Musical America Blogs

by Sedgwick Clark

His music is so compellingly rhythmic, so delightfully witty, so eminently repeatable. Why, then, except for three early masterpieces, are so few works by Igor Stravinsky played in our concert halls today with any regularity?  

We can credit New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert for the concert coup of his orchestra’s season: Russia’s foremost conductor, Valery Gergiev, leading three weeks of music by the 20th-century’s foremost composer, who also happened to be Russian. Can anyone doubt that Gilbert would have loved to perform this music himself—with the orchestra that boasts the strongest Stravinsky tradition in the world? But, as he explained last year in the season press preview, he learned that Gergiev, who we all know is music director of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, was available and thought it an irresistible opportunity for New Yorkers to hear this uniquely Russian performance combo. (The festival runs from April 21 through May 8; see our Web site’s Annotated Calendar for specific dates and programs.)

Marketing departments use the flimsiest excuses these days to call something a “festival.” And most of all, they need a title! The Philharmonic could have scheduled The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring, added in the stylistically similar Song of the Nightingale and Symphony in Three Movements, and tossed in a few short works like Fireworks, Scherzo a la russe, and Circus Polka to make the “festival” seem more substantial. Moreover, purely orchestral works would have saved a lot of money and not alienated hidebound subscribers for whom any vocal music is anathema.

But no, this is a genuine festival, one that does Stravinsky and everyone involved proud. The three early ballets are scheduled, of course; also, Les Noces, Le Roi des étoiles (“King of the Stars”), Renard, L’Histoire du soldat, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, and Symphony of Psalms. Also such debatably “Russian” works—normally dubbed “neoclassical”—as Jeu de cartes, the Violin Concerto, Oedipus Rex, Orpheus, Symphony in C, Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, Concerto for Piano and Winds, and Symphony in Three Movements. One could be greedy and wonder why, after importing the Mariinsky chorus and several Russian singers to perform, such quintessentially Russian—and early—works as Le Rossignol and Mavra are omitted? I could have gladly done without the complete L’Histoire, with that tedious Ramuz text, and settled for Stravinsky’s endlessly witty and inventive music in the suite. Also the frequently performed Violin Concerto. But we would have had to give up two “star” performers to do so: Alec Baldwin as Narrator in L’Histoire, and Leonidas Kavakos as soloist in the concerto. And speaking of stars, Jeremy Irons will be the Speaker in Oedipus Rex.

One might legitimately wonder how Gergiev justifies nearly every piece as Russian. (You can find out on a five-minute video interview of the Russian conductor by the American music director, at www.nyphil.org/Stravinsky, but I’ll give you a précis.) Stravinsky grew up in St. Petersburg, his father sang at the Mariinsky, and all of young Igor’s first musical experiences were at the Mariinsky. Gergiev’s performances of Stravinsky’s music are based on his experience of Mussorgsky, Glinka, and Rimsky-Korsakov operas and their orchestration, and Tchaikovsky’s symphonies. Also, Gergiev says, at the end of his life Stravinsky said, “I think in Russian, I hear in Russian, my words are Russian.” Which makes the Mariinsky chorus’s participation a major plus, argues Gergiev, “not only in the understanding of words and color but also the energy and special sonority that comes with . . . being a part of the tradition. The chorus is all-important in Les Noces, so the difference should be quite striking.”

“Russian” or “neoclassical,” who cares in light of such extraordinary music, performed by such stellar musicians—successors to players who Stravinsky himself conducted and recorded with more than any other? 

Thank you, Maestro Gilbert. I hope you bring back these and several lesser-known Stravinsky works during your tenure. 

by Sedgwick Clark

William Schuman at 100
We celebrate the centennials of two major American composers this year: Samuel Barber this month and William Schuman in August. The first is permanently enshrined in music history by dint of his Adagio for Strings, and he composed much other music that deserves to be played more often. The second, alas, has suffered the undeserved oblivion accorded many composers and performers upon their deaths.

Schuman was best known as a symphonist, and several of his ten are among the finest written by an American. But his major exponent during his lifetime, Leonard Bernstein, has been dead for 20 years. Only Gerard Schwarz, our current generation’s tireless champion of American music and Musical America‘s Conductor of the Year in 1994, has picked up the ball and recorded the symphonies with his Seattle Symphony for Naxos. With the release of the Eighth Symphony this month, they are now all available—all, that is, except Nos. 1 and 2, which the composer withdrew from performance.  Recently Schwarz related to me over lunch how he studied those early symphonies in the Library of Congress and approached Schuman’s son, Tony, to allow him to record the works. After consideration, Tony decided to honor his father’s wishes. So the cycle stands at Nos. 3 through 10.

Nearly 70 years after its premiere, the Third is unquestionably Schuman’s finest symphony and among the top ten of American symphonies. The work’s brooding lyricism and propulsive energy retain their power, and the wild outburst of timpani in the first-movement Fugue and rim shots on the snare drum in the concluding Toccata never fail to produce goose bumps. There are two Bernstein recordings and the new Schwarz, but there’s nothing like hearing it live. Leonard Slatkin, another distinguished proponent of Schuman’s music, will conduct the Juilliard Orchestra in the Third Symphony at an all-Schuman concert on Thursday (4/1) at Avery Fisher Hall. Also on the program are the Circus Overture and the Violin Concerto. Don’t miss it!

Fans of American music also shouldn’t miss Joseph W. Polisi’s American Muse: The Life and Times of William Schuman (Amadeus Press). Polisi—protégé, friend, and successor once removed to Schuman as president of the Juilliard School—was given exclusive access to his papers and the family archives, and it’s doubtful that there will ever be a more authoritative and sympathetic account of his life and music. Polisi’s vivid discussion of Schuman’s years as president of Lincoln Center and how his artistic vision for the center clashed with the financial concerns of John D. Rockefeller 3rd and the Trustees is far more candid and detailed than Lincoln Center’s own published official histories–and was of great interest to one whose first job in New York, 41 years ago, was at the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center (now Lincoln Center Theater).

A Bartók Soirée à la Soros
The financier and philanthropist George Soros hosted a dinner party at his home on Monday night (3-22) to boost sister violinists Angela and Jennifer Chun and their new Harmonia Mundi CD of the 44 Bartók Duos, just released. They played some of the Duos and a movement from Prokofiev’s Two-Violin Sonata. It’s refreshing to know that someone still believes in recorded CDs (the distinction needs to be made in this case) and in Bartók, his countryman, whose music still seems thorny to some listeners.

Ross on Gelb and the Met
Don’t miss Alex Ross’s progress report on Peter Gelb’s tenure at the Metropolitan Opera (“A bumpy season at the Met”) in this week’s New Yorker (3-29). Wonder of wonders, it’s Alex’s second piece in as many weeks—a trend that can’t be encouraged too much.

Ravel Revel at CMS
Damn! For the second time in a month, I’ll be out of town for an enticing Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center program. First it was a pair of Finnish-music offerings last week, and there’s an all-Ravel program on April 18. I can’t go, but you can, and I’ll list the delicious works to show why you should:

Introduction and Allegro for Flute, Clarinet, String Quartet, and Harp
Shéhérazade for Mezzo-Soprano, Flute, and Piano
Sonata for Violin and Cello
Cinq melodies populaires grecques for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano
Piano Trio in A minor

Looking Forward
My week’s scheduled concerts:
3/25 Carnegie Hall. San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas; Christian Tetzlaff, violin. Works by Kissine, Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Liszt.
3/25 Zankel Hall. So Percussion. Works by Reich, Mackey, Trueman.
3/26 Carnegie Hall. San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas. Mahler: Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”).

by Sedgwick Clark

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Alex Ross’s “Orchestral comparisons at Carnegie Hall” in his latest New Yorker column (3/22/10). He mentions ten concerts, nearly all of which I heard too, and singles out the Minnesota Orchestra concert conducted by Osmo Vänskä that I wrote about in this space on March 3rd. It’s always gratifying when a colleague one respects agrees with you, especially when you both think the concert was one of the best you’ve ever heard. On his blog two days ago, Alex announced the topic of his New Yorker piece and quoted an approving sentence from my blog about the concert. “Turnabout is fair play,” declared the old Vox budget LP label, and I trust he won’t mind my quoting his ultimate judgment on the concert: “For the duration of the evening of March 1st, the Minnesota Orchestra sounded, to my years, like the greatest orchestra in the world.”

Vänskä was Musical America‘s Conductor of the Year in 2005. In accepting the award he said that the orchestra had charged him with making the Minnesotans the finest orchestra in the world. When I reminded him of that backstage after the concert on March 1st, he smiled broadly and said, “We’re getting there, aren’t we?” An increasing number of people agree.

Bernstein’s Haydn
The first piece I ever heard Leonard Bernstein conduct live, at a New York Philharmonic concert in fall 1968, was Haydn’s Symphony No. 87. I hung on every note. Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder with Fischer-Dieskau and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, which followed, were no less compelling. A brand new New Yorker, fresh out of college, I attended all the Bernstein concerts I could afford on $100 a week ($76.90 after taxes), and never missed a Haydn performance. A few months ago Sony performed a major service by putting all of Bernstein’s Haydn recordings for the Columbia label into a 12-CD bargain box for $72—its most important release since its complete Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky recordings on 22 CDs for $45. Sampling this rerelease in light of today’s authentic-performance movement has only reaffirmed my affection for his warm, witty, expressive renderings of this endlessly inventive and most human of composers. One can pick at certain tempos, such as his mawkish Trio in the Menuetto of the 96th, but the rest of the performance is delightful. It is Bernstein’s Haydn that I always take from my shelf for enjoyment.

It’s too bad that Bernstein recorded only three Haydn symphonies in his late, Deutsche Grammophon years: Nos. 88, 92 (“Oxford”), and 94 (“Surprise”)—superb readings all, and with the Vienna Philharmonic to boot.  Interestingly, the latter’s second-movement Andante is fully a minute faster than his 1970s Adagio-like New York performance, and the “surprise” chord is a much quicker attack than the heavy, spread chord on that earlier rendition. A nod to authenticity? Only No. 92 was new to his discography, and it’s become a special favorite: relaxed, abounding with puckish details—perfect to wake up to, but, then, perfect at any time of day.

In reviewing the conductor’s first disc of the “Paris” symphonies in 1964, the late Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon wrote in High Fidelity magazine that “Leonard Bernstein is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, interpreters of Haydn’s music we have today, either here or in Europe.” His judgment stands.

Sondheim and the Phil
I had hoped to report on the New York Philharmonic’s 80th-birthday tribute to Stephen Sondheim last night (3/16/10), but I had to skip it at the last minute. Sondheim was Musical America‘s Composer of the Year ten years ago, the first non-classical artist to be honored by this pub. MA.com’s editor, Susan Elliott, an ardent musical-theater fan, e-mailed me close to midnight, “I’m SOO sorry you missed it.  It was amazing.” Susan was working at RCA when the label recorded the Phil’s extraordinary live performances of Sondheim’s Follies in 1985. She knows of what she speaks. Then, as now, the Phil pulled out all the stops in getting a star cast (Lee Remick for the original cast’s Alexis Smith!). And Tom Shepard, who produced so many Sondheim show albums for Columbia and RCA, commandeered the whole shebang superbly. If you don’t have this recording, your show collection is not complete. Fortunately, we can look forward to a PBS amalgam of the two 80th-birthday performances in the near future. You can get the necessary details in Stephen Holden’s Times review this morning. He calls Monday’s concert “thrilling,” and I, for one, can’t wait.

by Sedgwick Clark

I attend around 125 concerts annually and am often asked what good ones I’ve heard recently. At a time in my life when I can barely remember the prior sentence, I just heard the fourth concert of the year that I’ll bet I can recall next week without consulting my calendar: the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski in Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony on March 7.

Both conductor and orchestra have seemed rather pallid to me in previous New York appearances, mostly in standard rep. But not this time! Shostakovich’s tuttis raged with uncompromising fury, made all the more ear-splitting by Fisher Hall’s harsh acoustics. Three days later, my ears still feel clogged (but that may be my allergies). Several times during the performance I feared for the musicians’ hearing; at least I was in row U. The LPO’s quiet playing was no less impressive, but those moments were fidgety valleys between onslaughts. This was superb Shostakovich, in every way. At under 59 minutes, it was a fast performance—far more aggressive than Bernard Haitink’s monumental interpretation two years ago with the Chicago Symphony, which timed out to just over 70 minutes and revealed that the piece has its lyrical moments as well.

One might argue that Haitink’s daring approach is wrong-headed in looking for subtlety in this music—that works of this decibel quotient are simply, as PK calls it, “guy music.” One female friend used to fulminate during standing ovations for Mahler’s music: “Look at them—they’re all men!” Indeed, Mahler is everywhere in Shostakovich, and nowhere more than in the Fourth. Structurally episodic, its sections contrast wildly between manic prestos and dogged mumbling, ironic waltzes and polkas and jackboot marches. It’s long, too, but like Mahler’s even longer Third, the first movement of Shostakovich’s Fourth is in sonata form. Apparently Vivien Schweitzer, who called it “incoherent” in her Times review yesterday, is not convinced by the symphony, and I urge her to keep trying. This is the toughest nut to crack in his oeuvre—it took me years—and now I won’t miss a performance.

I’ve often thought of Shostakovich’s Fourth as a nervous breakdown in music. He began composing it during a time of great success, in mid-September 1935, when his satirical opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, was enjoying immense popularity with audiences and critics. All Soviet productions of the opera ended abruptly, however, when Stalin attended a new production at the Bolshoi on January 26, 1936, and two days later, Pravda published an editorial entitled “Muddle Instead of Music,” condemning “formalist” composers whose music did not speak to the Soviet masses. Shostakovich, a nervous man in the best of circumstances, went from being the Soviet Union’s most highly regarded composer to a man in mortal terror. He spent the next months composing the symphony, in December it went into rehearsal under a conductor apparently ill-equipped to cope with it, and it was withdrawn before its premiere for reasons that may still only be conjectured. It was finally performed for the first time in 1961, conducted and recorded by Kirill Kondrashin.

Shostakovich’s state of mind is all in the music. Laurel E. Fay—author of the most reliable, i.e., factual, book on the composer, Shostakovich: A Life, and also my friend and frequent concert companion (especially for Shostakovich works, and the Fourth in particular)—would label such an assertion “fantasy,” but I believe it.

The first half of the concert opened with Shostakovich’s aptly titled Five Fragments, written “reportedly in a single day in June 1935,” writes program annotator Paul Schiavo. He conjectures that these pieces “may well have served as preparatory exercises for the large and teeming Fourth Symphony that was already gestating within him.” The Allegretto piece undoubtedly does in its all-but-literal quote on solo violin, but I also heard long-line resemblances to the Fifth Symphony in a couple of the other Fragments. At any rate, while I’m glad to have heard it in tandem with the symphony, which is the only way I can imagine it is worth programming, it’s of interest solely to Shostakovich scholars and fanatics.

Then came Ravel’s ever-delightful Piano Concerto in G, played by Alexander Toradze. Russian audiences cheer his overtly emotional style, with its edge-of-cliff tempos and heavy rubato. But my own prescription for effective Ravel interpretation requires a certain elegance and simplicity, neither of which is in Toradze’s lexicon and certainly not on Sunday in the ineffable Adagio assai. There’s surely a happy medium between this and David Fray’s faceless account at the New York Philharmonic in December. Jurowski and the LPO’s accompaniment was first-rate, keeping up admirably with the soloist’s breakneck third-movement Presto, which they encored when the audience wouldn’t stop applauding.

Coda: Another Testosterone Favorite
Another of my favorite testosterone pieces is Prokofiev’s Third Symphony; and somewhat less so, his “age of steel” Second Symphony, with which Shostakovich must have been acquainted when he wrote his Fourth, at least in score if not performance.  In my younger salad days I used to play the Leinsdorf/Boston recording of the Prokofiev Third at ear-splitting volume when I was pissed at something or someone. There were only two recordings of the Shostakovich Fourth then, and I had neither, but it surely would have been on my letting-out-steam list.

Note to Regular Readers
Last week’s blog was posted before I had finished everything I wanted to say about the Minnesota Orchestra’s phenomenal March 1 concert at Carnegie Hall. You might want to check out the complete version as it now stands.

by Sedgwick Clark

In the past two weeks I heard two concerts I’ll never forget, both at Carnegie Hall. 

The first was on February 17, with my favorite European orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw, playing my favorite Mahler symphony, the Third. The CGB was Mahler’s favorite orchestra and its music director, Willem Mengelberg, the only conductor other than himself who performed the music the way he intended. I’ll bet he would have approved Mariss Jansons’s conducting on this evening, which reminded me of Horenstein’s noble interpretation. Even if I prefer a slower tempo in the finale, the music unfolded naturally and without the impatience he had demonstrated the night before in Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony. And the playing! It was simply stupendous—rich, warm, expressive, unforced musicianship that we modern Americans think of as “old world,” available on our side of the Atlantic only from Philadelphia on its best days (we’ll see if Chicago can reclaim its stature when Muti has settled in). Astonishingly, there was not a single strident note in the entire evening (and no wrong ones, either). The posthorn solo—suitably distant—took one’s breath away, and for once one’s stomach didn’t clutch as the climactic high A approached. To say that the contributions of the mezzo, Jill Grove, and the New York Choral Artists and American Boychoir, were up to the orchestra’s standard is the highest praise I can imagine.

The timbre and style of playing achieved by the Minnesota Orchestra under its music director, Osmo Vänskä, on Monday (3/1) was totally different but no less astounding. Vänskä seeks absolute transparency of texture and perfection of detail and attack. Thus Beethoven’s normally lumbering full-orchestra arrangement (by the late Michael Steinberg in this instance), taken at a ferocious clip, emerged lithe and dynamic, as if played by the world’s finest quartet. The first and second violins were split left-right, and throughout the concert I’ve never heard the seconds make such a strong impression on that side of the stage. To hear the five string bodies converse fortissimo with such unanimity and split-second force was jaw-dropping, but the pianissimos—a Vänskä speciality—arrested the listener’s attention no less. More than once I exclaimed to myself, “My god!”

After intermission came Sibelius’s nationalistic symphonic poem, Kullervo, an 80-minute piece for two soloists, men’s chorus, and orchestra. It tells a grim story about a thoroughly unpleasant “hero” who was separated from his family as a boy and many years later encounters and unknowingly rapes his sister on his way home from paying taxes. He woos her with the words:

“Come into my sledge, my dear,
come under my rug, my darling,
there you shall eat my apples
and crack my nuts at leisure.”

Her entirely understandable response of “I spit at your sledge, you villain, you rat. . . ” ires him to commit his foul deed, and at the end he falls on his sword in contrition. Those who know the composer’s compact later symphonies may be surprised at this early work’s garrulousness, which owes a strong debt to Bruckner, especially in the work’s structure and frequent lengthy pauses, which Vänskä fearlessly honored in full, presumably beating the longest rest clearly so that the audience would not applaud prematurely (it also ensured that his players would not mistake their entrance). Despite its dark story, it’s actually a rip-snorting piece, with Sibelius the inspired melodist and tone painter apparent throughout. The choral passages roar along with Brucknerian panache (cf. the Austrian composer’s Te Deum), and the soloists add high drama to the overall effect.

Kullervo’s New York premiere by the Nashville Symphony under Kenneth Schermerhorn, at Carnegie in 1979, and a Brooklyn Philharmonic performance led by Robert Spano in 1998, were good, but this Minnesota outing was in another league entirely. The wonders of ensemble were jaw-dropping. As usual, Vänskä’s laser-like ear and care for balances revealed hidden treasures in nearly every bar. He must have rehearsed those creepy first-violin downward-slithering pianissimo motives early in the second movement for hours to get such uncanny unanimity. Never were the strings overwhelmed by the brass, as happens with many orchestras, and the woodwinds contributed many distinctive solos. And when, I ask, did you last hear double basses in such perfect, pungent tune? I wonder if the Minnesota players know just how extraordinary their playing was on Monday night? If this was an example of their standard level, the orchestra’s subscribers may be the luckiest in the nation.

The encore, Finlandia, complete with the male chorus in the final bars, was icing on the cake.

Bleeding Olympian Chunks
Was anyone else bothered by the slicing and dicing of music for the ice dancers at the Olympics? Carmen, Scheherazade, Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody—on and on, brutally abridged to match the choreography rather than the other way around. Certainly those involved had no awareness of the jarring juxtaposition of keys.

And then there were a couple of General Electric commercials. The poetic slow movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G served as background to how a woman’s cancer was treated. Three sections of the opening solo piano statement, before the flute and strings enter quietly, were used. Its soothing character was perfect, and I was pleased to hear Ravel receive such exposure, however anonymous. Still, why not allow the music to play as written for the length of the commercial? I’ll think it over when Alexander Toradze plays it on Sunday (3/7) with the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski at Lincoln Center.

In a second GE commercial, the famous Beethoven Ninth melody is intoned by children around the world saying “ah” as doctors depress their tongues. That was fun.