Web Posted: 11/20/2007 02:03 AM CST
Mike Greenberg
Express-News Senior Critic
Two conversational works for piano and percussion — one a frank airing of differences, the other a sharing of sympathies — were the intriguing bookends of a Composers Alliance of San Antonio concert Sunday afternoon.
Both were among five world premieres on the program in First Unitarian-Universalist Church. Misook Kim contributed "Confrontation." The strong performance was by percussionist Graeme Francis and pianist S. Beth May.
The piece begins with bellicose chest-thumping on a suspended bass drum followed by an angry retort on piano. The battle of wills heats up until the piano explodes in an exasperated torrent of descending and ascending runs.
But then there is an uneasy step back from the brink. A repeated high note on piano, like the ticking of a clock, leaves an opening for tuned and untuned percussion to probe and test the possibility of accommodation.
The piano replies suspiciously while the ticking continues. The two sides steadily grow a little more yielding, a little more responsive. They don't end up smiling and hugging for the news cameras in Oslo, but at least they're not bombing each other.
Kim chronicles that progression in a modernist vocabulary that is hard-edged and tough-minded, but rendered inviting by clear, compact structure and the composer's attention to sonic pleasure.
In William James Ross' Music for Piano, Chimes and Marimba, the pianist and percussionist (the composer and Sherry Rubins, respectively) are like long-time friends, continuing and extending each other's thoughts without missing a beat.
The music has a strong rhythmic motion punctuated by long sustained chords and slathered with gobs of delicious sonic color. A brief contrapuntal coda ends the piece aptly.
Juan Luis de Pablo Enriquez Rohen based his "Seis preludios a la flor encendida" for solo piano on "a row of numbers that resemble in order the series of the planets in our solar system and the seven spectral-type stars," according to his program note.
Whatever. The music is harmonically surprising and attractive. Some of the pieces are slow successions of chords, others more active and dramatic, with a hint of romantic lyricism. The first prelude is a recomposition and extension of Bach's Prelude in C from the first book of "The Well-Tempered Clavier," with new, otherworldly harmonic movement. Geoffrey Waite gave a well-gauged performance.
Also new were Ken Metz's atmospheric and efficient "Passages (Sea Songs)" for percussion (Rubins); and Charles Goodhue's sincere but minimally interesting "A Little Suite of Thoughts" for organ (Waite) and oboe and English horn ( Mark Twehues).
From ancient days came Timothy Kramer's 1995 "Etude Fantasy (on a theme for Madame Durufle)" for organ (Waite). A brief motto is put through enterprising, richly varied paces, and the piece is vividly colorful in a rather French way.