Never Mind the Elephants

March 10th, 2011

by Keith Clarke

No elephants, but quite possibly naked dancing girls. That was the undercover promise for a new in-the-round production of Aida coming to the Royal Albert Hall in February 2012. And if you just can’t get the elephants these days, it’s clear where you go for tenors. “America is a good place for tenors right now,” said director Stephen Medcalf, announcing the show at an Albert Hall press launch today. Both his Radames come from the USA – Marc Heller and Joseph Wolverton- singing alongside an international cast.

This Aida comes from legendary impresario Raymond Gubbay, whose Madam Butterfly is currently selling out the Albert Hall on its fifth revival, having seen some 300,000 people through the turnstiles over the years.

Unlike Butterfly, which is sung in English, some classy amplification doing it best in the Albert Hall’s bathroom acoustics, Aida will be sung in Italian, giving producers the tricky task of making surtitles visible to 5,000 people sitting in a large oval.

Gubbay said it was exciting to be launching something special at a time of arts cuts. He has famously taken the risk on all his productions, which have not seen a penny of state funding. But he was keen to defend the need for public subsidy. “This is not the answer to the cuts,” he said. “It won’t fix everything else, but it works here.”

Aida will run for 18 performances, with tickets from $35 to $121. It remains to be seen whether the price includes naked dancing girls.


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To Compete, or Not to Compete: That is the Question

March 10th, 2011

by Edna Landau

To ask a question please write Ask Edna.

Dear Edna:

I am a young violinist who has been blessed to have solo opportunities. I was wondering if you think I should also consider competing in more public competitions, such as the Yehudi Menuhin Competition, to further my career goals.

Thank you so much for all you do!     —Eager to Know

Dear Eager to Know:

Your question is an excellent one, and one that doesn’t have a clear-cut answer. I would like to say from the start that this is something you should definitely discuss with your teacher, who knows your playing better than anybody and can give you the most informed opinion.

Competitions come in many shapes and sizes. Whether they might further your career goals depends on what your particular goals are. Every competition provides an opportunity to prepare certain repertoire to a high level and to perform before a jury of established artists and educators, as well as an audience that might contain individuals who some day may be of help to you. What it might offer beyond that depends on the individual competition.

There are many competitions that take place around the world whose winners walk away with a cash prize and perhaps a handful of local engagements, but the news of their accomplishment never radiates beyond that particular area. This could be because the competition doesn’t have a public relations mechanism set up to disseminate the news, or because the prestige of the jury or quality of the prizes is not of sufficient significance to make the results of the competition noteworthy on an international level. Such competitions may nevertheless prove valuable to a soloist or ensemble who wants to have a “competition experience” in order to see how their nerves hold up and to decide whether they want to participate in a more prominent one.

No one should enter a competition seeking greater exposure unless they feel comfortable with the process and motivated by the potential for artistic growth and for gaining valuable performing experience, regardless of the outcome. If that is a description of you, your next step should be to look at the time of the competition vis-à-vis your personal schedule, the required repertoire, the composition and geographical distribution of the jury, and the nature of the prizes. The first two must feel totally comfortable to you. An internationally renowned jury lends a competition greater prestige, which you benefit from if you win a top prize. It is particularly valuable if the top prizes include concert engagements and possibly a recording. Often the Finals afford a welcome opportunity to perform with a first-class orchestra and conductor. The larger competitions make several rounds available to the public on the Internet, thereby providing an excellent opportunity for you to be seen and heard by countless new potential fans.

There is no question that the Yehudi Menuhin Competition is recognized as one of the world’s premier music competitions. If you win a top prize, your public profile will be enhanced by the publicity generated by the competition and you will gain a vehicle for international exposure that you may not have had previously. If you do not win a top prize, there is not likely to be any damage to your career. Everyone knows that a competition performance represents how you played at one moment in time and that such a performance can be influenced by numerous factors.

In my view, competitions are a useful vehicle for getting an artist’s name out to a broader public and a top prize may play a role in helping the artist obtain management. However, that will only be the case if the artist possesses the musical maturity, technical accomplishment, communication skills and individuality that make them compelling, apart from having won the prize. Many such artists have never entered competitions and have built major careers via word of mouth. The wide reach of social media makes it easier today, than ever, to accomplish. Fortunately, the next Menuhin Competition is not until April 2012, so you have some time to sort this out!   

To ask a question please write Ask Edna.

© Edna Landau 2011

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Do What Thou Wilt: Modern dance, John Cage and the Guggenheim Museum

March 7th, 2011

By Rachel Straus

John Cage died in 1992, but his influence on modern dance lives on. Take the Guggenheim Museum Works & Process February 27 and 28 program: “John Zorn’s Music Interpreted: New Choreography by Donald Byrd and Pam Tanowitz.” During the moderated part of the event on the 28th, Byrd said to composer Charles Wuorinen, “We will not have music dominate us.” Then Byrd thanked John Cage, attributing his statement to the composer philosopher whose long-time collaboration with Merce Cunningham transformed the landscape of modern dance.

Considering the fact that this Works & Process series was devoted to examining the relationship between music and dance and that Cage might have taken issue with the word “dominate” to describe any musical-choreographic relationship, Byrd’s comment was oddly aggressive. However John Zorn—whose music Byrd choreographed to and who was seated to Byrd’s right—looked merely amused by the exchange. Bracketing Byrd’s cagey reference to Cage was two world premieres: Byrd’s (fay çe que vouldras) or “do what thou wilt” and Tanowitz’s Femina, created respectively to Zorn’s unnamed 2005 and 2008 compositions.

Being that Byrd and Tanowitz recognize John Cage and Merce Cunningham as major influences, it might be good to revisit their artistic approach. The composer and choreographer believed that music and dance could occur simultaneously, but need not directly respond to each other. Their works created an alliance of sound and sight. Both were disinterested in narrative, but their mainly abstract landscapes did foster interpretations. What dominated their collaborations were a sense of play, where there appeared to exist a multiplicity of choices, both for the dancers and the musicians.

Byrd isn’t much for playing. His approach in vouldras was about as light as an avalanche. He trafficked in exactingly obscure messages. His dancers (especially the women) were too often featured as splayed-leg pawns of another’s manipulations. As Stephen Drury played Zorn’s alternatively minimalist and thunderous-sounding piano composition, angst reigned. The two male dancers went into seizures on the floor. After performing aerobic ballet steps on pointe, two women whispered to the pained-looking men. All the dancers breathed heavily, as though they were scaling a treacherous mountain.

In Femina, Pam Tanowitz did a better job revealing how Cunningham and Cage influenced her artistic career. As a former student of Viola Farber, a founding member of the Cunningham Company, Tanowitz’s movement vocabulary bore the mark of the Cunningham technique: The dancers moved through space with no facial expressions and applied their bodies to tasks (rather than expressive emoting and gesturing). Their limbs transformed into design elements.

Tanowitz isn’t, however, a strict Cunningham-ian. In this case, she’s interested in gender. By choosing the title, Femina, seven women (and one man) appeared to focus on a female sensibility. In two solos for Banu Ogan and Ashley Tuttle—formerly with the Cunningham Company and American Ballet Theatre, respectively—two portraits of women emerged. In the first, Tuttle appeared in a ballet skirt, leotard, and pointe shoes. She danced steps lifted from a typical ballet class: chainé turns, tendus, port de bras. She faced the back of the stage, as though seeing herself in a rehearsal studio mirror. Toward the end, she took off a pointe shoe off and banged it on the floor. Bad pointe shoe! She seemed to be saying. Was this a Black Swan moment? Who knows, but it might have something to do with Tanowitz’s preference for modern dance.

In the second solo, Ogan didn’t flagellate any objects. She danced facing the audience. The recorded music—a mélange of spoken word, violin, harp, piano, percussion, natural sounds, with metered and unmetered sections—was vastly more digestible than the 2005 work used by Byrd. Ogan’s fluid motions corresponded to the music in one moment and against it in another. The solo possessed playful mystery, perhaps because none of the theatrical elements seemed to dominate.

 


 

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Listen to the Seagulls

March 3rd, 2011

by Keith Clarke

One of the best things about living in London is getting out of it. True, the city’s cultural offerings are pretty spectacular (though Paul Moor, RIP, would always insist that it couldn’t even hope to begin to compete with his beloved Berlin), but it is also noisy, overcrowded, and cursed with an often dysfunctional transport system.

My answer is to beat the retreat every couple of weeks to the south-west coast of Wales, where I swap the roar of London’s traffic for the soothing cry of Pembrokeshire’s seagulls.

So after last week’s diary of Anna Nicole on Monday, Lucrezia Borgia in 3D on Wednesday, a play in a pub theatre on Thursday, Madam Butterfly on Thursday and The Mikado on Saturday (“Why didn’t you do the Berlin Phil on Tuesday?” suggested a friend who thought I wasn’t getting out enough), I am sitting a two-hour drive from the nearest major concert hall – Wales Millennium Center in Cardiff.

Tenby is a small seaside town that punches above its weight in many ways, and has a lively arts festival every September – this year is its 20th – but it does not provide an urgent need to catch the hot ticket every night of the week, which is fine by me. A chance to recharge the batteries does wonders for the cultural appetite, and makes one ever more appreciative of the sheer volume of first-class entertainment that London has to offer.

At a time when all of us around the globe have a constant multi-choice of material making a claim on our time, it is no bad thing just to stop, and listen to the seagulls instead.

>>>

The deliberations of the Association of British Orchestras annual conference continue to reverberate. One of many issues creating heat was the large gulf between the earnings of top-name conductors and soloists and the rank-and-file musicians on stage. One player had done her sums and reckoned that when all things were taken into account, she was working for about £30 ($48) an hour.

There were some mutterings about how this compared with the going rate for a plumber in London, but the musician’s beef was how it compared with conductors, who she reckoned were getting five to ten times as much as the players. Must be something wrong with her calculator, for the great divide is far worse than she thinks, given the caliber of conductors who wave a stick at her band.

The major London orchestras have an agreement in place to cap conductor and soloist fees, but the big names still put a big smile on their accountants’ faces. At the other end of the scale, soloists on the way up the career ladder are being offered the kind of fees which hardly cover their expenses, a situation which we shall be investigating in a forthcoming issue of Classical Music magazine.

One singer told me how he had been rung to see whether he was available for a date. He wasn’t, but suggested a number of excellent young post-graduate singers from the music college where he is a tutor. “Oh no,” came the reply, “They cost £190 [$309]. I was thinking more of £130 [$211] maximum.”

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Would Beethoven Have Given Up His Copyright?

March 3rd, 2011

by Edna Landau

The following column was prepared with the kind and generous help of a few wonderful friends and colleagues whom I would like to thank and acknowledge: composers Derek Bermel, Jennifer Higdon and Alex Shapiro; Kristin Lancino, Vice President, G. Schirmer, Inc., and Mary Madigan, President, Madigan New Music.

The excellent question below was submitted by Steve Danyew, an accomplished and entrepreneurial composer, as well as the editor of the new Polyphonic on Campus section of Eastman School of Music’s widely read Polyphonic.org.

Dear Edna:

As a young composer, I’m wrestling with the decision of whether to pursue publication of my works through a reputable publisher or to continue to self publish. I’m leaning towards pursuing a publisher because of the distribution and marketing reach that many publishers have. As a self-published composer, it seems difficult to reach all the ensemble directors and musicians who may be interested in my music. At the same time, I’m not entirely sure where to start when thinking about publishers – which organizations would be the right fit, if this is the right point in my career, etc.     –Steve Danyew

Dear Steve:

I understand from the composers I have been speaking to that hardly a day goes by that they are not asked the very question you have posed. Not unlike young performers hoping to attract a manager, chances are that a composer in the early stages of their career will find it difficult to attract interest from a “reputable publisher.” Much will depend on the quality and volume of their work, record of past performances, and opportunities to hear their music in concert. Recommendations to the publisher from respected colleagues can also have great impact. Until such a time is reached, composers are advised to learn all the skills of self-publishing, as you seem to have ably done.

The next big question is, if you can succeed in attracting a reputable publisher, can you agree to the terms of the proposed agreement which typically include ceding control of your copyright and sharing revenues from sales, rentals, performances, and other uses of your music? Presumably you would only want to do this if you felt that you got a great deal in return. In addition to editing and preparation of score and parts, managing and negotiating agreements relating to the copyright and processing all orders, this could include substantial marketing and promotion and a targeted strategy to introduce your music to a well-established (possibly international) network of contacts, potentially enhancing your chances for new commissions. There is no doubt than an association with a major music publisher also carries with it a certain amount of prestige that can have incalculable effects on your career.

Do bear in mind that as with almost everything in life, nothing is absolutely black and white. Most deals have the potential for negotiation, especially if you are at a point in your career where you have some leverage. Some composers have succeeded in working out co-publishing agreements where the publisher may assume only some of the responsibilities mentioned above and the composer may retain partial ownership of (and greater revenue from) the copyright. Others have retained ownership of their copyright and passed along some activities to an independent entity such as Bill Holab Music, “publishing agents” for an impressive group of composers.

In choosing the right fit, it makes sense to study the catalogues of individual publishers to see if they include the type of music you compose and whether you admire, and maybe even know, the composers who are represented. This allows you to inquire what type of experience they have had. You might also want to get a feeling for whether the focus of the publisher’s activity is domestic or international. You will certainly want to research the level of music organizations with whom they regularly do business; check whether they are staffed adequately to provide the marketing and promotional support, as well as individual attention, you are seeking; find out whether they meet regularly with their clients and travel to key performances and premieres, and who would be your primary and regular contact. It is important to feel a good chemistry with that person and to sense that you would be a priority for them, not unlike a good artist/manager relationship.

In making a final decision, you need to weigh the benefits and financial realities of a publishing relationship against the time spent on maintaining total control of your business and growing it to higher levels. I suggest you speak to as many composers as possible about their personal experiences. In the end, the answer may lie somewhere in the middle.

© Edna Landau 2011

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The Powerful P’s: Paco Peña and Paul Taylor

March 1st, 2011

By Rachel Straus

A dance work that can express a rainbow’s spectrum of emotions is a marvel. More mysterious is that an identical set of motions—done softly and then forcefully—can convey opposite meanings. Last week’s New York performances by Paco Peña Flamenco Dance Company (Town Hall, February 24) and the Paul Taylor Dance Company (City Center, February 25) became a dance primer for how emotional interpretations, delivered through a minimal movement vocabulary, effect perception, much like a landscape drenched in sunlight, and then under storm clouds.

Among Paul Taylor’s gargantuan repertory, the most pointed exploration of contrasting emotions is his Polaris (1976). Made the year that the space shuttle named itself The Enterprise (after the Star Trek vessel), this sleek, space-age work takes place in Alex Katz’s cube, which resembles the Star Trek Transporter room.

Polaris is structured in two parts. “Part I” and “Part II” possess the exact same steps. The difference is in the dynamic approach of ten dancers. Like mirror images of each other, they are dressed in Katz’s black and white Mondrian-style briefs (and bras tops for the women).

In “Part I,” the dynamic quality of five dancers is buoyant, energetic, and bubbly. In “Part II” the same steps, as performed by five different dancers, is done with sharp, muscular force and steely expressions. The repetition of steps feels like a trick on the eyes: “Am I really seeing the same dance? It looks so different,” one asks. What is not surprising is that “Part II” is more interesting (and Donald York’s moribund electronic score improves when it is played in a minor key).

Celebrated for his pretty pas de deux and all-American frolicking dances, Taylor is a choreographer who makes consistently engaging works about the dark side. When he paints movement pictures tinged with violence, his work also feels more authentic. This is a subjective statement, but considering how dancers live with hardship (physical and otherwise), it’s an arguable position. Dancers’ bodies experience adversity continuously. They know how to channel it.

Also on the program was the New York premiere of Phantasmagoria. To anonymous Renaissance composers, the dance begins with AnnMaria Mazzini sinking her body into the floor and then slamming her fist like a nail into a coffin. Her serious mood is upended by Amy Young and the cast, dressed as “Flemish villagers,” who hop and skip about like medieval characters in Monty Python’s satire The Meaning of Life (1983).

Taylor’s new work is a lark. Divided into seven sections, it includes comic send-ups of Irish step dancing (as performed flawlessly by the black dancer Michelle Fleet), of an “East Indian Adam and Eve” (whose point of contact is a gargantuan phallus in the shape of a green snake), and of the Isadorables (the fey young dancers trained by Isadora Duncan). The staggering presence of a drunken “Bowery Bum,” as performed by Mr. Kleinendorst, continually destroys the Isadorables practiced mystique of coming from ancient Greece.

Very much an homage to the vaudeville circuit, where performers did anything and everything to get a laugh, Phantasmagoria is minor Taylor, but good Taylor nonetheless. However, the work’s subtitle—“Life, what is it but a dream?”—by Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carol doesn’t hit the mark. Here is a dance better described by Caroll’s opening chapter, “Down the Rabbit Hole.” The tunnel in this case is comprised of dances of the ages.

**

Then there was the performance of the Paco Peña Flamenco Dance Company, which polyphonically pulsated through Town Hall’s cavernous space for one powerful performance. Angel Muñoz performed a flamenco style marked by restraint and the imaginative interpretation of traditional dances learned from his predecessors. Muñoz’s austere quaity is reflective of the historic architecture of Cordoba, which is his hometown and Peña’s.  

Performing along side his wife Charo Espino and the relative newcomer Ramón Martinez, Muñoz’s understated sex appeal and musicality is mesmerizing. Neither a grandstander nor an introvert, Muñoz transformed the rectangular performing space in front of three guitarists (Peña, Paco Arriaga, Rafael Montilla), two vocalists (Inmaculada Rivero, Jesús Corbacho) and one percussionist (Diego Alvarez). As he struck stuck the floor with his feet, encircled his arms, and developed polyrhythms with the musicians, Muñoz’s dancing created a sea of emotions that could be describes as landscapes: Torrential rain, urban grit, mirages.

While Munoz possesses simultaneous ease and unswerving concentration in his body and face, Charo Espino’s presentation of self is more baroque. Her eyes dramatically contract to express her passion. Her stage persona is aggressive, cat like, haughty. However, when Espino sat next to Peña and a duet between her castanets and his guitar ensued, she dropped her dramatics to focus on her rhythmic chops, which are masterful. Like Martinez, who pulled off five elegant pirouettes, Espino’s talent is undeniable. It’s her approach, and some of her dresses, which are unnecessarily flashy.

The evening ended with singer Inmaculada Rivero dancing an improvised, playful encore for the company. Without the instruments accompanying her footwork, it was one of the few times where a dancer’s sound was not drowned out by the cajon. Perhaps the World Music Institute, which presented the company, will mike the floor next time, so that these powerful dancers can not only be seen but also heard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Breaking Through the Wall

February 24th, 2011

by Edna Landau

Dear Edna (wise sage of the management world):

I was hoping you could give me a little insight into manager best practices. It increasingly feels like orchestras want to deal solely with big management. The more I look at the season lineups, the more it seems they look to only one or two management firms to populate their seasons. As an independent manager trying to make waves for my artists, how does one break through the wall?  —I Just Can’t Get Through

Dear Edna:

I have worked with various rather prestigious organizations in the music field but am relatively new to artist management. Throughout those years, I gained access to a broad range of programming contacts and I’ve done well to maintain those relationships.  However, North America is a large territory. The League of American Orchestras indicates that there are about 1,800 orchestras in the U.S., about 400 of which are professional orchestras. Add to this chamber music series, performing arts centers, ensembles, opera companies, festivals, etc., and it’s a lot, to say the least. Obviously, having a targeted strategy is crucial for making headway but how can an artist’s representative get through to organizations and programmers where she has no established contact?   —Indie Artist Rep

Dear I Just Can’t Get Through and Indie Artist Rep:

There are very few questions that are more difficult to answer than the one you have posed. This is because the artist management business is a very personal one and each case is different. In the commercial world, if one spends a significant amount of money on mounting a well-planned advertising campaign for a product that is likely to appeal to a targeted market, there is a reasonable chance that such a product will break through and establish a place for itself among competitive brands. In the world of the arts, decisions are made by conductors and presenters who often already know whom they want to present and if they are willing to make room for new talent, they may depend on favorable reports from people they respect and be influenced by a “buzz” that may have already built up in the media.

You may find this shocking but the size of the management attempting to secure a booking for an as-yet-unknown artist will not in and of itself be a determining factor in a successful outcome. What it is really all about is strategy. The work begins long before the e-mail is sent or the phone call is made. You must be able to answer the following questions satisfactorily:

    1) Why should presenter X be interested in this particular artist? (The answer might revolve around recent major career recognition for the artist or some unusual repertoire they are offering.)

    2) Does Presenter X normally present this type/level of artist?

    3) Is there enough going on in this artist’s career at the present time to help the presenter sell tickets?

    4) Who might be willing to speak to Presenter X about this artist in advance of my approaching him? Or, alternatively, who can Presenter X call (whose opinion he will trust) to verify what you are saying in your sales pitch?

    5) What added value might the artist you are proposing bring to the presenter and his series (for example, educational activities at no additional charge)?

Once you have addressed these issues and have identified a realistic target list of presenters, you are ready to make your pitch. (Don’t be daunted by the number of presenters cited by the League. Many will be irrelevant to your specific project.) There is no denying that it is difficult to get people on the phone if they don’t know you. If someone you and they know can alert them in advance that you will be calling, that will undoubtedly help. If not, send them a concise, substantive and compelling e-mail, indicating that you will follow up by phone and are hoping that they will give you just five minutes of their time. If in your e-mail you make an impassioned case for the uniqueness of the artist in question and support it with suggestions of people to speak to, you stand a chance of capturing their attention. If you are able to see them in person (promising in advance not to take more than fifteen minutes of their time), your chances are even more greatly enhanced.

A manager colleague of mine whom I hold in high regard, Marianne Sciolino, is relatively new to the business (six years). When I asked her recently how she has succeeded in breaking through, she offered some very sensible advice:

    Make sure you present your artists in an impressive way, including excellent photographs.

    Use every opportunity to network. People you know can introduce you to others you don’t know. Every time you travel for any reason, try to meet presenters in that area. If they know you are visiting for a limited time, they will be more inclined to try and see you.

    When you leave a message on someone’s phone, speak in a pleasant, low-key way that makes you sound like someone with whom they would want to work.

And now a final word from the “wise sage of the management world”: Progress in arts management happens gradually, in very small steps. You can only assess that progress when you look back to where you were six months ago, a year ago. And there is one essential ingredient you must never lose: your excitement over working hand in hand with highly gifted artists and helping others to discover those potential great stars of tomorrow.

© Edna Landau 2011

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Time for the Close-up

February 24th, 2011

by Keith Clarke 

In ancient times, when the Metropolitan Opera first started beaming into movie theaters, I remember reading one man’s comparison between the real live experience at the opera house and the screened version. For him, having Anna Netrebko in glorious close-up won hands down against seeing her from 100 yards back in the opera house.  Last night I got my chance to agree with the verdict, when English National Opera’s Lucrezia Borgia became the world’s first live 3D opera.

This is the production where Movie director Mike Figgis takes us straight from the wonder of movie to a live stage production where the characters stand like lumps of wood and sing, so the idea of sitting through it all again was not the biggest thrill of the week. But lo and behold, could this really be the same production? With the wonder of close-up and slick direction, we were dealt an entirely different experience. You could see how these guys on stage were straining every sinew to put on a performance. And of the characters didn’t move, the cameras did.

The movie house version did not have ENO’s surtitles, but the amazing thing was that they were not needed. With everyone close-miked, every word rang out gloriously, and always came from the right part of the screen. Sometimes parts of the orchestra seemed to have moved to a side aisle—trying to find the bar, maybe—but the sound of the singers was bang on target.

The 3D was impressive, and if I had known that the Borgias were going to be coming quite so close I’d have lined up a few more drinks. But it was not the clincher. It was the imaginative transformation of a live performance from stage to screen that really won the evening. Let’s have more.

>>> 

Venue for this Lucrezia was Westfield in west London, heralded as Europe’s largest urban shopping mall. In US terms, it would probably be considered tiny, but for some arts journalists lured through its doors for the first time by the Lucrezia invitation, it was a bit of a surprise to discover that the cinema was what felt like a five-mile hike from the entrance. I am no Westfield virgin, as the center is on my doorstep and my kids seem to live there, but it was amusing to see first-time callers clearly in need of rescue dogs carrying brandy as they made their way to the multi-screen.

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More Than a Think Denk

February 24th, 2011

by Sedgwick Clark

Last Wednesday night (2/16) the American pianist Jeremy Denk performed—”relived” would be more accurate—a bracing recital of Ligeti’s Études and Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Last May he was soloist in an ideal performance of Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, with John Adams conducting the ACJW Ensemble. In numerous live and recorded performances over 45 years, I had thought the Concerto an ungrateful piece, gnarled and humorless. What a difference rhythmic security, seamless transitions, and puckish humor make—nothing less than a revelation!

It was these sparkling qualities that caused jaws to drop and eyes to crinkle in Denk’s brilliant rendering of the finger-busting Ligeti pieces. Fistfuls of notes dovetailed with seeming effortlessness, allowing an ideal balance of virtuosity with the composer’s inherent wit and warmth. No less important was the piano tone—clear but never brittle. Those same qualities distinguished the GoldbergVariations. Once past an overly slow introductory Aria, the 30 variations and concluding Aria da Capo clearly delighted a sold-out house. Another addition to my wee “don’t miss” artist list.

He’s also recorded both Ives Piano Sonatas for his own label, which I haven’t heard but will ASAP. It’s available, and also a more recent Bach Partitas CD, on his Web site, Think Denk.

His next New York appearance is as guest pianist in the Ives Piano Trio with the Ensemble ACJW at Le Poisson Rouge on March 20.

Adams and Nixon
And speaking of John Adams, he’s been in town lately to conduct the Metropolitan Opera’s staging of his first opera, Nixon in China. I remember a colleague returning from the 1987 premiere in Houston and declaring that it was the best opera he had ever seen. The Nonesuch recording and memory of Robert Spano’s 1999 Brooklyn Philharmonic concert performance at BAM whetted my appetite for the Met production, which I saw on February 9. (Spano was there too.)

Why, then, my disappointment? Because of the cartoonish sets, basically a duplication of the original production? The not-always-precise playing in Act I (it improved later)? Or the failure of the original Nixon, James Maddalena, to project in the Met’s vast space? The others sang effectively. However, whether the result of Alice Goodman’s libretto or Peter Sellars’s direction, I couldn’t hack Pat Nixon (Janis Kelly) as Debbie Reynolds (Singin’ in the Smog?) or Henry Kissinger (Richard Paul Fink) as a caricature out of Oh! Calcutta! Madame Mao (Kathleen Kim) and Chou En-lai (Russell Braun) came off best as characters and performers. The New York Times‘s former editor Max Frankel was on that China trip, and in a fascinating February 10 op-ed piece he discussed how Nixon in China jibed with reality. While recognizing the importance of artistic license he ultimately agreed with Shakespeare, “who chose a century as the minimal safe distance between actual events and his iambic-speaking kings.”

I caught the live HD broadcast three days later in East Hampton for another look. The differences between sitting in Row I in the orchestra section of the cavernous Met auditorium and watching a screen in an intimate movie theater—at least in Nixon—were all in the broadcast’s favor: The close-ups of the singers lent far greater immediacy to the story, and the singers were all perfectly audible—most conspicuously James Maddalena, who, I was reliably informed by a colleague attending the performance, was no less difficult to hear than three days before. (So why hadn’t the body mikes boosted his voice adequately in the house?) The production benefited too. It’s reasonable to believe that a (or perhaps even the) major concern of Gelb-era set designs is filmability. The original director, Peter Sellars, had changed a few things—none of them for the better, reported Patrick J. Smith in his Musical America.com review. One of Sellars’s new inspirations was to further vulgarize the libretto’s satirical portrait of Henry Kissinger; interestingly, in the HD broadcast, also directed by Sellars, the cameras averted their eyes during the most offensive moment, when the Kissinger character pumps his hips vigorously at his Chinese translator.

But if I can’t join most of my colleagues in praising the Met’s Nixon, Adams the conductor continues to impress. He led the Juilliard Orchestra at Carnegie Hall last Friday (2/18) in City Noir, his affectionate tribute to moody1940s film scores that he composed for Gustavo Dudamel’s inaugural gala as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in October 2009. The LA team performed it at Lincoln Center last May, and I enjoyed it even more under the composer’s purposeful baton. He prefaced his work with a taut, expressive reading of Strauss’s Don Juan, reminding me of Fritz Reiner’s 1954 Chicago recording in its near-identical timing and several dramatic details, and Bartók’s rollicking Dance Suite. In both performances I was struck by rhythmic niceties I’d never heard before—clear as could be in the score but ignored by numerous big-name conductors.

Who Says Classical Music is Dead?
I asked the Times‘s Anthony Tommasini last night at the opening of Lincoln Center’s Tully Scope festival if his mail had increased since the end of his “Top Ten Greatest Composers” series, which I wrote about in my last blog (2/4). Over 2,700, he replied—1,200 more since the final article ran. Dear Congressmen and women: I’ll bet they vote too.

Looking Forward
My week’s scheduled concerts:

2/23 Avery Fisher Hall. London Symphony/Valery Gergiev. Mahler: Symphony No. 7.

2/24 Alice Tully Hall. Tully Scope Festival. Axiom. Feldman: Rothko Chapel; Bass Clarinet and Percussion. Kurtág: Hommage à R. Sch; Messages of the Late R.V. Troussova.

2/25 mat. Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic/Paavo Järvi; Janine Jansen, violin. Tüür: Aditus. Britten: Violin Concerto. Beethoven: Symphony No. 5.

2/25 Avery Fisher Hall. London Symphony/Valery Gergiev. Mahler: Symphony No. 3.

2/26 Walter Reade Theater. 2:00: Mahler documentary featuring Alma and Anna Mahler, Henry-Louis de la Grange.  4:30: Mahler interpreters, Bruno Walter, Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein; complete Symphony No. 4 with Vienna Philharmonic/Bernstein and soprano Edith Mathis.

2/27 mat. Avery Fisher Hall. London Symphony/Valery Gergiev. Mahler: Symphony No. 9 and Adagio from Symphony No. 10.

2/28 Carnegie Hall. Minnesota Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä; Lisa Batiashvili, violin. Beethoven: Violin Concerto. Sibelius: Symphonies Nos. 6 and 7.

3/1 Carnegie Hall. Philadelphia Orchestra/Charles Dutoit; Vadim Repin, violin. Berlioz: Overture to Béatrice et Bénédict. James MacMillan: Violin Concerto. Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5.

3/2 Zankel Hall. Making Music: all James MacMillan

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Roman Holiday

February 22nd, 2011

By Alan Gilbert

It’s hard to avoid Michelangelo in Rome — his presence seems to be everywhere in this most beautiful of cities. Sunday was free from my work with the Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra, and you could say that, in a way, I actually spent the day with Michelangelo (and most pleasant it was, indeed!).

I never visit Rome without stopping by St. Peter’s to see Michelangelo’s Pietà. His David and the Sistine Chapel may be even more well-known, but for me this sculpture is the most miraculous. How is it possible that out of solid rock he was able to fashion something so vibrant, textured, and emotionally piercing? Michelangelo famously said that every stone has a sculpture within it, and that the sculptor must merely chip away the extra parts to reveal it. This resonates powerfully for me: it doesn’t explain how the artist has the eye or genius to see a pietà within a crude block of marble, but it does support the sense of inevitability and oneness with nature that imbues this masterpiece.

Hans Werner Henze attended my concert on Saturday night and kindly invited me to have lunch with him the next day, so after leaving St. Peter’s I drove out to his gorgeous villa in the Lake region outside of Rome with Mauro Bucarelli, the artistic administrator of the Accademia. Mauro is a terrific orchestra manager, but I must say that he really missed his calling as a Roman tour guide. On our ride out of town I heard fascinating history and facts about the many monuments we passed. (I particularly enjoyed passing the Teatro Argentina, where I learned that the premiere of Rossini’s Barber of Seville took place.)

Arriving at Maestro Henze’s villa is like stepping back in time, both because of the actual Roman ruins that surround the house, and also because of the old-world elegance and way of life Henze has maintained. He is not as mobile as he once was, but he is still the most perfect and charming host. While we were served a splendid meal by his staff — a meal that began with a perfect risotto milanese and ended with “frappe,” a kind of fried dough that puts carnival food to shame — we discussed music, Italian politics, wine, the New York Philharmonic: a host of topics that show how engaged and endlessly curious Henze remains.

Legend has it that the olive grove on Henze’s land is the exact spot in which Michelangelo wooed Vittoria Colonna, who would become the amorous subject of his ardent sonetti. I’ve become extremely interested in a very recent piece by Henze, Immolation, which was written for the Accademia in Rome. It is a powerful hour-long work that poignantly and shockingly explores the subject of love and the way it is entwined with the eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil. As I was browsing Henze’s library, and admiring his fantastic collection of modern art, a good portion of which he painted himself (there is also an amazing Francis Bacon on the wall), I couldn’t help but think that Henze is the quintessential modern Renaissance man, a worthy successor to Michelangelo. How inspiring, and yet unsurprising, it is that the elements of life that move him are the same timeless ones that fueled Michelangelo centuries ago.

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

Michelangelo's Pieta

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