THREE COINS IN AN ICEBERG

The San Francisco Symphony presents the U.S.  premiere of Peter Maxwell
Davies' 'Antarctic' Symphony no.  8, with the composer conducting his own
work and music of Mozart and Ravel.  Davies (no relation) Symphony Hall,
San Francisco, CA, 14 March 2002.

'To suffer woes' begins the superscript to Vaughan Williams' Sinfonia
Antarctica.  To celebrate the 50th anniversary of its premiere, the British
Antarctic Survey and the Philharmonia Orchestra not only commissioned Peter
Maxwell Davies to write another Antarctic symphony, but also sent him down
there to get a feel for the place that deserves such a superscript.
Unfortunately, 'suffer' is what the new symphony does by comparison.

Record cold weather was poised to hit the Bay Area in seeming anticipation
of the arrival of Davies' declared last symphony, and cold is what he
received from the largely elderly Thursday afternoon audience.  Not a few
walked out during the performance.  What is wrong?

There is no denying the power of the work, its balanced construction, its
earnestness of purpose, the charm of its composer preparing the audience
with a brief lecture from the podium: 'Please hold your hat on! ... Don't
think I've run out of ideas ... I've taken the liberty of hurting your
ears ...  Wrap up well and bear with me [for] a pretty tremendous ride!'

Nevertheless, this reviewer must hazard on first hearing three possible
sources of failure for Mr.  Davies' well publicized and bankrolled effort:
failure of conceit, failure of clarity, and failure of concision.

First, the conceit of the hurtful brilliance of the Antarctic sunshine -
that according to Davies this must be conveyed by pain to the ears.
Although Davies can write in his diary 'distant snowy peaks thrust millions
of crystal needles into any unprotected eyes,' this just doesn't fly in
the music:  the many sudden dissonant blasts and shrieks in the orchestra
help milepost the construction, but flashes of light just don't emerge for
this listener.  Only perhaps the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho could
perhaps do justice to this concept.  Vaughan Williams does a better job
depicting a kind of twinkling in the 'Landscape' movement of his Antarctic
symphony.

Second, the obfuscation of motivs.  Most successful music succeeds with
'grabbers' - -motivs or melodies here and there that are more readily
discernable and help guide the listener from place to place or build
anticipations.  Davies has a few of these, a B major chord here and there,
a nice clarinet melody in the third section, some jazzy syncopations in the
fifth.  But these are so overlaid with other activities that they barely
emerge.  As with any piece, more would come to light with repeated
listenings, but not a single grabber in the first listening motivates
for more.  One of the more publicized grabbers is the opening dissonances
associated with the noise created by Davies' icebreaker, the Royal Research
Ship 'James Clark Ross.' This is unimpressive compared to the entrance of
the Prince in Prokofiev's 'Romeo and Juliet,' nowhere near heart-stopping
like the sudden blast of the organ in Vaughan Williams' 'Landscape'
movement.  And this dissonance set seems not distinctive enough to be
recognized second time around.  Another and best potential grabber is the
'Dum complerentur dies pentecostes' plainsong reported in the program
notes.  It may be in the score, but it must not have been important to
Davies that the audience hear it.

Third, the scope - a duration worthy of the merits of the material.
Here Davies has improved upon the Vaughan Williams, which aside from the
opening credit theme and the entire 'Landscape' movement, is stuffed with
hokey film shreds.  But Davies sticks in a whole section which he calls a
junkyard, depicting trash left behind by previous expeditions.  In another
reach of a conceit, he populates the section with snatches of material
(unidentified) from previous works.  On the whole, Davies could have
conveyed much the same information, more powerfully, in half the time.
For the best contemporary work of appropriately executed scope, one must
turn to Nicolas Maw's 'Odyssey,' a masterpiece that is long overdue to the
West Coast.

This is not to say the work is uninteresting.  There is often an underlying
current of softer music off and on drowned out by complex formulations,
perorations, and the icy eye needle stuff.  This undercurrent has an
uncanny way of appearing from time to time, and indeed, in one conceit that
DOES work, seems to portray the 'bedrock' under the ice.

That Davies is a master craftsman cannot be denied.  But perhaps he is more
dutiful than inspired.  In his conducting of Mozart's E-flat piano concerto
and Ravel's Left-Hand concerto, he appeared busily bent over as if he were
carefully mending wall on his Orkney estate.  Neither he nor pianist
Garrick Ohlsson brought forth any fire.

Hearing the Ravel, one was struck by how such a familiar work to this
listener still has resonance.  For the first time the similarity of the
sinuous, recursive opening contrabassoon theme to the main motiv of
Szymanowski's second violin concerto became apparent.  The Szymanowski was
written just after Ravel's Vienna premiere.  Was Szymanowski in the
audience?

Similarly, perhaps further exposure to the unforgiving, carefully
constructed ear-shard of a symphony by Davies will bring out the plainchant
and other resonances- - if the work catches on, which is doubtful in this
country, judging by the audience reaction.

Jeff Dunn
Alameda, CA
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