In Sunday’s (2/6) San Diego Union-Tribune , James Chute reviews the all-volunteer La Jolla Symphony, led by music director Steven Schick. “On Saturday at UCSD’s Mandeville Auditorium, they performed an improbable, some might say impossible, program including the United States premiere of a monumental work by the 20th century master Innes Xenakis, ‘Metastasis (Alpha Version),’ and a world premiere by 21st century master Phil Kline, ‘A Dream and Its Opposite,’ framed by two works by Debussy, the ‘Nocturnes’ and the too rarely programmed ‘Jeux.’ ” Chute terms the Xenakis piece “undeniably moving, even majestic. If you opened your ears, and for the nine minutes the work occupies your consciousness forgot about your culturally conditioned values (consonance good, dissonance very, very bad), music might never sound the same way again. … Then there’s Kline, who sounds indebted to Debussy and Xenakis in his ‘Dream’ work performed with the inspired assistance of the ensemble Real Quiet (pianist Andrew Russo, cellist Felix Fan and percussionist Justin DeHart). Through much of the work, you are lost in this strange yet irresistible sonic wonderland. But somehow at the end, as he resolves the whole piece into a single major chord, you realize that really, you knew exactly where you were the whole time.”
Posted February 8, 2011
