San Diego ArtsLa Jolla Summerfest: Appalachian Journeys
Hillbilly chamber music
Jed: Thar's Sherwood Hall uppy yonder. Ah cain't wait t'hear Mark O'Connor. He sure plays a purty fiddle. Jethro: Maybe, Pop, but why does he have to write those high-falutin' string KOOR-tets? Photo Courtesy CBS Why do so many pop musicians aspire to write classical music? The hunger for critical recognition is not apparent in other artistic endeavors. How many action film directors use their Hollywood prestige to make a probing drama of the human condition? Tom Clancy doesn’t try to expand his genre to produce insightful novels about human relationships in contemporary society. Neil Simon doesn’t attempt to write brainy mind-bending fantasies dense with allusions. They’re content to work successfully within their own fields. For some reason, popular composers want the approval of classical critics and audiences. This may have had some validity 80 years ago, when the “music critic” at the paper only reviewed classical concerts; in fact, the designation “classical music critic” is a fairly recent title in journalism. In our era of cultural relativism, where professors get tenure publishing books on Madonna or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the hankering for classical acceptance is unnecessary, an anachronistic throwback to the days when the only music that was taken seriously, that was considered respectable, was classical music. Yet they keep trying: Paul McCartney, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Billy Joel, Elvis Costello, David Byrne. For whatever personal reason, they keep assaulting the ivory tower. And unfortunately, they keep failing—aesthetically, anyway. This doesn’t bother classical music producers; they love (or at least view as a necessary evil) the ticket and CD sales that crossover music generates. San Diego is the home of a distinguished crossover composer. After establishing himself in his field, he wrote classical compositions, which were recorded and well reviewed. He has blurred the boundaries between his genre and classical music, so much so that it is often impossible to pigeonhole him as belonging to one or the other. Despite his national and international reputation, San Diego does not actually get that many opportunities to hear him or his pieces performed. His name is Anthony Davis, and it’s too bad La Jolla Summerfest didn’t commission a string quartet from him instead of Mark O’Connor. It’s unclear what Summerfest’s motives were in commissioning O’Connor. If they wanted to sell more tickets, they certainly succeeded. People had to be seated on stage behind the performers to accommodate the demand. If violinist and festival director Cho-Liang Lin wanted to showcase his bluegrass chops, then he was successful in that regard as well. But if they wanted someone to write a potential addition to the chamber music repertoire, they asked the wrong gentleman. Mark O’Connor is one of the big classical crossover successes. Classical music audiences first paid attention to his Appalachia Waltz project with Edgar Meyer and Yo-Yo Ma. To this day, I don’t know what all the fuss was about. The compositions and arrangements are pleasant enough, and O’Connor is a remarkable violinist, but they do little more than sound pretty. It’s a kind of classical music fool’s gold--bright, glittering, and shiny, but of little actual value. His String Quartet no. 2 is subtitled Bluegrass, and it delivers on that subtitle. Bluegrass licks permeate the entire work. O’Connor’s initial melodic ideas are usually attractive, the creative ways he harmonized some of these ideas is appealing, and he has a knack for writing for string instruments. What his music lacks, as it does so often in most pop composers crossing over to the classical domain, is a convincing structure. Specifically, O’Connor really needs to work on his transitions. An idea is developed, then the section peters out, and hey! a new idea suddenly springs out of nowhere. No amount of pleasant melodies can be strung together like this in a large-scale form, without proper development and transitions. Otherwise, you get a kind of musical train that keeps stopping at different stations, picking up again, only to grind to a halt at the next station. When the musical scenery (in this case, the bluegrass flavoring) doesn’t vary, well, it’s like staring out a train window rolling through Nebraska—all those wheat fields look the same, and it gets pretty boring. I do think O’Connor has raw compositional talent, but it needs to be trained and developed. To put it bluntly, he needs composition lessons. Perhaps after a few years of such study, he’ll be able to produce a work that can unabashedly be programmed with Ravel and Dohnanyi. In performing his Quartet no. 2, O’Connor played second fiddle to Cho-Liang Lin’s first violin. Lin surprisingly adopted a bluegrass sound, demonstrating real flair. He performed O’Connor’s part with care and sincerity. Violist Carol Cook and cellist Natalie Haas are the current members of O’Connor’s Appalachia Trio, and they brought to their performances an ease between country/bluegrass and classical music styles. The concert opened with two selections by O’Connor’s trio. The first was a kind of fantasia on the folk tune Blackberry Blossom. The second was the Caprice for Three from the Appalachian Journey CD. Luckily, the problematic forms were not so disturbing here, due to the shorter lengths of the pieces. Again, the performances were beyond reproach, but the actual musical merit of the compositions? One is puzzled why O’Connor, in these works, shuns the simple forms such as theme and variations that country/folk music inhabits, when it would serve his material so much better. There’s nothing inherently wrong about classical music melding with popular music. There are two generations of composers born after 1955 or so who think nothing of incorporating rock, country, or folk music into their concert music, and are accessible to boot. What was frustrating about O’Connor’s commission was that these composers, all more capable than O’Connor, toil in relative obscurity. I hope that Cho-Liang Lin investigates and programs these pop-influenced ladies and gentlemen with the same acumen that he has shown in bringing ethnic-classical-hybrid composers such as Chinary Ung, Tan Dun, and Franghiz Ali-Zadeh to Summerfest. The wonderful cellist Lynn Harrell appeared in the remaining two works with his wife, violinist Helen Nightengale. Ravel’s Sonata for violin and cello was the first genuine masterpiece for violin and cello duet. Formerly, contributions to this genre consisted largely of works composed for the pleasure of amateurs to play in their own homes (or in the case of Master and Commander, at sea). Ravel lifted this lowly combination up to the level of the string quartet or violin sonata, a serious, profound piece of music. One of the amazing things about this duet is the way it’s scored to suggest that more than two instruments are playing at once. They rapidly switch between high and low registers, or between plucking and bowing the strings, to create the illusion of more instruments joining in. Such writing is necessarily virtuosic, and Harrell and Nightengale performed the Sonata as effortlessly as if it were a string method duet. With such formidable technique, they were able to focus on the passion that lies beneath the thorny surface of Ravel’s rhetoric. Harrell and Nightengale were joined by Paul Neubauer for a performance of Dohnanyi’s String Serenade for violin, viola, and cello. String trios, while rare enough in the 19th century, are not quite as scarce in the 20th as Eric Bromberger’s otherwise excellent program notes would have readers believe. A partial list of string trio composers not mentioned by Bromberger includes Webern, Krenek, Schnittke, Gubaidalina, Scelsi, Xenakis, Fine, Wuorinen, and Ferneyhough. These trios are better pieces than Dohnanyi’s string trio, but they’re also much more challenging to listen to, making Dohnanyi a safer bet. His String Serenade sounds like something a student of Brahms or Dvorak might produce; even though it was composed in 1902, there’s little evidence of the chromaticism that challenged listeners in Germany at the time, or the nonfunctional harmonies that Parisian audiences pondered over (although the third movement of the Serenade is a fugue with a slipperly, Straussian subject for its theme). If the String Serenade does not scale the heights that Ravel’s Sonata inhabits, it nonetheless is a well written piece which merits occasional programming. As one might expect, Harrell, Nightengale, and Neubauer gave the String Serenade as great a performance as one is likely to hear. Click here for program.
 Christian Hertzog About the author: Christian Hertzog studied composition with George Crumb, Brian Ferneyhough, Robert Erickson, and Morton Feldman. He studied piano with Cecil Lytle and Aleck Karis. He has been hired by or collaborated with many local performing arts institutions, including the La Jolla Playhouse, SUSHI, Sledgehammer, Isaacs and McCaleb Dance, and City Moves. From 1995-2000 he was the executive director for San Diego New Music. In recent years, he has been a keyboardist with the Geisel Library Toy Piano Ensemble and the Teeny Tiny Pit Orchestra. In 2008 he won 1st prize from the San Diego Press Club in the category of Newspaper/Internet Reviews. More by this author Subscribe to Arts:
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Mr. Hertzog wonders why Mark O'Connor was involved with the concert instead of someone else named Anthony Davis. Not to sound jaded [I've been working in the arts for 20+ years], but the reality is that everything in the arts comes under the classification of "Show Business"; please note that the second word is equal to the first. The days of Ludwig supporting Wagner are largely gone, so arts organizations have to program something interesting enough to get the public interested in attending. Judging from Mr. Hertzog's report that the concert was quite well attended, it seems that the La Jolla Music Society made a sound decision. And though I won't address Mr. Hertzog's seeming disdain of folk-based American music, I would like to point out that his stab at humor with the Beverly Hillbillies parody was inaccurate: Jed was Jethro's uncle, not his "Pop".
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August 19, 2005
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Hertzog makes points but doesn't grind axes, except for one: he laments the obscurity of certain talented composers while mediocre ones grab the limelight. I hope San Diegans will take his cue and demand more substance, especially from composers that have been hired to write for local performers.
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August 19, 2005
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Mr. Grienenberger: Back in the 1960's, the topic of incest was outside the realm of what was acceptable to television viewers. But fans of the show know that Jed had carnal relations with his sister Emmy Lou, resulting in Jethro. Thus, Jethro would be correct referring to Jed as BOTH "Pop" and "Uncle."
Mr. Kocher: Mark O'Connor is indeed a San Diego native, but the other members of the string quartet were out-of-towners. But your point is well-taken: I'd much rather hear Cho-Liang Lin play first violin in a quartet by Julia Wolfe or Michael Torke or Derek Bermel or Michael Daugherty or Steve Martland....
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August 19, 2005
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While some of O'Connor's compositions leave me wanting something a little more...substance, complexity, other things I can't put my finger on, much of it leaves me very satisfied, and excited. For someone who greatly appreciates both sides of the musical bridge that O'Connor is trying to join, I feel musically indebted to his efforts, and I always look forward to anything new he creates. Even though Mr. Hertzog puts into question O'connor's compositional know-how, and indeed he is "self-taught" in this area, it is the fact that he is, somewhat self-invented, and has the deep background and profound understanding of American based fiddling--which is a thriving art form of its own, that will make his voice always unique, yet familiar, and from my perspective, always worth listening to. The idea that classical and popular musicians and composers (not that O'Connor's music could be likened to Pop music) should stay in their respective fields sounds a bit elitist, and not very fun, daring, or curious. I agree that the likelyhood of "success" is limited, and it is rare virtuosi and composers that can make a go at it...Mark O'Connor, Edgar Meyer, Kenji Bunch to name a few, and with them they bring extremely accomplished acoustic musicians/composers like Mike Marshall, Darol Anger, and Chris Thile, Natalie Haas, etc., along into a more classical world. I think particularly with those at the pinnacle of the, what I will call, New Acoustic movement (like some of the people just listed), should be exposed and showcased in the "classical" world, and, of course, with them they bring their own admirers into that same classical or crossover world. Which to me sounds like a great thing, and in theory, should be celebrated. I think of the Tango, as a popular dance music in the back streets of Buenos Aires, and then I think of what Piazzolla was able to do with it, and that feels VERY satisfying to me, so I have high expectations, in that regards, of O'Connor, and the movement that he is a part of.
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September 08, 2005
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