SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Webern, Satie, Boulez: Erin Morley (soprano), Ken Noda (piano), The MET Chamber Ensemble, James Levine (conductor), Zankel Hall, New York City, 31.10.2010 (BH)

Webern: Four Songs for Voice and Piano, Op. 12 (1915-1917)

Satie: Socrate, symphonic drama in three parts (1918)

Boulez: sur Incises (1996-1998)

 

In his excellent notes for this intriguing afternoon at Zankel Hall with James Levine and the Met Chamber Ensemble, Jay Goodwin offers three options for considering Erik Satie’s Socrate: “…either the composer’s masterpiece, a sarcastic musical joke, or a boring and worthless failed experiment.” Judging from the comments overheard at intermission, one might be tempted to say, “All three.” At slightly over a half-hour, it is not designed for listeners hungry for bouts of wild electricity. Satie’s excerpts from Plato’s dialogues—not without drama in themselves—are set in a gentle, purring manner for four soloists and chamber orchestra. (Satie gives the option to use just a single voice and to replace the ensemble with piano.)

 

It struck me that this oddity has something in common with another Levine favorite, Milton Babbitt’s The Head of the Bed, whose fifteen sections are more alike than different—at least on casual hearing—and in a similar way, the three parts of Socrate seem to have very few qualities distinguishing them from each other (texts aside). While the chamber orchestra generates a peaceful motion—think of a boat, moored to the shore and gently rocking—the vocal soloists offer an equally soothing version of the words, rather at odds with say, the final section in which Socrates dies by drinking hemlock.

 

What made this strange thing not so easily dismissed were the outstanding four singers—mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford (as Alcibiade), and sopranos Emalie Savoy (Socrate), Susanna Phillips (Phèdre), and Erin Morley (Phédon)—all magnificently, heroically tranquil, and each adding unique vocal qualities to the parts to create as much variety as possible, given the constraints. Morley, in particular, had the grueling final section all to herself, a monologue longer than the first two sections combined. Morley also began the afternoon, with the superb pianist Ken Noda, in Webern’s Four Songs for Voice and Piano. Her clarity and nuance, coupled with Noda’s alert keyboard work, turned these tiny gems into an unusual, crystalline appetizer for the Satie.

 

But for many the highlight may have been a stunning performance of Boulez’s sur Incises, a demanding work spawned from a request by Luciano Berio and Maurizio Pollini for a short piano work for a competition in Milan. Boulez expanded the original three-and-a-half-minute commission into ten, writing for an unusual group of three pianos, three harps and three percussionists, later revising it to the longer score heard today. Its 37 minutes are filled with glittering, virtuosic moments—the second part resembles a toccata—and the sheer pleasure of the timbres Boulez concocts from this palette delights the ear with a unique, constant sparkle. (So much for those who characterize his work as sterile.) The kaleidoscopic shifts of meter and timbre are constantly engaging, and the virtuosity required means that only musicians of a certain caliber can even attempt navigating the score. The absolutely fearless explorers here were Stephen Gosling, Margaret Kampmeier and Conor Hanick (pianos); Deborah Hoffman, Susan Jolles and Bridget Kibbey (harps); and Gregory Zuber, Tomoya Aomori and Jeffrey Irving (percussion).

 

Especially in this final work, and despite wide publicity lately for some health issues, Maestro Levine seemed to be having a blast, conducting these fabulous players while seated at the podium. One couldn’t help noticing his feet, dancing on the footrest—twitching left, curling right, toes first pointed out and then inward—in some kind of ecstatic Boulezian empathy.

Bruce Hodges