A central - and yet rarely emphasized - fact about Luis Bunuel's 1928
film, "Un chien andalou," is that it doesn't have a single dog in it,
Andalusian or otherwise.  It does have, unfortunately, a razor slicing
an eyeball, a cow's head on the piano (Salvador Dali was responsible for
the mise en scene), a severed hand on the street, and a total of 24
minutes of nonstop bizarre non sequiturs.

Thanks to the Bunuel-Dali creative team, the silent film originally was
accompanied by music from "Tristan und Isolde," in a setting of Argentinian
tango.  Alas, that wasn't good enough for David Milnes' San Francisco
Contemporary Music Players, so they offered not one, but two screenings
of the film tonight at Yerba Buena, with two different scores.

To clear the palate between the two, there was Luciano Berio's 2001 Piano
Sonata, played to the nines by the rightly-cherished Julie Steinberg.

"Chien" No. 1 started in silence, which somehow fit a silent film well,
but just when the man wearing a nun's habit falls off his bicycle for
no reason at all, Wolfgang Rihm's 1984 "Bild, eine chiffre" ("Picture,
a cipher") kicked in with jarring percussion.  Loud and percussive
persisted more or less unvariegated for the rest of the film, almost
diverting attention from the screen, but not quite.

The program notes had a somewhat startling note by the composer: "Because
`Build' has absolutely nothing to do with film (apart from a certain
`spliced-ness'), it might be the idea film music for `Un chien andalou'."
A properly surrealistic approach, I guess, especially the "spliced-ness"
business.

The reprise of movie had wall-to-wall accompaniment, Martin Matalon's
1996 "Las siete vidas de un gato," a jazzy, entertaining score, which
actually had something to do with the film.  (A non-existent dog, a cat
with seven lives...  surely there is a connection.) The Argentine composer,
in attendance at the concert, included some tango-flavored dance music,
in acknowledgment of what Bunuel had wanted.

Participating CMP players did very well, paced by violinist Roy Malan,
cellist Thalia Moore, and pianist Karen Rosenak.

And yet, the music highlight of the evening was clearly and overwhelmingly
the Berio.  In Steinberg's effortless technical wizardry and with her
unique ability to shape and color identical notes differently, this
large, difficult and rewarding work came to life gloriously.

Although there are elements of Minimalism in the sonata - such as the
ostinato of a single B-flat note - it is not restrained by rules or
poses; the music is endlessly inventive, hypnotic, but not by its sameness.
As performed by Steinberg, the music brought to mind the scene of Hanno's
improvisation in Mann's "Buddenbrooks" - a feeling of immersion and a
slowly-building rapture.  Nothing surrealistic, "just" good, substantive
music.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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