Opera Crowd Whoops for Zappa
By Robert Commanday
San Francisco Chronicle, February 11, 1983
STRANGE GOINGS-ON in the Opera House Wednesday. Some 2500 folk, mostly under
30s, vividly gotten up and down for the occasion, were there sitting in quiet
awe of four delicately colored works by Anton Webern and wowed by Edgard
Varèse's modernist "music noises," sensuous and otherwise.
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Loud whoops went up periodically, a surprising one after the first of
Webern's "Six Lieder," Op. 14, but mostly to greet the appearance onstage of
rock heroes Frank Zappa and Grace Slick. It was the Varèse-Webern dual
centennial celebration mounted by Jean-Louis LeRoux' San Francisco Contemporary
Music Players, a benefit.
Zappa was there to conduct the Varèse "songs" as emcee Slick routinely
called them: "Ionization" (1931) to open, and "Intégrales" (1925)
to close the
program. Zappa had acknowledged Varèse's music as most influential on him,
turning him around musically in high school. He took his untypically formal
role seriously. He shushed the greeting, responded to some shouts with "Let's
get serious," turned, gave the beat in an audible "One, two, three, four" and
awkwardly stroked out the conducting patterns, mouthing the count.
HIS STRICT marking of time and meter changes was enough for the SFCM Players to
give Varèse a good, rhythmically clean, dynamically balanced go. "Ionization,"
with 13 percussionists on 34 instruments, was effective but no longer shocking,
having made its influential point years ago. "Intégrales" for 11 winds, four
percussion, was the hit, evocative of some primitive ritual, of contrabass shofars, battle horns, deep-lying forces.
The original three-track tape for "Poème Électronique" (1958) was startling
though broadcast over the Opera House's only two speakers instead of 425
speakers as in Le Corbusier's building at the 1958 Brussels World Fair. Varèse's
pure talent and instincts shone through in his uses of "concrete" sounds, ideas
and fabric created at the dawn of electronic music – a little later actually,
about 9 a.m. While "Poème" breaks down formally midway, it's much more musical
and exciting than a majority of stuff produced by electronickers (not
composers) using 1960-83 technology.
Judith Cline, not Grace Slick, was the excellent soprano, for the two French
songs in Varèse's "Offrandes" (1921) for which LeRoux carefully
restrained
and balanced the post-impressionist chamber orchestral score. The originality of
the rough-hewn musical sonorities, the varied textures, bright, dense, airy, was
arresting.
THE FRAGILITY OF the exquisitely detailed word-expression in Webern's Six
Lieder (Cline with chamber ensemble) and Three Lieder, Op. 25, (Cline, with
Marvin Tartak, piano) has to be lost on a non-German-speaking audience and in the
big Opera House, despite the fine and sensitized performance onstage. It was
unfair to Webern, unfair but not altogether a futile exercise. Perceived as
beautiful abstraction but not so intended, the refined play of color and design
at least drew respectful attention.
More to Webern's due was accorded by Marvin Tartak in an expressively rich,
authentically romantic performance of Webern's Variations for Piano, Op. 27. His
interpretation, following instructions from one who studied it with Webern, was
not cool and ascetic but warm and intense. It's poetic music, not less but more
passionate for being so fleeting.
Before the final "Intégrales," LeRoux conducted Webern's chamber orchestration
of the Fuga (Ricercata) from Bach's "Musical Offering." It is the most famous
entry into Bach through the ears of another great composer.
THE DISTRIBUTION of notes in each line among the single instruments acts as
arrows of color or flags defining the sharp, phrase, clarifying counterpoint,
pointing out the events and process. A larger original Webern orchestral work
would have been fairer representation but this was immediate, simpler and
pleased the young audience.
There were lengthy changes of orchestral set-up which ought to have been
rehearsed but the crowd was respectful, attentive and patient. The SFCM Players
were rewarded for the unconventional event itself, and properly. Popularizing
Webern on a grand scale and with rock stars for bait? Well, no harm done.
1. Varèse and Webern: One Hundredth Anniversary Celebration
program
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