SummerFest's struggle with neophobia
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/aug/16/la-jolla-music-society-summerfest-new-music/
Time to take our medicine. We don’t necessarily like it, but we know it’s important, and ultimately, good for us. That seemed to be the attitude in a half-filled MCASD Sherwood Auditorium for the La Jolla Music Society SummerFest’s annual “Music of Our Time” program Friday.
In other years it’s been called “Commissions and Premiers” or last year, “Crossroads,” but the idea has been much the same: largely confine contemporary music to a single program. And just figure that’s going to be the least attended concert in the festival, unless you have a celebrity composer/performer like the former Police drummer Stewart Copland, who wrote a work for the festival several years ago (after that performance, it was never heard from again).
Yet, it is absolutely essential to present “Music of Our Time.” Otherwise, you risk omitting a huge link in a musical continuum that goes back centuries, not to mention the fact we are living in the 21st century, not the 18th.
The festival’s record commissioning new music is commendable, even stellar, with composers ranging from Chick Corea to John Williams, and music director Cho-Liang Lin has gone as far as giving an entire evening to Tan Dun’s “Water Passion
Still, dealing with new music is not the La Jolla Music Society’s forte, and a big question remains: if you are going to devote a single program to new music, how do you create some excitement, how do you make it an opportunity to attract a new, younger, curious audience, rather than programming as if fearful of offending your core supporters?
The “world premiere” on Friday’s program was a new song cycle by Howard Shore, “A Palace Upon the Ruins,” which is not likely to offend anybody.
The 67-year-old Shore is a distinguished film composer, best known for writing the music to “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. His elegant, well-crafted score for the unusual ensemble of mezzo-soprano, flute, cello, piano, harp and percussion, was evocative, but despite the ensemble’s committed performance, especially mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano and cellist Coleman Itzkoff, it was not persuasive. The German text by Elizabeth Cotnoir moves from darkness to redemption, but the music starts in darkness and stays there.
The Flux Quartet – violinists Tom Chiu and Conrad Harris, violists Max Mandel and cellist Felix Fan – offered affecting interpretations of Ligeti’s 1954 String Quartet No. 1, “Metamorphoses Nocturnes,” and Julian Anderson’s brilliant 2014 String Quartet No. 2, “300
Weihnachslieder.” It’s the sort of piece that confirms the worst fears of those who dislike the “Music of Our Time” and the highest aspirations of those who believe the avant-garde is not dead.
Michael Daugherty’s 1991 “Viola Zombies,” with violists Cynthia Phelps and Yura Lee, provided some comic relief, and Mario Lavista’s 1982 “Marsias” needed a little more warmth from oboist Liang Wang.
So far, the most challenging, dissonant, disturbing contemporary work (as in, it kept you up at night) at SummerFest has been Prokofiev’s 1940 Piano Sonata No. 6, given an uncompromising, fearless performance by Yefim Bronfman Wednesday in front of an overflow audience.
It was not presented as something that would be good for you; it was offered as music, not medicine. All of the “Music of Our Time” would benefit from that same attitude.