Animals, anthropomorphic and otherwise, were honored in the marvelously performed and interesting second program of the increasingly well-heeled Music@Menlo festival. A large and enthusiastic crowd was particularly pleased with the final number, Camille Saint-Saëns'
Carnival of the Animals, but every selection was well-received, enjoyed by audience and musicians alike. In a production of this quality, I can only take issue with minor points of promotion, interpretation, and instrumentation.
Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han went to great lengths to provide themes for each concert, and concocted a "Bridging the Ages" theme for the entire festival, writing:
The works on this season's programs jump wildly between styles and sensibilities yet are held together by inspirations shared among composers over centuries and across oceans. ... The sounds we will hear are diverse, yet the messages are universal and need no translation.
But 83 percent of the compositions programmed were written in the 19th or 20th centuries, with no medieval or Renaissance music represented. How many "ages" here? The theme of Program II was "Sounds of Nature," a slapdash attempt to find a reason to include Samuel Barber's
Summer Music, which, far from presenting a universal message, could easily have been experienced as "Bleak Winter Night in the City" had it not been otherwise named. The real interest was in the aspects of animalia found in the rest of the pieces, detailed program notes for which were nearly essential for full audience enjoyment.
Dangerous Frogs
The concert began with Heinrich von Biber's
Sonata violino solo representative, a suite for violin and harpsichord that was interrupted by depictions of a nightingale, cuckoo, frog, cock and hen, quail, and cat. Oh, and also musketeers. Of all the animals, the cat's meow got the best response from the audience. The dissonant double stops of the frog indicated that the amphibians of 1669 were far scarier then those of today — perhaps even man-eating. Violinist Ian Swensen, cellist Andrés Díaz, and Kenneth Cooper on the keyboard did a credible job here.
For this concert only, the festival experimented with a new, larger-size venue, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. With no apparent air conditioning, the large crowd heated up sweatily in time for
Summer Music and Debussy's
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, the next pieces on the program. The internationally known Carol Wincenc on flute and hornist William VerMeulen were standouts in the Barber. For the Debussy, listeners had to accept less lushness due to the reduced Benno Sachs 11-player orchestration, prepared for an Arnold Schoenberg concert association in 1920. The interpretation was appropriately languid at first, but this time Debussy's imaginary animal couldn't get up the passion I've heard elsewhere for the intertwined naiads he jumps in Stéphane Mallarmé's poem.
Next came George Crumb's
Vox balaenae (Voice of the whale). Here was a piece with 1971 avant-gardisms so outmoded that it sounded almost as old as the Biber. Crumb requires the three performers (on flute, cello, and piano) to wear a "black half-mask" in order to "represent, symbolically, the powerful impersonal forces of nature" by "effacing the sense of human projection." The composer also suggests that the work be performed "under deep-blue stage lighting."
Accordingly, the church was darkened and three blue bulbs provided scant illumination. The masks were burglar masks. The music was long and inoffensive and could be taken as either hypnotic or sleep-inducing. Wincenc created the whale sounds by simultaneously singing and blowing into her flute. But stronger than the whale was the atmosphere of a cold, deep sea induced by the static music — almost as good as air conditioning. The music's highlight was a beautiful cello melody near the end, with an exotic raised fourth in its scale.
Doggerel, but No Catterel
After a welcome intermission outdoors came the Saint-Saëns, each number in it preceded by witty doggerel written and read by composer Bruce Adolphe, founder of Lincoln Center's Meet the Music family concerts. Unfortunately, not all the words were clearly pronounced, enhanced as they were by various fake accents. A printed text would have helped. Also, it would have been nice if two introductions had been read at one time for the kangaroo and aquarium, and the pianists and fossils. That way, the chamber orchestra could have played the striking transitions between the named movements without interruption.
Most of Saint-Saëns' animals are not so much biological as satirical, a fact not emphasized enough in the program notes. Not mentioned were that the wild asses are virtuoso pianists with no heart, and the fossils are overplayed folk tunes and opera arias. Of the movements, the "personages with long ears" came out the best, with brothers Ian and Joseph Swensen shrieking back and forth with exaggerated bow strokes. As the hapless cuckoo who can only play two notes, Carey Bell did a terrific job on his clarinet in varying his expression and dynamics with each repetition. Speaking of expressions, the facial expressions of all the performers did much to warm the music — their evident enjoyment with the music was contagious.
My only disappointments with the carnival were with the Aquarium and Pianists movements. The first is best performed by a larger string section, where the mutes in toto have a more magical effect (this concert was performed with only one instrument per part). Furthermore, a glass harmonica called for by the composer, or a celesta (though more awkward to obtain), would have been far better than the xylophone used instead. As for the Pianists, performers have a difficult choice: Should they play it "straight" or go deliberately out of snyc like rank beginners as they play scales in keys raised a half-step at a time, preceded by ponderous, dominant seventh chords?
Over many, many hearings, I've concluded that the straight approach is better, or maybe some slight amateurism suggested by pausing too long on the seventh chords. But the wildly out-of-line interpretation by otherwise superbly intuitive pianists Wu Han and Inon Barnatan didn't seem to work, nor did it generate laughs in the audience.
Complaints aside, I must emphasize that, while not perfect, the concert was first-class, and that the festival as a whole does the Bay Area, and the Peninsula in particular, a great service with its contribution to the musical scene.