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PREVIEW What: |
From the November 15, 1996 Arizona Daily Star and Starnet.com
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By James Reel
The Arizona Daily Star
The Arizona Friends of Chamber Music have developed a frontier mentality.
Like the pioneers who carefully gathered up their cherished belongings and migrated to unknown territory, the Friends are venturing into the realms of new music.
They certainly aren't leaving Beethoven and Brahms behind. The European classics will continue to be the mainstay of concerts presented by this organization.
But the group is now encouraging visiting chamber ensembles to include recently written scores on their programs.
Jean-Paul Bierny, the Belgian-born radiologist who serves as the Friends' president, is as excited about this adventure as he is about his frequent backpacking trips into the Arizona wilderness.
Bierny says the pro-contemporary-music turning point came a couple of seasons ago at a concert by Cuarteto Latino Americano.
``The program was totally Latin American, totally 20th century - and it was a very exciting concert, and the audience loved us for that,'' he says.
``So it's in this same dynamic spirit that we've decided to start inserting into as many of the programs as possible a really contemporary piece.''
A carefully chosen contemporary piece, Bierny adds. Do not expect the thorny, forbidding avant-garde styles of now-elderly academic composers like Milton Babbitt. (That notorious Princeton prof dismissed audiences in a 1958 article titled ``Who Cares if You Listen?'')
``The composers today, it seems,'' says Bierny, ``have started moving away from the extremely strident, atonal, non-melodic music that has chased audiences away. Now, they are writing music that can be appreciated by more than just the highbrow and technically sophisticated audiences.''
Because contemporary music, no matter how attractive, is still considered box office poison by most other concert presenters and agents, few ensembles bother to offer anything more recent than the gripping but decades-old quartets by Bartók and Shostakovich.
So Bierny and his fellow board members have started lobbying musicians directly. The ensembles send recordings of recent compositions they've worked on, which the generally conservative board members screen for local appeal.
``I am an ignoramus, musically,'' admits Bierny. ``This has to be the choice of a group of us, including people who really know music. But if I like it, with my lack of technical knowledge, I can be pretty sure the audience will like it.''
The first result is up for evaluation at Wednesday's concert by the Muir String Quartet. Along with standard items by Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms and Samuel Barber, the group will offer ``Night Fields'' by Joan Tower, one of America's most prominent composers.
On Jan. 15, the American String Quartet will include on its program a work by the little-known Gian-Paulo Bracali, who will briefly speak about his music during the concert.
Bierny can hardly wait: ``The audience will say, `There's a composer, alive !' ''
On Feb. 5, Ärvo Pärt will probably not be present for the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio's performance of his piece, actually a transcription of a Mozart movement. But Pärt's blend of spirituality and minimalism is so popular that his name alone is enough to draw an audience.
On April 11, Venezuela's Cuarteto Rios Reyna and pianist Monique Duphil will present an all-Latin American program, including a quartet by Venezuelan composer Inocente Carreño.
Even newer music will find its way into the Friends' mini-series of concerts featuring young pianists and string soloists. On Feb. 26, violinist Scott Yoo and pianist Fazil Say will play music by Szymanowski, Wagner, Saint-Saëns, Franck - and by pianist Say himself.
Say, a 26-year-old Turk, is a prolific composer. But he won't just pull a score off his shelf for this concert. He's writing a new piece, under commission from Bierny.
The board president also promises two commissioned works for the 1998 Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, in celebration of the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music's 50th anniversary.
Bierny hopes to inspire his fellow board members, and the Friends of Chamber Music as a body, to commission more works. It's certainly not something that Bierny can do much on his own. Although a young composer can be persuaded to produce a small-scaled work for $2,500 or so, the Koussevitzky Foundation - which is in the business of supporting new music - suggests that a major quartet by an established composer should be worth $15,000.
This is why Bierny would like his organization to commission new works in cooperation with other presenting organizations. The cost would be shared, and the music would have guaranteed exposure in more venues.
Unfortunately, Bierny has found other Western chamber music presenters to be frightened by the very idea of new music. Unlike the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, they have closed the frontier.
©Arizona Daily Star
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