Musical America Blogs

by Sedgwick Clark

Earlier this month a flash flood of e-mails from old high school friends inundated my New Mail box. How old? The subject was our 50th reunion. But—wait a minute!—that’s four years from now. What’s the rush? I have several deadlines to meet before I can deal with this. That excuse kept me from attending interim attempts to reunite since our 25th.

Sandy Teverbaugh York, my classmate who got the reunion ball rolling this time, had my number when she wrote in one of her stream-of-conscious e-mails, “Sedge I think you work too hard-LOL.” I was flabbergasted a week later when I received a personal e-mail from Sandy. Great heavens, she loves classical music! And how did she come to share that intimate secret with me? I have this line below my address that reads, “Please follow my blog Why I Left Muncie,” and she actually dipped into some of them.

My Muncie humility—you see, some things never die—restrains me from reporting the kind things she said about my blog. But the first piece of music she mentioned among her favorites just happens to be one of my two favorite piano concertos in the whole world, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, in my humble estimation a far stronger piece than his more popular Second and Third Concertos. (My other favorite, by the way, is Brahms’s D minor Concerto, incomparably more passionate and enduring than that emotionally arms-length note spinner, the B flat.)

She said something that pleased me no end: “I have a very limited knowledge of such music-but I enjoy it & that’s what counts I guess.” Right on, Sandy!  So many people shut themselves off from so-called classical music with the excuse that they don’t know anything about it. I have a limited knowledge of art, but that doesn’t keep me away from MoMA and the Met.

My friend Sandy lives in Florida and “never get[s] much of a chance to indulge [herself],” but she has a goddaughter who lives in New York. She loves vocal music, and I hope she visits her goddaughter one of these days and lets me take her to the Met, Broadway, Carnegie Hall, or Lincoln Center—sometime before our 50th reunion.

by Sedgwick Clark

I’ve got this good friend, see, and he’s a composer. In his lighter moments he signs his e-mails Darth Vader. At other times he’s pissed at the plight of modern composers who can’t get a hearing and get noticed—especially American composers and himself in particular. He looks at  orchestra programming and sees many European composers getting premieres, and he sees red. He’s got an opera opening tonight in Manhattan, and no one seems to be paying attention. He’s taken to sending me personal blogs, and here’s the most recent:

“You say I am an angry composer, the real questions is, How can a modern composer NOT be angry
This is the second run of [my opera]
The first time, the major papers did not come
And the second as well (with a full time PR person)
New Yorker, Times, Timeout

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/arts/music/16ensemble.html?ref=music
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/arts/music/16vanska.html?ref=music

Yet this is what I get up and read in the Times today, more of things we know like the back of our hands

My feeling is that these institutions should be tried for cultural treason !!”

I remind him that he has gotten good reviews in at least one of those treasonable publications and tell him that someday he may not have us to kick around anymore—then who will help him get recognition? I heard his opera in its first run and enjoyed most of it; some of it is quite ribald, and the audience laughed in all the right places. I could do without his “messages” and told him so, but I’ll be there tonight to cheer him on.

The Mozart We All Know

Sorry, Darth, I’m going to write now about one of those events covered by the treasonable Times. It was one of those increasingly rare completely Mozart concerts offered up by Mostly Mozart. (The pre-concert recital compensated with music by Janácek and Bartók.) Osmo Vänskä, the live-wire Finn who conducted the Minnesota Orchestra last March at Carnegie in the knockout orchestral concert of the season, a pairing of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge and Sibelius’s Kullervo Symphony, was on the podium. Wise music lovers don’t miss his concerts.

Vänskä programmed three Mozart works in minor keys: the two symphonies in G minor, the 25th and the 40th, and the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor in between. A serious evening in his purportedly “tragic” vein.

He led a demonic 25th, teeth rattlingly intense in the outer movements, whisperingly delicate in the spooky Andante, with a relatively relaxed lilt in the Menuetto. Its lean, see-through textures and slashing string attacks reminded me of a good original-instrument performance but without the ghastly wheeze of those wretched strings and honky winds. I loved it, but my friend Peter was horrified; he thought it sounded like one of Haydn’s “Sturm und Drang” symphonies and stood by the much more refined Beecham recording.

We agreed about the Concerto No. 20, liking Vänskä’s pointed accompaniment but finding the young Finnish pianist, Antti Siirala, who was making his New York orchestral debut, rather lacking character in this edgiest of Mozart keyboard concertos.

Knowing Vänskä’s predilection for fast tempos, I was expecting high drama in the 40th’s first movement Molto allegro, but his tempos remained within standard boundaries throughout. I think he took all the repeats in both symphonies (a fact I couldn’t check because of the dark lighting in Avery Fisher Hall). I confess I’ve never cared for the Mozart 40th. Only Furtwängler’s hell-for-leather tempos in the outer movements of his late-40s Vienna recording on EMI compel me to sit up on the edge of my seat and wish to hear the piece again. My blind spot, however, does not keep me from recognizing that in all three performances Vänskä’s ear for detail, shades of dynamics (especially the pianissimos), and chamber-music interrelation of each choir was masterful and that the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra musicians were committed to within an inch of their lives.

Those Avery Fisher Hall Acoustics 

It’s a subject debated to death, and when the economy improves, Lincoln Center and the hall’s principal tenant, the New York Philharmonic, will try, try, try again to bring the hall up to snuff. In the meantime, the decision adopted in recent summers by Mostly Moz to move the players out past the proscenium and have seats on each side and behind the orchestra is a good interim solution. It worked well for Boulez’s Rug Concerts in the ’70s and seemed successful at Alan Gilbert’s Lincoln Center Festival Varèse concert with the Phil. I say “seemed” because my press seats were in the first tier on stage left, so I couldn’t judge from my usual perspective down on he floor. Phil spokesman Eric Latzky told me that “New York Philharmonic consensus was that it worked well.” When I suggested adopting it fulltime, he reminded me of the variety of events in the hall and that moving the stage and seating configuration of the hall is costly. (Why can’t these things be easy? Silly question.)

by Sedgwick Clark

An article on AOL early this week by Aaron Crowe profiles the U.S.’s the ten worst cities to live in. The reasons are no surprise: unemployment, climate, crime, foreclosures. In the worst, El Centro, CA, unemployment is 27.5% and the cemetery is in foreclosure. Five cities caught my eye for reasons unspecified in the article but which my readers will understand:

2. Cleveland

3. Detroit

6. Los Angeles

8. Newark

9. Miami

Last year more people left Cleveland than any other major city: 2,658. Brutal winters, political corruption, lousy sports teams, and high taxes are blamed. Unmentioned: the flight of large businesses that once contributed to the arts.

Detroit is crimewise the country’s “most dangerous city,” with 13.7% unemployment, a “stumbling” although hopefully improving auto industry, and the highest national office vacancy (30%) in the land. Last year you could buy a house for $10,000.

“If you don’t really care about breathing,” writes Crowe, “Los Angeles is a great place.” It has the worst ozone level and most congested traffic in the States. Best wear goggles.

“Political and social dysfunction” have plagued Newark for memory-defying years. The city’s young, energetic mayor, Corey Booker, has made inroads into crime and poverty, but a $70 million deficit doesn’t leave much for the New Jersey Symphony.

After Detroit, Miami is the worst place to raise a family. It also has some of the worst drivers and traffic in the country. The Miami Philharmonic folded a few years ago, just before the new arts center with no parking facilities opened. But it does have the New World Symphony, which recently announced that Frank Gehry would build it a new concert hall—so don’t abandon all hope, ye who enter.

40 Years of James Levine at the Met

The Metropolitan Opera has announced the release of huge CD and DVD sets to honor James Levine’s 40th anniversary, with 11 operas on each format and a bonus DVD of concert performances.  The complete list is below.

I’m especially happy to see the 1983 Pelléas et Mélisande in the CD set. This was the second time around for Levine at the Met in Debussy’s only completed opera. His first go at Pelléas had been in 1978 with a brilliant theatrical touch at the beginning: The house lights dimmed to black, and Levine made his way to the podium in total darkness. The music welled up from the void, and ever so slowly the lights on the players’ music stands began to glow. As the opera progressed, however, Levine’s conducting struck me as perfect in every detail but shy of atmosphere overall. But by 1983 his Pelléas was luminous, reminding me of Ansermet’s stereo recording, and I can’t wait to hear it. Jeannette Pilou, Dale Duesing, José van Dam, and Jerome Hines are featured in the cast. A bonus CD contains excerpts from two other performances: one from 1978 with Stratas, Gabriel Bacquier, and Hines, and a second from 1995 with Frederica von Stade and Dwayne Croft. I’ll be interested to hear how my memory holds up.

Longtime broadcast producer Jay David Saks promises revelations in his digital remastering of these recordings. Many of them date back to c. 1980, and at the time I often found their sonic perspective overly close (undoubtedly in the interest of vocal clarity) and lacking in atmosphere. These qualities are a death knell to Pelléas. (I especially recall my disappointment with the broadcast’s sonic dissection of Manuel Rosenthal’s wondrous performance of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortìleges, which was so magical in the house.). But who knows what glories are possible in the remixing process? I cross my fingers.

11 Titles on 32 CDs

Berg: Lulu

Christine Schäfer, Hanna Schwarz, David Kuebler, Clifton Forbis, James Courtney; April 21, 2001

Berg: Wozzeck

José van Dam, Anja Silja, Ragnar Ulfung, Richard Cassilly, Dieter Weller; March 8, 1980

Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini

Marcello Giordani, Isabel Bayrakdarian, Kristine Jepson, Peter Coleman-Wright, John Del Carlo, Robert Lloyd; December 27, 2003

Berlioz: Les Troyens

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Deborah Voigt, Ben Heppner, Dwayne Croft, Robert Lloyd; February 22, 2003

Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande

Jeannette Pilou, Dale Duesing, Jocelyne Taillon, José van Dam, Jerome Hines; January 22, 1983

Harbison: The Great Gatsby

Jerry Hadley, Dawn Upshaw, Dwayne Croft, Susan Graham, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Mark Baker; January 1, 2000

Parade (triple bill)—Satie: Parade / Poulenc: Les Mamelles de Tirésias / Ravel: L’Enfant et les Sortilèges

Ainhoa Arteta, Danielle de Niese, Earle Patriarco, Ruth Ann Swenson, Wendy White; March 16, 2002

Schoenberg: Moses und Aron

Philip Langridge, John Tomlinson; February 20, 1999

Stravinsky: The Rake’s Progress

Dawn Upshaw, Paul Groves, Samuel Ramey, Stephanie Blythe; April 19, 2003

Stravinsky (triple bill)—Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps / Le Rossignol / Oedipus Rex

William Lewis, Florence Quivar, Franz Mazura, Gianna Rolandi, Philip Creech; February 25, 1984

Wagner: Lohengrin

Ben Heppner, Deborah Voigt, Deborah Polaski, Hans-Joachim Ketelsen, Eric Halfvarson; March 21, 1998

12 Titles on 21 DVDs

Berg: Lulu

Julia Migenes, Franz Mazura, Evelyn Lear, Kenneth Riegel; December 1980

Berg: Wozzeck

Falk Struckmann, Katarina Dalayman, Wolfgang Neumann, Graham Clark, Michael Devlin; October 2001

Corigliano: The Ghosts of Versailles

Teresa Stratas, Håkan Hagegård, Marilyn Horne, Gino Quilico, Graham Clark, Renée Fleming; January 1992

Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro

Carol Vaness, Kathleen Battle, Frederica von Stade, Thomas Allen, Ruggero Raimondi; December 1985

Puccini: Il Trittico

Renata Scotto, Cornell MacNeil, Vasile Moldoveanu, Betsy Norden, Jocelyne Taillon, Gabriel Baquier, Italo Tajo, Philip Creech; November  1981

Smetana: The Bartered Bride

Teresa Stratas, Nicolai Gedda, Jon Vickers, Martti Talvela; November 1978

R. Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos (Virgin Classics release)

Deborah Voigt, Natalie Dessay, Susanne Mentzer, Richard Margison, Nathan Gunn; April 2003

R. Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier

Tatiana Troyanos, Kiri Te Kanawa, Kurt Moll, Judith Blegen, Derek Hammond-Stroud, Luciano Pavarotti; October 1982

R. Strauss: Elektra

Hildegard Behrens, Deborah Voigt, Brigitte Fassbaender, James King, Donald McIntyre; January 1994

Verdi: Don Carlo

Vasile Moldoveanu, Renata Scotto, Tatiana Troyanos, Sherril Milnes, Paul Plishka, Jerome Hines; February 1980

Weill: The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Teresa Stratas, Astrid Varnay, Richard Cassily, Ragnar Ulfung, Cornell MacNeil; November 1979

In Concert at the Met (Highlights)

Plácido Domingo, Tatiana Troyanos (February 28, 1982); Leontyne Price, Marilyn Horne (March 28, 1982); Plácido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes (January 30, 1983).

by Sedgwick Clark

The other day Harris Goldsmith told me of a CD he thought impressive by duo-pianists Stephanie Ho and Saar Ahuvia, and I was reminded again of the disconnect between young musicians and traditional subscribers. They perform under the billing Stephanie and Saar, which is how you should google them for info about this CD if you wish.

Anyway, here’s the repertoire—conservative, colorful, and eminently listenable:

Messiaen: Visions de l’Amen: IV. Amen du desir

Schubert: Sonata in B-flat, D. 619

Debussy/Ravel: Nocturnes

Janácek: Moravian Dances 1-12

Stravinsky: Pétrouchka: Scene IV – The Shrovetide Fair

Isn’t this scary? I’m confident that most hidebound subscribers (“I know what I like!”) would find this CD delightful in a blindfold test. But take off the blindfold, and you’d have half a house even with Schubert as a come-on. The problem is, such once-terrifying composers as Bartók, Stravinsky, and Varèse are mother’s milk to the younger generation of performers, and they want to play this music along with the three Bs.

It’s a quandary because the subscribers are the people who have the money to support the concerts; but the younger audiences who would embrace such music don’t have enough money to support a large presenting organization like Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center or even little Merkin Hall, which largely has turned away from the classics since its recent renovation.

Perhaps Alan Gilbert will be allowed to take a few chances at the New York Philharmonic, given that his first season’s overwhelming triumph was a semi-staged concert performance of Ligeti’s 1975 opera Le Grand macabre, followed by the all-Varèse concert two weeks ago at the Lincoln Center Festival. Maybe, one of these days, he’ll ask Stephanie and Saar to do a new concerto for two pianos.

by Sedgwick Clark

The music of Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) has a singular voice—harsh, aggressive, dissonant, dynamic, often witty, uncompromising—the very embodiment of a city rising. For once, the nearly always misused word “unique” applies to a composer’s sound; despite his early influences—most obviously Stravinsky and, here and there, Ives—there is absolutely no possibility of mistaking Varèse’s music for any other composer’s. It all fits comfortably on a pair of concerts (and CDs), which was how Lincoln Center presented it last Monday and Tuesday (7/19 and 20) at its chi-chi summer festival. But I’m not sure that’s the best way to hear it. Problem is, there’s not much stylistic development in Varèse’s music, a certain sameness to the works, despite LC’s cutesy title for the concerts, “Varèse (R)evolution.” Like Brahms, who also destroyed his juvenilia, there’s a consistent style in all of Varèse’s works that survive, although the German composed in a wider range of forms—symphonies and concertos, solo and chamber, choral and vocal.

I shouldn’t have worried. These were non-subscription concerts, which are always preferable, for the audience had come to hear this music played by these performers. And these performers were smashing, the masters of every pile-driving fortissimo and every ominous pianissimo, playing with utmost commitment and enthusiasm. The audience was a youngish one, and everyone appeared to know what to expect, without the usual subscription quotient that hies for the exit before the last note has decayed. And speaking of sonic decay, the silence in Avery Fisher Hall at the end of Arcana was simply awesome—of the pin-dropping variety—and conductor Alan Gilbert held that silence for an ideal length of time, unlike so many of his infantile colleagues who try an audience’s patience by delaying applause after quiet endings (usually in the Mahler Ninth).

The first concert began impressively with Varèse’s final composition, the eight-minute Poème Électronique, composed for the 1958 Brussels World Expo. Hearing it in Alice Tully Hall, spaciously amplified over large speakers, revealed subtleties of wit and timbre that no home system could hope to match. The original four-track tape must not have been available because the “performance” on this occasion was two-track stereo-but it was mighty impressive still.

The main (human) performers this evening were the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and So Percussion, conducted by Steven Schick. The works were Hyperprism (1923), Offrandes (1921), Intégrales (1925), Ecuatorial (1934), and Déserts (1954), all played with riveting ensemble and attack. The latter work has three tape sequences evocative of factory sounds—very ’50s—interspersed throughout the 25½-minute duration. I was pleased to hear it performed as such because the only other live performance I’ve heard was led by Boulez, and he omitted the tape sections, as Varèse sanctioned. Having now heard the complete score, I understand why Boulez opted sans tape: Unlike the more subtle, transparent textures of Poème Électronique, the Déserts tape is plagued with background noise and congestion. Moreover, the tape at this performance was mono, unlike the stereo reproduction of the Poème. Riccardo’s Chailly superb set of complete works on Decca includes the tape interlude, but the rudimentary two-track reproduction consists disappointingly of a mono signal played first in one channel and then the other, back and forth. The tape quality on Decca is not much better than it sounded in Tully.  Unfortunately, I don’t have access as I write to my early-1960s Robert Craft LP for comparison. But I only liked moments that reminded me of Louis and Bebe Barron’s “electronic tonalities” for the 1956 sci-fi film classic, Forbidden Planet.

Also on the first concert was the early, impressionistic song, Un Grand Sommeil Noir (1906), sung by soprano Anu Komsi and accompanied by Mika Rämmäi. A charming trifle entitled Dance for Burgess (1949) was edited by Varèse’s disciple Chou Wen-Chung in 1998). ICE founder Claire Chase’s virtuosic performance of the solo flute work, Density 21.5 (1936), brought the house down. The less said about Étude pour Espace, for soprano and chorus, the better; it was a disaster at its first performance in 1947 and an embarrassment in Chou’s 2009 “orch. and arr. for spatialized live performance.”  In this awkward presentation, amateurishly microphoned sound emanated from speakers on and above the stage, with the soprano panned disconcertingly left and right. It should have been allowed to remain in oblivion.

The second concert is easier to cover. The New York Philharmonic’s Varèse tradition dates back to Boulez’s tenure in the early 1970s. His peerless Columbia recording, now on Sony, of Ionisation, Arcana, and Amériques belongs in every collection. Lorin Maazel conducted Amériques toward the end of his tenure, and Alan Gilbert took the reins on July 20 in rip-roaring renderings of Ionisation (1929-31), Octandre (1923), Arcana (1925-27; rev. 1960), and Amériques (1918-21; rev. 1929). Also performed were Nocturnal (1961; completed by Chou Wen-chung, 1969) and Tuning Up (1947; completed by Chou Wen-chung, 1998).

Hearing his works in such close proximity made two things clear: first, while Varèse is an important figure in the development of American music during the crucial post-World War I years, his years of important composition ranged only from Amériques to Ionisation, a mere eight works in 13 years. Also, that while his faithful disciple Chou Wen-chung, who studied with him from 1949 to 1954, may have performed yeoman’s duties in popularizing his teacher’s music, the scores he edited or completed were either trivial (Tuning Up and Dance for Burgess) or trash (Étude pour Espace and Nocturnal).

Whatever torment Varèse underwent to produce those eight masterworks and his final masterpiece, Poème Électronique, the audiences of these two concerts stood and hollered lustily for the great man’s vision, with a final cheer when Gilbert held the score of Amériques in the air.