SummerFest 2024 Explores Flamenco Flair in Contemporary Chamber Music

Thursday’s La Jolla SummerFest concert at The Conrad revealed the three faces of Thomas Adès, this year’s composer-in-residence. In the program opener, we heard the accomplished young British guitarist Sean Shibe play Forgotten Dances, one of Adès’ most recent compositions. Then Adès presided at the concert grand in Manuel De Falla’s nonpareil 1926 Concerto for Piano, Flute. Oboe, Clarinet, Violin and Cello. And to complete the concert, Adès conducted eight instrumentalists in Francisco Coll’s Turia, a chamber concerto for guitar from 2018.

It is obvious why SummerFest Music Director wanted the versatile Adès back for his second stint as the La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest composer-in-residence.

Although Adès’ Forgotten Dances was first performed at two European festivals last year, Thursday’s SummerFest audience enjoyed the work’s U. S. première. A taut, elegantly structured work in six contrasting movements, Forgotten Dances struck me as what flamenco would have sounded like had the dance originated in England. The “Overture” sets the stage in Adès’ signature style: animated yet slightly hesitant flourishes that scamper across the stage but then return for subtle embellishment. Quick movements such as the “Carillon de Ville” charm with their brash, mildly dissonant ostinatos, but the spare, more reflective movements—“Berceuse” and “Barcarolle”—wander with earnest but diffident direction.

Shibe’s technical prowess and warm sonority made an eloquent case for Forgotten Dances.

SummerFest 2024 opened last Friday with Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat, the 1918 musical drama that arguably launched 20th-century Neoclassicism. By the time Manuel De Falla composed his Concerto for Piano, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violin and Cello, both the Roaring Twenties and Neoclassicism were in full bloom. De Falla wrote this 1926 Concerto with the harpsichord as its keyboard instrument, and he dedicated the work to Wanda Landowska, who premiered the work in Barcelona in 1926. Landowska restored the 18th-century harpsichord to common musical practice, but she was the sole harpsichordist of note in the 1920s, so De Falla wisely adapted the harpsichord score for the piano, and this was the version we heard at The Conrad on Thursday.

Like any respectable concerto of Mozart’s time, De Falla’s Concerto is structured in three movements, a pair of lively outer  movements surrounding a placid center movement, which is the heart of the work. Opening with a flamboyant solo piano flourish, the “Lento” quickly turns into a somber chorale outlined by the piano’s harmonically dense rolled chords as the three winds proclaim the theme. From the composer’s annotations in the score, some interpret this movement as a depiction or at least an allusion to traditional Spanish outdoor religious processions. De Falla’s bright, spirited final movement caps his Concerto with muscular yet joyous counterpoint. Thomas Adès at the piano was assisted by violinist SooBeen Lee, flutist Emi Ferguson, obist Nicholas Daniel, clarinetist Tommaso Lonquich, and cellist Leland Ko.

Francisco Coll, a young Spanish composer whose work Adès has championed in other guest appearances, employs a diffuse, diaphanous melodic style similar to Adès own. Sean Shibe returned to the Conrad stage to deliver the guitar solo in Coll’s five-movement Turia, accompanied by flute, clarinet, percussion, violin, viola, cello, and piano. Adès’ adroit conducting and the finesse of the SummerFest instrumentalists gave a robust account of this recent work with its muted allusions to Spanish flamenco style.

The concert was presented by the La Jolla Music Society as part of SummerFest 2024 at La Jolla’s Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center on  August 1, 2024.