With mainstream music becoming increasingly homogenized, the
appeal of classical music is sometimes lost among today’s
youth. By offering a range of both classical and contemporary
chamber pieces, performers of tonight’s chambermusic@ucla
show hope to prove their music can be just as rewarding.
In tonight’s Phantasmagorias and Tributes, the five
musicians ““ Professors Antonio Lysy, Mark Kaplan and Paul
Coletti; graduate students Searmi Park and Valerie Johnson; and
guest artist Yael Weiss ““ will endeavor to prove chamber
music is still pertinent to people today. The concert will blend
the music of the old masters ““ Beethoven and Mozart ““
with the work of living composers Berio and Corigliano.
“There’s a crisis in classical music now, as far as
attracting audiences and proving the relevance in what we
do,” Kaplan said. “And it’s a program like this
that can immediately capture the relevance with what we do with the
new works and also show that the old works have a timeless quality
that gives them their relevance.”
As traditional chamber music audiences grow older and dwindle,
there is a younger audience emerging with its own interests in
chamber music.
Younger audiences typically want to see more eclectic programs
that include the classical works they grew up listening to mixed in
with new works that represent the culture and attitudes of
today’s society.
The concert aims to cater to this new, growing audience. Even
contemporary pieces are accessible and are not so full of the
unexpected sounds and dissonance that have been known to scare
people away from modern music.
The concert also celebrates the addition of cellist Antonio Lysy
to the string faculty, as having full-time cello, violin and viola
professors is new to UCLA.
Phantasmagoria, the concert’s title piece, is about ghosts
of Versailles and is written like a play, representing characters
with musical themes. Corigliano, who wrote the piece for piano and
cello, takes famous melodies directly from the works of Mozart and
Wagner so the familiar melodies will resemble lines from a
play.
As a professor at UCLA, Kaplan finds many of the violin students
who come to UCLA have a high level of technical ability but lack an
understanding of the background of the violin. As a result, he
makes an effort to teach his students that as artists, they are the
link between the composer and the audience. In order to play this
role, Kaplan believes it’s crucial the student has an
understanding of classical music’s history and the direction
in which it is heading.
“Violin playing is not like learning an athletic
discipline, which is how it is taught these days,” Kaplan
said. “Violin playing is taught as an increasing succession
of little things you do, but many students don’t realize
it’s more than that. As an artist, you’re the link
between the present and the past, and you have to be representative
of the pieces you play.”
Guest artist Yael Weiss, though not a student of Kaplan, has
also struggled with this idea personally. She complains she used to
be so busy practicing technical mastery of music that there was
little room to convey the emotional side of a musical piece.
“Music used to be a matter of life or death for me,”
Weiss said. “I now know that it’s more important that
you can communicate the (composer’s) message to the audience
than have the absolute most literal read of the piece.”
Chamber music isn’t just beneficial to the audience, it
also makes up an important part of the learning and exploration
process in a musician’s personal studies.
“As a musician, when you are studying the works of a
composer, you see that Beethoven, for example, wrote piano solos,
concerto music and music for large ensembles,” Weiss said.
“And to really understand the essence of a composer, you have
to study a wide range of repertoire, not just one aspect like piano
sonatas.”
The chamber musicians are looking forward to introducing the
audience to unfamiliar. Kaplan compares the process of choosing the
pieces in a program to serving a dinner ““ no one wants to eat
all of the same dishes. Likewise, in planning concert pieces,
musicians strive to find works that both contrast and complement
each other.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of music you like.
You’re going to find something that draws you to this
concert. And then you’ll find that the other things are
really good too,” Kaplan said.