Here's the ultimate in being old-fashioned: the Paul Dresher Ensemble
Electro-Acoustic Band and Moscow's Opus Posth played 21st century works
tonight (with John Adams, no less, paying rapt attention in the audience),
but I came away from the long concert haunted by the voice of a young
Russian soprano, singing music of the earliest Baroque.

Galina Muradova, 30, is from Moscow, trained in Vienna, and probably
making her US debut at Dresher's Wired Strings Festival, in San Francisco's
ODC Theater.

She sang Monteverdi's "Tempro la Cetra" ("Tuning the Zither") from
"Madrigale Erotiche," in a simple, intense, committed, appealing way,
selflessly serving the music with crystalline diction and touching
sincerity.

Russian musicians, who presented the latest minimalist music as Opus
Posth, accompanied Muradova beautifully in their other incarnation as
the Moscow Academy of Ancient Music - a fine ensemble either way.

The new music they brought with them for this US-Russian/old-new festival
(running here through May 2) required all their skills, but presented
no satisfying experience.

Vladimir Martynov's "Autumn Ball of the Elves," for example, is built
on a two-note figure that's repeated rapidly until the hair on the bows
shreds.  The poor musicians working so hard for so little received an
unexpected lift at the end from a wet obbligato as the music dissolved
into the sound of heavy rain beating down on the theater's flat roof.

Pavel Karmanov's "Green DNK" opens with a quote from "Das Rheingold,"
goes into endless repetition and then quotes at length from the granddaddy
of all ostinato, "Bolero."

The Americans did much better, both in their selection of new Russian
composers (Vladimir Nikolaev and Albina Stefanou) and, especially, with
the world premiere of Dresher's "Unequal Distemperament."

This Concerto for Cello and Electro-Acoustic Band, featuring Joan
Jeanrenaud (and violinist Karen Bentley, who has a major role in the
work), begins unpromisingly enough, with the empty ostinato noodling
that was tiresome 40 years ago, but slowly the piece develops and grows...
until "a sea-change into something rich and strange." The final section
of the concerto may well be Dresher's best work to date.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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