The Art of Reengagement

April 13th, 2011

by Edna Landau

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

Dear Edna:

I have greatly enjoyed reading your blog on Musical America’s website and have encouraged students to send in their questions. This time, I have one of my own:  During your artist management career, what were the most common factors or mistakes (within an artist’s control) that caused them NOT to be re-hired for a subsequent engagement?  —Barli  Nugent , Assistant Dean and Director of Chamber Music, The Juilliard School

Dear Barli:

In contemplating your important question, I thought it would be a good idea to respond separately for singers/instrumentalists and conductors.  In the case of the former, the primary reason would probably be the failure of the artist to render an artistically satisfying performance. This could be reflected in several possible ways:  technical sloppiness, unsatisfactory sound projection, absence of a compelling musical statement, or lack of stylistic awareness.  Any of these could be due to a lack of confidence that might stem from the artist performing  repertoire in a highly exposed situation without having had adequate opportunity to try it out beforehand.  If these were not an issue, we might move on to the matter of interpersonal relationships, especially in the case of an orchestral engagement. A vote of no reengagement is certain for an artist who tells an orchestra how to play while the conductor is on the podium, or who speaks disparagingly to the conductor about the orchestra’s performance within earshot of the musicians. Another pitfall to be avoided is a decision to play an encore without first checking with the conductor and with the orchestra manager. Although this may not, on its own, account for a failure to get reengaged, if the encore sends the orchestra into overtime, thereby incurring extra cost for them, their future recollection of the artist might not be all that rosy.

Interpersonal relations offstage are of equal importance.  An artist must appear on time (preferably early) for all rehearsals and for the performance. They should be reachable throughout the engagement and not change hotels without telling anyone.  Most presenters will ask artists to make at least a brief appearance at a post-concert reception. This request will be made in advance of the date of the performance. If an artist refuses for no apparent reason, it could have a bearing on their chances for getting reengaged, especially if the performance was less than stellar. An artist who resists playing in a smaller venue and pushes the presenter to put them in a larger and seemingly more prestigious one, where they end up drawing only half a house, shouldn’t expect a re-invitation any time soon and would be well advised to respect the presenter’s judgment in the future.

In the case of conductors, it goes without saying that someone who delays in sending marked parts (if they elect to do so) and rehearsal orders until long past the deadline, doesn’t start out with the orchestra on the right foot.  The rehearsal period is critical, especially for a young conductor making a first impression. Often, musicans’ impressions of a conductor are indelibly formed during this time and they may not change even if the conductor delivers an effective performance. A frequent criticism is that they talked too much during rehearsals, seemingly because they couldn’t adequately convey their musical goals through their gestures. The objection is exacerbated when the spoken words don’t enhance the musicians’ understanding of what is expected of them or enlighten them in some way about the music they are playing. They may be asked to repeat passages without being told why, leading them to conclude that the repetition was really for the benefit of the conductor who needed another chance to get it right. It should also be mentioned that a conductor who chooses to re-seat the orchestra without prior permission from the music director should not expect to return to that orchestra any time in the near future.

One can never stress often enough that the music business is built on relationships. Artists who endear themselves to presenters are more likely to be invited back. This includes something as basic as treating the presenter’s staff and the venue’s front of stage and backstage crew with respect and warmth, showing appreciation of their efforts.   The icing on the cake is an artist who attends a post-concert reception and tells donors how fortunate they are to have such a special presenter in their community and how their contributions make all the difference in the world. Some artists have been known to send hand-written thank you notes to a presenter following the engagement,  a certain way to stand out from the crowd. An orchestral soloist who acknowledges the orchestra’s excellent performance while taking their bows, clearly understands that their successful performance was a true collaborative effort  — a gesture that does not go unnoticed. I have known some soloists who have even baked cookies for the orchestra. While I personally think that may be going a bit far, if your students do it, my suggestion would be chocolate chocolate chip.

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

©Edna Landau 2011

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Underwear in Underland: Stephen Petronio Dance Company

April 11th, 2011

By Rachel Straus

Stephen Petronio likes underwear. His steely and mellifluous skeins of movement—via the bare legs and buttocks of talented dancers—can be transporting. In Petronio’s New York premiere of “Underland,” the first ten minutes was beautiful. But as time progressed on April 10 at the Joyce Theater, “Underland” became an aerobic workout for the eyes. The dancers never stopped moving. Then there was the matter of the work’s subject.

Created on and for the Sydney Dance Company in 2003, “Underland” initially seemed to be about Australia. The evening-length piece incorporated music by the Australian rocker Nick Cave. It projected video, created by fellow Down Under filmmaker Mike Daly. Daly and Cave’s work explored human doom and gloom. But Petronio’s channeling of the fashion world, particularly its blank stares of runway models, felt at odds with the collaborators’ ideas. As his 12 performers bounded through space, beating their legs together and then splitting them open with utter ease, they looked detached. Their faces bore no relationship to the ecstasy of their movements—or to Armaggedon.

Photo: Julie Lemberger

Mired in multiple ideas, “Underland”‘s elements never quite coalesced. Petronio’s kinesthetically driving choreography made the dancers appear invincible. Daly’s video—with its projected images of atomic mushroom clouds, raging fires, and towns flattened by a tsunami—featured environmental havoc. Cave’s lyrics delivered a vague malaise. Yet in the section named after Cave’s “Weeping Song,” the dance and music elements cohered. The cast (costumed in Tara Subkoff’s military-style fatigues) marched in geometric patterns. Cave’s song, a march and a lament, supported the choreography. When one and then two performers broke out of their soldier-like lines, their gesturally-driven solos and duets seemed to speak of loss of life.

The audience, however, didn’t react to “Weeping Song” with the same enthusiasm as the section titled “Ship Song.” Named after Cave’s 2001 hit, “Ship” featured four performers who swayed at the lip of the stage, as though on a crowded steamer. Gino Grenek appeared in underwear and a leather trench coat. Amanda Wells and Shila Tirabassi wore late 19th century slip dresses. Their swaying evolved into a languid-style orgy, where they grabbed each other’s breasts, kissed and swooned. But being on a boat (perhaps bound for an Australian penal colony) seemed beside the point. It was the underwear, and what lies beneath it, that made this part of “Underland” clearly understandable.

 

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Berlin Diary

April 9th, 2011

By James Jorden

I apologize for long period (two months!) of radio silence: it’s been a very busy spring season in New York, broken up by a two week vacation my traveling companion and I called the “Regietournee,” a sampling of some of the opera direction going on in Germany (and other northern European theaters.) First up was a three-day, three-performance stopover in Berlin. Read the rest of this entry »

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Phone Rings, Door Chimes, in Comes Company!

April 7th, 2011

by Sedgwick Clark

Stephen Sondheim’s Company, with a book by George Furth, is a hilarious, wickedly insightful take on marriage and the difficulty of commitment. It seemed to this adoptive New Yorker the essence of his new home. I saw the original production three times in 1970. At the second one I was in the front row, on audience left. Act II opens with a show stopper called “Side by Side by Side,” which concludes with the entire cast spread across the stage, kick stepping. Right above me was Barbara Barrie as Sarah, the karate wife, at whom I was staring, utterly captivated. She looked down at me and winked. You can’t get that on TV or in the movies!

In the days when record companies thrived, the New York Philharmonic’s unforgettable 1985 performances and RCA recording of Sondheim’s Follies started the trend of Broadway-musical recordings by top orchestras. In 2000 the Philharmonic performed the composer’s Sweeney Todd, with a CD released on the orchestra’s own label. This week the Philharmonic is mounting a semi-staged version of Company on April 7th at 7:30, 8th at 8, and 9th at 2 and 8. Paul Gemignani conducts, and Jonathan Tunick, who orchestrated the original production, will ensure that it sounds as it should.

But something’s missing: As of this writing–3 p.m. on opening night–it may not be recorded. It will not be broadcast on the orchestra’s regular radio series. There won’t be a CD. No PBS Live from Lincoln Center. In an article today about how the cast has rehearsed everywhere but together until dress rehearsal this morning, the New York Times reports that a video will be filmed and shown in movie theaters in June. But the word from the Phil’s p.r. department is still that “the details are being worked out, so we cannot confirm anything yet.” I don’t believe for a moment that the New York Philharmonic is going to mount this Sondheim masterpiece and not make it available in some form. Stay tuned.

Denk Again

I had my say in this space about American pianist Jeremy Denk’s Zankel Hall recital on February 24, but I can’t resist a quick comment about his Carnegie Hall recital debut, replacing an ailing Maurizio Pollini, on March 27. He played Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-60,” on the first half. I had listened to his recent recording of the “Concord” for comparison just before setting out for Carnegie. Excellent though the recording and its discmate, the First Piano Sonata, are, Denk’s live traversal was even better–naturally expressive playing, with soulfully nostalgic pianissimos that contrasted perfectly with fist- and armfuls of wild Ivesian fortissimos. Unlike so many pianists of his generation, his sonority never turned harsh in climaxes. He achieved a singing, almost orchestral sound out of an American Steinway that I assume was Carnegie’s house piano–far superior to the disconcertingly mushy Hamburg Steinway played by Yevgeny Kissin three weeks earlier on the same stage. Denk always made sure that Ives’s allusions to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, “Bringing in the Sheaves,” “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean,” and others were audible in the layered textures. And was that really “Autumn in NewYork” that Ives keeps slipping in?

The second half was Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which Denk had played in his Zankel recital. I was pleased to note that the initial statement of the theme seemed to move more comfortably than his ultra-slow tempo of before . . . or was I just used to it this time? Whatever the case, the performance as a whole was no less involving, and more than once my eyes rolled at his digital perfection in volatile passagework. Denk was called back again and again, and you know what he played for an encore? Not Bach, but “The Alcotts” movement from the “Concord” Sonata.

An exhilarating afternoon!

Do They Really Mean That?
On Tuesday (4/5) AOL Video ran the following piece about Air New Zealand’s new passenger comeon:

Airline Creates a Very Unique New Seat
An airline creates a new type of class that combines two seats and allows couples to lay together

You’re watching Airline Creates a Very Unique New Seat. See the Web’s top videos on AOL Video

A Schoenberg Trend?

In the next four days, three works by Arnold Schoenberg, the classical king of audience anathema, will be played at Carnegie Hall. Granted, the artists are all stars, works by perennial favorites dominate the programs, and these are not among the Austrian master’s difficult works. Still, today’s artists like–perhaps even love–20th-century music, want to play it, and damn the torpedoes. So on April 7, Leif Ove Andsnes will perform the Austrian master’s Six Little Piano Pieces; James Levine will lead the MET Orchestra in Five Pieces for Orchestra on April 10 at 3:00; and the Tetzlaff Quartet will offer the meatiest Schoenberg work, his 45-minute Quartet No. 1, at Carnegie’s mid-size Zankel Hall at 7:30.

No Joy in Muncie

I was very sorry to see in Musicalamerica.com on March 28 that my home town’s symphony orchestra cancelled its final concert of the season to save $35,000 and not add to its $100,000 deficit. It’s an all-too-typical story: A well-to-do Muncie music lover and his wife used to kick in extra funds in tight economic times, but they died over the past two years. They had lived in Muncie all their lives and were well-known and beloved pillars of the community. Apparently the members of their large family who have remained in Muncie have other commitments.

Looking Forward

My week’s scheduled concerts:

4/7 Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic/Paul Gemignani; soloists. Sondheim: Company.

4/11 Thalia. Cutting-Edge Concerts/Victoria Bond. Works by Brian Ferneyhough, Jeffrey Mumford, Harold Meltzer, Victoria Bond.

4/13 Metropolitan Opera. Berg: Wozzeck. James Levine, cond.; Meier, Skelton, Siegel, Held, Fink.

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Meaning in Music

April 7th, 2011

By Alan Gilbert

On Monday, April 4, 2011, Alan Gilbert became the first New York Philharmonic Music Director to give the Annual Erich Leinsdorf Lecture. His remarks, titled “Performance and Interpretation,” were Webcast live. Following is an excerpt from his speech, which can be watched in full on the New York Philharmonic’s Website, nyphil.org/leinsdorf.

Meaning in music is elusive — in fact, there are those who have said that music has no meaning. Nevertheless, for this discussion, I will be bold enough to posit that music does indeed have meaning, albeit not in the concrete or overt way that the word “apple” has meaning. Still, a performer interprets a piece of music by playing it in a way that is designed to enable the audience to understand the piece’s meaning, and I think that we can agree that it is not enough just to present the notes in the score. There must also be emotional understanding that adds meat to the bones of the score.

But what is meaning in music? Is it necessary to defend the notion of music as having meaning? As I just said, there are those who have said that music per se has no meaning — that music is essentially an empty shell that can only provoke individual responses that are not intrinsically related to whatever quality the music holds. I could be tempted to counter this nihilistic attitude, first, by pointing to the many functions that music has served over the millennia. For one thing, music has crucially served as a call to religious life —  by the shofar at Rosh Hashanah, or by masses for weekly or funeral rites, or other types of music used for rituals in other religions. Similarly, music has inspired people in battle, in declarations of love, and in other various communal and social forms. Today many art forms — art song and opera, Broadway musicals and film — are human expressions in which music contributes to the text’s meaning. How could it be possible, especially in cases where it is an accompaniment to narrative, for music to lack meaning?

That having been said, I am much more comfortable with a non-rigorous, intuitive reaction: obviously music has meaning, because it so palpably provokes a deep emotional response in people. I think I am drawn to this approach for dealing with this profoundly important question partly because I am far from being a true scholar — I lack the intellectual tools that academics use to effectively carry a convincing philosophical argument very far.

Still, my belief that music has meaning lies on an even more basic level: as a musician, believing in the primacy of meaning in music could not be more fundamental as a defining point in who we are and what we do. Furthermore, the idea that we must constantly search for meaning and truth in music is, I think, the guiding light for most musicians, and it provides a framework for stylistic choices: why would it even matter how we decide to play a given piece if there were no reference goal or meaning to pursue? It does matter, it has to matter, since otherwise we would have no compass to guide us in our interpretive decisions.

Of course, music’s meaning is ineffable — precisely because it picks up where words leave off. How often have we, as music lovers, felt something incredibly powerfully as the result of hearing a piece, or a phrase, or even a note of music, without being able to express or understand why we had that particular feeling? Amazingly, these musical moments can seem unbelievably precise, although there may be no words to describe them.

(For more information on Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic, visit nyphil.org.)

 

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All quiet on the western front

April 7th, 2011

By Keith Clarke

It has been encouraging to see British students finding their voice again in the face of government plans to leave them with horrendously huge debts if they venture into higher education. After a generation of Quiet Satisfieds, the way the new set has taken to the streets with their placards and megaphones has been quite refreshing to those of us brought up in more volatile times. Of course, every legitimate student protest is joined by a bunch of hooligans who just want to smash plate glass, but that’s an irksome by-product of virtually any gathering these days.

What has this to do with music, you ask. Not a lot. But the thoughts were stirred by the fact that at a time when everyone is relearning the art of shouting and making a fuss, one of the biggest shifts in UK arts funding has left an eerie quiet. More than 200 organizations have lost their funding altogether; many more have been dealt cuts; yet there is a singular lack of public breast beating. Perhaps these guys have just had the spirit knocked out of them.

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It’s a funny old business. Welsh singer Wynne Evans came to attention playing the part of a caricature opera singer in a series of tv ads for an insurance price comparison website. Kitted up in a tux and sporting a twirly moustache, he intoned “Go Compare” to the melody of the American military song, Over There, his performance creating such an effect that the ad was voted the most irritating on British television. That didn’t stop Evans heading for stardom, releasing an album featuring Mario Lanza show classics which hit the number one spot, appearing on a tv documentary, giving concerts.

Behind the moustache and the Go Compare persona, Evans is a working singer whose less publicized work included a part in the Royal opera’s Anna Nicole. But such was the clamor for his tv personality (Gio Compario) that he was forced into hiding, reported the Daily Star. Now comes news that all the interviews have taken their toll – he has lost his voice.

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We have to hope Wynne Evans’ sound was still emerging when he joined the Welsh Guards to record a special album for the royal wedding which currently has the popular press in paroxysms of excitement. What music will actually be played for the event is a state secret, but there might be a clue in the selection on the CD, which Semper Fidelis; Men of Harlech; Pomp and Circumstance; and Love Divine, All Loves Excelling. Evans’ contribution is a “Royal Crown” medley of Welsh national songs.

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Starting Your Own Festival

April 6th, 2011

By Edna Landau

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

This week’s question comes from a young violinist at Juilliard whom I had the pleasure of meeting when I was a guest in Bärli Nugent’s class a few weeks ago. I am grateful to Edward Klorman, a founder and co-Artistic Director of the Canandaigua LakeMusic Festival and Director of Manhattan School of Music’s Center for Music Entrepreneurship for sharing his personal experience with me as I prepared the answer below.

Dear Edna: 

I’m a violinist having spent most of my life performing and collaborating, but I’ve hardly done any organizing of my own projects. After working with many different kinds of musicians, dancers, actors and other art-related people throughout the years, I’m beginning to really want to organize my own festival combining them all. I feel that some pretty amazing projects could be created out of their collaborations, and it would be fascinating to experience the way in which all forms of the arts complement one another. I have no clue as to how to start such an epic project – what would be the best way to do so?  —Laura Lutzke 

Dear Laura: 

It is exciting for me every time a young person shows the initiative and desire to launch a new project based on their own artistic experience and observations. I am sure you are right that the festival you envision could be “pretty amazing” and I hope you will not let anything get in the way of your zeal to follow through on it. You seem perfectly positioned to bring to fruition such a multi-genre celebration of the arts. 

I think the most essential thing, when undertaking a substantial new project, is to start with what and who you know. If you plan your new endeavor in a community where you are known, people will be motivated to help you right from the start. Edward Klorman hails from Rochester, New York and his family has spent summers at Canandaigua Lake for many years. That area was therefore a natural location for him to start a festival. His mother, Rhonda Jones, was actually the founding executive director of the festival. He knew his potential audience well and attempted to figure out from the start how he could collaborate with them, drawing on their established interests but also potentially introducing them to new things. It will prove advantageous to you if the area you are identifying seems “hungry” for the type of cultural events you are anticipating and if there are established organizations that are already involved in the genres of performance you hope to promote. Also, be sure to identify a time when you are likely to draw the largest audience. 

Once you have identified your ideal location, be prepared to do a tremendous amount of networking and legwork. One of your first goals will be finding a suitable performance venue that might make space available for free or at low cost. Churches are often good starting points but you also shouldn’t be afraid to think creatively. Edward Klorman and his co-Artistic Director, Amy Barston, launched their very successful Classical Blue Jeans series in a barn. Other festivals have worked collaboratively with vineyards, who have been delighted to have a new cultured audience to introduce to their fine wines. 

At every step along the way, you should never hesitate to ask people for help and advice. People with resources and expertise love the idea of giving something back to a good cause. When Ed Klorman started on his journey, he asked a local piano dealer who they knew that had a piano in their home. He then organized a house concert to float the idea of a festival and to get people excited about it. An enthusiastic audience of about 50 attended. He asked them to leave their contact information and to be sure to tell their friends about plans for a festival ten months later. Within a few months, small gifts totaling close to $15,000 came in. The festival operated at first under the fiscal sponsorship of a local arts council, enabling them to receive contributions. They subsequently decided to apply for non-profit status through a lawyer who volunteered their services. 

Once you have settled on the what, where and when of your festival, you want to call on as many people as possible to get on board. Check out housing options and see if some hotel or bed and breakfast proprietors might be willing to offer some complimentary rooms to festival participants. Perhaps local residents might want to offer private housing. That is a great way for them to feel involved in your venture without having to necessarily spend any money. Visit local vendors to see whether they might offer in-kind sponsorships; for example, free printing of your programs and/or brochure in exchange for acknowledgment in all of your festival promotion. (You might want to throw in some free tickets as an inducement.) You should approach various arts and civic organizations to see if they might send an announcement of your festival to their mailing lists. Be sure to cover all of the genres represented in your programming. Also take the time to visit the local Chamber of Commerce, Tourist Bureau, newspapers and other town publications to get their advance support of your new venture. 

When it is time to settle on artists for the festival, think about a core group that shares your vision and that might potentially want to be involved for the long haul. They don’t need to be world-famous but they should share your excitement over this new project and be very adept at communicating it to your audience. Hopefully, they will be satisfied with low fees at the start, as long as their expenses are covered. 

It goes without saying that the success of any new venture can be largely dependent on public relations. Seek as much help as you can in this area. Make sure that all of your materials are attractive and inviting, with great photos, and that your press releases convey the careful thought that went into your programming and the uniqueness of what you will be offering. While a clever name for your festival is not essential, it might be a small plus in your public relations efforts.

There is so much more to say on this topic but space precludes addressing matters such as programming and fundraising in greater detail. I hope the above paragraphs will give you a basic idea of how to get started. As you move forward, you should seek out people who have started their own festivals and they will all have useful information to offer you. And please remember to put me on your mailing list as soon as you have one! 

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

© Edna Landau 2011




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Just one cornetto

April 1st, 2011

by Keith Clarke

By the time this reaches the blogosphere I shall be swanning round Venice, gaping at art and canals and hoping not to encounter too many people playing Vivaldi at me. It’s my luck, one way or the other, to be out of the UK when the Arts Council makes its biggest funding announcement in history, but I’m not losing too much sleep over that. It’s a great way to use up airmiles while British Airways is still in business, and we booked it ages ago.

Of course it not so easy to escape the world of rolling news and avoid taking the office with you. There’s a worrying message on the Venice hotel website that wifi is available in all rooms, but I think I’ll forget that and dedicate my few days to the study of renaissance art and fine wines, though not necessarily in that order. I shall survey the remains of the British music industry when I get back to Blighty.

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If any Venetian students do try to run me down with The Four Seasons, I am at least protected by an ear problem that is currently quieting the world down a bit. A deaf music critic is probably as useful as card tricks on radio, but this is not the full works, just a little local difficulty that can almost certainly be cured by large doses of Grappa. Not like a few years ago when a very unpleasant inner ear infection had the effect of making music sound entirely weird, single notes sounding as discordant chords. I took the opportunity at the time to say in an editorial that Angela Gheorghiu was singing like a drain, and that if the London Symphony couldn’t do better than that the players  should take up gardening instead, swiftly diving in with an explanation before the lawyers turned apoplectic.

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As we sit and wait for the funding axe to fall, cheapskate music is all around. A colleague tells me he went searching for Gustav Holst’s Fugal Concerto in the Naxos Music Library and got the message: “Did you mean holst frugal concerto?” Look out for The Love of Two Oranges and other cost-cutting works.

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Another Opening, Another Show

April 1st, 2011

by Cathy Barbash

While cultural export is again a priority in China’s new Five Year Development Plan, investment in venue construction is still more visible than investment in exportable cultural products. The latest high-profile foray is a joint venture between the Beijing Oriental Songlei Musical Development Company (of Butterflies and Love U Teresa fame) and the Dongcheng District Government of Beijing, which (like every district) wants to make itself a “Center of Culture.” The Beijing Oriental Songlei Theatre (under construction) is part of this plan. Founded in the year 1989, the parent Songlei Group of Companies is a vast conglomeration of industries dealing in real estate, commerce, education, property management, banking, finance, transportation, culture, as well as media and communications. Such conglomerates are increasingly the developers of new venues.

It will be a proscenium theater with 1200-1400 seats, smallish stage, not unlike Broadway theaters, and a pit that can accommodate about 16 players. Terrific location, just south of the Dongsishitiao subway station and directly across the street from the Ministry of Culture along the Second Ring Road. They plan to be a mostly rental house, though understand that during the early years they will have to pay to bring in a certain number of shows. The theater will also present Beijing Oriental Songlei Musical Development Company’s own musicals, including the aforementioned “Love U, Teresa” and the new magic-themed musical “The Joker’s Game.”

Their focus is musical theater and general all-ages entertainment, i.e. magic shows and that ilk; including both domestic and international productions. The rental pricing structure is still in development, but I’m guessing the aim is to be more affordable than places of comparable size such as the nearby Poly Theatre. This is definitely a for-profit venue.

The most unusual and interesting aspect of the project is not only the active involvement, but also the public acknowledgement of the continuing involvement of foreign management expertise. Chinese veteran cultural producers and officials Li Dun (Chairman), Jiang Haiyan (CEO) and Pan Yong (CEO, Beijing Oriental Songlei Theatre) are joined by Broadway veterans Tony Stimac and Don Franz as respectively Chief and Company Consultants. Dance specialist and recent Kennedy Center Fellow Alison Friedman serves as Director of Programming.

Contacted for his comments, Stimac waxed euphoric: “This is historic. To date there is not one theatre in China that a big musical can book for an open-ended run; this theatre will break that mold. On top of that, this is one of the first venues dedicated to musical theater. It really is a break through.” A grand opening Broadway gala review is slated for Oct. 28, 2011, with plans for a three-day theater-related conference the preceding week.

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America’s Quartet

March 31st, 2011

by Sedgwick Clark

The Juilliard String Quartet has always seemed to me the quintessential American quartet––lean, intense, adventurous in repertoire, living on the edge performance-wise. So it was nice to see that it had received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy in February, along with fellow honorees Julie Andrews and Dolly Parton, among others. The Juilliard is the first classical ensemble to receive the award––in a “special ceremony” held during GRAMMY week, which means that TV mention of the award was relegated to a scrolled list before commercials, the GRAMMY show’s dustbin for old timers and classical artists. No matter: The JSQ deserves recognition no less than Julie and Dolly.

The award came on the heels of ArkivMusic’s welcome reissue last fall of perhaps the Quartet’s greatest recorded achievement: the 1963 cycle of Bartók’s six string quartets. The Juilliard also recorded the cycle in 1950 (which was deservedly inducted into the Recording Academy’s Hall of Fame in 1986) and a digital one in the early 1980s. The early cycle had the distinction of being the first ever and the concomitant virtue of wide-eyed discovery; the digital set was good, if a trifle avuncular for such bracing music. By 1963 the quartets were in the Juilliard players’ bones, and stereo technology could capture, as Alfred Frankenstein wrote in his High Fidelity review, “every one of those curious Bartókian pizzicatos which bound off the fingerboard like pistol shots, every needle-shower of ponticello, every straw-fiddle effect of drone basses and tone without vibrato.”

Arkiv’s CD release sounds superb, matching the excellent LP sonics but with less tape hiss, and James Goodfriend’s excellent notes are printed in full in the accompanying booklet. Moreover, the quartets are sensibly accommodated on three discs, unlike a French CD release from 2001 that crammed the six works onto two discs, requiring the Fourth Quartet to be broken between CDs after the first movement. This set is an absolute must for anyone interested in the greatest quartets after Beethoven’s.

At the same time, Arkiv brought out an excellent CD transfer of the Juilliard’s 1967 recordings of the two Ives quartets. The homespun First (1896) is filled with hymn tunes (“Stand up, stand up for Jesus”) and such songs as “Bringing in the Sheaves.” The Second Quartet is made of similar inspiration in less consonant garb, in three movements: Discussions, Arguments, and “The Call of the Mountains,” ending in “Nearer My God to Thee.” In Arguments, the second violin interrupts a vigorous altercation with a saccharine solo marked “Andante Emasculata,” which in turn is violently rejected by the other players in a fortississimo “Allegro con fisto.” Later the four players have at each other “con fuoco (all mad),” and the movement ends with a brief “Andante con scratchy (as tuning up)” and an abrupt “Allegro con fistiswatto (as a K.O),” right out of the ending of The Rite of Spring. Boys will be boys.

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