A Blog by Sedgwick Clark
Man(ny) of the Year. A ray of hope in our embattled biz. A world-famous pianist learns that an orchestra he has performed with for decades may go under, and he waives his fee for a pair of concerts (MA.com, 3/20). The orchestra is Ohio’s financially strapped Columbus Symphony, and the pianist is Emanuel Ax. It was his idea, reported the CSO management, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has basked in the warmth and generosity of his playing. So, who’s next?
Southern Turn at Tanglewood. Ever notice how newly appointed music directors charge into their jobs with enterprising, challenging programs, only to turn south after a couple of years? James Levine, for instance, loaded his first few Boston Symphony seasons with Carter, Babbitt, Wuorinen, and Schoenberg. Critics raved and audiences ran. For a time, some of those works turned up at the orchestra’s summer music festival at Tanglewood, and last season featured a daringly inclusive tribute to Carter for his 100th birthday. But that experiment appears to be history. The newly announced season opens with Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” and the First Piano Concerto, closes with Beethoven’s Ninth, and contains a single unfamiliar name on the weekend orchestra concerts: the late George Perle, for his brief, sweet-natured Sinfonietta No. 2, performed “in memoriam.”
Trash Cans at Tully. My ecstasy was short-lived. As reported in my second blog, the 12-tone bells signaling the end of intermission—which made their debut in the ’60s at Philharmonic, now Fisher, Hall—were resurrected at Tully’s reopening. On further trips to Tully those evocative tintinnabuli were replaced by what sounds like the banging of garbage cans or at least the world’s most cacophonous cow bells. Is this a musical decision? Scarier still, do the New Populists at Lincoln Center worry that the tone rows might alienate audiences?
Perahian Perfection. Murray Perahia’s recital last week (3/31) at Fisher of works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, capped off by an encore by Schubert, was so exquisite that I felt underdressed. Normally I wouldn’t go near such a rearguard program, but he’s one of two or three pianists I would willingly hear play an evening of Hanon. Brahms’s “Handel” Variations, my favorite of his solo piano works, has been lodged in my head all week like a tape loop. I must remember to wear a coat and tie to his next recital.
Fisher’s Murk. I love you, Lincoln Center. But the lighting in Fisher Hall has been impossible this season. Any farther back than row R seems remote under the best of circumstances. But sitting in row Y, with hall lighting suitable for necking and the stage barely bright enough to find the bathroom at night, poor Perahia seemed to be in the next county. Need I add that such dim lighting compromises the music-making as well? I once asked a British friend what he thought of the concert we’d just heard at Fisher, and he replied, “I kept wanting to turn the volume up.” Hey guys, I know you want to attract young’uns to your concerts, but the majority of your patrons are aging—nay, OLD—and presbyopic (like me), which brings me to another subject: the program type. It’s the same point size as Carnegie’s program (8/11), but LC’s is lightface and CH’s is medium. Even in a reasonably illuminated house, LC’s programs would be more difficult to read. Let’s be reasonable.
Patelson’s music store, in back of Carnegie Hall for 70 years, will close up shop for ever on April 18. The mice had preceded me when I stopped in yesterday for visitation, and the few remaining items are 35 to 40 percent off, depending on which clerk you speak with. What’s next?