A Joyous Evening That Is All Schickele

Peter Schickele is an extremely funny man. As the perpetrator of P.D.Q. Bach, he has kept music lovers in stitches for some three decades. But he is also a clever and prolific composer under his own name, and that seems to be how Schickele wants to be known these days. He now limits his P.D.Q. Bach activities to the occasional CD along with an annual year-end Carnegie Hall bash.

That also allows him time for another annual event--the all-Schickele concert in Los Angeles put on by the Armadillo String Quartet and guest artists. Monday night, in the Zipper Concert Hall of the Colburn School, was the 10th such program and a celebration. Every instrument that had been incorporated in the concerts of the past 10 years was included, and a program was devised in which each instrument would be used in at least two pieces.

There was little advance publicity. But word of these concerts gets around; a substantial, ardent audience appeared. The Armadillo--composed of members of local orchestras and busy freelancers--operates on a shoestring. Even so, Schickele confided to the audience that because of the international reputation he and guest pianist Christopher O’Riley enjoy, they were being paid double the evening’s going rate--which meant they got the same as everyone else.

Such is the tone of a Schickele concert. Name another living composer whose music overextended professional musicians will perform in concert simply for the love of it. A dominant impression of the long program--three hours passed even before the encores--was of constant smiling on both sides of the stage.

Schickele’s music is not side-splitting as can be P.D.Q. Bach’s. But it is often waggish. In a new work, “Top o’ the Millennium” for two violas having its world premiere, Schickele named its first four movements for the first four days of the year--”01/01/00,” “01/02/00” and so on. The dates are codes for fingering positions on a string instrument, an idea that helped him out of a writer’s block induced by the New Year’s holidays. The result is music that rocks around a few notes, an entertaining effect of a drunk righting himself with sober repetition.

A tactic that has helped keep P.D.Q. Bach going all these years is that of the sudden change of direction--Mozart, say, interrupted by a hoedown. In his concert music, Schickele employs the same technique but less for shock value than out of a sense of design. During the first movement of his Piano Quintet No. 2, in which Schickele was the pianist, a sweet, lyrical melody (Schickele has a knack for them) alternates with dramatic passages of Brahmsian bravura. Eventually a pattern is created, and the two styles happily come to coexist. For the spring movement of the String Quartet No. 3 (its four movements are depictions of the seasons), there is contrast of enchanting violin trills broken by violent storm; and they, too, learn to merrily coexist. This is the quality that leads to all those smiles.

Schickele likes unusual instrumental combinations and sounds--it’s the rude ones in P.D.Q. that get the most laughs. A straighter, but still amusing example here was “Queen Anne’s Lace,” sprightly music for low-pitched instruments. There was also “Morning Music,” for piano four hands (played by Schickele and O’Riley), inspired by Indian raga but sounding more like Indonesian gamelan. An Octet for strings and winds had Schubert as its model, but, typically, Schickele drew from everywhere, with bluesy tunes, walking bass and a Mozart tribute.

Schickele’s most evident quality is his eclecticism, and pop music is always around the corner. So with 14 players on hand, and a soprano at his disposal (Michele Eaton, who is his assistant), he used the concert to realize a longtime ambition of arranging Beatles songs. The set of six numbers proved--for Schickele anyway--curiously reverential, if unerringly musical. Most memorable was “I’m Only Sleeping” treated as an ethereal, haunting drone.

The performances were ever appealing. The Armadillos (Barry Socher, Steve Scharf, Raymond Tischer and Armen Ksajikian) and their friends gave the heartening impression that they had become musicians just so that they would enjoy evenings like this. And any composer who can inspire such response is worth even 10 times his fee.