Matt Haimovitz in Recital
by
Lyn Bronson
Matt Haimovitz
California Summer Music
presented cellist Matt Haimovitz last night in a benefit concert for the Irene
Sharp Scholarship Fund. It would be gratifying to report that the event was
sold, out with standing room only, but, in fact, Keck Auditorium was only three
quarters full for this event. Whether this was a reflection of Haimovitz’s only
moderate “show biz fiz” or lack of media blitz, we may never know. However, the
audience was mostly composed of students attending California Summer Music, plus
board members and supporters. I didn’t see any people whom you might find in
downtown Monterey’s jazz clubs or the “brown bread and open-toed sandal set”
from Santa Cruz.
From this we might deduce that
although Haimovitz has demonstrated he can invade jazz clubs throughout the
fifty states and successfully bring a mixture of classical, contemporary and
rock music to people who normally shun the classical and contemporary, his
appearance in a more conventional venue in a benefit concert and fund raiser
proved to be only a moderate draw. Perhaps, after all, it was the $50 admission
price that was responsible for the only moderate turnout.
Whatever the reasons,
encountering Matt Haimovitz in concert is an unforgettable experience, for he is
one of a significant group of musicians who sees the conventional classical
music scene as stagnant and dependent on an older, grey-haired (or no-haired)
audience that is resistant to change and content to hear the same music (from
dead composers, naturally) year in and year out. Haimovitz discovered that when
he played in bars and jazz clubs people responded, not with politeness, but with
genuine enthusiasm, for they recognized that there can be a message for them in
a Bach suite for unaccompanied cello, or in other contemporary music by living
composers Haimovitz performs so enthusiastically.
Last night’s concert had a
special focus, for his presence here was paying tribute to the extraordinary
teaching of cellist Irene Sharp, the spiritual force behind California Summer
Music, and a former teacher of Haimovitz when he was quite young. He said that
he has very warm memories of his period of study with her, which have remained
with him in his adult life. He was also bringing his unique approach to music to
a younger generation of cellists gathered here on the Monterey Peninsula to
learn from masters and to play ensemble music during the three-week duration of
California Summer Music. Make no mistake about it, there were a lot of young
student cellists in the audience last night, and for them this had to be a
unique experience.
Haimovitz isn’t particularly
fond of printed programs, for he likes to wing it, so to speak, and perform
whatever he feels like performing at the moment. Therefore, the first work on
the program was listed as “Unaccompanied Suite No.? by J.S. Bach. Nor did he
announce before his performance which suite he had finally decided to play,
although the cello aficionados knew instantly that his first piece was the
Unaccompanied Suite No. 2 in D Minor. His selection, he told the audience, “was
influenced by the ever deteriorating conflict in Lebanon — Haimovitz was born in
Israel, although he moved to the USA at a very young age and thus was raised and
schooled here. His performance of the Bach Suite was deeply felt by Haimovitz
and profoundly moving for his audience.
For the remainder of the first
half of the program, we heard contemporary works by Osvaldo Golijov and György
Ligeti that were well written for the instrument and played with flair and
tremendous conviction by Haimovitz. The Ligeti piece, which Haimovitz played for
the composer before his death had some interesting features about it. The first
movement, Dialogo, contained effective use of contrast between
pizzicato and arco passages to suggest a dialog between two people.
The second movement, Capriccio, was a ferocious toccata that Haimovitz
played with great passion and vitality.
After intermission Haimovitz
treated us to a beautifully styled performance of the Unaccompanied Bach Cello
Suite in C Major. Again, we heard elegant playing that was a revelation of how
vital and absorbing this work can be.
Certainly the most startling
work on the program was a specialty of Haimovitz’s, —an adaptation of the Jimi
Hendrix version of “The Star Spangled Banner” that Hendrix played at Woodstock
in 1969. Before Haimovitz played this work for us, he commented that we would be
hearing lots of powerful and “wrong” effects that Irene Sharp would not want to
encourage among the younger cello students in the audience. This powerful work
is often played by Haimovitz, and it is a chilling and ironic performance of an
arrangement Hendrix composed to express his anger at the Vietnam conflict that
was raging at the time and was affecting us all in a profound way. When you hear
this work played by Haimovitz, the first impression you have is that you
couldn’t imagine a cello sounding like this. We heard extraordinary sounds
underlining a sardonic performance of our national anthem and ending with “Taps”
snuck in to suggest the never-ending number of casualties all parties were
suffering in this war.
To reward an enthusiastic
audience, Haimovitz played two lovely encores by Bach, the Allemande from the
Sixth Suite for Unaccompanied Cello, and the Prelude from Suite No. 1.
