Icebreaker V: Love & War, Feb. 26-28
On the Boards

Once again Icebreaker has come and gone.  After presenting it five times, I think the Seattle Chamber Players have really gotten the hang of it.  My first Icebreaker was two years ago.  It consisted of two decidedly mixed evenings of contemporary music curated by Alex Ross and Kyle Gann.  Ross' night featured young composers based almost exclusively in New York.  Gann's evening focused on more experienced composers who would have been at home in New York's so-called "Downtown Scene" of the sixties and seventies.  This concert proved to be the best, though there was quite a terrible piece that concluded the evening.  Ross' cadre of composers, while all quite talented (some are already famous), was missing something.  There was, however, a magnificent piece by Max Duykers as well as a few other works that had moments of clarity, but the vast majority of the music fell far short of my expectations.  For the last two years, I've asked myself what was so frustratingly lacking in the music of that evening.  It wasn't until a few weeks ago that I figured it out: most of those young composers weren't crafting chamber music, but rather conceiving pieces for much larger ensembles and then paring them down to fit the Seattle Chamber Players format of violin, cello, flute, clarinet and possibly a guest instrument or two.  When that sort of thing happens, crucial elements like tone color, timbre and balance between instruments go out the window.  I was very wary of that sort of thing happening again going into this series.  Well, that was Icebreaker IV; this is Icebreaker V, and it was very often miraculously good.  Although it was quite an endurance contest - five concerts over three nights - by the end, I was still encountering pieces that made me want to stand up and cheer.  Yeah, they were that good.  Not only that, but they were also expertly performed.  It was one of the best and worthwhile musical experiences I've had in a long time.   

This year, the Icebreaker Festival drew composers and ensembles from all over Europe and proclaimed love and war as its theme.  You know, I actually forgot about the theme very early on, because a lot of the pieces concerned themselves with neither love nor war.  For instance, where did those themes figure into György Kurtág's Kafka Fragments?  They didn't.  Did that lessen the piece for me?  Absolutely not.  So basically, there was an overarching theme for these concerts, but it didn't always apply.

The first evening featured music from the Netherlands - or rather composers based in the Netherlands.  The first piece was an effort by Michiel Mensingh that felt like it should have been written for a larger ensemble.  The instruments didn't blend well, the music never flowed and there was this blasted declamatory four-note motif repeating over and over again.  It was one of my least favorite pieces of the entire festival.  The second piece (there were only two on the bill; these concerts were relatively short and some were followed by a Q&A session with composers and performers), Satellites by Yannis Kyriakides (a Cyprus-born, British-educated, Netherlands-inhabiting fellow), contained a few things that often cause contemporary pieces to go awry: electronics and a highly esoteric concept.  Through the use of said electronics in conjunction with the Seattle Chamber Players and guest pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama, it was Kyriakides' intent to describe in music some of the satellites orbiting above us at this very moment.  In his own notes about the piece, he actually used the word "soundscapes." This almost always bodes ill.  I feared the worst.  But it was not to be.  It turned out to be superb: 12 movements of ethereal beauty that created its own reality and kept my attention for its entirety.  This was my favorite piece of the entire festival.  And yes, you can actually picture these 12 satellites orbiting around the Earth during the piece.  The work is divided into six sections featuring the full ensemble alternating with six sections highlighting each instrument as a solo voice.  For these solos, the players moved to music stands apart from the main group, except for the piano (too big to move) and the electronics (too many wires coming from the laptop).  Speaking of electronics, they were perfect for this piece.  They made it seem like you were in space alongside these satellites.  And most importantly, they weren't too loud.  In case I haven't been clear enough: this was an excellent piece.

The next evening featured two concerts spotlighting Italy and Hungary.  In the early concert, the Xenia Ensemble gave us an overview of about a century's worth of music.  They even featured works by - gasp! - dead composers.  By the way, I hadn't heard of any of the nine guys on the bill, living or dead.  It was kind of strange.  Here were these three nice ladies from Ireland, England and Germany, playing very nice, fairly contemporary Italian music and I was feeling like each and every piece would suddenly veer into Verdi or Corelli or Monteverdi territory.  All of the pieces seemed devoid of any contemporary character.  Even those by living composers seemed to be from another era.  The ensemble's announced purpose was to highlight Modernism in Italy.  After all, the first Modernist manifesto was published a century ago in - you guessed it - Italy.  But the ironic thing is that Italy defies modernity.  This concert emphasized it.  True, they've produced such lights as Berio, Nono and Dallapiccola, but those seem to be the exceptions that prove the rule.  But it was all very pleasant.  The nice ladies played quite well and I wish them all kinds of luck.  The music just wasn't that interesting.  The late concert had only one piece on the bill: Kafka Fragments by György Kurtág, illustrious Hungarian composer.  It's a large, sprawling piece for violin and soprano in 40 parts featuring seemingly random snippets of Franz Kafka's diaries, letters and notebooks.  I suppose you could call it a song cycle, if you really wanted to.  There was much virtuosic and passionate playing and singing put into this piece by violinist Mikhail Shmidt and soprano Agata Zubel, but there was never a moment when the music grabbed me.  I could hear and recognize things as they happened, I could appreciate them, but the piece remained just out of my reach.  One of my problems with it was that I couldn't figure out how the text fragments were significant.  I mean, what special meaning does "Nothing of the kind, nothing of the kind" have?  Or "The seamstresses in the downpourings." These words were always carefully set, but their selection seemed almost haphazard.  Maybe if I hear it again, I'll see the light.  Sometimes you miss a lot when you're hearing a piece for the first time. 

The last two concerts focused on Russia and Denmark/Iceland.  This was the best evening of them all.  Two pieces on the earlier Russian concert really stood out: Shadows - Hommage to Borys by Virko Baley and Divertissement by Yevgeniy Sharlat.  Baley's piece featured the core players, Shmidt, Sabee, DeLuca and Taub, augmented by two percussionists playing aquaphones for the majority of the time.  The aquaphone may not seem like a familiar instrument, but everyone who has watched a seventies cop show or suspense film has heard it.  It's made entirely of metal, filled with water and played with a bow or struck by the player.  Baley's writing for the pair of aquaphones was excellent.  They complemented the piece's quiet, solemn pace by adding an otherworldly element.  At times, it sounded like there were electronics involved, but no, it was all acoustic.  Sharlat's Divertissement was wonderfully written and superbly performed, plain and simple.  About halfway through the piece, it stuck me just how good it was.  This guy really knows how to write music.  And the most fortunate thing of all is that he's just 33 years old, so I'm expecting to hear more brilliant stuff from him in the years to come.  The other two pieces on the program, Musical Offering by Alexander Wustin and alpastro by Igor Kefalidis, didn't really appeal to me.  Wustin's piece was for cello and piano, but unfortunately, his writing for the former instrument seemed inadequate for what he wanted to express.  Many of his phrases sounded tentative and much of his high-register interludes didn't sound like they belonged in the piece.  I probably could have liked Kefalidis' piece had it not been drowned out by its own electronics.  The Danish/Icelandic concert was also dynamite, due in part to the participation of Danish FIGURA Ensemble.  Once again, there were two outstanding pieces on the bill.  The first was Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs) with music by Anders Brødsgaard and German text by Christian Morgenstern for mezzo-soprano, flute, accordion, double bass and percussion.  This piece veered wildly across a diverse musical landscape.  At times, it pitched towards cabaret, at others towards art songs, theater music, archaic popular music, early serialism and so on.  Sometimes the ensemble sang backup.  It was such a joy to hear.  And if anybody tells you that an accordion has no place in contemporary classical music, steer them to this piece.  The group as a whole sounded fantastic and the mezzo, Helene Gjerris, had a lovely voice.  The second outstanding work was Preludes to Disaster with music by Peter Bruun and Spanish text by Cervantes.  Imagine Spanish music put through the prism of contemporary musical thought and Danish culture, and you get a vague idea of how this piece sounded.  It was unmistakably Spanish in character, but it had far greater intensity.  It was quite a stunning thing to hear.  The remaining two pieces, both by Steingrimur Rohloff: Stadig ikke/endu ikke and Hit Upon, were both good efforts, but they were overshadowed by the other two monsters on the bill.  And that was Icebreaker V.  Like I said, the "love and war" theme wasn't always prominent, but it had absolutely no bearing on how much I enjoyed the festival.

I realize that contemporary music is a tough sell.  According to sales figures, 96% of this country's population would rather not listen to classical music.  And out of that 4% who do buy classical, I'd estimate that around 98% of them would avoid contemporary music like the plague.  The market segment that buys new music by living composers is too small to measure.  But despite the small following, it's events like these that restore my faith in contemporary music.  It's not about composers scheming to write the most dissonant music on the planet; it's more a matter of how they deal with sound.  Yes, new music is often dissonant, but once you get past that one small hurdle, you're in the middle of a beautiful and spacious new world.  Hats off to the Seattle Chamber Players and their Herculean efforts to bring us into that world.  I can't wait for Icebreaker VI.           

Hold on a second!  You have a chance to take in Songs of War I Have Seen (hey, now there's the war theme), a new work by German composer, Heiner Goebbels.  It's playing March 4-6 at On the Boards.  The Seattle Chamber Players will team up with Pacific Musicworks for this gig.  Also on the bill are works by Dario Castello and everybody's favorite guy, Claudio Monteverdi.  It should be a super show.