American Mavericks at Davies Hall: the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas and Friends Play Cage, Foss, Cowell, and Ruggles, by Steven Kruger


Cage-song-books

Jessye Norman, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Meredith Monk in John Cage's "Song Books"

The San Francisco Symphony
Davies Hall, San Francisco
Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
Meredith Monk, Joan La Barbara, Jessye Norman, vocalists
Jeremy Denk, piano

Cage – Song Books (1970)
Foss – Phorion (1967)
Cowell – Piano Concerto (1928)
Ruggles – Sun Treader (1931)

Revolutions, the saying goes, are frequently revisited as farce. If only one knew it at the time! In the ferment of the 1970s, a seeming battle to the death played itself out among advocates of dodecaphonic music and the apostles of deconstructed “happenings.” Both insurgencies would ultimately lose. But the arrogance of the revolutionaries was no different in music from what it would have been in politics. The average listener hoping for Brahms found himself besieged in those days—contemptuously marginalized in either camp—-and marked for replacement. That is always the frightening dimension of revolution: the smugness of the cook breaking eggs for the new omelette—-and the suspicion that you may be one of the eggs.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!