HAPPY END FOR DIRECTOR’S LA JOLLA SYMPHONY CONCERT
A capacity crowd gathered at the Good Samaritan Episcopal Church on Saturday to hear Steven Schick conduct his valedictory concert as music director of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus.
Schick’s 15-year tenure with LJSC has been impactful, giving San Diegans an opportunity to hear music such as Xenakis’ “Metastaseis,” Chinary Ung’s “Inner Voices,” Ives’ “Three Places in New England,” Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Pipa with String Orchestra, and John Cage’s “101” (the only time I have ever heard any orchestra perform Cage).
Schick was a strong advocate for John Luther Adams, programming several works, including his massive “Become Ocean” and an unforgettable realization of “Sila: The Breath of the World” involving musicians dispersed throughout the Japanese Friendship Garden. Stravinsky, Bartók, Ligeti, Glass — I could go on and still not recapture all the magical moments Schick and LJSC have provided.
Schick brought some of the most outstanding performers in new music to solo with LJSC. For last weekend, he booked David Bowlin, an Oberlin Conservatory professor
and co-founder of the International Contemporary Ensemble, to play Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1.
Bowlin was an enchanting soloist, cut from the same cloth as David Oistrakh. His throbbing vibrato and technical command were well suited to the young Bartók’s Straussian Post-Romantic sensibility.
This concerto, never performed during Bartók’s life, is perhaps best appreciated by Bartók mavens (if such people still exist). Nevertheless, the audience was enraptured by Bowlin’s effusive playing. The orchestra seemed inspired by Bowlin too, giving him wholehearted support.
The concert opened with
a world premiere by UCSD graduate student Anthony Vine. Tom Nee, LJSC’s first music director, established an annual commission to a graduate student for a composition, a tradition continued by Schick.
In “The Song of St. Bazetta,” Vine has constructed a mythos around Bazetta, a small Ohio township, ascribing an unlikely spiritual atmosphere to it.
His program notes described hermits settling in Bazetta and practicing religious singing while hidden amongst trees. “The Song of St. Bazetta” imagines these vocalizations so spiritually powerful that they heal passers by lucky enough to be enveloped in them.
While Vine’s program notes may be whimsical, the music was anything but — 10 minutes of slowly changing harmonies and timbres in a continuity of sound with no discernable rhythms. The orchestra was augmented by Vine on electric guitar and Madison Greenstone on a prominent bass clarinet part. Two percussionists bowed tuned cowbells for the duration of the work, an inconsistent sound flickering in and out, imparting an electronic sheen to the ensemble.
Vine’s guitar part never had an audible attack, slowly fading in, maintaining a plateau, and then slowly fading out. Greenstone played a series of multiphonics — two or more notes sounded simultaneously. Maintained over a long period of time, each multiphonic had an erratic quality similar to the cowbells.
This was not music for impatient listeners, but for those willing to slow down and hear these changing drones, it was a mysterious and rewarding meditation.
Schick selected a more familiar classic to round out the program, Brahms’ Symphony No. 2. The orchestra gave it their all, playing with an infectious enthusiasm, a happy ending to Schick’s reign as music director.