Last Night in L.A.: Gloria Cheng

Close to 300 of us traveled to Zipper Auditorium last night to hear Gloria Cheng open the new Piano Spheres season.  It was a great concert.  With the exception of the premiere of a new work, she selected pieces by some of the most unrelenting modernists; as she said from the stage, the names of the composers would make most potential audience members head for the hills, anywhere but to sit and listen.  She gave us pleasure and enjoyment.  No one in the audience gave up and left.  In fact, after the encore of a long, challenging program, I think most of the audience felt as I did: grateful to have heard this.

Gloria Cheng is a great communicator in her playing, an artist painting a picture in sound for us to hear.  She introduced most of the works from the stage, talking about what the piece communicated to her.  Berio’s “Sequenza IV” (1966), for example, seemed to be about a shy, somewhat insecure, uptight person who finally goes out into the world, has experiences and frustrations, and comes home, true to itself, but more colorful from the experiences.  Cheng’s performance of the work gave us a structure and an arc; the work was not merely about momentary sounds, but it evolved and grew.  Here’s a performance of Sequenza IV on YouTube; the technique is good.  Even allowing for the lack of resonance in the sound reproduction, which significantly limits the realization of the work, this performance seems quite removed from what we heard last night.  Cheng’s performance had breadth and depth.

Similarly to Cheng Elliot Carter’s “Intermittances” (2005, at the age of 97) was like meeting very interesting people at a cocktail party: an arguing couple, someone tipsy, etc.  She said that for her, performing Carter was “a gas”.  She made the work fun to hear.

Her performance of Messiaen’s “Canteyodjaya” (1949) viewed the work as a series of stained glass windows within the structure provided by the jagged Hindu rhythmic theme.  Yvonne Loriot apparently said that playing the work was “great fun”, and Cheng found this ability to enjoy the colors and communicate the enjoyment.  As if the Messiaen weren’t difficult enough to play, the concert ended with a performance of “Evryali” (1973) by Iannis Xenakis.  Cheng admitted that Xenakis was difficult to like, but she grew into the work after she was asked to perform it for a ballet group building a dance to the work (which is hard to imagine).  This was fierce music and must have been difficult to play.

The first half of the program opened with Helmut Lachenmann’s “Guero” (1969/1988) in which the pianist uses plastic credit cards along the surfaces of the keys themselves or of the tuning pegs.  (The original version was for fingernails.)  About the only notes with pitch are those from the resonance in the piano as the pedal is used.  She gave us a variety of sounds and of colors, making the work interesting.  The second half included one of Cage’s theatre works, “October 2, 2007 [Water Music]” (1952) and early Takemitsu, “Litany, in Memory of Michael Vyner” (1950, revised 1989) as respites for the fingers so exercised in the Messiaen and Xenakis works.

She gave the world premiere of a Piano Spheres commission, “Piano Sonata No. 1, ‘Arcata’ ” by Dante De Silva.  The three movements had strong rhythmic content (De Silva is a percussionist and guitarist as well as a pianist) and individual episodes of spark and color.  It was an enjoyable work by a composer making his first attempt at a major piano work.

Next Piano Spheres concert:  November 13 with Vicki Ray.