Musical America Blogs

by Sedgwick Clark

The Philadelphia Orchestra had the reputation in the Ormandy days of a well-oiled machine that played in a predictably beautiful, glossy manner no matter the maestro. Ormandy’s successor, Riccardo Muti, sought to change the corporate Philadelphia Sound into a “composer’s sound” (and now he’s saying that again about his current American orchestra, Chicago). To my ears, the result was a recognizable Muti Sound, evident in his conducting of the New York and Vienna philharmonics, as well: emphasis of high frequencies, reduction of lows, de-emphasis of strings, rather grainy textures, and, above all, strait-jacketed rhythmic control. Muti’s successor, and an Ormandy admirer, Wolfgang Sawallisch, gloriously restored the old Philadelphia Sound. His successor, Christoph Eschenbach, retained his own haphazard, Germanic sound, and Charles Dutoit gave the orchestra a glistening Franco-Russian accent.

The orchestra’s new music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, has by all reports captured the Philly audiences’ hearts, and I’ve blogged approvingly twice about his Philly concerts at Carnegie Hall (10/25/2012 and 2/28/2013). He’s an exciting guy, and I was looking forward to hearing what he would do with a pair of Philadelphia specialties at Carnegie Hall on December 6. But a sinus-related illness prevented him from travelling. In his stead, the orchestra snagged Michael Tilson Thomas, who elicited unfailingly excellent playing. Hélène Grimaud was scheduled for Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with YN-S but switched to No. 1 with MTT. She turned in a strong, relatively straightforward interpretation—far preferable to her exceedingly lethargic recording with Kurt Sanderling for Teldec several years ago. Thomas’s accompaniment, like much of his work these days (see my blog, “Whatever Happened to MTT,” 11/15/13), was overly refined for such a stern piece, especially in the turbulent opening movement. His tempos for Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique were well chosen and the playing beautiful, but the music’s delirium was kept on too short a leash for my taste (and where were those deliberately vulgar blats of the lower brass in the Marche to the Scaffold?). Inclusion of the first- and fourth-movement repeats was welcome, but I missed the cornet in the second movement—“apparently added to [the manuscript] at some point after the completion of the symphony,” writes Edward T. Cone, editor of the Norton Critical Score—which adds such color and vivacity to Colin Davis’s recordings.

Ligeti in the Lake

Last week I tuned into the middle of a 1946 noir film called Lady in the Lake on TCM. Robert Montgomery stars as the detective Philip Marlowe and also directed. Interestingly, the music score is a cappella choral vocalise, composed by Maurice Goldman, who, according to IMDb.com, is credited only as “Choral Director.” At about 68 minutes into the film, Marlowe leaves the murdered Florence Elmore’s parents’ home, gets into his car, and starts driving. The background music wells up, and darned if it doesn’t sound strikingly similar to the Kyrie from Ligeti’s Requiem (1963-65), which Stanley Kubrick used in 2001 to underscore the appearance of the monolith.

One of my consultant film experts says that Lady in the Lake was popular internationally. I wonder if Ligeti’s yen for the macabre extended to Hollywood noir?

by Sedgwick Clark

Forgotten repertoire is usually forgotten for a good reason. But the industrious Pacifica Quartet and Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin hit pay dirt with the Piano Quartet of Leo Ornstein at Zankel Hall on November 19. Ornstein (1893-2002) studied violin at St. Petersburg Conservatory. After his family migrated to New York City, he received a scholarship at the Institute of Musical Art (later Juilliard), where he studied piano. His early works, in the teens, were apparently the essence of enfant-terribleism. Vivian Perlis and Libby Van Cleve quote a horrified review in London’s Daily Mail, March 27, 1914, in their Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington (Yale, 2005), a must read for anyone interested in American music:

“WILD OUTBREAK AT STEINWAY HALL

A pale Russian youth dressed in velvet, crouched over the instrument in an attitude all his own, and for all the apparent frailty of his form, dealt it the most ferocious punishment. Nothing as horrible as Mr. Ornstein’s music has been heard so far—save Stravinsky’s ‘Sacrifice to Spring’ [sic]. Sufferers from complete deafness should attend the next recital. . . .”

He gave the first performances in America of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit and Sonatine, Schoenberg’s Drei Stücke, Op. 11, and Scriabin’s Ninth and Tenth Piano Sonatas. “In about 1920,” write Perlis and Van Cleve, “at the height of his performing career,” Ornstein abandoned his performing career to compose and teach. His modernist style became more lyrical, of which the Piano Quintet (1927) is an example. It was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the notable philanthropist who commissioned such works as Bartók’s Fifth Quartet, Stravinsky’s Apollon musagète, Prokofiev’s First Quartet, Ravel’s Chansons madécasses, Schoenberg’s Third and Fourth quartets, Poulenc’s Flute Sonata, and Copland’s Appalachian Spring.

The Pacifica foursome and Hamelin have been performing Ornstein’s Piano Quintet nearly everywhere the past year, and they will record it for Hyperion this month. Nearly 40 minutes long, it’s a spooky piece. The driving intensity of the opening movement’s Allegro barbaro alternates with exotic lyricism, perfectly integrated by the impassioned Pacificans and flawless fingerwork of Hamelin. French influences pervade the middle Andante lamentoso, which momentarily segues into the “Little Egypt” or snake charmer hoochie-coochie music (“All the girls in France . . .”) popular in America in the first three decades of the 20th century before returning to the initial lyricism. Bartókian folk dance influences the final movement, which ends quietly.

Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim in her review on the Times web (11/22) perceptively characterizes Ornstein’s style in this work as “Late Late Romanticism” and wonders why it isn’t in the standard repertoire. Good question.

The Pacifica’s ardent Beethoven’s B-flat Quartet, Op. 130, with its original Grosse Fuge final movement, was a crowd pleaser, but to me was no competition after that spellbinding Ornstein discovery.

Perlis, incidentally, was Musical America’s Educator of the Year in 2011, and Van Cleve wrote our tribute to her. Vivian pioneered her invaluable oral history recordings of American composers and performers while at Yale University, and Libby succeeded her as director of the school’s Oral History program.