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Last weekend the final concert of Rajan Krishnaswami’s Simple Measure’s autumn concert proved that contemporary music actually can work in Seattle and it also proved live classical music can be interesting, accessible, and instructive.  Rajan Krishnaswami is a self described guerilla musician who started Simple Measures because, as he says, “I was looking for a 21st century paradigm for classical music presentation, in which the formality and need to know stuff before you listen is gone; a way to bring today’s audiences, which generally have scant musical knowledge, up to speed so they really understand what they are listening to, and have some context for the music.”

The performance at the Mount Baker Community Club last Sunday was the fourth in a series called String Theory, linking classical music, politics, and the upcoming election.  The program was divided into sections where movements from string quartets, piano trios, and sonatas were classified as either reformist (coming from a composer who challenged the musical and, in some cases, political status quo of their time) or traditionalist (the equivalent of a musical fuddy duddy).

So, the fourth movement of Brahms’s Second Viola Sonata (traditionalist) was put up against the second movement of Debussy’s (reformist) String Quartet and a movement from a Luigi Boccherini (traditionalist) piano trio was pitted against the first movement of Mozart’s (reformist) “Dissonance” Quartet.  In most cases, the composer of each selection was listed clearly in the program and, when traditionalist/reformist pairing was over, the audience spoke out in favor or against pieces and voted on which they liked best.

The fun part of the concert was the discussion that went on after each segment of the program.  It was the first time in my memory I actively heard people debating the music they were hearing.

From the front row one man said, “Boccherini has elegant lines and we hear a lot of Mozart already.”

“The viola has the melody, and as a violist it’s nice to hear that,” a violist sitting in the back row noted.

On the Debussy selection, one woman who listened seriously, with eyes clenched shut said, “I traveled through the piece better because of the conversation between the instruments.”

The idea that classical music needs to be static and boring was thrown out the window.  Why not talk about music?  Why not debate the pieces?  All pieces aren’t created equal, and neither are the preferences of the audience.  Instead of an audience nodding silently and clapping politely, regular people were asked what they think about the music.  A concept like this could have turned out badly if the quality of the performance ended up being secondary.  From top to bottom, however, the music was played with care and curiosity.

As an added treat, Krishnaswami himself emerged to play movements from two reformist/traditionalist cello sonatas.  However, this time he did two things differently.  First, he kept the names of the composers a secret; second, he had the audience vote for either the “traditionalist” or “reformist” sonata, and the winning selection would be pl;ayed.  Not more than a day before a record store clerk assured me that Seattle audiences don’t like 20th Century music and if given a choice will pick a more conservative piece or concert.

The vote was close, but when the final tally was announced, the “reformist” piece won the day - Elliott Carter’s Sonata for Cello and Piano.  During the intermission, I spoke with Krishnaswami, and Carter’s sonata had won three out of the four public performances.  “Everyone wants reform these days,” he said.  It even won against a strong recommendation by violist Mara Gearman for the other piece - Prokofiev’s Sonata for Cello and Piano. Carter’s sonata is reformist through and through.  The sonata marks Carter’s move away from his early populist style to the complex language he has stuck with for most of his life.

Even though Prokofiev’s sonata didn’t get enough votes to be heard during the program, Krishnaswami did play the piece as encore after Gearman, Krishnaswami, pianist Mark Salman, Artur Girsky, and violinist Jennifer Caine played Dimitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet.  Shostakovich fell in and out of favor with the Stalinistas during the 1940’s.  The Piano Quintet, deliberately avoided controversy after the whithering scrutiny heaped on Shostakovich after Lady Macbeth.  The five were at their best galloping through the feigned joy of the scherzo and the unexpected serenity of the work’s finale.

I have to admit the intimacy of the performance at the Mount Baker Community Club.  I found the last minute practicing and tuning a bit disorienting.  But, we don’t often get the chance to see and hear what takes place before we hear musicians play.  Besides, more disorienting to this music fan was the audience’s narrow selection of an unidentified “reformist” sonata which turned out to be Elliott Carter’s.  It certainly seems even Seattle’s notoriously conservative classical music fans want reform.