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Tonight's concert at Mills College in Oakland featuring the music of visiting Composer-In-Residence Helmut Lachenmann was a bit of a disappointment.
Lachenmann, now 73, has been active in Europe since the 1960's, and his music appears regularly at new music festivals around the world.
What was disappointing for me tonight was not being able to hear any of his recent music. All the pieces presented were from 20 to 45 years ago (1963-1988).
Needless to say, the concert at Mills seemed exceptionally well performed. This music is really difficult to pull off. Kudos to anyone willing to attempt it.
But by now the style seems really dry and, at least to me, devoid of any real life. It was like being at a play, a very physical and emotional drama, but in a language you didn't understand at all. For awhile it sounds intriguing, and then it gets a bit tedious. The actors were great and you can tell they were really into the performance; but the meaning of the whole thing remained a mystery.
It's hard to tell from the listener's seat what compositional processes were involved. And even tho much of it sounded as if it could have been improvised, it was clearly all written out in a complex notation. But one wonders what to make of it all.
Lachenmann employs a lot of non-traditional performance techniques in his music. And in that period of the 70's and 80's it seemed that every piece of new music tried to outdo each other by exploring new ways to play traditional acoustic instruments that no one else ever thought of.
Two of the works tonight, his Gran Torso (1972) for string quartet, and Toccatina (1986) for solo violin, had significant sections that were practically inaudible (and I was in the third row). The players bowed on the wood parts of their instruments, producing whisper-like sounds while making big gestures with the bow and arm. It was as if someone suddenly turned off the sound but the players kept going. (I noticed too that they were torturing their poor bows.)
I was reminded of Nicolas Slonimsky's complaint: "The trouble with modern music is that there isn't enough of it." He was referring to those pieces of sparse pointillism and long silences that sound as if someone had taken a big eraser to the score and only left a random smattering of notes here and there. "Too few notes" Nicolas complained, "lets hear more music".
I had the same feeling tonight. In Gran Torso, the quartet rarely played a conventional note. Very ugly scraping sounds were contrasted with quiet ticking sounds made by tapping the bow handle against the strings, and glissandi effects made by running the bow up the strings (instead of across). But when this work was created, composers rushed to see how many unique and clever effects they could get out of these instruments, no matter if it made any sense to do so.
The works presented tonight made up a Grand Catalog of crazy things you can do with instruments. This gets pretty tedious quickly. I'm still left wondering what Lachenmann is composing today. (Most composers left the 80's behind them.)
Lachenmann's two piano pieces, Wiegenmusik (1963) and Ein Kinderspiel (1980) were a bit different. The first is a violent cascade of notes all over the keyboard, utilizing "after-sounds" .. those ghostlike sounds that echo in the body of the piano after the sustain pedal is released. (We heard a lot of those.) The second was much more minimal, hammering away at some of the "marginalized" piano sounds, like clusters of the highest notes that sound like metal clanking. I found these pieces much more interesting than the others. And, they were masterfully played by the composer.
The final work of the evening, Allegro Sostenuto (1988) for clarinet, piano, and cello, was difficult to like. Many of the unconventional sounds we had heard in the earlier pieces reappeared. And this one had a lot more notes, which would make Nicolas happy. Needless to say, this apparently difficult work was enthusiastically played by Matt Ingalls, no stranger to extended techniques on the clarinet, Christoper Jones, piano, and Geoffrey Gartner, whose dramatic frown throughout the piece made it seem he was having a serious punch-out with his cello.
Still, I found it really tedious, devoid of any sustaining interest beyond a few "nice sounds" here and there. There must have been some organizational thread holding it all together, but I couldn't find it.
The venue at Mills, Lisser Hall, was chosen because the wonderful Mills College Concert Hall is under reconstruction. It worked well and the place was full, mostly of young people, which is always good to see. Only problem was the smell of garlic from a nearby kitchen, and the gentle sound of rain on the roof which was most apparent during those long inaudible sections of the quartet, which mixed with growling stomachs from the audience to make a nice aural patina that added a bit of reality to the proceedings.
The audience was extremely attentive and respectful, and Lachenmann did receive a standing ovation, which surprised some of us old-timers. It does seem that the local improviser-performers hold him in high esteem. Which itself is curious because none of his music is improvised. I hope this same enthusiastic audience will show up at some of the other new music events coming up in the next couple of months. We all need audiences like this.
I was glad I went, if only to see up close someone I'd only heard about for 40 years. Unfortunately, there wasn't much there there.
