Capanna and Maneval works at Curtis

There was a time when composers organized claques that attended their competitors' concerts and booed their misguided efforts. Nowadays composers organize joint concerts and stand side by side, like good buddies, as the audience files in.

At the recent "Sonata Today" program that Robert Capanna and Philip Maneval presented at Curtis, I even saw other local composers sitting in the audience and applauding their rivals.

What's a music writer to do about this ridiculous camaraderie? How can we critics and program note annotators keep audiences interested without clever nasty quotes and vivid descriptions of concert hall brawls? If these good feelings among composers persist, we'll have to confine ourselves to writing about their music.

Capanna and Maneval make an interesting pair. Both have combined careers as composers with important careers as arts administrators— Capanna as executive director of the Settlement Music School and President of the Presser Foundation, Maneval as manager of the Marlboro Festival and executive director of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. But musically, they display personalities that are as different as some of the titles attached to their movements.

"'Light' vs. "'determined'

Capanna begins his 2007 Sonata for Violin and Piano with a movement marked "lyrical and rhapsodic" and ends it with a movement marked "light and fast." Maneval's 2010 sonata for the same instruments opens "with strength and expression" and ends "flowing and determined."

Maneval does include a "slowly and lyrically" movement in his violin sonata, and Capanna ventures into the "mysterious" in his. But Maneval would never produce a "witty, light, and dry" movement, as Capanna does. And Capanna didn't have any movements marked "con spirito," as Maneval did.

The result of their differences was a varied program that demonstrated, once again, the difference between the music that composers turn out today and the academic music that audiences endured for too many years of the 20th Century. The four pieces on the program did everything sonatas are supposed to do, and all were stamped, from beginning to end, with the individuality of the composers.

Maneval's grand tradition

Capanna's violin sonata begins hesitantly, with disconnected fragments, but it builds into a solid structure, and the fragments seem packed with significance when they return at the end. Hard strikes at the piano keys and strong, swift strokes of the violinist's bow set the overall tone of the final movement. By the time you reach the end of the sonata, you know you've been somewhere and experienced something.

Maneval's violin sonata inhabits the center of the grand tradition of the form. Its opening movement seduces its audience with soaring flights for the violin and dark, beautiful piano melodies. In the finale, the violin rotates between passion and sweetness, with the piano adding support and commentary.

Their choice of musicians reflected the knowledge and astuteness that the two composers have acquired from their experience as administrators. Violinist Diane Monroe is one of Philadelphia's leading new music performers, and she seized all of the opportunities that Maneval provided for technical display and authoritative emotional expression.

Her partner, Michal Schmidt, delivered the kind of performance that her admirers have come to expect, whether she's playing the piano or demonstrating her prowess with her other instrument, the cello.

Russian's Odyssey

For the two piano sonatas on the program, Capanna and Maneval recruited Mikhail Yanovitsky, a less familiar figure whose personal odyssey has taken him from the Moscow Conservatory to the Temple faculty, by way of the Moscow Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony and other international stops in between.

Capanna's piano sonata again opens tentatively, gradually gains authority, and even erupts into outright violence. The scherzo is more subdued than most contributions to the scherzo repertoire, but it has a satirical quality that elicits smiles appropriate to a form that takes its title from the Italian word for "joke."

Capanna titles his last movement "quasi allegro appassionata." I'm not sure whether the quasi applies to the tempo or the appassionata, but I suspect it's the passion. Capanna treats classic sonata riffs with a light playfulness and turns serious just before the end.

Unexpectedly playful

The first movement of Maneval's piano sonata opens with some of that same playfulness. It's an inventive movement, with quick changes of mood, that keeps moving in unexpected directions.

Maneval's other movements are just as inventive. His final rondo ends the sonata with a traditional burst of liveliness, but Maneval puts his own mark on the form.

In many rondo movements, the main theme sounds like a variation on a hunting call. Maneval opts for a staccato theme with plenty of forward rush— a dash through an American rapids instead of a gallop through a European hunting preserve.