Reaching Out During the Storm

November 8th, 2012

By: Edna Landau

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

For those who live along the eastern seaboard of the United States, this past week was filled with overwhelming challenges, including displacement from homes, freezing temperatures, loss of electrical power, extensive property damage and financial loss. Many of us have read about the telethon organized by NBC, featuring performers including Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, Sting, and Christina Aguilera, which raised $23 million in donations to the American Red Cross for Hurricane Sandy relief. A note I received on this blog following the storm inspired me to pay tribute this week to less heralded performers who gave generously of themselves to make this trying experience more bearable. Marianne Schmocker, director of Marianne Schmocker Artists, wrote as follows:

I do not have a question, but thought you might be interested to read this. One of the groups that I represent, the Hugo Wolf Quartet, performed an afternoon concert in New York on Sunday, October 28, and headed out to the airport to return to Vienna at the start of Hurricane Sandy, only to be turned away. They found one of the last taxis to leave for Manhattan. The director of the Austrian Cultural Forum, Andreas Stadler, who had presented the quartet a few days earlier, invited them to stay in the ACF building where he also lives. However, there was not enough space for all four musicians. Two of them had to sleep on the concert stage. After the storm on Monday, they gave a free concert at the ACF which was attended by seven people. When they heard that concerts were canceled everywhere in Manhattan, they gave another free concert on Thursday, November 1. This time, the hall was packed, after an announcement appeared on the ACF’s website and word spread via Facebook and Twitter. Even though the quartet had to live together in a very small place away from their families who were very worried about them, they still had the energy to play music for others. As their manager, I discovered the Hugo Wolf Quartet anew. I am proud to work with them.

In speaking with Ms. Schmocker, I learned that the Hugo Wolf Quartet offered different programs each time they played, trying to present music that was as uplifting as possible for the special circumstances. For the final concert on November 1, they wanted to offer Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quartet #2 but they had a small problem – they didn’t have the music. So they went to Starbucks, joined the large numbers of people who were already signed on to their WiFi, downloaded the music onto their computers and printed it out at the Austrian Cultural Forum.

Before leaving the country, the quartet’s cellist, Florian Berner, joined by Mr. Stadler, did an interview for WWFM in Princeton. Mr. Stadler explained how the November 1 concert came about. As he and the quartet had been sharing accommodations and meals for several days, they discussed what would be important to New York after the storm. They felt that the answer was a message of reconstruction and good spirit, something for which music is the perfect vehicle. Mr. Berner reported that the atmosphere was so exceptional during the concert that they were reminded how important art and music are when we encounter moments in life which we don’t know how to handle. A number of audience members thanked him and the Quartet for giving them a two hour reprieve from watching great devastation on television and lifting their depressed spirits.

It is particularly touching when artists from abroad seize the opportunity to share the healing power of great music with us in our time of need. I am sure they were not alone. Bravo to all the other performers who spontaneously responded in similar fashion. Please feel free to use the comments feature on this blog to share your stories. I’d love to hear from you!

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

© Edna Landau 2012

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The Arts’ Lease on Life

November 7th, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

Nearly three years ago, December 6, 2009, President Barack Obama said these inspiring words at the Kennedy Center Honors presentation:

“In times of war and sacrifice, the arts — and these artists — remind us to sing and to laugh and to live. In times of plenty, they challenge our conscience and implore us to remember the least among us. In moments of division or doubt, they compel us to see the common values that we share; the ideals to which we aspire, even if we sometimes fall short. In days of hardship, they renew our hope that brighter days are still ahead. So let’s never forget that art strengthens America. And that’s why we’re making sure that America strengthens its arts. It’s why we’re reenergizing the National Endowment of the Arts. That’s why we’re helping to sustain jobs in arts communities across the country. It’s why we’re supporting arts education in our schools, and why Michelle and I have hosted students here at the White House to experience the best of American poetry and music.”

Yesterday, President Obama was reelected to a second term. He defeated a man who had looked directly into the camera at the first presidential debate and said that despite the fact that he loved Sesame Street‘s Big Bird, he would withdraw all government funds from PBS. Sesame Street is out of my viewing slot, but I was well aware of what that threat meant. I can’t imagine that there were not millions of other voting arts lovers who were not similarly offended.

Looking Forward

My week’s scheduled concerts:

11/7 Carnegie Hall. Midori, violin; Özgür Aydin, piano. Beethoven: Sonatas Nos. 2, 6, and 9 (“Kreutzer”). Webern: Four Pieces, Op. 7. Crumb: Four Nocturnes (Nightmusic II).

11/13 Carnegie Hall. Cleveland Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst; Michael Sachs and Jack Sutte, trumpets. Beethoven: Symphony No. 4; Grosse Fuge, Op. 133. Matthias Pintscher: Chute d’étoiles for Two Trumpets and Orchestra. Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstasy.

11/14 Juilliard School. Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Juilliard Orchestra/Alan Gilbert; vocalists. Mozart: Così fan tutte.

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Congratulations America!

November 7th, 2012

GG Arts Law took a break from the blog to follow the election. We’ll resume next week. Keep your emails and comments coming!

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Järvi and Jansen with the DSO Berlin; The Knights play Beethoven on Sony Classical

November 2nd, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid
The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin is off to a fine start this season, having gained Tugan Sokhiev as music director after an interim period senza maestro following Ingo Metzmacher’s departure in 2010. On Wednesday, Paavo Järvi and the violinist Janine Jansen joined the orchestra together for the first time in a performance of Bruch’s Violin Concerto at the Philharmonie. The only work by this German composer to have entered the canon is also his first violin concerto, an original assimilation of the devotion to Mendelssohn and Schumann which he would never relinquish despite the growing influence of the New German School in his time.

Jansen, a regular fixture in the Philharmonie-based chamber series Spectrum Concerts before entering the international spotlight, imbued improvisatory moments of lyricism in the opening movement with unselfconscious passion. While the climbing runs of the inner Adagio verged on the muscular, her seamless, chamber-like communication with the orchestra and its full-bodied strings, in much better form than last season, made for a satiating performance. The account grew in intensity for the last movement as Jansen’s visceral playing found an ideal outlet in Bruch’s fierce harmonics. Her liveliness carried directly over to the orchestra in fortissimo passages which Järvi harnessed without force. As an encore, Jansen offered a soulful account of a Bach Partita, finding the right balance between introspection and sentimentality.

The opening performance of Nielsen’s First Symphony, which leans heavily on Beethoven for structural and motivic inspiration, proved less gripping. While the tension brewing in the simple harmonies of the inner Andante emerged nicely through the DSO’s chiselled strings, the climatic harmonic changes of the third movement could have been plumbed to greater effect. The orchestra also did not shine in hard-edged attacks and at times wobbly woodwinds of the first Allegro movement. Järvi’s good humored presence kept the energy high through moments of Nordic grandeur, and the orchestra found its stride in the winding melodies of the final movement.

Closing the evening was Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, a dance commission premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 1944 and choreographed for City Ballet under Balanchine eight years later. The modernist setting of Romantic melodies found inspiration in Stravinsky’s neo-classical Pulcinella, which makes itself especially apparent in the cheeky low woodwinds of the second Turandot movement. The DSO’s direct, spirited playing served the music well in its stern but free polyphonic invention, culminating in a sardonic march.

The Knights’ latest Release…

The clichéd notion of Beethoven an uplifting force for humanity seems a strange fit for the Knights, an orchestra of young freelancers whose flexible format and dramaturgically innovative programming provide a promising alternative in today’s climate of stalled bureaucratic dealings and gloomy discussions about attracting new audiences. The ensemble’s most recent independent album, A Second of Silence, released earlier this year on Ancalagon LLC, interweaves Satie, Glass, Feldman and Schubert. Meanwhile, the Knights also teamed up with cellist and Dresden Music Festival Intendant Jan Vogler for an all-Beethoven “prelude to the 2012/13 season,” out on Sony Classical since September 28. The orchestra, which has mostly stayed close to U.S. territory, has collaborated with Vogler on several occasions since winning his attention four years ago—performing a Beethoven symphony. “I was struck immediately by the fresh and innovative interpretation, but also by the musicians’ treatment of each other, by the ideals of a true communality which hold this orchestra together,” he writes in liner notes.

The album takes what the press release describes as “two contrastive compositions,” the Triple Concerto and the Fifth Symphony. Both were written within the same four-year period, published respectively in 1807 and 1809—the year Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor—but, as concert master and Knights co-founder Colin Jacobsen points out, show the composer in two very different moods. Beethoven’s Fifth may be one of the most hackneyed symphonic works today, having emerged alongside the Ninth as musical specimens able to redeem mankind from the horrors of world war, yet it is easy to understand Vogler’s coup de foudre. Eric Jacobsen leads the orchestra with a lightness that evokes an embrace of life as much as a struggle of man against fate. By contrast, even Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, documented on Sony Classical Great Performances, seem weighed down by the forces of history.

The Knights’ unusually fleet articulation of the iconic four-note motive in the opening movement and evasion of bombast in the final Allegro propel the music away from ruminations about tortured genius and into a realm in which the joy of music-making triumphs, even if it at times skims over the surface of “the tremendous inner battle” Bernstein saw in this manuscript. The orchestra nevertheless captures an introspective quality, such as in the dance-like inner Andante, breathing together like a chamber ensemble, and infusing the piece with renewed vitality. The Triple Concerto, featuring solo parts for violin, cello and piano, similarly sheds a cloak of nostalgia for restraint and buoyancy, creating exciting suspense in what Jacobsen rightly identifies as an “operatic sense of drama” in the opening bars and moving through French-inspired rhythms with grace. The violinist’s solos are sweet and unassuming in the inner Largo, never too majestic, echoed sensitively by pianist Antti Siirala and Vogler’s lamenting cello. The recording gives a balanced account of the instruments’ interactions, a further argument in favour of adding yet another Beethoven album to the shelf.

rebeccaschmid.info

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Carnegie’s Crane

November 2nd, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

Hurricane Sandy left a humbling amount of destruction in its wake, including a breath-catching sight in midtown Manhattan: a construction crane dangling 1,000 feet above West 57th Street, just east of Seventh Avenue, across from Carnegie Hall. Traffic was cordoned off between Sixth and Eighth avenues on 55th through 58th streets, bringing Carnegie concerts to a halt until the crane is brought down. It was initially thought that the street could be reopened when the crane was secured to the scaffolding, but second thoughts determined that the whole kit and caboodle—crane, cab, and 90-story scaffolding—would have to come down and then be replaced for utmost safety.

How long the replacement would take varied in several reports. But on Thursday, November 1, protests by consulates of international hotel guests and pleas from apartment residents within the restricted area grew to the extent that they were allowed to enter their rooms briefly for selected belongings and pets, accompanied by the police, according to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek. This indicates a long haul at the very least, which will change the status of concert appearances this season by many favorite artists on Carnegie’s stages.

For a time the hall was optimistically announcing the cancellation of concerts day by day, but late on Thursday it e-mailed a press release covering concerts through November 5. Among 11 concerts rescheduled, cancelled, or moved to alternative venues, Murray Perahia’s annual New York recital, scheduled for 11/2, was handily moved to Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday, 11/4, at 7:30. But the Belcea Quartet’s first of three Beethoven quartet concerts on Saturday, 11/3, in Zankel Hall was rescheduled for Tuesday, 11/6, “pending the reopening of West 57th Street in Manhattan”—most likely wishful thinking under the circumstances.

Ticketholders were encouraged to check carnegiehall.org for the most up-to-date information. 

Free Mozart from the New Jersey Symphony

I wonder if New Jersey Governor Chris Christie likes classical music? He has displayed such a statesmanlike profile in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that nothing would surprise me from now on. His state’s fine orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, has just announced that this weekend’s all-Mozart concerts at the State Theatre in New Brunswick on 11/3 at 8 p.m. and at NJPAC in Newark on 11/4 at 3 p.m. will be open to the public at no charge on a first-come, first-served basis. Works on the program are the Violin Concerto No. 3, Symphony No. 29, and Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364. Augustin Dumay is violinist and conductor; Frank Foerster is violist.

Another Yannick Angle        

I’ve always enjoyed others’ opinions whether I agree with them or not. As it happens, George Loomis and I largely agreed about Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s Verdi Requiem with the Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. When I e-mailed George to say how much I had liked his review (Musicalamerica.com, 10/26), he replied: “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Verdi Req where the focus was so much on the orchestra.” Perhaps that’s one reason I liked the performance so much (Musicalamerica.com, 10/24). I have admitted before that vocalism is not my strong suit, but it certainly is (one of) George’s, which is why anyone interested in the arts should read as many different opinions as possible.

George concluded his review with a good point I had forgotten: that Yannick had held up his arms to silence applause when the last note of the “Libera me” died out—but for too long, and one could sense the audience champing at the bit to register its approval. It was pretentious. Giannandrea Noseda got it just right last fall at Lincoln Center after his devastating performance of Britten’s War Requiem: about 20 seconds.

Botstein Overreaches

Music Director Leon Botstein’s celebration of the American Symphony Orchestra’s 50th anniversary was typically ambitious—two monumental works identified with Leopold Stokowski, founder of the ASO: Charles Ives’s Symphony No. 4 and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 (“The Symphony of a Thousand”), with Stoki’s 1969 arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner thrown in as an opener. Ticket prices matched 1965’s: $1 to $7.

Three of the Ives Fourth’s movements had been performed previously—Nos. 1 and 2 conducted by Eugene Goossens in 1927 and No. 3 by Bernard Herrmann in 1933—but Stokowski’s was the premiere of the complete, four-movement work (1910-25), on April 26, 1965. Coincidentally, one of the 83-year-old maestro’s assistant conductors for the Ives premiere—José Serebrier (the other was David Katz)—was downstairs in Carnegie’s Zankel Hall leading the American Composers Orchestra in Ives’s Third Symphony and other works. I had planned on attending the ACO but, alas, I heard about the Botstein concert the morning of the concert and was able to get a ticket.

The Ives is still a rarity these days, with the complex rhythmic layering of its second and fourth movements still requiring considerable virtuosity. I’ve heard Boulez/New York Phil, Ozawa/BSO, and Dohnányi/Cleveland of the Fourth in concert; the first and third of these had much to offer technically but were hardly idiomatic. The Stoki and Serebrier recordings remain superior. It was announced on Bernstein/Philharmonic programs in the Sixties and Eighties but to my knowledge was never performed. Botstein’s performance was surprisingly accomplished technically, but it was emotionally unsympathetic, especially the lovely third-movement Andante moderato, and devoid of the folkloristic American elements that Stoki unearths in the busy second movement. It was also awfully fast—27 minutes; six minutes faster than the timing listed in the program.

Stokowski led the American premiere of Mahler’s Eighth in 1916 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and gave it a notable reading in 1949 with the New York Philharmonic, preserved on several sources, including a historical broadcast set of the symphonies released by the orchestra, which, incidentally, I produced. The Eighth is an extraordinarily difficult piece to unify and was neither memorably played, sung, or conducted. Imagine, Maestro, if you had given the rehearsal time you took for the Ives and applied it to Mahler’s gargantuan symphony. You could have worked to honor the composer’s pianissimo directions. Loud portions, such as the end of the first movement, might have been more than a chaotic noise. You might not have had to stop twice in the second movement’s instrumental introduction, and more than that, you might have had time to invest it with some meaning.

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A Dance That Still Strikes The Heart: Martha Graham’s Chronicle:

November 1st, 2012

Note: This review marks the continuation of a series dedicated to showcasing the best student writing from the Dance History class I teach at The Juilliard School.

By Michael Marquez

Martha Graham’s Chronicle speaks against the rise of fascism, but it also reveals a universal message. Everyone should fight for causes. On September 30 at New York City Center, The Martha Graham Dance Company’s performance of Graham’s 1936 masterwork concluded the second program of the Fall for Dance Festival.

Blakeley White-McGuire. Photo by Michele Ballantini

Chronicle opens with a lone figure. Wearing a long, heavy black skirt and sitting on a round-shaped platform, Blakely White-McGuire manipulates yards of her costume. Her skirt becomes a psychological extension of her being. It looks like the psychic weight she carries. It invites fascination. When she unfolds the skirt’s red underside, it is as though she is shedding her own blood. While White-McGuire’s focus is captivating and fearless, her full-bodied gestures show her fight.

In the second section, “Steps in the Street,” nine dancers step, jump and twist as one. On the dark-lit stage, with its black floor and cyclorama, Wallingford Riegger’s music drives the performers into a primordial state. Their impassioned dancing looks like it is being spun from their inner impulses. They dig deep into the ground, rooting them selves to the stage to form archaic and statuary-like shapes.

Photo by Michele Ballantini

The strong and vigorous women fight humanely, instead of devolving into immorally behaving creatures. Unfortunately, too many of the dancers’ transitions lack suppleness. Or, as master Graham teacher Terese Capucilli puts it, their transitions lack “thickness.”

Nonetheless, Chronicle shows how much emotion is inside of us. We should never ignore what we feel. We should never forget that it’s necessary to fight for causes. A vanguard artist of the last century, Graham made essential dances. Chronicle is one of Graham’s works that continues to strike at the human heart.

Michael Marquez is a second year student in the Dance Division. He studies the Graham technique with Terese Capucilli.

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The Power of a Program

November 1st, 2012

By: Edna Landau

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

On Monday, October 15, while reading the Arts section of The New York Times, I was struck by the fact that more than half of one page was taken up by two reviews of concerts that had very small audiences and that were performed by artists without major name recognition. Anthony Tommasini reviewed a performance by the Mivos Quartet at the DiMenna Center’s Benzaquen Hall, where he reported that chairs were set up for just 50 people. The review of the quartet was accompanied by a performance photo which measured 6 x 9 inches.  Vivien Schweitzer reviewed a concert by the Danish String Quartet in the Victor Borge Hall of Scandinavia House, which has a seating capacity of 168. I can well remember a time when only concerts performed in New York’s biggest halls, or debut concerts performed in one or two venues, stood a chance of being reviewed.

It would seem that it matters far less where today’s performers share their music with us than what they choose to program. I find this change wonderfully refreshing and welcome. The Mivos Quartet’s program, which Mr. Tommasini called “thoughtful”, consisted of Helmut Lachenmann’s String Quartet No. 3 (“Grido,” 2002), Wolfgang Rihm’s “Quartettstudie” (2004) and John Cage’s String Quartet in Four Parts (1950). The Danish String Quartet performed Beethoven’s String Quartet in A minor (Op. 132), which Ms. Schweitzer called “one of the most powerful performances of Opus 132 I’ve heard live or on disc.” The rest of the program consisted of Hugo Wolf’s “Italian Serenade” and Janacek’s String Quartet No. 1 (“Kreutzer”). Ms. Schweitzer’s quote and very enthusiastic review will undoubtedly be beneficial to the quartet as they continue to build their career and it will not matter at all that they didn’t play in one of New York City’s premier concert halls.

While pondering this topic, I decided to call my esteemed colleague, the preeminent publicist Mary Lou Falcone, to see if she thought that my observation was accurate. Ms. Falcone is one of the founding directors of Spring for Music, a festival that has brought orchestras to New York’s Carnegie Hall in May of the past two years, chosen solely by the distinctiveness and adventurousness of their programs.  Ms. Falcone also teaches a Vocal Arts Seminar at the Juilliard School in which she stresses the increasing importance of connecting with one’s audience through thoughtful programming and direct personal communication. She concurred with my observation and we shared our excitement at the thought that in choosing from a broader and more imaginative variety of venues, artists need not concern themselves so much with the chances for media coverage. A call to Welz Kauffman, President and CEO of the Ravinia Festival, confirmed that in Chicago, even tiny venues may be covered by the press, especially if new work is involved or the venue is unusual and interesting. I know for a fact that Mark Swed, Chief Music Critic for the Los Angeles Times (who visited my class while I was teaching at the Colburn School), has long been drawn to concerts with unusual programs in interesting venues. Clearly, the entire country is moving in the same direction.

While it is likely that concert presenters may still be reluctant to present a large number of concerts in small, intimate venues, due to their legitimate concern about box office income and covering their expenses, it is heartening to note that they still may opt for them if they feel they are most appropriate for a particular program. Earlier this week, The New York Times featured the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s “Cozy Celebration of Britten’s Centenary” which took place in the Rose Rehearsal Studio at Lincoln Center. The Escher Quartet’s fascinating and interconnected program of works by Britten, Beethoven, Purcell and Gesualdo (arranged for the ensemble by the quartet’s violist) was enjoyed by a small audience seated in circles around the quartet – close enough, said Wu Han, one of the Society’s artistic directors “to breathe in the rosin dust released from the performers’ bows and to become participants in the music making.” How wonderful that the Society opted for the Rehearsal Studio, rather than the much larger Alice Tully Hall.

Can performers conclude that they no longer have to contemplate raising a huge sum of money to rent one of the most prestigious concert halls in hopes of gaining attention? This might be true, but only if they do not lose sight of the importance of offering a program that will be distinctive and enlightening. It does not need to be a program of all-contemporary music, but it might be especially attractive if the pieces relate to one another in some way. It is always a plus to introduce a new or relatively unknown work to an audience, or even to offer an interesting transcription that speaks to the artists’ strengths. The performers should feel that they have something very special to say about the music and they should have lived with it and performed it sufficient times to thoroughly share their passion for the music with their audience. The crowning touch will be to choose a venue that will allow them to accomplish this in the most direct way, so that their audience can get swept up by their excitement and cherish the experience long after the concert is over.

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

© Edna Landau 2012

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I’ll Show You My Visa If You Show Me Yours!

October 31st, 2012

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq.

First and foremost: our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone recovering from and impacted by Hurricane Sandy. From property destruction to physical injuries and deaths, it has caused immeasurable damage. For those of us in the arts industry, its also caused cancellations and logistical nightmares, but performances can always be rescheduled. Now is the time for us to work together and remember what’s important.

Dear Law and Disorder:

I am writing because I am filing a visa application for a German orchestra conductor. He has been approved for an O-1 visa for a period of two years. He has multiple engagements and will need to come in and out of the U.S. during this time. I am hoping to apply for a multiple entry visa for him, however I cannot see an option to select the times he wants to come to U.S. on the visa application. Was this something I was supposed to request on the visa petition? What do I do?

Good news! There is nothing for you to do. Except with regard to a small list of specific countries, all US visas, once issued, are automatically multiple-entry!

If you visit the website of the United States State Department at http://travel.state.gov/visa/fees/fees_3272.html you will find the State Department “reciprocity” list. This contains the rules that govern the validity period of visas, the number of permissible entries, and fees charged for them. Its called a “reciprocity” list because the U.S. charges citizens of other countries whatever fees their countries charge U.S. citizens for similar types of visas and, reciprocally, limits the citizens of certain countries to visas as short as three months, and to visas valid for single entries only. In other words, the United States basically treats the citizens of other countries either as good or as bad as they treat citizens of the United States…diplomacy at its best!

For example, Chinese citizens are only eligible for single entry visas and their visas are only valid for three months at a time. So, even if USCIS approves a Chinese musician for an O-1 visa with a classification period of three years, pursuant to the “reciprocity” list, the consult will only grant the Chinese musician a visa valid for three months and a single entry. This means that, once the visa is issued, the Chinese musician has three months to enter the U.S. Once she enters the U.S., she can remain and work in the U.S. for the full three years of her approved O-1 classification. However, if she leaves at any time, she will need to return to the consulate and obtain a new visa before she can return. (NOTE: She will not need a new approval from USCIS. She merely needs to apply for a new visa at the consulate using her original I-797 approval notice.) Similarly, a Brazilian artist approved for a three year O-1 will be issued a multiple entry visa, but only valid for three months. During the three year period, they can enter and leave as often as they wish, but only for three months. After that, they must obtain a new visa.

In your case, there are no restrictions on German citizens. So, pursuant to the reciprocity list, if your conductor has been approved for a 2-year O-1, the consulate will automatically issue him a multiple entry O-1 visa valid for 2 years, during which time he can enter and leave the U.S. as many times as he likes during that period. There is no box or option to check because you are done.

________________________________________________________________

For additional information and resources on this and other legal and business issues for the performing arts, visit ggartslaw.com

To ask your own question, write to lawanddisorder@musicalamerica.org.

All questions on any topic related to legal and business issues will be welcome. However, please post only general questions or hypotheticals. GG Arts Law reserves the right to alter, edit or, amend questions to focus on specific issues or to avoid names, circumstances, or any information that could be used to identify or embarrass a specific individual or organization. All questions will be posted anonymously.

__________________________________________________________________

THE OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER:

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE!

The purpose of this blog is to provide general advice and guidance, not legal advice. Please consult with an attorney familiar with your specific circumstances, facts, challenges, medications, psychiatric disorders, past-lives, karmic debt, and anything else that may impact your situation before drawing any conclusions, deciding upon a course of action, sending a nasty email, filing a lawsuit, or doing anything rash!

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Rocky Seas, a Waltz and a Violin Concerto

October 26th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

The programming of the Berlin Philharmonic, while reportedly having gravitated away from the players’ specialty in German repertoire since Sir Simon Rattle took the reins a decade ago, not only gives equal weight to post-Romantic repertoire but consistently illuminates connections between works which seem disparate at first glance. Andris Nelsons conducted the orchestra on Wednesday in a program of Britten, Widmann, Debussy and Ravel that yielded a powerful sense of emotional coherence. Jörg Widmann, a prolific German clarinettist and composer whose opera Babylon premieres in Munich next week (also featuring MA.com New Artist of the Month Anna Prohaska), combines neo-Romantic expressivity with avant-garde textures and unrestrained modern angst, much in the spirit of his teacher Wolfgang Rihm, yet in its own impulsive search. His Violin Concerto unfolds in a single, approximately 30-minute movement with a driving, lamenting melody at its center, alternately spurring and diffracting the colors of the orchestra. Structurally, it recalls Rihm works such as Gesungene Zeit, a chamber concerto written for Anne-Sophie Mutter.

Soloist Christian Tetzlaff, who premiered Widmann’s concerto in 2007, brought out the music’s direct dramatic qualities in plangent lyricism that escalates into an existential struggle richocheting throughout the orchestra. The players of the Philharmonic performed in precise coordination and with sensitivity under Nelsons. After a long pause toward the end of the piece the music returns with a violent snap in the low strings until the soloist, supported by the violins, climbs out of its tortured state. A celeste chord and gentle gong crash provide closure. This sense of eerie loneliness also penetrated the final moments opening work, the Passcaglia op.33b from the opera Peter Grimes. The soulful viola solo performed over celeste at the close, foreshadowing the death of the persecuted fisherman’s second apprentice, evokes a deserted beach and grey skies, a struggle already expired. Nelsons intelligently gave the viola section emphasis by placing it downstage in front of the celli. The aching string passages in the body of the work, punctured by anxious woodwinds, were a bit studied in this reading by the Philharmonic, but the fluid communication of the players kept the balance naturally in place.

A more lively vision of the sea emerged in Debussy’s poetic masterpiece La Mer, a series of three ‘symphonic sketches’ whose free structure and painterly landscapes have inspired everyone from Luciano Berio to John Williams. The orchestra found its stride in the second movement Jeux de vagues, capturing the music’s buoyancy with more ease than the surging, mysterious quality of the opening De l’aube à midi sur la mer, although wind solos were impeccable throughout. Nelsons brought sweep and youthful energy to Debussy’s vision of dancing waves which escalates into a battle between wind and water in the final Dialogue du vent et de la mer. The impending turbulence emerged with keen dramatic timing before subsiding into triumphant serenity. Ravel’s La Valse, conceived as a poème choréographique, follows the opposite trajectory, gathering its forces into a Viennese waltz à la Johann Strauß before marching brass attacks and Spanish-inflected castanets force the melody to fragment and spin out of control. Program notes infer that Ravel was not only impacted by the fall of the Hapsburg Empire in the First World War but the death of this mother in 1916. The strings of the Berlin Philharmonic reaffirmed their elegant culture of playing as the demonic dance unfurled with a sense of desperation that had been tacitly present the entire evening.

rebeccaschmid.info

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Yannick in Philly

October 25th, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

Tuesday night’s first Philadelphia Orchestra concert in New York was exciting for several reasons. First and foremost, it featured a Verdi Requiem in Carnegie Hall. For others, it was a proving ground for Yannick Nézet-Séguin as a simpatico music director for the Orchestra at last. A short, compact, 36-year-old Montreal native, with a penchant for ugly ties, he veritably bristles with quick-step intensity, and the Philadelphians were with him all the way.

From the opening pianissimo notes, played at an achingly slow tread, to the most eruptive attacks in the Dies Irae, the players never made an infelicitous sound, never forced their tone or scrunched their bows. The winds were more forwardly balanced and exhibited more character than I recall from this ensemble in Carnegie (perhaps from playing in Verizon Hall, where their clarity is extraordinary). The brass were never rasping or overbearing, and those glorious strings held their own in the most massive Verdi tuttis. For the conductor’s part, the music always breathed but never to the point of distortion. There was no point making or personalization of the line, just good, solid, communicative musicianship, well within the boundaries of tradition—even in his opening Molto Adagio (cf. Reiner’s recording) rather than Verdi’s simple Andante (Toscanini).

Of the vocalists, mezzo-soprano Christine Rice stood out for her expressive shaping of phrases. Soprano Marina Poplavskaya was the most dramatic, soaring in her high register and contributing a rivetingly personal Libera me. The men were less impressive, singing at a generally unvarying forte most of the evening. Bass Mikhail Petrenko was not always audible in ensembles, and Rolando Villazón was often effortful. One pulled for the Mexican tenor in (I believe) his return to New York after several years of vocal problems, but the two inaudible trills in his “Hostias” solo were only the most conspicuous disappointments. The Westminster Symphonic Choir, directed by Joe Miller, sounded exceptionally impressive, with the basses especially sonorous.

Throughout the Philadelphia Orchestra’s administrative and artistic discord of the past decade—which included a five-year mismatch with Christoph Eschenbach, bankruptcy, four years of often distinguished performances with Charles Dutoit as interim “chief conductor” while the Orchestra looked for a permanent music director, and a new administration under Alison Vulgamore that paved the way to fiscal balance—the players remained on top of their form.

And now we’re on to the Yannick (pron. Yan-NEEK) Years. Philly audiences are turned on again, and we’ll be listening with interest for enlightened programming and a sense of conductorial structure in the symphonic repertory—a major downfall for some of our most talented young conductors. The ball’s in your court, maestro.

Talk About a Great Program

On Saturday night, Robert Spano brings the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus to Carnegie for Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. See you there!

Looking Forward

My week’s scheduled concerts:

10/26 at 7:30. Zankel Hall. American Composers Orchestra/José Serebrier; Sharon Bezaly, flute. Serebrier: Flute Concerto with Tango. Narong Prangcharoen: The Migration of Lost Souls. Milica Paranosic: The Tiger’s Wife. Gabriela Lena Frank: Manchay Tiempo. Ives: Symphony No. 3 (“The Camp Meeting”).

10/27 Carnegie Hall. Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Robert Spano. Copland: Appalachian Spring. Bernstein: Chichester Psalms. Walton: Belshazzar’s Feast.

10/29 Juilliard School. A Celebration of Rudolf Firkušny. 7:00 Paul Hall. Bach: Chorale Prelude, BWV 659, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (arr. Busoni); Liszt: Transcendental Etude, No. 9, La Ricordanza (Eduardus Halim, piano). Chopin: Andante spianato et Grande polonaise brillante (Avner Arad, piano). Janáček: Piano Sonata, 1.X. 1905 (Charles Albright, piano). Martinů: Fantaisie et toccata (Sara Davis Duechner, piano).

10/31 Carnegie Hall. Mariinsky Orchestra/Valery Gergiev. Shchedrin: The Little Hunchbacked Horse Suite. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 6. R. Strauss: Ein Heldenleben.

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