Sacramento Bee Interview

Chamber Music Society to debut "Pony Concerto"

By Patricia Beach Smith Bee Arts Critic, March 13, 2005

Though Nevada City composer Howard Hersh did not intend his latest composition to be a narrative, its title - "The Pony Concerto" - conjures up a fairly vivid picture.

The names of the movements of the concerto - "Pony Day Begins; Pony Dances and Dreams," "From His Starry Field, Pony Watches Bombs Fall," and "Pony Runs and Runs" - also add to the scene.

"Clearly, from the titles, there is programmatic material in there," Hersh said.

"While I was at a Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside in September and October, it was a perfect place to work," Hersh said. "Right outside my studio door were the rolling hills of California overlooking the ocean. There were a couple of horses in the distance and bird songs in the morning - the inspiration for the opening of the piece."

The genesis of the name came "from nowhere," Hersh said. "I was sketching out the original ideas for the piece and all of a sudden the name 'Pony Concerto' came to mind. I don't know what it meant, but it is appropriate for the musical material that was emerging at the time.

"I saw Pony as not real, but an archetypal creature - the symbol of innocence, cleverness, mischief and the ability to be vulnerable and still survive."

All that in 30 minutes of music so impressed the Chamber Music Society that the group changed its next program to accommodate Hersh's work.

"It is the best piece he's written, in my opinion," said violinist William Barbini, music director of the Chamber Music Society. "It is extremely virtuosic for all the instruments. It's scored for flute, clarinet, piano, violin, cello."

 The big piece on the program was to have been a Johannes Brahms wind quintet, but Barbini said his group has adjusted the program and dropped the Brahms quintet because Hersh's work has proven to be so impressive.

 "Instead, we will do Howard's piece, a Ned Rorem trio for flute, piano and cello and a Brahms sonata for clarinet and piano," Barbini said. "Dmitriy Cogan will be the pianist and Patty Shands of the University of the Pacific will play the clarinet."

 Hersh's concerto was commissioned a year ago, which Barbini said is "about the going rate for finishing a piece. Howard had the parts and score and even a computer disk of the music, all set a little more than a month before the performance.

 "I have been in the position before with commissioned pieces where you are getting dribs and drabs days before you are going to perform them," Barbini said. "It's a good thing we got it on time because it is extremely difficult. There's a lot of fast playing in it."

 Hersh admitted his piece will be difficult to play.

 "But I knew when I was writing it that I was doing it for the best players in Northern California," Hersh said. "Also, I knew that although they have to learn it in a relatively short time, the players want to be challenged, too."

 To compose, Hersh uses a piano to sketch out the initial ideas and try things as he's going along.

 "Then I go to the computer, enter everything in and play it back," Hersh said. " Sibelius is the program I have used for the past three or four years. It has definitely had an influence on the way my music has evolved. I always wanted to compose in a sort of painterly fashion, standing back to see what I've done and then adding or subtracting from it here or there. It makes the composition more tactile in a sense, and it's a little bit more immediate."

 The computer plays each instrument he designates, Hersh explained.

 "They have their traditional sounds and colors, but it's still a synthetic kind of sound," he said. "Nowhere is it a substitute for live music."

 As for his own style, Hersh said it is difficult to define.

 "My particular interest is to find a way of combining abstract as well as representational material in the same context," he said. "This piece has high activity, some Latin and other dance rhythms in it, and it's also pretty lyrical. I felt relaxed about using some pretty weird stuff that came out of the ether."