Camerata San Antonio
Invitation to the dance
March 20, 2012In its March 18 concert, Camerata San Antonio focused on three living American-born composers, with music from the 21st, 20th and 15th centuries.
How’s that? Well, the concert in Christ Episcopal Church opened with Charles Wuorinen’s “Josquiniana” for string quartet, a 2002 “recomposition” and freshening up of six chansons attributed to the late-Renaissance polyphonist Josquin des Prez. Altogether new was David Bruce’s “Gumboots” for string quartet and clarinet, from 2008. From ancient times (1994) came a delicious set of seven selections from John Adams’s “John’s Book of Alleged Dances” for amplified string quartet and prerecorded percussion sounds.
Despite appearances, Josquin and Mr. Wuorinen are not an odd couple. Granted, Mr. Wuorinen’s high-modernist native style -- spiky, complex, highly energetic -- seems far from the sublime sound world of Josquin and his contemporaries, but the two composers share the technique known as polyphony, the weaving of two or more independent lines. It was natural, even inevitable, that post-tonal modernists such as Mr. Wuorinen would be drawn to polyphony, a style that predated common-practice tonality.
“Josquiniana,” a little too respectful of its source material, is more interesting in the context of Mr. Wuorninen’s other music than as a standalone piece. Pairing it with, say, Mr. Wuorinen’s bracing Trio for violin, cello and piano would have made a more illuminating program.
Mr. Bruce’s “Gumboots” was strangely structured. Its first part was a contemplative, quiet, rather sad piece, with slow serpentine melody sometimes sending out elaborate tendrils. Frequent use of a rising second interval gave the piece a kind of restless stasis. The second part was a sequence of five brief dances that hinted of a wide range of folk styles -- Central Asian, Russian, African, Mexican. Much of this material was delightful, but the piece as a whole didn’t seem sure what it wanted to be.
Mr. Adams’s dances were similarly diverse in their allusions, which range from hoedown to habanera, but the composer’s skill and flexibility in the application of his chosen discipline -- repetition and variation of short motives -- made them fully consistent in their point of view.
Five of the dances presented by Camerata included a prerecorded rhythm track, created originally with a prepared piano; the sounds are variously metallic and woody, and in the Habanera they emulate a bass marimba. The strings were on their own in two dances, the very brief “Toot Nipple” and the longer “Pavane: She’s So Fine,” whose most prominent feature was a sweet melody set in the cello’s high register. The accompaniment had an Appalachian folk character, with harmonies that sometimes recall Ravel. The textures grew highly complex and the rhythms increasingly eccentric. Despite its modest scale, under seven minutes, “Pavane: She’s So Fine” proved to be one of Mr. Adams’s most engaging and memorable works.
Ilya Shterenberg played beautifully on both B-flat and bass clarinet in “Gumboots.” The excellent string quartet comprised violinists Matthew Zerweck and Anastasia Storer, violist Emily Freudigman and cellist Ken Freudigman.
Mike Greenberg
