MUSIC REVIEW : Virtuoso and New Concerto Put Contrabass in Spotlight

If they doled out Academy Awards to musical instruments, the contrabass would rarely be considered for anything but the “Best Supporting Instrument” category. An indispensable member of any jazz combo and the requisite underpinning of the orchestra’s string section, the humble contrabass rarely rates top billing.

UC San Diego’s resident contrabass maestro, Bertram Turetzky, has devoted his career to bringing equal musical opportunity to his chosen instrument. Over the years, Turetzky has had some 300 contrabass compositions written for him, and he has circled the globe many times to spread his contrabass gospel. Saturday evening at the downtown Lyceum Theatre, he enlisted the assistance of his North County musical colleagues, the International Orchestra of USIU under music director Zoltan Rozsnyai, to present the American premiere of Australian composer Barry Conyngham’s Concerto for Contrabass and Orchestra (“Shadows of Noh”.

While this single-movement concerto may not find the ready niche in the orchestral repertory accorded the two Shostakovich Cello Concertos, Conyngham’s work is more than a momentary indulgence for a neglected instrument. Turetzky’s ardent performance revealed a colorful tone poem whose roots go back not to Richard Strauss but to Edgard Varese.

In this work, both the solo contrabass, which is lightly amplified, and the orchestra’s string sections employ a variety of glissandos and plucked sounds liberally accented with a host of percussion effects. Conyngham’s musical landscape is dotted with whirring sonic clusters rather than a succession of melodic ideas, although towards the conclusion the contrabass in given a deep-throated, elegiac theme.

If the subtitle has any programmatic application, it may allude to the work’s organization: its precise, halting gestures of the type associated with traditional Japanese drama.

Following the concerto, Turetzky and the International Orchestra offered as a chaser a jaunty arrangement of the duet by Duke Ellington and Jimmy Blanton, “Mr. J. B. Blues.” The soloist’s soulful and artfully shaped cadenza kept everyone on the edge of his seat.

In Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a, Rozsnyai’s troops showed how far they had progressed over the current season. They played with genuine ensemble and gave the ever-popular piece an appropriately lyrical cast. Rodrigo’s Concerto Pastorale for Flute, on the other hand, sounded under-rehearsed and ill-focused. From the opening set of “Ancient Airs and Dances” by Respighi, Rozsnyai coaxed as much brio as might be expected from this 45-piece orchestra.