Zestful musings from the left edge

The good news is that Morton Subotnick’s “Release” -- which had its first performance at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival last summer and was given its West Coast premiere Saturday night by Southwest Chamber Music at the Norton Simon Museum -- is an intensely affecting piece, one of the composer’s finest. The bad new is that Subotnick, who is about to turn 71, says that he intends “Release” to be his last work. Although still vigorous, the pioneering electronic music composer and longtime faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts intends now to concentrate on the software he is designing to teach composition to young people.

But more good news: He may not mean it. Subotnick told the audience that he has made that threat before.

“Release,” a quintet for violin, clarinet, cello, piano and computer electronics, does have a valedictory character, which is part of what makes it striking. It pays homage to Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time,” a work Subotnick played often 40 years ago, just before he gave up the clarinet. Musings about turning 70 and the death of a friend also, the composer said, served as inspiration, as he thought about the release of the life force from the body.

One strong first impression made by “Release” is the sensation of flight. The electronic sounds that take wing through the auditorium are like the spirit, while the acoustic instruments, very subtly amplified to give them a plumper tone rather than more volume, remain earthbound. The sense of pulse that runs through the four interconnected movements (“Without End,” “Judgment,” “Ice” and “Alone”) keeps varying. The piano may leap to life in the zestful way typical of Subotnick’s earlier music, but there is also a mysterious life to even icy, lingering string harmonics. The clarinet stills the other instruments at the end, an end as beautiful as anything in the recent chamber music literature.

If this really is the summation of Subotnick’s music (and I hope it isn’t), it reveals a composer who while at the cutting edge of electronics and synthesizer music in the ‘60s and ‘70s, has always gone his own way. The electronics have an old-fashioned character; Subotnick relies on many of the same “futuristic” effects that he made famous in the ‘60s but that now sound almost nostalgic. His pulsating and melodic instrumental techniques haven’t changed much over the years either, other than deepening. Others can write software, but only Subotnick makes music that sounds like this.

The program, part of a Southwest Chamber Music series devoted to “left edge” composers, also included the first live performance of William Kraft’s “Cascando,” a radio play by Samuel Beckett. There are three characters: Opener, who does little more than say things like “I open,” “I close” and “I start again”; Voice, a manic whisperer; and Music, which is what Kraft supplied.

“Cascando” was not acted out on stage (Beckett would not allow that for his radio plays) but rather recited by the perfectly deadpan John Schneider (Opener) and the perfectly hyper Martin Perlich (Voice), while a small chamber ensemble played Kraft’s score. Kraft’s music is less austere than most Beckettian music, but the contrast worked.

The evening’s other left-edger was Luciano Berio (presumably because the late Italian composer once taught in the Bay Area). “Naturale,” heard in its West Coast premiere, pits a richly expressive solo viola against percussion and interjected recordings of Sicilian folk song. Much like “Cascando,” these are three worlds that brush against each other rather than interact, but with each musical brushing, sparks fly.

Violist Jan Karlin and percussionist Lynn Vartan sounded in complete command, as did the other players throughout the evening. And that is more good news. Last year’s shakeup, in which the venturesome Southwest Chamber Music lost many of its best players, has been anything but a disaster.