SOLI Chamber Ensemble
Revisiting the work of a master craftsman
March 18, 2010By his own claim, the late composer Theron Kirk never strove for originality. He was a craftsman in the received tradition of tonal, mainstream, neoclassical Modernism.
Why, then, was his Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano the freshest-sounding music on the SOLI Chamber Ensemble’s concert of music by Texas composers, May 13 in the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center?
Because, to repeat, he was a craftsman.
The son of a Methodist minister, Kirk was born in 1919 in Alamo -- he was the first baby born in that then-tiny Rio Grande Valley town. He attended Baylor University on scholarship, served in the Navy during World War II, and then taught during the school year and spent summers doing graduate work at Eastman and Chicago Musical College. Eventually he settled at San Antonio College.
Like most craftsmen, Kirk produced to order, and people ordered quite a lot from him. His catalogue runs to more than 1,000 works, many of them published under a pseudonym. Choral music accounts for the biggest chunk of his output, but he also composed symphonic works, a one-act comic opera based on Aristophanes, and gobs of chamber music.
Kirk composed this trio in 1998 for SOLI, which first performed it in May of 1999. He died in October of that year, a few days after his 80th birthday. The same excellent musicians who gave the premiere -- clarinetist Stephanie Key, cellist David Mollenauer and pianist Carolyn True -- revisited the piece last week.
As before, I was struck by how well-made it was, in classical terms. The themes were sturdy, their development inventive, the counterpoint lively, the harmonic landscape flexible but consistent and far from saccharine. Each of its three movements -- a sonata-allegro with contrasting jaunty and lyrical themes, an elegiacal middle movement, a wild finale -- sailed with a clear sense of destination and interesting vistas along the way. The canvas of ideas stretched to perfectly fill its frame.
On second hearing, other qualities came into the foreground. This music is not just appealing and well-made. It is classical by disposition, not only in form. It represents human emotional life in an authentic way, but with a sense of balance. I think for Kirk the formal discipline was a convenient vessel that could accommodate genuine musical expression of his understanding of life.
The Canadian-American Karim Al-Zand, born in 1970 and now teaching at Rice University, is far from Kirk in background, generation and idiom, but his “Cabinet of Curiosities” for clarinet and piano evinced a comparable level of discipline, care and engagement with life. The piece comprises six approximately descriptive miniatures, texturally spare and melodically free. The slow motion of the first, “Still Life with Lizard,” is interrupted by brief flashes of rapid filigree, like the sudden darting of a patient lizard’s tongue. The fifth, “Love Letter,” is a beseeching monologue in the natural rhythms of language, for the clarinet alone. Apart from some bright harmonies reminiscent of Messiaen in the witty, chirpy “Salarello al rovescio,” this music sounds entirely individual -- without trying too hard to be so.
The rest of the program was less interesting.
George Archer Winters of San Antonio was represented by Variations on a Pastoral Theme for string quartet. The theme is direct and rather pretty, its variations modest in ambition. The plush Romantic chordal harmonies often recall Chausson. Torgul and Mollenauer were joined by violinist Bnnie Terry and violist Emily Freudigman in a poised, creamy performance.
Dan Welcher’s “Harbor Music” (referring to the harbor of Sydney, Australia) for string quartet and Peter Lieuwen’s “Gulfstream” for clarinet, violin, cello and piano had generally polished surfaces, sophisticated technique and moments of great beauty, but both were a tad verbose, and both seemed to drift on their respective bodies of water.
None of the music on the program sounded conspicuously Texan, but actor-folklorist Guich Koock certainly did. Between musical works, he regaled the audience with reminiscences (of J. Frank Dobie and others) and cowboy poetry.
Mike
Greenberg
