In a Blending of Cultures, Politics Pushed

Aside

In his lucid and haunting works, the composer Toru Takemitsu synthesized the sounds of his

native Japan with the techniques of Western modernism. Speaking from the stage of the 92nd

Street Y on Thursday evening, the English violinist Daniel Hope summed up this cosmopolitan

style: “So far, and yet very near.” Takemitsu’s elegant “Distance de Fée” was one of the cross-

cultural examples in “East Meets West,” a likable, low-key concert organized by Mr. Hope, who

was sensitively accompanied by the pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips. The composers on the

program were united, however loosely, by their attempts to bring together those two compass

points: Falla (“Suite Populaire Espagnol”), Ravel (“Kaddish,” based on a Jewish melody, and the

Gypsy-flavored “Tzigane”) and Bartok (“Romanian Folk Dances”).

This is extroverted music, and Mr. Hope was vivid in fast-moving plucks and laser-thin

harmonics. The more dazzling the effects, the more responsive his playing.

But there were slight slippages of tone — moments when the core of his sound would waver —

that prevented the melodic line from being ideally smooth, a problem in long-phrased works like

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s “Romance,” for violin and piano (which, while stylish, had little

connection to the East-West theme).

A larger problem was the concert’s presentation of multiculturalism as reassurance. “Long

before the invention of digital mass media,” Mr. Hope’s program note said, “there were

connections between distant places with reciprocal influences and inspirations.”

Nothing troubled this account. In neither the written notes nor in Mr. Hope’s onstage

commentary was there even a passing mention that the forces that brought together these

different cultures were often violent.

When introducing a trio by Gaurav Mazumdar that combined Eastern and Western instruments,

Mr. Hope said that the British had taken violin playing to India, and that the Indians

immeasurably improved it, a rather innocuous version of colonialism.

The works and performances were just as pleasant as this vision of history, with harmless

agreement between Mr. Mazumdar’s consummate sitar playing and Mr. Hope’s violin. Their

dialogue took the form of genial synchronization or tame call-and-response, without productive

tension or much variety.

Things occasionally heated up when the sitar and the tabla (played by Vishal Nagar) hit a

groove, but the violin didn’t add anything special to the mix; little was made of its distinctive

colors and possibilities.

It’s not necessarily interesting, these works implied, to combine West and East. The cultures you

are bringing together stand to lose as much as they gain: so near, you might say, and yet still so

far.

A version of this review appeared in print on November 1, 2011, on page C4 of the New York edition

with the headline: In a Blending of Cultures, Politics Pushed Aside.