Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, July 27–31
Music by Gabriela Lena Frank, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Reena Esmail, and Tebogo Monnakgotla
Overview
Four women with globe-spanning ethnic backgrounds supplied the majority of repertory for this summer’s Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood. The planners of this festival cannily chose this demographic to offer a built-in unity-in-diversity, which turned out to be a richly varied smorgasbord of musical challenges and delights for the audiences who attended some or all of the five main festival events. Each composer’s work reflected her ethnic background—some obviously, others in more subtle ways. The payoff was that their distinctive musical voices complemented each other and provided a wide-ranging view of what is happening today in the global world of new music through concerts devoted to each of them, along with the final Tanglewood Music Center (TMC) program last Monday night that included their works for larger forces.
The diverse geographic and cultural domains that were represented include Peru, China, Lithuania, and the USA for Frank; South Africa and Sweden for Monnakgotla; India and the USA for Esmail; and Iceland for Thorvaldsdottir. Only the continents of Australia and Antarctica remained unrepresented. A corresponding aesthetic and stylistic diversity manifested itself. Frank’s musical gestures are robust, extroverted, and linked to traditions of earlier 20th-century modernism, while overtly reflecting her encounters with Peruvian music and culture. Appropriately, she chose to include in her program Bartok’s joyfully folk-inspired “Contrasts.” Indeed, the subtle presence of Bartok pervaded the festival, offering the model of reconciling multiple streams of influence with the development of a thoroughly personal style.
In direct contrast, Thorvaldsdottir’s music tends to be subtle and delicate, often approaching the boundary between noise and silence, regularly utilizing alternate performance methods such as quarter tones, unusual bow pressure, and blowing through wind instruments with minimal pitch content. Showing her connection to predecessors, her program included “Hommage à Mihály András” by Gyorgy Kurtag, and another of her pieces, “Hrim,” was composed as a companion to Gyorgy Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto. These composers could be considered late-20th-century Hungarian modernists, both receivers of Bartok’s influence.
Monnakgotla’s own style seems more traditional, but for her program, she chose works of a more avant-garde character by the Swedish composers Malin Bång and Bent Sørenson and the South African Andile Khumalo, reflecting the diverse origins of her parents (Sweden and South Africa). Her choice of text for the large orchestral songs on the final program were poems in French by the Malagasy poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, who was also the subject of her 2016 chamber opera “Jean-Joseph.” A conspicuous influence for these songs seems to be the music of Debussy, just as the poetry reflects the symbolist influence of Paul Verlaine.
Finally, Esmail’s project for the past decade has been to fuse the classical traditions of North India and Western music, one which works more organically than previous attempts, such as Ravi Shankar’s sitar concertos. This has been the fruit of collaboration with her “musical sister,” Saili Oak, who not only instructed her in the Khyal (North Indian classical) style of singing, but also participated throughout the performances on Esmail’s program. The general impression is that her style is fundamentally lyrical and romantic.
A Closer Look
Gabriela Lena Frank’s music had been previewed on the Tanglewood Music Festival Orchestra’s program the previous Sunday, July 23 (see my review here). The three chamber works on her Thursday program showed three facets of her wide stylistic range. The opening Sonata Serrana no. 1 for piano duet (one piano, four hands) portrays three times of day—Sun, Night, Dusk—and a final “Karnavalito in the Quechua style.” These are all set in a Peruvian landscape, the title seeming to refer to “mountain women.” The composer’s note refers to a folkloric concept of cultural coexistence as formulated by the Peruvian author José Maria Arguedas, who advocated powerfully on behalf of mixed heritages. The music makes use of a full range of the piano keyboard and its dynamics, keeping both performers fully engaged. The presence of Peruvian folk elements—particularly rhythm—is apparent, but at the same time the music feels fully modern, using tonal harmonies with complex extensions. Pianists Fifi Zhang and William Shi supplied the virtuosic brilliance required by the score with precise coordination, as if they were one performer with four arms.
The most untraditional work in this program, as well as the earliest, drew it closer to the style of Thorvaldsdottir. This was the rendering of the mysterious atmosphere of the Andean high peaks, which were believed to be inhabited by—not necessarily benevolent—gods, in “Las Sombras de los Apus” (“Shadows of the Apus”). Like her Icelandic colleague, Frank here portrays the spirit, feel, and sound of the landscape—in which existence can be perilous—specifically owing to the threat of landslides possibly triggered by shifting tectonic plates. The work is scored for four cellos which are used atmospherically to conjure up the mists that are said to precede and serve as warnings of landslides. This unusual scoring enables varied sound-texture elements to coexist: mist, rolling rocks, cracking fissures, and human anxiety. Each cello is tuned a bit differently to allow open strings to be plucked and snapped with the left hand while the right continues to bow.
The third work on this program was for a conventional string quartet and was a set of eight short sections, Milagros, along the lines of a number of other of Frank’s chamber works celebrating Peruvian folk-ways. (Highly recommended are “Ritmos anchinos” for pipa, zheng, and string quartet; and “Hilos” for clarinet, violin, and cello, all available on recordings.) The title means “miracles” and the short sections are “milagritos”—small miracles which might be a road marker, a broken pan pipe, or a local dance. Like the sonata, these miniature pieces are sharply etched character sketches full of color and devoid of sentimentality or cliché. The program was rounded out by Bartok’s Contrasts for clarinet, violin, and piano, commissioned by Benny Goodman and based on Hungarian folk-dances perceived through the lens of Bartok’s exhaustive ethnomusicological studies. Between it and Frank’s music there is clearly a direct line. All of the performances by TMC students, New Fromm Players, and one BSO member, were alert, confident, and exuberant.
Although there were overlaps (as indicated above), the music of Anna Thorvadsdottir assumes a vastly different profile from Frank’s. Much of it is very quiet and without pulse: You hear apparently unmeasured, sustained sounds—although the rhythmic notation is completely specific—that only gradually morph with transitions of dynamics, colors, and textures, sometimes imperceptibly, the way weather can change in a landscape. The first two works on the program were sets of short pieces: the first, “Reminiscence,” for piano in seven sections, and the second, “Spectra,” for string trio in three sections. Without a score, it would be impossible to know where one piece ends and the next begins (both of these sets are actually larger single forms divided into short phases rather than truly separate pieces). Precedents for such sets of tiny pieces go back to Schoenberg and Webern, but a more immediate and influential predecessor is Kurtag, whose set of miniatures for string quartet was included on this program by the composer. Some of Thorvaldsdottir’s pieces are tiny: The final piano piece is only two measures long. Like most of “Reminiscence,” it contains two layers: a sound produced by rubbing the piano strings with either a “superball mallet” or a guitar pick, and single notes either played from the keyboard or plucked inside the piano. She invents a special musical staff along with the conventional one, in which the piano strings are depicted along with a wavy line illustrating the motion of the mallet.
Generally, the textures are thin, but some pieces are performed in the conventional way, only from the keyboard. The pieces quote each other, strengthening the impression that this is all one larger work, in which the single pitches reverberate against a sonic background that seems to place them within a vast space.
“Spectra” treats the three strings as a kind of mega-instrument, together producing subtle, complex colors through their interactions. Like her larger works, the textures are not about melody, harmony, or counterpoint in any traditional sense, but about the integration of wave-forms into new sound-colors. The title “Spectra” may point to the influence of the so-called “spectralist” school of composition, which arose in conjunction with the development of computer music, primarily in France, of which the late Kari Saariaho was a powerful exemplar. This is not to detract from the uniqueness of Thorvaldsdottir’s voice, but many of her techniques and aesthetic approaches have recent antecedants. While Ligeti and Kurtag are explicitly acknowledged, I would add yet one more: Giacinto Scelsi, an older composer whose radically athematic scores from the 1950s and ’60s anticipate much of what contemporary spectralist composers sound like.
Of the three larger ensemble pieces that concluded this program, two were conducted by Stephen Drury of the TMC faculty, and one by Agata Zajac, one of the hard-working conducting fellows. All three works share the basic characteristics of quietude with disruptions, which are most apparent in “Hrim” for a more or less conventional chamber orchestra with single strings and extended percussion. “Aequilibria” is similar, but it uses alto flute and bass clarinet to produce a mellower surface and even more blended tone colors. “Ró” is unusually scored for bass flute and bass clarinet as the only winds (no brass) along with percussion, piano (with those special performing techniques), and single strings without double bass. It has the most seamless flow of sound, as called for in a poetic and characteristic note in the score: “When you see a long sustained pitch, think of it as a fragile flower that you need to carry in your hands and walk the distance on a thin rope without dropping it or falling. It is a way of measuring time and noticing the tiny changes that happen as you walk further along the same thin rope. Absolute tranquility with the necessary amount of concentration needed to perform the task.” Thorvaldsdottir goes on to write, “Brokenness refers to subtle vulnerability and fragility but does not indicate a state of being ‘ruined’ or ‘in pieces’—it indicates a fragile state of wholeness.” Rather than sounding broken, my impression at the end was of an uninterrupted stream of melodic sound in the winds to the point where I wondered if the performers had been practicing circular breathing.
Reena Esmail’s program on Saturday afternoon in the Linde Center’s Studio E included commentary about each work by the composer, who speaks engagingly about her life, growth, and decision to integrate Indian music into her practice. Of Indian-American heritage, she grew up in Los Angeles and trained as a classical musician (pianist, then composer) with little awareness of her cultural background, especially its music. Developing curiosity about it, she eventually went to India on a Fulbright in 2011 and 2012, where she received a classical Hindustani musical training (which means learning through long hours of imitation) and started to think of herself as a translator between her two traditions. Her subsequent Yale doctoral thesis was entitled “Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians” (2018).
Many, if not all, works on her program are built around the Indian scales called rags or raags. These are easy for listeners to identify but have subtle complexities of shape and articulation that supply the composer with pre-determined melodic elements. For this composer who fuses two such complex and disparate traditions, a key to success lies in the presence of her collaborator, the singer Saili Oak, whom she was fortunate enough to encounter at the beginning of this project. Oak performed (as a singer) in two of the major works on this program, “Ragamala” and “Meri Sakhi Ki Avaaz,” as well as in an encore in vocal duet with the composer herself; however, their collaborative bond was apparent throughout. The first piece, for solo violin, entitled “Darshan” (“Seeing”), utilized two raags, Bhag and Charukeshi. To prepare the audience, Esmail asked Oak to briefly perform them, attuning our ears to their sounds, and our eyes to the beautiful hand gestures that she used to accompany them, certain gestures occurring at appropriate points in the scales themselves. The composition was performed with great purity and nuance by violinist Sage Park.
This was followed by the third movement of a piano trio, marked “Capricious.” As in Hindustani music, a monophonic melody is accompanied by a less conspicuous background layer; here the piano plays a lively raag in octaves and in asymmetrical phrases, occasionally accenting a note with a rolled chord, while the strings shake and pluck in the background. Eventually the piano divides into parts and morphs into background textures while the strings drop out, only to re-enter with the melodic material divided into short phrases that are thrown rapidly between them in the style termed “jawab sawal,” or “question and answer,” between melody instrument and tabla (drums) that often marks a phase of a full raag performance. Eventually, the strings play together in counterpoint (primarily in contrary motion) but using the rhythms and phrasing established at the outset. In the next section, the piano sets up a different background phrase and each instrument gets a longer solo full of raag-like inflections (grace-notes, slides, etc). They come together again, this time playing in octaves, and the ornaments blossom into long runs and slides, along with piano glisses spanning the keyboard, as the music grows more excited. Suddenly, the music returns to the beginning and the whole process is repeated, this time leading to an even more exciting climax in which the strings and the piano strum and pound out wide open harmonies, again reminiscent of the climactic final moments of a raag performance, before returning briefly and in backwards order to the calm of the opening. I have described this movement in detail to indicate how resourcefully Esmail has taken over Hindustani characteristics in a way that works idiomatically on Western instruments, and to give some idea of how exciting and appealing this is for the audience. Fortunately, it has been recorded, so the music is available for those who missed this performance or wish to hear the other three movements.
Esmail’s writing for voice is particularly effective as befits a singer-composer. “Who Makes a Clearing” is a setting for soprano, violin, and cello, of a poem by Wendell Berry which offers an image of a cleared field as a dual metaphor: for collaborating with nature and for making a space for aesthetic contemplation. The voice and instruments play equally important roles, and the music draws on an improvisatory type of raag called alap. The vocal was beautifully performed by soprano Eva Martinez. The other programmed vocal piece, “Meri Sakhi Ki Avaaz” (“My Sister’s Voice”), was set more elaborately for two voices, Western and Hindustani singers in duet, with string quartet and piano, supplemented by moments of prerecorded material. The take-off point her is the “Flower Duet” from Lakme by Delibes (based on a story about the daughter of a Brahmin priest); a recording of that piece of lush romanticism blends into a live continuation as the music began to morph into a complex layering of composed and partially improvised vocal material, with the instrumental parts extended in the manner of a developing raag. The text celebrates the sisterhood of the singing voices, performed by Oak and Robin Steitz, and celebrates by implication the sisterhood of the composer and her collaborator. The music enacts this with the harmonious interaction of the Western and Hindustani performers, richly supported by Western harmonies and raag scale material.
I missed the program devoted to Tebogo Monnakgotla’s music (it was held at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning), but I have been able to catch up with enough of her compositions to get the impression that she has a wide stylistic range that cannot be succinctly described. Like Frank, her music does not rely heavily on alternative performing techniques, even though one of the scores she chose as a companion piece for her program, “Arching” by Malin Bang, uses a variety of amplified tools as sound sources. The three songs I heard on the final TMC program were more conventionally scored for normal orchestra with extra percussion, including several metallophones. This song-cycle “Un clin d’oei” (“A blink of an eye”), to poetry by Rabearivelo, puts the spotlight on the French lyrics, set sensitively for baritone (here performing duties were shared by Rolfe Dauz in the first song and Kevin Douglas Jasaitas in the others). The music moves in planes of long, stable pitch areas sustained by trills, tremelos, and ostinati, with harmonies that would feel at home in the music of Debussy. Textures tend to be thinner, leaving lots of room for the voice, and the French scansion is thoroughly idiomatic, sometimes bordering on the sung speech characteristic of the impressionist chanson; particularly in the powerful delivery of Rolfe Dauz, the lyrics could be clearly understood without amplification or supertitles. Rabearivelo’s poetry powerfully explores liminal states of consciousness: between waking and sleeping, reality and dreams, the self and the world, the eyes of a child and the stars, youth and old age entwining their fingers to form a footbridge between twilight and sunrise. This is beautifully reflected in the constantly varying shimmer of Monnakgotla’s orchestral textures.
There are two large take-aways from the great variety of music heard at the Festival. The first is the wide variety of style and invention among the works of these four composers, each of whom takes a highly individual approach to projecting their voice through their works. There is no core orthodoxy shared by any of them; this is not the earlier modernist period when composers were presented with the choice of being influenced by either Schoenberg or Stravinsky (although some chose not to). If there is a common predecessor here, it would be Bartok, but refracted into a spectrum of approaches from such widely divergent figures as Alberto Ginastera, Gyorgy Kurtag, Gyorgy Ligeti, to which I would add Henri Dutilleux and Carlos Chavez, along with the masters of non-Western traditions from India, Africa, and Asia. The second is that all this variety was presented in forms that had great audience appeal, stemming not only from contrasts but from a common mastery of large color palettes, whether in a work for a single instrument or large orchestra. Unlike previous festivals, there were no works that failed to captivate and hold my attention, and the enthusiastic audiences seemed to agree.
