Date: Fri 15-Dec-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

Prokhorov-Quick-Takemitsu

Full Text:

Exploring Western Influences

B Y V ADIM P ROKHOROV

The Orion String Quartet

Peter Serkin, piano

Judith Pearce, flute

David Shifrin, clarinet

The Quick Center, the Fairfield University

Cosmopolitan and national. These two sides of the same coin have been of great

importance and concern to many national composers. Some would stay inside the

national idioms, expanding their scope. Some, exploring music of other

cultures, would lose their touch with national tradition.

The Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu (born, 1930) belongs to a third category.

Adopting and absorbing Western music and Western innovation, he blended

Japanese tradition with cosmopolitan aesthetics, creating the inseparable

synergy of both. Thus, Takemitsu transcended the two in his own idiomatic way.

It became possible because Takemitsu has always been preoccupied with musical

timbre and texture, the most abstract elements of music. He has reached the

highest order of refinement in the sonoric sphere of music, intertwining the

Western contemporary techniques and the exotic style of the Japanese arts.

On December 2 in the Quick Center of the Fairfield University, the musicians

and guests of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center explored some

Western influences on Takemitsu. His means of expression can be easily traced

to the expressionism of Schoenberg, Debussy's impressionism, and Messiaen's

innovative musical vocabulary. The music of these three composers, as well as

two Takemitsu's works, comprised the concert.

In Debussy's String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10, the Orion String Quartet

(Daniel Phillips, Todd Phillips, Steven Tenenbom, and Timothy Eddy), the

Chamber Music Society's Quartet-in-Residence, was persuasive from the

technical point of view, but failed to impart the fragility of sound and

transparency of texture of Debussy's music, which were so instrumental in

influencing Takemitsu's style. The Quartet's sonoric palette was too heavy and

Romantic for the work.

The very short Messiaen's "Piece pour piano et quartour a cordes" (performed

by Peter Serkin and the Orion Quartet), with its dialog between piano and

strings, rich harmonic "vertical" progressions, and irregular rhythms, showed

other idioms that Takemitsu assimilated in his music. But the composition

failed to convince the audience that its presence was necessary. Messiaen

wrote numerous chamber compositions. Some of them explore Oriental styles

which Messiaen absorbed in his search for synthesis of all means of

expression. Certainty, they would have been more appropriate in this concert.

Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie No.1, powerfully performed by Serkin, Judith

Pearce, David Shifrin, Daniel Phillips and Eddy, showed the influence that the

serial musical language exerted on Takemitsu's style.

Takemitsu's compositions were represented by the piano trio "Between Tides,"

played by Serkin, Toddy Phillips and Eddy, and "Itinerant" for solo flute,

performed by Pearce. "Between Tides" was written in 1993, and premiered by

Serkin, Pamela Frank and Yo-Yo Ma. According to Takemitsu's own words, music

should "give a proper meaning to the streams of sounds which penetrate the

world which surrounds us." In the case of "Between Tides," it is the sound of

tranquillity and stillness.

The three horizontal progressions, juxtaposed on each other, fill the space

with the shimmering light and refined and delicate sonorities. The different

aspects of one picture are contemplated with cinematic clarity, beautifully

photographed.

"Between Tides," as well as "Itinerant," attract the audience because of their

sonoric virtuosity, which gives the impression of spatial experience,

creating, by sound, the visual reality.

The program was repeated the next day at Alice Tully Hall in New York.