Intriguing Links Emerge in ‘Emigres on the Roof’

The cataclysmic artistic diaspora of the Nazi era brought many of Europe’s finest talents to Los Angeles. “Emigres on the Roof,” the second installment of the Focus on California festival presented by Monday Evening Concerts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, brought together the disparate journeys of five such composers, who all found here at least nominal support from Monday Evening Concerts and its predecessor series, Evenings on the Roof.

Hanns Eisler’s Piano Sonata No. 3, Stravinsky’s “Elegie” for solo viola, Schoenberg’s String Trio and Ingolf Dahl’s Concerto a Tre were composed here in the 1940s. The confluence of time and place are a matter more of coincidence than manifest destiny. As far as any California influence goes, the first three were certainly more shaping than shaped, although Dahl’s fresh, jazzy trio can be considered an integrated stylistic reaction to his new home.

Nonetheless, Monday’s agenda suggested intriguing points of comparison. Expected points, perhaps, in issues of structural clarity and polyphonic procedures, but far less so in references to popular and earlier music and in astringencies of color and texture. The Dahl again is the odd one out--the sonic shadow resting heaviest on it is that of Copland.

Oddest of all, at least in this context, was Ernst Krenek’s “Aulokithara.” Krenek did move here in 1947, after a few years on the East Coast, but he created this bold but long-winded experiment for oboes, harp and electronic tape in 1972; it sounds more dated than any of the earlier pieces. It has the fierce and intelligently manipulated invention characteristic of Krenek, but far less expressive discrimination than the composer’s printed note suggests.

Leonard Stein was crisply pertinent and persuasive in Eisler’s sonata, which he premiered in 1945, and David Walther played Stravinsky’s muted tombeaux with mournful grace. Violinist Maiko Kawabata, Walther and cellist William Skeen grew into Schoenberg’s dark trio, and Kawabata and Skeen partnered clarinetist Gary Gray with spirited warmth in Dahl’s sunny trio. David Sherr handled Krenek’s multifarious oboe challenges capably, with the incisive support of harpist Amy Wilkins and the moderating hand of Scott Higgins on the onstage electronics.