Wednesday, Stanford Music Dept.The quarterly showcase of matching the students up in chamber music groups. There were a lot of pianists this term, so the concert was full of four-hand and two-piano works by Barber and Rachmaninoff. But the first one, by Mozart, turned out to be scored for two pianos and a cell phone alarm. The scherzo from Ravel's string quartet and the slow movement from Dvořák's Op. 87 piano quartet lacked oomph, but the students get credit for trying.
Saturday, California SymphonyThe common thread of the three composers on m.d. Donato Cabrera's program at Lesher in Walnut Creek is that they all came from countries being oppressed by the Russians at the time. Two were contemporary "holy minimalists": Valentin Silvestrov (Ukraine) for
Stille Musik, a piece for small string orchestra, beautiful harmonies but disconcertingly off-kilter; and Arvo Pärt (Estonia) for
Tabula Rasa, half an hour of two violins playing overlapping hypnotic rocking figures while the string orchestra murmurs behind them. The third was Jean Sibelius (Finland) for his Second Symphony, played as if it were the anthem for Finnish independence it was sometimes taken for. That meant with all the stops out. Even the first movement sounded as grand as the finale, and the finale went totally overboard, the sort of thing that made Virgil Thomson hate Sibelius.
Recent Cal Sym concerts have been pretty full, so it was notable that this one was more sparsely attended. The Sibelius is a crowd-pleaser, so it must have been Silvestrov and Pärt who scared the hordes away.
Sunday, Marea EnsembleEnsemble consisting of a string quartet (four women) and a soprano (Lori Schulman), presented by the Santa Cruz Chamber Players at their usual church in the hills behind Aptos. What attracted me to this one was the theme of "a journey from despair to hope" bookended by Shostakovich's Eighth Quartet, probably the most suicidal piece in the repertoire, and the "Heiliger Dankgesang" from Beethoven's Op. 132 quartet, probably the most luminous piece in the repertoire.
In the event, the Shostakovich was solemn and deliberate, avoiding slashing vehemence, which more matched it with the equally solemn and quite graceful Beethoven than contrasted with it.
The four pieces in between were all by contemporary American composers, three of them vocal. My favorite was "And So" from Caroline Shaw's song cycle
Is a Rose, for its imaginative, varied and sweet accompaniment, but then Shaw is one of my favorite living composers. A cycle by Eliza Brown employed varying styles depending on the nature of the poems, but favored shimmering chords of light dissonance.
Source Code by Jessie Montgomery, the instrumental piece, consisted of fragments taken from or evoking spirituals embedded in a soup of dissonance.
Local composer Chris Pratorius Gómez, who shows up on SCCP programs a lot, set "Sonder," a purpose-written poem by local writer Kristen Nelson about shared humanity under crisis. I like patterned poetry, and this was made even more effective by the composer's choice to give some of the lines to the instrumentalists to be spoken, like this:
Singer: Here hawks still circle and screech
Quartet: For now
Singer: Here owls still hoot at night
Quartet: For now
Afterwards I was able to speak to Nelson and compliment her on the poem. A long series of patterned triplets addressed "to a photo of the kids I love / their guts intact in their bellies" included
May they never fear the sky
May they never fear the sea
May they never fear the cops
A rear gut-kicker, that one, I told her, and she said, "Oh good, you got it."
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solarbird![2 screencaps. On left, Hannah Brandt on X, 4:51pm 22 March:BREAKING: In a phone call just minutes ago President Trump told me Democrats want to make a deal on DHS funding but he doesn't "think any deal should be made on this until they approve save America."First I asked him how long he's prepared to have ice agents help out at airportsHe told me, "For as long as it takes."Then I asked "Some lawmakers are saying they should just fund TSA while they negotiate on DHS. What do you think about that?"President Trump said "Now that I did this the Democrats want to make a deal. And I don't think any deal should be made on this until they approve SAVE America."On right:Shitstain on Shithole Social, Sunday 22 March:I don't think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass "THE SAVE AMERICA ACT." It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate, and that includes giving these same terrible people, the Dems (who are to blame for this mess!), a Five Billion Dollar cut in ICE funding, a deal which, even when disguised as something else, is unacceptable to me and the American people - UNLESS it includes their approval of Voter I.D., (with picture!), Citizenship to Vote, No Mail-In Voting (with exceptions), All Paper Ballots, [anti-trans hate propaganda], and [anti-trans hate propoganda]. Put it all together, and also, let Leader Thune clearly identify those few "Republicans" that are Voting against AMERICA. They will never be elected again! In other words, lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!! Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C. for Easter, if necessary. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! President DJT](https://solarbird.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-2-1024x783.png)
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