Chamber music by Foumai, Beethoven, and Still at the Tanglewood Learning Institute
Sunday, March 12, 2023
Michael-Thomas Foumai, ‘Printing Kapa’ and ‘Defending Kalo’;
Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartet no. 10 op. 74 in E-flat, ‘The Harp’; William Grant Still, ‘Ennanga’ for harp, string quartet and piano
For the past few years, the classical music repertory has been expanding, not only giving exposure to previously under-performed composers, but also to include music that emanates from and represents cultures outside the Euro-American mainstream. The chamber-music performance at the Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI) on Sunday, March 12, programmed by BSO violinist Lucia Lin, brought us two fine examples: a 1956 work by the dean of 20th-century African-American composers, William Grant Still, inspired by a harp from Uganda; and a brand-new work foregrounding aspects of Hawaiian culture and “inspired by indigenous knowledge,” by Michael-Thomas Foumai. Between them was Beethoven’s Quartet no. 10 op. 74, nick-named “The Harp.” (The nick-name was applied by its publisher, not its composer; nor was that the reason it was chosen for this program, according to Ms. Lin’s spoken introduction.) Rather than providing contrast, the older Beethoven work offered continuity with its surrounding modern/contemporary bookends.
The superb harpist Charles Overton was the featured artist, performing Foumai’s two pieces in a duo with Ms. Lin’s violin, and then acted as a virtual concerto soloist in Still’s engaging and virtuosic work. Mr. Overton was called upon to elicit a vast range of colors and textures from his instrument and he projected them vividly, managing to be both spontaneous and dazzling. Ms. Lin’s solo playing was equally effective in Foumai’s lyrical evocations of two key elements of Hawaiian culture.
The title, “Printing Kapa,” refers to a traditional fabric made from tree bark and stamped with geometric patterns. Foumai focuses on one pattern in particular, called ‘Ūwila, which resembles lightning: The fabric is used to make a magic skirt that “protects against dark or negative forces,” according to the composer’s program note. The composition reflects the light or positive energies being preserved rather than lightning’s volatility and potential destructiveness. Expansive melodic figures in violin and harp flow outward from the middle register in piled-up thirds which, along with the diatonic tonality, offer an image of verticality evocative of lightning’s shape. The repetition of the stamped design pattern in the fabric is reflected in the varied repetitions of these expansive gestures, often involving lively variable meters and syncopations, all taking place in a highly lyrical mood that, to this American listener, was occasionally reminiscent of Copland’s “outdoor” music. The vertical dimension is dramatized by the violin’s use of very high harmonics which seem to arrive at some lofty summit, only to proceed even higher. These delicate violin gestures are offset by the harp’s symmetrical descent into lower depths of the instrument.
It is worth noting that this work was commissioned jointly by the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music and Lucia Lin’s In Tandem project. Frank is at the forefront of new multicultural musical thinking, both through the example of her own music and through her Academy’s support of younger composers like Mr. Foumai. We can look forward to hearing more results of this important trend in this summer’s Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, which she is scheduled to co-curate.
Kapa’s companion piece, “Defending Kalo,” refers to the traditional farming of taro root, a basic food source whose ecosystem is currently threatened by tourism. Foumai offers the image of rich, spongy black (volcanic) soil (“I was … knee-deep in the cool fudge-like mud of the taro patch”) which the music evokes through emphasis on the rich, fudge-like lower registers of violin in double-stops and of harp, providing strong textural contrast to the airy expansiveness of Kapa. Here the darkness hints at the mysterious, mystical properties of taro. At its center, there is a lively conversation in short phrases between the instruments (pulling up the taro plants by their roots?) before building to an eloquent, almost oracular climax recalling Stravinsky’s “Orpheus” and ending with a harp glissando to its bottom string. In both pieces, the instruments are used very colorfully; it is music that the musicians must love to play — full of lively dramatic character.
Following this, the Beethoven quartet was less of a shock than might be expected; this lyrical work doesn’t storm the heavens like its contemporaries, the Symphony No. 5 or the “Emperor Concerto,” although there is a brief echo of the “Fifth” in its scherzo. The first movement follows classical sonata outlines: A slow introduction offers questioning melodic motives that are discussed and developed in the body of the movement. The instrumental conversation is filled with harmonic inventiveness and a liberal helping of plucked strings (justifying its nick-name “the harp,” perhaps). The Adagio is a lyrical drama, an operatic soliloquy with sighing figures and expressive chromaticism. A contrasting bit of demonic intensity and rhythmic legerdemain appears in the scherzo, which transitions in a slightly disorienting way to the subsequent theme and variations, concluding with a series of increasingly ecstatic rhythmic transformations. Lucia Lin described the trajectory of the quartet as one aimed toward hope, a mood that extends the aspirational qualities of Foumai’s work.
The mood of celebration is picked up and expanded upon further by “Ennanga,” billed as a suite for harp, piano, and string orchestra but here played in a version with string quartet, which was not only more suitable for the TLI space, but provided the brighter, more articulate energy of solo strings. This work is structurally a concerto for the harp, with strings and piano standing in for the orchestra. The virtuosic solo part was projected with ease and eloquence by Mr. Overton, abetted by energetic and colorful playing from his colleagues. Harps have traditionally been used to accompany story-telling in traditional cultures, and there is a suggestion of a narrative function in the solos of the first and particularly the second movements. The tonal material of this work is basically pentatonic with an effective overlay of chromatic, extended harmonies landing somewhere between Ravel and jazz. This gives the music a wonderful mix of naivete and sophistication. I am not aware that any specifically African materials are used; the familiar elements are reminiscent of spirituals, ring dances, and other African-American folk music (whose materials, to be sure, descend from Africa). The final movement, a high-energy, joyful celebration, contained distant echoes of Gottschalk’s “The Banjo” (1853), and concluded the program on a enthusiastically optimistic note.
Along with other music by Still that has been emerging in recent concert programming, like the String Quartet offered in Great Barrington last month by the Harlem String Quartet, “Ennanga” demonstrates the composer’s wide stylistic and expressive range in an idiom that is inventive, original, and at the same time very accessible to audiences on both first and subsequent hearings. He clearly deserves a place in a newly enlarged canon of modern composers.
