concert review: Bridge Piano Quartet

Yikes, did this ever turn out to be a challenging review to write.

First, it featured a work to which the music was virtually inconsequential, and was all about the texts the narrator was reading. So I had to focus on that, which is not what I was expecting of a concert review. (When I covered the discussion panel on anti-Semitism in Bach, I at least was clear on what I was getting before I started.)

That the topic was early 20C Asian immigrants and their travails with bureaucracy in trying to get into the US immediately suggests contemporary parallels, and the connection was drawn in the pre-work talks. So I alluded to that, but without making explicit my own opinion. Nobody on stage would have disagreed if I had been explicit, but I dislike it when reviewers throw in personal political views that aren't germane to the concert, even (maybe most so) when I agree with them. For instance in this week's issue, here. It doesn't add anything to the review and is either obvious or annoying. There are other forums for that.

Second, the acoustics. It was pretty awful for the narration, which knowing the hall I could have predicted beforehand, not that the narrator had a good voice for such work, a fact I tried to elide over - I don't want to insult her. But I had to be blunt about the basic problem. I did not have room to mention that the concert had been played at Old First Church in the City last week, and it probably came off a lot better there.

I had a fairly lengthy chat with the composer afterwards, not discussing the acoustic problems, but asking him musical questions as I was anticipating saying more about the work musically than I eventually decided to do.

I also learned of the origin of his interest in things Asian. Not only has he worked with both Japanese and Chinese musicians, but his bio says he speaks Japanese fluently, and he's learning Chinese (says Wernher von Braun). He told me his interest in Japan had been sparked when he was sent there on his Mormon missionary tour.

Now that's interesting, because he can thus be added to several people I know of Western origin, with no previous personal connection with Japan, who have fallen intensely in love with the country and its culture. I suppose this dates back to the fad for things Japanese that swept Britain at the time of the Knightsbridge exhibition in the 1880s, but the intensity of it in the cases I know, though focusing on different forms - anime in one case, literature in another, J-pop in a third - is striking.

It's also baffling to me, because I have no particular interest in things Japanese (apart from their composition of Western classical music, in which they are supreme among all non-Western countries), and insofar as I have a cultural learning in the East Asian world, it's decidedly towards things Chinese instead. I prefer Chinese painting, folk music, literature (insofar as I've read any from either culture), and above all food. Of course, I also have one friend so interested in China that she visits it frequently, and I wouldn't go that far either. Well, everybody has their passions, and I'm just curious about the choice.