score. Nor should a lute sound like a banjo. Cellos should not sound like rusty saws, and it's generally a good idea for the violin section to play together and in tune. I haven't seen a poorer performance in a couple of years. I guess it was just an off night for them.

Glass' work fared much better, but it has the advantage of being unfamiliar- one's attention is divided between absorbing its newness and listening to how it's being played. Glass' second concerto is absorbing, at times mesmerizing in its propulsive rhythms , though in other sections it reminds one too much of "film" music. It begins with a motive highly reminiscent of The Godfather theme, which I found highly amusing in an American-themed piece. There are no breaks in the music and Glass leaves it to the listener to decide when the seasons have changed. I'm not sure it works as a companion piece to Vivaldi's masterpiece, nor do I detect anything distinctly "American" in it, but I would love to hear it again, preferably by an orchestra which plays a lot tighter than the Venice Baroque Orchestra- which sounded a lot better in this piece, but still had some sloppy moments. In the second half however, I must tip my hat to McDuffie, who has obviously committed this difficult virtuoso work to memory and delivered it with conviction.
Beforehand, it was very nice to have dinner at Zuni with the Opera Tattler and the erudite, svelte pernicious Belgian, who has returned to San Francisco for a vacation. Sadly, we forgot to order fries.

Kronos: Fenced In, Bowing Out

Thursday night I went to hear the Kronos Quartet at the Z Space @ Atraud- which may have the most uncomfortable seats of any venue in San Francisco to put your butt in for a 90-minute performance. Kronos, subject of an interesting article appearing in today's New York Times, was putting on a four-night, sold-out run of performances featuring Jon Rose's Music From 4 Fences, along with works by Terry Riley, John Zorn, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Felipe Perez Santiago, Amon Tobin and Scott Johnson (a full set list can be found here). The works by Rose, Ali-Zadeh and Tobin were the highlights. The others, especially Riley's piece, I found less than interesting, though overall the program had a variety and intensity that kept my attention focused through it all.

The show began with Ali-Zadeh's Mugam Sayagi, as cellist Jeffrey Zeigler sat alone onstage playing an evocative theme with other instruments accompanying him offstage. Then the rest of Kronos came onstage to deliver one of the most satisfying pieces of music I've heard at first hearing. Essentially spinning an Azeri folk tale in music, this piece transported me to a different place altogether. It was by turns lighthearted, touching, adventurous, melancholy and consistently engaging. Written for Kronos, it's a work I would love to hear again.

Amon Tobin's Bloodstone featured recorded music (as did many of the pieces performed this night) with the quartet accompanying it, sometimes in front, sometimes from behind. I'm ambivalent about this kind of performance because when the rhythm of a piece is dictated by a recording and not by the musicians onstage, I feel a sense of discovery and spontaneity inherent in the best lives performances is curtailed, if not rendered impossible to achieve through a kind of tyranny imposed by a beat that won't/ can't be altered once it's begun. In this instance though, it worked for me on the strength of the composition itself, which at times reminded me of the work Kronos did for the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack. Accompanied by a video backdrop and atmospheric lighting, the piece had an amplified force to it that I found quite satisfying.

The highlight of the evening, which definitely falls under the "and now for something completely different" category, was Rose's fence music. As Rose writes in the program, he usually has his pieces composed for fences performed in situ and one of the challenges was constructing the fences and delivering for the performance. Each member of Kronos had their own fence to play, using electrified bass bows. The fences stood about six feet tall and were perhaps about eight feet across. Composed of five wires, like a staff, only the top three lines of wire were played and attached to pick-ups. The uppermost wire was barbed and there were lights and cameras attached to the top which caught the musicians in action and projected their hands on a screen at the back of the space.

The first note was a shock. Loud like a shotgun blast, some people visibly jumped in their seats. Imagine the whomp heralding Ulrica's entrance in Verdi's Un Ballo en Maschera played by Hendrix and you'd have something approximate. Disorienting and thrilling, it only got more interesting from there, as the quartet beat, drummed, sawed and bowed their way over, against and through the fences. As much a performance piece as a musical one, whether intended or not, it was unforgettable.

I attended the concert with Axel Feldheim, who wondered afterward whether or not 4 Fences was a notated score. Fortunately, as we were leaving we espied Jon Rose standing outside so we asked him. His response, one of the most amusing things I've heard in a long time, can be read at Axel's account of the performance.

Photo by Christina Johnson

Ensemble Parallele's Wozzeck looks great... but I'll be at the movies

Sometimes I really do wish I could be in two places at once. This coming Sunday I'll be leaving to attend the Sundance Film Festival for the first time, which I'm pretty excited about, especially since MG is going to be my escort and she's an old pro at this event. If anyone can get us into one of the Runaways screenings, please let me know- there's a few rounds of drinks in it for you if you can come through. As fun as all this sounds, it also means that I won't be able to attend what is likely to be one of the highlights of this year's performing arts season, Ensemble Parallele's production of Alban Berg's masterpiece Wozzeck at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

They've only scheduled two performances, on January 30 & 31. The company, led by Nicole Paiement, bills itself as a Contemporary Chamber Opera and the production will feature an orchestration by composer John Rea for chamber orchestra. The cast features bass-baritone Bojan Knezevic, a graduate of the Adler Fellowship and Merola programs, as Wozzeck, tenor John Duykers as the captain, and Canadian soprano Patricia Green as Marie. Director Brian Staufenbiel's film noir staging uses multimedia projections by media artist Austin Forbord evocative of German silent films of the 1920s.

I went to a preview of the production and was greatly impressed by the talent and dedication of this team as well as the formidable passion and knowledge Paiement brings to this opera. The accompanying film work looks to be an integral and compelling aspect of the production. You can view an example of it bel0w.

San Francisco Opera hasn't presented Wozzeck since 1999 and in the current climate I wouldn't expect to see it there anytime soon. The work is one of the most searing musical and theatrical experiences created of the 20th Century and here's a chance to see and hear it by a company that has a palpable excitement for it.

Tickets are available by calling 415 978 2787, at the Yerba Buena Box office at 701 Mission St. in SF or online at

YBCA .

I'm going to have to miss it, but there's no reason why you should.

Cypress String Quartet- Ten Years of Call & Response

The Cypress String Quartet's Call and Response program commissions new works from contemporary, young composers to create a musical dialogue between the past and present. Saturday night at Herbst Theater they presented the tenth anniversary edition in program featuring Kevin Puts Lento Assai, Mendelssohn's String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13 and Beethoven's F Major Quartet, Op. 135. The dialogue between the three works was apparent as the concert progressed- this was a consistently rewarding program, well played by each member of the CSQ.

Mendelssohn's quartet, written the year of Beethoven's death, asks the question, "Ist es Wahr (Is it true)?" in response to Beethoven's "Muss es sein (Must it be)?" Placed between the two, Puts' piece seemed to be the interior deliberation of someone pondering both questions before answering in the affirmative. CSQ played the second movement of the Mendelssohn with a delicacy that gave it a lush cinematic quality. The fourth movement's distant clarion call suggested to me the answer to Mendelssohn's (and Beethoven's) question was to move forward and never look back.

Lento Assai is the tempo marking for the slow movement of the Beethoven quartet. Before the performance, Puts offered the audience some comments about how the piece came together, saying that he was inspired to use the existing connections between the other works as a starting point for his own. On hearing it for the first time, my opinion is that he succeeded handsomely. This is a piece I would definitely like to hear again and thanks to this program I've been introduced to a composer whose work I'll now be seeking out.

This particular Beethoven quartet holds a special place in my own journey of musical appreciation. Years ago, after ending a torrid fling, I received an anonymous package in the mail containing a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being with "Muss es sein?" written in delicate handwriting on the inner jacket. After reading the book (the relevance of it to my life is another post entirely, probably not suitable for this blog), I delved into Beethoven's late quartets with a curiosity that bordered on obsession. Alongside the Ring, I would be in the camp of those who believe these works may be the finest music ever written.

I've always considered this to be a dark work, tinged with mockery aimed at the face of fate, but the CSQ brought out a light, playful and exuberant tone I never really noticed before in the first movement. The second movement was played with great propulsion, with cellist Jennifer Kloetzel creating great churning currents of sound. The slow movement was played with a tender grace, while the fourth movement's motive wasn't scary, but pugnacious and pushy. It was a terrific reading of the work.

As an encore, they performed a seven minute piece aptly titled "Chippewa Song" by an American composer whose name I unfortunately didn't hear clearly enough- perhaps Griffis or Griffiths? Google was no help to me on this one- please let me know if you know the name of this composer.

The audience was filled with a large number of mostly well-behaved students participating in Call & Response, who applauded at the end of every movement- Emmanuel Ax would have been pleased. The Call & Response program deserves real credit and support for commissioning new works and bringing them to the public through a terrific outreach program aimed at younger and student audiences. I look forward to next year's presentation. Check out the Cypress String Quartet's website for more information.

There will be another performance by the quartet on May 3rd at Hertz Hall on the Berkeley Campus with a program of Hayden, Bartok and Beethoven. Check it out here: http://www.calperfs.berkeley.edu/presents/season/2008/chamber/csq.php