Berkeley orchestra's Spangler virtuosic in Sheinfeld piece
Joshua Kosman, Chronicle Music Critic
Thursday, January 24, 2002
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/01/24/DD161980.DTL

It may not have been planned that way, but Tuesday's concert by Kent Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra emerged as a moving tribute -- fittingly tender and tough-minded -- to composer David Sheinfeld, who died in June at 94.

The centerpiece of the program (which was repeated last night in the Berkeley Rep's Roda Theatre) was the posthumous world premiere of "Different Worlds of Sound," a concerto for the orchestra's virtuosic percussionist, Ward Spangler. It turned out to be a fascinating creation, simultaneously spare and densely wrought, and an apt vehicle for Spangler's decisive and thoughtful brand of showmanship.

Yet the rest of the program too, including Schubert's Fifth Symphony and Berg's Chamber Concerto, reached out and connected in sometimes unexpected ways with Sheinfeld's voice -- the former in its lighthearted grace, the latter in its motivic connections.

And in between, at Sheinfeld's own suggestion, came a brief appearance by the 11-member Sonos Handbell Ensemble, playing Karen Lakey Buckwalter's irresistibly sweet Nocturne in A Minor.

True to its title, "Different Worlds of Sound" begins by staking a large sonic territory in an almost fitful way -- the soloist ranges over an extensive battery of instruments without mustering a sustained phrase on any of them, and the orchestra contributes its own start-and-stop assortment of disparate musical gestures.

But over the course of four movements running about 23 minutes, Sheinfeld gradually ties those threads together into an increasingly taut and propulsive web.

The slow movement, perhaps the concerto's most alluring segment, begins and ends in a witty, grumbling dialogue between the percussion and the orchestra's lowest instruments, led by a darkly insinuating contrabassoon. After a cadenza brief enough to leave the listener hungry for more, the hard-driving finale offers an expanded summation of everything that has come before.

Spangler, long one of the Bay Area's under-sung musical heroes, gave a performance marked by vigor and panache, and Nagano (wearing earplugs to protect himself from the clangor) led the orchestra deftly. Into the appreciative silence that greeted the conclusion came a lusty cry of "Bravo Sheinfeld!" that seemed to sum it up.

The performance of the Berg after intermission lacked some of the clarity and focus that the Sheinfeld enjoyed, but it still captured much of the composer's distinctively Romantic brand of atonality.

Particular honors went to German pianist Markus Pawlik, who dispatched the solo part with an analyst's taste and a performer's verve. Stuart Canin's playing of the violin solo favored the rhapsodic over the incisive, which made for a happy balance, and the ensemble of 13 wind players, under Nagano's leadership, moved as one.

Only the opening Schubert -- part of the orchestra's continuing survey of the composer's orchestral music -- seemed patchy and uncertain. Each movement began strong, moving with crisp assurance, only to collapse in midstream into rhythmic laxity and intonation problems.

E-mail Joshua Kosman at jkosman@sfchronicle.com.

©2002 San Francisco Chronicle