PORT ANGELES, Wash. — Music on the Strait, the week-long summer music festival held here, highlighted two of its four seventh-season concerts with music by its composer-in-residence, Gabriela Lena Frank. I sat in the first row for the Sept. 5 performance in the excellent acoustics of 135-seat Maier Hall at Peninsula College.
In the hands of violinists Rachel Lee Priday (a distinguished soloist who has commissioned works by many contemporary composers) and co-artistic director James Garlick, violist and co-artistic director Richard O’Neill (Takács String Quartet), and cellist Efe Baltacigil (principal, Seattle Symphony), Frank’s 2001 string quartet, Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout, proved the highlight of an evening. The concert began, somewhat traditionally, with J.S. Bach’s Contrapunctus I-IV from Art of the Fugue, followed by Philip Glass’ String Quartet No. 3 (Mishima), composed for Paul Schrader’s 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.
Frank’s Leyendas, which reflects her mother’s Peruvian heritage, consists of six atmospheric movements. Employing a huge battery of techniques, including microtonal shadings and bowing on the fingerboard (or sul tasto), each movement is based on Frank’s experience of visiting her mother’s homeland and immersing herself in the culture of the Andes.
The first movement, “Toyos,” centers on the sound of a huge panpipe (imitated by the viola), which effectively provides the movement’s bass foundation. The second movement, “Tarqueada,” sees the violin playing the part of Peru’s wooden flute, with hints of indigenous melodies. Next, “Himno de Zampoñas” imitates the overtones of panpipes playing indigenous rhythms. (“It’s all about the breath,” Frank said about this movement before the performance).
The energetic fourth movement, “Chasqui,” depicts young male relay runners who, during the 15th-century Inca Empire, carried messages and records throughout the land. By contrast, “Canto de Velorio” — the movement Frank called “the heart of the quartet” — depicts the professional women mourners who are hired to intensify sadness at funerals and Quechua Indian religious rites of passage.
Reflecting Frank’s desire to bring together sometimes antagonistic elements from different cultures, the movement includes snatches of the Catholic “Dies irae” chant. The final movement of Frank’s marvelous cultural travelogue, “Coqueteos,” references the flirtatious romanceros often sung in pubs by tenors to guitar accompaniment.
Frank’s Leyendas demands of its players not only many techniques but also the time-travel breadth of imagination and natural empathy essential to recreating the sounds and atmosphere of an ancient culture from which their modern instruments did not arise. It’s also one of the most colorful and beguiling contemporary pieces I’ve heard in some time.
The players took to Frank’s music as to the manner born. In their hands, “Toyos” became a gateway into a totally unique, increasingly captivating sound world. The marvelous music of “Tarqueada,” which was distinguished by vigorous attention-drawing col legno strikes and pizzicati, paved the way for the fascinating multiple rhythms of “Himno de Zampoñas.”
In “Chasqui,” Priday distinguished herself by playing extended fortes and double fortes while singing in a smooth, round, and full-bodied tone. Player after player dispatched every trick in the book with aplomb as they recreated rhythms unique to Peruvian culture.
With “Canto de Velorio,” the tone changed as cello and viola began to mourn and sob while the two violins wailed. Through multiple intense peaks, the wailing continued unabated. Frank’s humorous commentary on feigned grief was a delight. Ditto for the palpably seductive melodies and rhythms of the final movement.
Bach composed in a very different physical, cultural, and spiritual climate. Best to describe the opening four Contrapunctus as a beautifully voiced, perfectly blended cool opener intended to contrast with a hotter and juicier close.
In between came Glass’ Quartet No. 3. Every ensemble that has recorded the work since the Kronos premiere has broken free of celluloid click-track necessity and benefited from the ability to broaden phrasing and dynamics according to each group’s perception of the music’s needs. The Strait players were no exception, bringing out the second movement’s inherent mournfulness, playing with notable subtlety in the third movement, emphasizing O’Neill’s viola mastery in the fourth, performing with optimal clarity and balance in the fifth, and expressing surprising introspection in the closing. Ultimately, Glass’s trademark repetition helped pave the way for Frank’s expressive freedom.
