Stookey Strikes Again with Marin Symphony / Phillip George

Nathaniel Stookey is the composer of the hour. With a growing list of compositions that includes The Composer Is Dead with Lemony Snicket, Junkestra for found percussion, and incidental music to Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle -- Stookey has struck it rich again with a brilliant Zipperz, characterized as a "soaPOPera." Dan Harder's "zipper" poems provide the libretto, presenting a love story simultaneously from the perspectives of both lovers, in interlocking lines that yield third meanings when combined. This is perfectly reflected in Stookey's contemporary counterpoint, engagingly realized by the versatile vocalists Robin Coomer and Manoel Felciano, with the Marin Symphony on March 15 at Veterans Auditorium. Stookey again writes colorfully and naturally for the orchestra and voices, finding humor, power, and poignancy in a tale that was splayed on each side of the intermission (Act I: 1. Meeting, 2. Waiting, 3. Waiting; Act II: Coming Together / Coming Apart). If there were hints of minimalism and Frederick Rzewski (the Coming Together synchronicity), it was probably through the common coin of the vernacular.

The freshest program that this ensemble has produced in recent years, one can only hope for more progressive concerts from conductor Alasdair Neale and the gang to come along similar lines.

The presentation was rounded out by Leonard Bernstein's always shining Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" and a roster of six choruses from various 19th-century operas: in order, Richard Wagner's "Procession and Chorale" from Die Meistersinger, Giuseppe Verdi's Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves and "Anvil Chorus" respectively from Nabucco and Il Trovatore, Ruggero Leoncavallo's "Bell Chorus" from Pagliacci, the lovely Wagner "Bridal Chorus" from Lohengrin, and a rousing "Polovtsian Dances" from Prince Igor. The Marin Symphony Chorus was in full voice against the lushness of the orchestra, and a good time was had by all.

Not the Solution He Expected / Mark Alburger

Long time readers will know that this writer defaults to the 20th and 21st Centuries. So why is it that yet again the old guy trumped the newer ones in Alasdair Neal's Marin Symphony November 14 outing at Veteran's Memorial Auditorium?

Well, let's make a list. Beauty, clarity, energy, inventiveness, strength of material, balance between stasis and change, sheer power and excellence in performance -- many of the qualities that make art worth paying attention to, and life worth living.

The trumper was Peter Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. The trumpees were William Walton's Viola Concerto and Avner Dorman's (not) The Shadow.

While the Tchaikovsky is perhaps a textbook case of over-the-top, it's also one of intuitive-yet-logical development, allowing listeners to clearly follow the course of arguments even in the second half of a program when ears had possibly been over-lulled. One can still almost hear Tchaikovsky's thought process at work: how about a third movement beginning with only pizzicato strings, then simply woodwinds, followed by unadorned brass (trumpets mostly playing accurately all night) and timpani, then somehow weaving all three ideas together? Forty years (or thereabouts) after first hearing this piece, and I still picked up new qualities of organization in the fourth movement.

That's how it should be.

And even the over-the-top part. Why not? It works for early Igor Stravinsky and Philip Glass and heavy metal. Audiences want to be blown away sometimes. It's not always about subtle.

But sometimes, it is. Even the notion of a Viola Concerto bears this out -- the non-flashy in-betweener relative of the violin and cello -- and William Walton's bares this out (the list of top-drawer violistic solos is not much longer because of this work). This is not the flashy Walton of Facade (1926), despite that the work was only written three years later (1929). Principal violist Jenny Douglass did her best to bring life to this intriguing work, despite the fact that she is not a globe-trotting showman and the music, particularly in the first movement, is a little arch and leisurely. The scherzoic Vivo has its whimsy, which conductor and soloist brought out nicely, and the finale does its best to sound 1920's modern. Yes, we get the rising fourth motive (admittedly decades before Alexander Courage's Star Trek usage) and the earnest fugato, it's just that we don't always care. Somewhat akin to Richard Wagner's relentless use of the Tristan prelude motive, or Sam Shepard's True West character Austin: "I don't want to know!"

Because, sometimes we can overthink things. Dorman started in a bang-up fashion in his engaging composition "not after" Hans Christian Andersen's The Shadow. An upward rocket, pounding funky-mid-eastern percussion, rapturous textures -- there was not much to not like! The middle section, however, spun out in a rather protracted manner: scale fragments and intervallic oscillations apparently can only go so far (and this said by a critic-composer who is a confirmed post-minimalist!). The end redeemed itself, returning to opening -- yet altered -- material, but overall, one wished for a little less "all-the-music-spins-out-from-initial-gestures" and a little more tangential "where did that come from?" surprise, as the composer so wonderfully demonstrated in the work's outset.

Not the conclusion we might have drawn. The unexpected is inevitably the goal....

Potential Humdrum Hums / Mark Alburger

Richard Strauss, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ludwig van Beethoven. Not exactly headliners to light my new-music fire, as we settled down to potential sonambulance for the opening of the Marin Symphony at Veterans Memorial Auditorium. But, then again, in their respective days, these guys did not make their money by putting their audiences to sleep. And on October 3 -- anywhere from roughly 60 to 180 years after said composers' respective deaths -- conductor Alasdair Neal, piano soloist Joyce Yang, and the gang proved that dead men can still dance, in a persuasive and mostly-professional program that stirred hearts and heads.

"Dead Can Dance" was not inappropriate for Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Introduction and 24 Variations), since Rachmaninoff partly based his arguably-most-wonderful-of-his compositions not only on the Faustian virtuoso violinist Niccolo but also the notorious Thomas of Celano "Dies Irae" ("Day of Wrath") medieval sequence. Keyboardist Yang put her all into this fiery and voluptuous music, highlighting the notion that, contrary to even the composer's (and certainly his critics') perception, this is not particularly unprogressive music. While solidly rooted in the romantic tradition, there is no way this can really be perceived as a merely 19th-century (rather than 20th) endeavor -- in a heightened, self-concious neoromanticism that is over-the-top lush, surreal, skeletal, and even jazzy through its various incarnations. Pianist, director, and orchestra made the most of every moment.

And Strauss. Again, a self-aware, coyly manipulative con where the composer seems at once hip and square. Strauss's anachronistic waltzes are, as in Maurice Ravel, too good to be true, and archly erotic. The Marin Symphony shined in sumptuous strings and holistic horn playing that healed what ailed ye.

OK, so that was a little much. But so is the music.

And what can be said of Beethoven? The Sympony No. 5 is a defining cliche of classical music, its place on the cusp of romanticism unquestioned. But what is old now was new then in so many ways, and Neal captured some of that excitement, where an exposition must be repeated, a trombone must be wailed, and a piccolo must piercing over the top of the texture. This was early 19th-century head-banging music, and even the old (but living) guys in this current audience responded with their own rhythmic shakings of the arms and tapping of the toes.

It was surprisingly refreshing and exciting.

Past Tense, Future Perfect / Mark Alburger

"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past," said George Orwell memorably in 1984, and so it must ever be as we constantly re-evaluate what-was- once as we head on to who-knows-where.

Such thoughts came to mind when taking in a glorious and visceral performance of Carl Orff's great Carmina Burana (1936) at Marin Symphony and Chorus, conducted by Alasdair Neale, this past April 27. Yes, the rendition was magical, abetted and aided by the first usage that this writer has experienced of supertitles outside the confines of opera.

The ribald texts of these Songs of Beuren, attributed to medieval wandering goliard-scholars, are all the more immediate when projected above a chorus and orchestra, such that an audience cannot miss their import. Sure, one can follow words in a program booklet, but how many do? The answer in this related case was clear, as glee alternated with wonder in communal laughs and gasps.

My goodness, this stern piece. sung by a youth chorus, is about young people getting it on! That clangorous one, sung resolutely and theatrically by baritone Igor Vieira, is an heretical drinking song! And so on.

Commonality and reinterpretation were everywhere. Here were emotions just as present then as now (of course, in the reproductive cycle, the only reason we're here is that they're there), re-worked in Orff's telling and re-experienced by us.

The opening "O Fortuna," with its suspended-ninth dissonances, and tense minor interplay of three-patterns in the choral melody against two-patterns in the animated accompaniment, sounded in top form. For many, this familiar music has become inextricably associated with various movies and movie-trailers, eliminating certain odious comparisons with Igor Stravinsky's formerly better-known Symphony of Psalms (written six years previously) and goose-stepping Hitler youth (Orff didn't exactly flee Nazi German at his earliest oppornity).

Corey Head's tenor solo in "The Song of the Roasted Swan," was almost too beautiful (how often do critics complain along such a line?) as the bizarre and surreal text and orchestrations evoke a Rite-of-Springian fantasy world that shocked yet again.

Soprano Ronit Widmann-Levy's ethereal upward major-ninth leap before "Blanziflor et Helena" set the stage for an erotic and sinfully stately chorale-paeon to the pleasures of the flesh before it all came crashing down in the turn of Vanna's celestial Wheel of Fortune in the recapitulation of "O Fortuna."

Marvelous.

Also featured was a sparkling rendition of Colin McPhee's Tabuh-Tabuhan, a work composed in the same year as Carmina Burana, by one of the pioneers of musicology. If the work lacks, by design, the forward thrust of Western art music in its evocation of Balinese models, it offers a refreshing proto-minimalist take on life, the universe, and everything that one can now hear was far ahead of its time.

Name That Memory / Phillip George

Aaron Copland once said something to the effect that music is pretty much about the melody, and, while this is overdrawn, there is still much to be said about the notion.

The Marin Symphony's Season of the Silver Screen continued on March 30 with a program that was less cinematic but rather more anamnestic.

OK, I admit -- had to google that last word for dramatic effect: it means, according to dictionary.com, "the recollection or remembrance of the past; reminiscence" and it brings to mind the memorability factor in music.

I'm home now. I'm remembering the music of the concert. What do I remember, just off the top of my head, without referring to my notes, but rather, instead, just the notes of the concert that I can remember?

The Haydn Cello Concerto, with its opening thematic gambit of a demonstrative C, followed by dotted "long-short" rhythms B C D E F and the cadential (ending) phrase of F E D E F C B C.

Catchy tune, which I've seemed to know all my life, and indeed the piece was astoundingly only relatively recently re-discovered (1962) at just about the time I was tuning in.

Also memorable was Hai-Yi Ni's animated and elevated playing, bringing a still-youthful demeanor and freshness to the endeavor as well as the experience of a solo career that dates back to 1991.

Keeping on the Aaron Copland citations, this is an actual quote: “A melody is not merely something you can hum.” And this definitely came to mind when recalling the sometimes-impressive efforts of Pierre Jalbert in Fire and Ice, a 20-minute work that comes with a resounding several concluding minutes of excitingly strident percussion that forced its way into the consciousness.

The proceeding "Ice" was an age of stilled strings and shimmering by-now-a-bit-over-used bowed vibraphone strokes that left its own glacial moraine in the mind.

And as for Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 7, here's the composer on the subject -- "Wherever I go, I have nothing else in my mind but my new symphony, which must be such as to make a stir in the world, God willing."

And here's the cinematic Herr Rosenberg in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus... "A young man trying to impress.... Too many notes."

And, while this is unfair, and probably irrelevant, and Dvorak was not all that young at 44 when he completed this symphony, still we can hear the composer working hard to astound.

And the Marin Symphony gave it a gorgeous run, from the purely sonorous side of the street. And Dvorak provides symphonic solutions here that are not always the expected ones, and that go beyond some received norms.

Still, what remains? For that, his best symphonic workouts were next to come in his remaining two symphonies.

What lingers in the mind is that the composer had a ways to go. But that the Marin Symphony has come a long way, and continues of late to produce quality concerts on a par with the best.