Musical America Blogs

By Sedgwick Clark

I just received the press kit for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 2010-11 season, announced today, and it’s a humdinger (haven’t used that word since I was in Muncie). The veteran Charles Dutoit, now 73, whose association with the orchestra dates back to 1980, is currently in his second of a four-year appointment as chief conductor while a new music director is being sought, and the new season’s programs glisten with his French-Russian specialties. Most encouragingly, the usual standards are balanced by the music of 12 living composers, including Osvaldo Golijov, Christopher Rouse, Magnus Lindberg, Arvo Pärt, Tan Dun, James MacMillan, and three works by Henri Dutillieux, which seems extraordinary for this conservative organization. The complete 2010-2011 season announcement press kit materials can be viewed online here.

It’s no industry secret that the orchestra is in parlous shape these days due to disastrous decisions from a dusty Board of Directors on down, capped off by the appointment of former music director Christoph Eschenbach, who lacked the support of the players. The orchestra’s “new” home at the Kimmel Center seems never to have recovered from a premature opening at which the acoustician, the late Russell Johnson, let everyone know that Verizon Hall was not ready for prime time. (Nevertheless, while not perfect, Verizon is incomparably superior to the unmusical Academy of Music in which the orchestra labored for nearly a century.) Whatever the reason, the Center hasn’t been sufficiently embraced by Philadelphia audiences and recently cut back on its programs and personnel. After hiring and quickly dispensing with an executive director who had no prior experience running an orchestra, the Board lured Alison Vulgamore—a savvy, hands-on exec with a proven track record—away from the Atlanta Symphony. (Do I hear Robert Spano, anyone?)

She has her hands full: balancing the budget, spearheading the search for a new music director, rebuilding the audience at home, and re-educating the world that this orchestra remains one of the foremost in the world. Which brings me to an infamous article in the December 2008 issue of Gramophone that rated “The World’s 20 Greatest Orchestras.” Not only was the Philadelphia Orchestra not included among the top 20, it was listed with the NBC Symphony—an orchestra that last played in 1954—under a sidebar headed “Past Glories”! I wonder how many of Gramophone‘s critics had heard the orchestra in concert before they voted? Eschenbach took Philly on a European tour last year, the final year of his tenure, but it was too late and, moreover, he was the wrong man in every way. An international tour is crucial as soon as possible after a new (presumably younger) maestro is chosen and the economy allows.

From my vantage point at the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall outings, the Philadelphians remain fabulous. Their corporate sound is intact, and their concerts display nothing of management fumbling. Indeed, the most memorable concert I heard last season was when André Previn led the orchestra in April in one of his typically laid back Mozart concerto performances. It was the 24^th, and it sang from first note to last. When I was younger I thought his Mozart twee, but on that evening his autumnal expressiveness was a balm to the soul, reminiscent of Curzon in the 27^th. The 80-year-old Previn is frail these days but has lost none of his musical powers. After intermission he led, with minimal gestures, a Philadelphia specialty from the Sawallisch days, Strauss’s Sinfonia domestica. One would have thought this oft-maligned work was Strauss’s greatest tone poem. Rarely have I seen such a chorus of smiles from orchestral players as they responded with affection and power, always wrapped in what Stravinsky called a “chinchilla echo.”

Here’s hoping that Dutoit’s well-chosen repertoire for the new season may be the first step to restoring the Philadelphia reputation.

By Sedgwick Clark

Everyone’s been raving about Pierre Boulez’s fountain of youth as he nears his 85^th birthday on March 26. I missed his Vienna Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall on January 16 of music by Schoenberg, Webern, and Mahler. But I caught his pair of Chicago Symphony concerts at Carnegie and was once again riveted by the same revelatory clarity of texture, subtle palette of instrumental color, and vigorous thrust of tempo that first astonished me 41 years ago this month at his initial engagement with the New York Philharmonic. 

Very simply, he changed the way I hear music. From those first four Philharmonic concerts, I cannot forget the harmonic clarity and singing of the cellos halfway through the first movement of La Mer; the unexpected orchestral outburst and dramatic surge of waves at the climax of “Asie,” the first song in Ravel’s Shéhérazade, which nearly propelled me from my seat; the whisper-quiet dynamics in Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta; and of course that savage Sacre! His Philharmonic years are still the most exciting of my concert-going life. 

Those qualities were vividly in evidence at the two Chicago concerts: on January 30, in Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, Marc-André Dalbavie’s Flute Concerto (2006), and a concert performance of Bartók’s only opera, Bluebeard’s Castle; on January 31, his own Livres pour cordes, Bartók’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra, and Stravinsky’s complete Firebird. 

The only (minor) letdown was the Tombeau, which has never seemed to me to fully engage him and was not that well played; I wish he had programmed Debussy’s elusive Jeux, a work he reveres and has always led with peerless lucidity. His concentration was fully in gear for the Dalbavie concerto, commandeering a brilliant accompaniment to Mathieu Dufour’s sparkling flute playing. But it was Boulez’s glittering performance of Bluebeard that remains most vividly in the memory. He has always been drawn to the early works of favorite composers, and in this case he never lets us forget the young Bartók’s many lustrous debts to Debussy. Some listeners may have missed the devastating emotional impact of the Kertész (Decca) and Kubelik (New York Philharmonic Special Editions) recordings, but those anticipating the usual Boulez insights were not disappointed. Mezzo-soprano Michelle De Young and bass-baritone Falk Struckmann characterized their solo roles outstandingly, especially the latter, who was terrifyingly intense.

In the second concert, Boulez’s incomparable ear for balance and the Chicago’s rich bass sonority combined to produce the most luscious performance of the French composer/conductor’s Livre pour cordes I’ve heard. Originally a two-movement work for string quartet (1948), it was revised 20 years later for full string orchestra and has become a genuine crowd-pleaser to judge by the audience reaction. I already wrote about the second work on this concert—Bartók’s recasting of his Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion into concerto form—in my February 1 blog. In short, the performance was unsurpassed but I far prefer the Sonata version. The evening concluded magnificently with one of Boulez’s specialties, the complete Firebird, the work that made Stravinsky famous. In his later years the composer seemed embarrassed by the score’s Rimskian opulence and pared down the orchestration for his 1945 suite; and in his early-sixties Columbia recording, which was billed as utilizing “the original 1910 orchestration,” he had the strings play the final peroration with the slashing, sec attacks of the latter suite. Boulez stuck with the sustained, Romantic chords of the original, played to overwhelming effect by the CSO.

Boulez will lead the MET Orchestra at Carnegie on May 16 in Bartók’s rarely programmed folk-nationalist ballet The Wooden Prince and Schoenberg’s expressionist monodrama Erwartung—again, both early works by favorite composers. (Coincidentally, his friend and former Ensemble Intercontemporain colleague, David Robertson, will conduct The Wooden Prince with the New York Philharmonic on February 25-27.)

And then what? The two American orchestras Boulez has conducted and recorded with most often in the past two decades are Chicago, of which he will remain conductor emeritus, and Cleveland.  But their music directors are not likely to give up their opportunities to conduct in New York, especially Riccardo Muti, who takes over Chicago in the fall. It’s doubtful that Boulez will make time for the New York Philharmonic. He says he will greatly reduce his conducting to concentrate on composing. We’ve heard that before, but the passing time may strengthen his resolve now. 

Clearly, the chances of his conducting in New York again diminish rapidly after his MET Orchestra engagement at Carnegie. Wise music lovers will get their tickets ASAP.

By Sedgwick Clark

Beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . stuttered a dying hearing aid battery during Carnegie Hall’s Boston Symphony concert last Monday (2/1). Heads turned throughout the audience, trying to locate the high-pitched nuisance.  Announcements were made before each of the Ravel works on the second half of the program, but to no avail.

It’s safe to say that neither artists nor audience members with adequate hearing could concentrate fully on the performances. But the BSO under James Levine still managed an authoritative reading of Elliott Carter’s Dialogues for piano and orchestra with soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, a rousing Berlioz Harold in Italy with the orchestra’s rich-toned principal violist, Steven Ansell, Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand with the masterful Aimard again, and the Suite No. 2 from Daphnis and Chloé. 

My most vivid recollection in this regard was a Philadelphia Orchestra concert conducted by Eugene Ormandy at Lincoln Center on April 23, 1973, when a hearing aid accompanied the Mahler Tenth continuously from first note to last. Ormandy probably had something else on his mind, for he had received a letter stating that he would be shot during the concert if he didn’t perform Deryck Cooke’s 1972 revision of the score instead of the 1964 version. To stem the death threat, a note on the program page explained that he couldn’t conduct the ’72 revision because another conductor had exclusive performing rights. As I recall, the performance was on the fast side.

Lincoln Center tried to solve the hearing aid dilemma in the 1980s. An article in the Times reported that LC’s P.R. director, Joe McKaughan, had pinpointed several of the worst offenders (usually old men) and enlisted the ushers to keep their eyes out for them. LC certainly didn’t want to discourage faithful music-loving subscribers from attending, Joe said diplomatically, but the ushers would be ready with a gentle reminder if one of them misjudged the volume control.

Couldn’t a neighbor have asked the offending noisemaker to desist? I’ve done that in the past. In my opinion, Levine should have stopped the orchestra, turned to the audience, and announced that the concert could not continue until the intermittent noise was located and turned off, which is what Erich Leinsdorf did at a New York Philharmonic rug concert back in June 1977. A camera was discovered, its piercing whistle extinguished, and the concert resumed. 

By Sedgwick Clark

Note to the blogosphere: Sorry, I’ve been in Muncie. But I return with an exciting discovery.

Tamara Stefanovich. Hers was a new name for me until her piano recital of works by Bartók, Carter, Ligeti, and Rachmaninoff last Wednesday (1/27) at Poisson Rouge. Simply put, I was bowled over and urge anyone within Internet distance to hie themselves to any concert she plays. I would say more about that recital now, but Musicalamerica.com editor Susan Elliott has asked that I keep readers in suspense until March for my interview with Stefanovich as the Web site’s New Artist of the Month.

I am allowed, however, to mention last night’s Chicago Symphony concert at Carnegie Hall where she performed with her mentor and fellow teacher at the Cologne Hochschule, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Musical America‘s Instrumentalist of the Year for 2007, in Bartók’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra (1940). The destitute Hungarian composer, newly arrived in America, made this orchestral transcription of his Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (1937) at the suggestion of his publisher in hope of widening the work’s appeal and providing a vehicle for himself and his pianist wife during what would be his last years.

Despite the superb efforts by the two pianists, percussionists Cynthia Yeh and Vadim Karpinos, and the Chicago Symphony under Pierre Boulez, the Concerto version is unquestionably inferior, merely gumming up the Sonata’s evocative timbres with superfluous doublings. It should be retired to the curio bin, in my humble opinion, and Carnegie Hall should re-engage the four soloists to perform the Sonata ASAP.

And yet. And yet, my wife and another friend in attendance had never heard either version, enjoyed the Concerto immensely, and are looking forward to hearing the original. So Bartók and his publisher were right.

By Sedgwick Clark

When was the last time you heard a world premiere on “Live from Lincoln Center?” The typical fare is last season’s New York Philharmonic opener, at which Yo-Yo Ma played Dvořák’s Cello Concerto and Lorin Maazel led Tchaikovsky’s Fifth for the umpteenth time in his seven-year tenure.

Alan Gilbert’s first official concert as music director of the New York Philharmonic tomorrow evening (9/16) will begin with an overture by the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg called EXPO.  He’s a fine composer—yet another in his generation of superb home-grown musicians benefitting from an enlightened national music-education program—but the important thing is that the Phil, under its new leader’s inspiration, finds it important to acknowledge that music (“classical,” “serious,” or whatever we’re supposed to call it these days) is still being written.

I was prompted to take time from my deadline on the 2010 Musical America Directory to key these august thoughts by Vivien Schweitzer’s review of the San Francisco Opera’s production of Il Trovatore in this morning’s Times.  She points out that the company has curtailed newer works this season to fill seats.  She quotes General Director David Gockley, who has a strong record of innovative leadership, as saying: “The research that I have access to says that it’s the core works, the great central works of the operatic tradition, that attract and inspire the new audience.  You might have heard, ‘Well, new works or edgy productions are what get the young people in.’  Well, it’s not true.”

I have argued this point for years with my good friend and colleague, Musicalamerica.com editor Susan Elliott.  The chief music critic of the Times, Anthony Tomassini, also believes in new music as the answer to attracting young audiences. Sorry guys, I have no doubt that Gockley is correct. There’s a reason these works have stayed in the repertory for centuries—audiences like them—and the kids are hearing them for the first time. Tony’s a fervent opera lover, and I can’t imagine that he would bet the house on Doctor Atomic (which was premiered at San Francisco Opera, by the way) over, say, Otello, as a young-audience pleaser.

Nevertheless—NEVERTHELESS!—a full-evening opera production has higher stakes than a single concert, and I think that Gilbert and the NY Phil deserve full support. A national television broadcast of a ten-minute overture by a successful composer who works in the tonal idiom isn’t that scary. It’s not Aaron Copland’s ear-rending 12-tone Connotations, which Leonard Bernstein conducted on the first concert in Philharmonic (now Avery Fisher) Hall in 1962, or the 80-year-old Stravinsky’s serial The Flood, commissioned by CBS and broadcast in prime time the same year, which effectively ended any further thoughts of classical music on network TV.

A not-so-minor musical point: Gilbert has programmed Lindberg’s EXPO on subscription concerts two weeks from now, a vote of pride in his new composer-in-residence (judging from his Violin Concerto played at Mostly Mozart last year, an excellent choice). Many—probably most—music directors drop new works like hot potatoes after their premieres. 

It’s a good sign.  I look forward to hearing it again.  Carry on, Alan!

WELCOME BACK, ALAN!

Alan Rich, that is. He’s been out of commission for the summer. In his first blog entry since June, it’s clear his sense of humor hasn’t deserted him (“A series of small strokes had disarranged the components of my skull for most of the summer.”) Nor has his love of music and music makers. Click on So I’ve Heard in the Web site’s roster of blogs.

By Sedgwick Clark

Michael Steinberg, one of America’s foremost writers about classical music, died last week (7/26) at age 80.  For nearly12 years, he was critic of the Boston Globe, holding the orchestra and three music directors to the highest standards. So when the Chicago Symphony under Georg Solti, at that time the hottest orchestra team in America, performed on tour in Boston in the mid-1970s, many of Michael’s colleagues were eager to see what he would have to say. But he boycotted the concert because the originally announced Variations for Orchestra by Elliott Carter had been changed at the last minute to run-of-the-mill fare. (The CSO and Solti performed the Variations at Carnegie Hall, and it still resonates in my memory.  Carter, visibly thrilled, was called out five times for bows.)

By 1976, Michael was tired of reviewing and the BSO cannily engaged him to write its program notes.  Later, he wrote notes for the orchestras of San Francisco, Minneapolis, and New York—the most cultured, erudite notes in my concert-going experience. One can get a taste of them in three collections published by Oxford: The Symphony (1995), The Concerto (1998), and Choral Masterworks (2005). 

Times have changed.  Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the New York Philharmonic have decided that shorter, less challenging notes are better suited to today’s audiences.  You see, knowledge is intimidating.  “We’re not here to educate,” was a line I heard often from the station manager at WNCN in the 1980s when I was editing Keynote, the station’s music magazine and program guide. In my first issue Michael wrote an article about Elliott Carter, our composer of the month.  Unfortunately, it was the only time I had the pleasure of working with him.

Pulcinella at Mostly Mozart

I try to avoid concerts in the summer, but I came out of hiding last night (8/5) for a complete Pulcinella at Lincoln Center and was amply rewarded by Montreal-born conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s spiffy conducting, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra’s superb playing, and better than usual singing in this piece by mezzo Karen Cargill, tenor Toby Spence, and bass Matthew Rose. The crisp attacks, sharp rhythms, wit, and buoyancy cocked a snook at the logy Chicago/Boulez outing at Carnegie last March.  But then Boulez’s music-making has never really danced, and at least the Midwestern band was far superior to the early-’70s New York Philharmonic when he last conducted it here. A fairer comparison would be with David Robertson’s tightly sprung rendering of the Pulcinella Suite with the Juilliard Orchestra at the reopening concert of Alice Tully Hall in late February, although even here Nézet-Séguin’s relative relaxation in some of the dances had its points. The flawless brass, pungent woodwinds, and excellent string ensemble—ideal for Stravinsky (or just about any other composer, for that matter)—had me smiling throughout. The highlight, for me, in this 40-minute performance was the gavotte con due variazioni, played to thrilling perfection by orchestra principals Demarre McGill (flute), Marc Goldberg (bassoon), and Lawrence DiBello (horn).  After that, the Mozart piano concerto and Mendelssohn “Italian” Symphony in the second half would only have been anticlimactic, and I departed happily.

By Sedgwick Clark

Did you see the piece in Musicalamerica.com on July 3 about 10,000 Londoners braving the record-breaking swelter to watch a free open-air live screening in Trafalgar Square of the Royal Opera House’s “La traviata” with Renée Fleming and Joseph Calleja? A further 10,000 watched on 15 open-air screens across the U.K. Moreover, the performance was also screened live into 177 cinemas around the U.K. and Europe, drawing 20,000 more opera fans.

Who says that classical music is dead?

Another Sign of the Times . . .

New York Philharmonic press release: July 7, 2009

NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC TO INTRODUCE “MOBILE GIVING”
AT 2009 CONCERTS IN THE PARKS, PRESENTED BY DIDI AND OSCAR SCHAFER, CONDUCTED BY ALAN GILBERT,  JULY 14-17, 2009

Audience Members Can Support the Philharmonic and Concerts in the Parks Through $5 Donations Made by Text Message

By Sedgwick Clark

I attended Sunday’s matinee of South Pacific at Lincoln Center Theater’s Vivian Beaumont with trepidation. I had known the music from the original cast album, starring Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza, for going on six decades and was worried that I’d be unable to accept anyone else. I never imagined that it would be the conducting that would deep-six this highly praised revival. From the first notes, I leaned forward in disbelief that Richard Rodgers’s gorgeous melodies could be rendered so inexpressively, so metronomically. “They’re just warming up,” I told myself. “They’ll relax when the singers chime in.” But no, this guy—Fred Lassen, by name—compromised everything to the very end.

The two leads, Laura Osnes (Nellie) and Paulo Szot (de Becque), were actually not bad, and struggled valiantly to escape their conductorial straitjacket. It wasn’t difficult to imagine how much better they could have been with a sympathetic leader. 

But Bartlett Sher’s direction was offputting too. All of the American characters just seemed angry, especially Billis (Danny Burstein) and Cable (Andrew Samonsky). “There Is Nothing Like a Dame” was misogynistic, not affectionate. A couple of G.I.s ran bare-assed from the shower (but no nurses?) to titters from the audience.  Sure, war is hell and bigotry is bad, but R&H aren’t Sondheim or Heggie.

And then there was the amplification. On the credit side, I could understand every word, many of which are smudged by the original cast. On the debit side, the singers must scale themselves to the machine: not too loud, not too soft, and always under control—in other words, with no truly emotional response to the music. Some 30 years ago, one Christmas night, I saw Hello, Dolly with Ethel Merman. She seemed subdued in the first act, but after intermission she stepped in front of the microphones for one of her songs and pinned me to the back of my last-row orchestra seat. Now that’s theater, never to be forgotten. 

Also unforgettable is the current Tony-winning revival of Hair, which has energy galore. Amplification may be inimical to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s warm-hearted inspirations, but it’s a necessary element in this great rock score.  It’s as unpretentious and true to the original as Sher’s 21^st -century view of South Pacific is not. 

By Sedgwick Clark         

With the concert season winding down and the threat of a closing notice on Thursday, I caught up with 33 Variations on Monday night. Just imagine!  Playwright Moisés Kaufman’s theme is the redemptive quality of music. On Broadway! 

An American musicologist (Jane Fonda) is obsessed with Beethoven’s monumental “Diabelli” Variations: How, she wonders, could he possibly have been interested in, and written 33 sublime variations on, his publisher Diabelli’s simple-minded waltz. So she sets off for Bonn to study Beethoven’s own sketches. Interwoven into this fictional dramatization is that the musicologist has Lou Gehrig’s disease. A further complication is that her daughter, whom she has never respected, insists on coming to Bonn to take care of her and prove her worth to both her dying mother and herself. 

The many friends who recommended the show and those with whom I attended it were serious classical-music lovers, but most of the audience undoubtedly came to see Fonda in her first Broadway appearance in 46 years—which, for the record was perfectly respectable, as was that of the entire cast. Pianist Diane Walsh ably performed the musical excerpts live. As I exited the theater, I couldn’t help wondering how much of the standing ovation was for Beethoven.

New Yorkers have two days to see 33 Variations before it exits Broadway’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre on Thursday, the 21^st. 

A Blog by Sedgwick Clark

Guilt allayed.  I’m relieved—as I endure the sadistic proddings of my otherwise charming and demure publisher and editor to produce a new entry—to read Steve Smith’s expression of guilt at neglecting his blog (Night After Night, presumably a takeoff on the Mae West film title):

[A]t home alone, my mind is racing. Should I be working on overdue freelance projects? Might I get ahead on my day-job work, so that perhaps I’ll have a few nights that don’t linger into the wee hours?

Instead, I’m taking the opportunity to update this poor, neglected blog of mine, which so seldom sees any attention apart from links to my Times writing. (Those links have frequently been tardy in recent months, something I should really work on if this blog is to serve any use at all.) . . . . I miss the days when there was time for larger reflections here.

John Rockwell confessed to me his skimping of blogular duty (Rockwell Matters) a few weeks ago at Carnegie Hall.  And then I note that Emanuel Ax, another regular blogger on MusicalAmerica.com, has not added to his blog since the same day of my last posting: April 8, when, coincidentally, I wrote about him.  (How’s that for chutzpah, comparing my blogerie with that of a major international performing artist?)

Actually, during this heaviest month of concertgoing in years, I’ve been working on an entry about several orchestras I’ve heard lately.  The graf on Gergiev’s Prokofiev symphony series was written weeks ago, so if anyone cares, it’s on the way!  But first . . .

Trenchant commentary on my fellow bloggers.  I confess I’ve not been a regular blog reader (bloggist?), but I scanned those of my colleagues last week [all MusicalAmerica.com “Editor’s Blog Picks” and listed on the home page], and I must say that they contain plenty of worthwhile and insightful observations when one has time to log on to them. 

• Anne Midgette (The Classical Beat) of the Washington Post writes of how she used to evaluate prospective boyfriends by their appreciation of Heifetz recordings, but that didn’t stop her from eventually marrying an anti-Heifetzian, the ever-iconoclastic Greg Sandow. I was pleased to see that she was also watching the 1947 film Carnegie Hall a few weeks ago on TCM, enduring the trite screenplay and wooden acting to revel in vintage performances by Heifetz, Rubinstein, Walter and the New York Philharmonic, Pinza, Pons, Rise Stevens, Peerce, Piatigorsky, Reiner, and the greatest magician of them all, Stokowski. This was the best copy of the film I’ve seen (typical of TCM, my favorite TV station by far)—crisp, excellent contrasts, few speckles.
• Alex Ross began his blog (therestisnoise) five years ago this week. He named it after his book in process, which became a big seller even for a book about classical music and has won many awards. If you haven’t read it yet, get it. Almost at once it became the blog of choice among classical literati. He does such things as run the score of Terry Riley’s “In C” to promo the Carnegie concert that week. He ranges widely in his topics and never wastes words, which allows him time to keep the blog up to date. I must study his technique.
• Tim Smith (Clef Notes) of the Baltimore Sun mixes local reviews with well-chosen YouTube clips. One day he included the slow movement of the Concerto for Two Pianos by Poulenc, one of his “all-time faves.” Now there’s a piece that would spruce up any concert, as would practically anything by Poulenc. Problem is, these days there aren’t enough of the sisters Lebècque and Pekinel to go around. In the interim, look for the Gold and Fizdale/Bernstein recording with the NYPhil on Sony’s Prince Charles Edition (undoubtedly deleted) at your nearest second-hand record store.
• Peter Dobrin (ArtsWatch) of the Philadelphia Enquirer takes care to range far wider than simply his town’s famous orchestra. He also includes loads of photos. In one posting he runs a p.r. shot of a gorgeous Austrian mezzo-soprano that’s so photo shopped as to be virtually unrecognizable . . . or did she go the Meg Ryan-Joan Rivers route? Last week at the Met I checked out a balding conductor’s bio in Playbill and was taken aback to see that he once had a full head of hair too. Tempus fugit. Hair today, gone tomorrow.
• Lawrence A. Johnson’s South Florida Classical Review has the handsomest blog design of this group. He writes that Vladimir Feltsman’s Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto in Miami was “note perfect” but “cool, technocratic and disengaged, with a shiny surface brilliance and little to say about the music’s heart.” That’s a perfect description of every performance of this piece I’ve heard in at least 30 years, except for one by Ivo Pogorelich with the Boston Symphony and Ozawa at Carnegie that was so defiantly distended that I haven’t gone to a concert or listened to a recording of his since. My favorite recording is the pirated live performance by Horowitz, Szell, and New York Philharmonic from 1953. It may not say much about the music’s heart, but if the soloist’s astonishing virtuosity doesn’t cause your jaw to drop—especially his double-octave fusillade in the finale—it’s time to pack it in. When asked why he played those double octaves so fast, Horowitz replied, “Because I can.” Legend has it that Szell said to the orchestra during rehearsal that the concerto was “a piece of shit” and that they should just let Horowitz do what he wanted. I don’t believe it: Even if Szell did say that, “perfunctory” was not in his musical lexicon. His life-or-death accompaniment is pugnacious and knife-edged, matching Horowitz’s challenge in every bar. My favorite modern recording features pianist Gary Graffman, a Horowitz pupil, accompanied by—guess who?—Szell in a similarly contoured but much less combative (i.e., more supportive) mood, this time with Cleveland. It’s on a two-CD set (Sony 827969473726) that contains Graffman’s excellent Second and Third Tchaik concertos with Ormandy and Philadelphia and the pianist’s versions of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures” and Balakirev’s “Islamey.” And while I’m on Graffman/Szell/Cleveland, the team’s bracing recording of Prokofiev’s First and Third Concertos is a must, in its best sound on Sony 828767874326, with the pianist’s recordings of the composer’s Second and Third Sonatas filling out the CD.
• Alan Rich (soiveheard) is as cantankerous as ever at age 84, but no one writes with such loving insight about music—especially Mozart’s.