Posts Tagged ‘alice tully hall’

Finding the Right Gimmick

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

Shaham’s 1939 Dark Horse

Gil Shaham had an epiphany. After years of recognition as one of the brightest young lights of the concert circuit, the Israeli-American violinist conjured one of the most imaginative programming concepts in years. He had been struck by how many violin concertos written in the 1930s had entered the basic repertoire: Stravinsky (1931), Berg and Prokofiev Second (1935); then, in 1939 alone, the same year that Hollywood produced perhaps its greatest year ever, the Bartók, Hindemith, Walton, Britten, and Barber concertos. Since 2009 he has performed all of these but the Hindemith and Britten, and in December, when he received Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year award for 2012, he promised that he would get to those too.

But there are many other concertos on the periphery waiting to be discovered—as Dennis D. Rooney mentioned in his tribute to Shaham in the Musical America Directory—waiting for the right performer to bring them alive to a public that loves the tried and true but welcomes a little spice too. The Szymanowski Second (1932) is one; Henryk Szeryng introduced it to me at a New York Philharmonic concert nearly 40 years ago. And after four decades of over a hundred concerts a season, countless radio broadcasts, and the collection and partial deaccession of over 20,000 LPs and 10,000 CDs, I’m about to be introduced to another ’30s violin concerto at a Philharmonic concert—this time courtesy of Gil Shaham, who gave the Walton concerto such a virtuoso turn with this orchestra last spring. The work is Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Concerto funebre (1939). Astonishingly (to me, anyway), I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a note of Hartmann’s music. Shaham will perform this concerto with the New York Philharmonic and David Zinman on March 15, 16, 17, and 20. Who knows? As with Szymanowski it may be a new love affair. I’ll let you know.

As a warmup to hearing Gil again in concert, I listened this past weekend to two Shaham CDs on his own Canary Classics label, which he founded several years ago when his previous label, Deutsche Grammophon, didn’t want to record a disc of Fauré chamber music. An all-Prokofiev disc (ATM CD 1555) includes the two violin sonatas, Opp. 80 and 94, the Five Melodies, Op. 35, and three Heifetz transcriptions sandwiched between the larger works. It’s a great CD, with the violinist contributing subtleties of dynamic shading and phrasing that elevated these works far beyond my previous estimation; he is ideally partnered by his sister, Orli Shaham. The sound, superbly produced by Eric Wen, matches the performers in its breathtaking realism. My preferred recording of the sonatas was previously the ’70s Perlman-Ashkenazy (most recently paired on an RCA CD with Perlman’s peerless recording of the Second Concerto with Leinsdorf and Boston). Henceforth, I’ll reach for the Shahams. Another superior Shaham CD on Canary is called “Virtuoso Violin Works” by Sarasate (CC07). This time Gil shares violin duties with his wife, Adele Anthony, and the pianist is Akira Eguchi. The four tracks requiring orchestral accompaniment feature the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León conducted by Alejandro Posada.

The Rest Is Noise in London

Another brilliant programming connection will dominate London’s Southbank Centre next season. It takes the subject of American music critic Alex Ross’s award-winning book The Rest Is Noise as a stepping-off point, and I quote:

“In 2007 Alex Ross wrote the seminal book The Rest Is Noise – listening to the Twentieth Century. Throughout 2013 we bring the book alive, with nearly 100 concerts, performances, films, talks and debates. We will take you on a chronological journey through the most important music of the 20th century to dramatise the massive political and social upheavals. The London Philharmonic Orchestra, with over 30 concerts, is the backbone of the festival that reveals the stories behind the rich, exhilarating and sometimes controversial compositions that have changed the way we listen forever.”

BBC Four is also involved in the project, assuring that the Foggy City will be awash in 20th-century music next season (see link).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2012/bbc-four-southbank-partnership.html

NOW, I ask you, my good friends at Lincoln Center: Here’s a concept inspired by an internationally acclaimed book by an American author, published in America (Farrar, Straus, Giroux). With all your resources and a campus made for a project of such scope, why . . . ? But that’s a hopeless query. The Brits beat us to it, and no arts org on this coast is likely to jump off the 20th-century music cliff in today’s economic climate.

A New Carlos Kleiber Bio—in ENGLISH!

Alison Ames informs me that Corresponding with Carlos: A biography of Carlos Kleiber by Charles Barber has been published by Kindle, available through Amazon for $52.69. The reader reviews, which seem astute, are raves, and two of the reviewers find the price well worth it. Here’s the link:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Carlos+Kleiber&x=0&y=0

American readers frustrated by the existence of three bios in German may click on this link for info (they’ll still be frustrated, of course, but at least the info will be available to them):

http://www.amazon.de/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?__mk_de_DE=%C5M%C5Z%D5%D1&url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Kleiber%2C+Carlos&x=0&y=0

Looking Forward

My week’s scheduled concerts:

3/15 Metropolitan Opera. Verdi: Macbeth. Gianandrea Noseda (cond.). Thomas Hampson, baritone; Nadja Michael, soprano; Dimitri Pittas, tenor ; Günther Groissböck, bass.

3/16 Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic/David Zinman; Gil Shaham, violin. Hartmann: Concerto funebre. Beethoven: Symphony Nos. 1 and 3.

3/17 Walter Reade Theater.1:30 The Callas Effect. 3:00 Callas on Film.

3/17 Alice Tully Hall. Vadim Repin, violin; Itamar Golan, piano. Janácek: Violin Sonata. Ravel: Violin Sonata. Violin Sonata No. 2. Chausson: Poème. Ravel: Tzigane.

3/18 Carnegie Hall. American Symphony Orchestra/Leon Botstein; Stephen Powell, Lori Guilbeau, Robert Chafin, Burak Bilgili, Corey Bix, soloists; Collegiate Chorale Singers. Schmidt: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (in concert).

3/21 Rockefeller University. Rachel Barton Pine, violin. Paganini: Caprices (24).

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Masterly Mann at Manhattan

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

In their wildest dreams, the six string quartets couldn’t have asked for more. Nor could music lovers, as the Manhattan School of Music rang in the New Year with what it called the “Inaugural Robert Mann String Quartet Institute.” Yes, this is why I left Muncie, but this time my hometown friends could share the event, for the Thursday and Friday master classes were streamed worldwide. Those who couldn’t attend could watch the great man inspire several gifted young musicians in works by Brahms, Bartók, and Beethoven, among others. And now they can see both classes by going to www.dl.msmnyc.edu/archive. Which I highly recommend!

For those not into chamber music, Robert Mann is renowned as the founding first violinist of the Juilliard String Quartet (in 1946) and, moreover, probably the postwar era’s foremost influence on the “American” style of chamber-music playing. Since retiring from the Quartet in 1997, he has continued to perform chamber music, conduct, give master classes, and teach on the faculty of the Manhattan School. The passion and personality of the many JSQ performances I’ve heard over the years in concert and on record were fully evident in his comments at Friday’s session. Indeed, his many expressive tips to the PUBLIQuartet in the Poco allegretto of Brahms’s Third Quartet gave me an appreciation of the music I’d never had before.

As usual, however, it was the Bartók performances that grabbed me. The Juilliard recorded the six quartets three times since 1950. It was the second cycle—recorded in 1963, released in 1965, and honored with a Grammy the next year—that introduced me to the works and which I still prefer above all others. (The CD reissue, now on Sony Classical/ArchivMusic 77119, sounds excellent. Mann is on all three cycles; be sure you get the one with Cohen, Hillyer, and Adam.) A complete Juilliard Bartók cycle at Alice Tully Hall, 43 years ago this month, is no less vivid in my early New York memory bank than my first Bernstein/Philharmonic concert, or Colin Davis leading Peter Grimes with Jon Vickers and Wozzeck with Geraint Evans at the Met. In the mid 1980s, the JSQ’s long-time press rep, Alix Williamson, presented the group in the complete Brahms and Bartók quartets at Tully, and I complained that she was devaluing Bartók. Alix, who loved Brahms and detested Bartók, barked endearingly that if she listened to the likes of me, no one would come. I miss her.

Mann’s insightful blend of performance comments, anecdotes, and cheerleading at Manhattan—filmed admirably, by the way, with none of the herky-jerky camera cross-cutting that can compromise one’s attention—revealed a master of persuasion. When the Ars Nova Quartet plays the Allegro molto capriccioso second movement of Bartók’s Second Quartet, Mann initially has nothing but praise, telling of the time a group played the Third Quartet for the composer and was disappointed when Bartók simply stood up and said, “Good, let’s have lunch.” Mann continues, “The great composers are less critical than you might think.” He suggests that the young players should worry less about wrong notes and dig in more. “You know, Bartók as a performer played very cool, but he liked performers to play wildly.” The violist demurs, “But we’re on the Internet.” Still, the Ars Nova foursome plays part of the movement again, digging in as prescribed, and the results are markedly superior—as in every case of following Mann’s masterly advice.

Next, the Old City Quartet plays the Mesto-Burletta movement of Bartók’s Sixth Quartet. Mann asks for more march character (“It lacks rhythmic swing”) and evokes the opening of Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat as a guide. Later he remarks about a precipitous speedup, laughing robustly, “Your accelerando is too fast: You’re very exciting, but it’s too fast.” After a slower runthrough he says, with a huge grin, “Terrific!  I’d like you in my quartet,” and the four players break into smiles. A final comment: “Can you make a bigger bite on that C?” he asks the first violinist, and when he does Mann shouts, “Ah-h-h-h, wonderful!”

Now 91, Robert Mann seems the youngest man in the room. I can’t wait for next year’s master classes.

Looking Forward

Concerts I would attend next week were I not on vacation:

1/14 Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn. 4:30-9:00 p.m. Brooklyn Art Song Society. Complete Songs of Charles Ives (114).

1/18-21 Avery Fisher Hall. New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert; Lang Lang, piano. Lindberg: Feria. Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 2. Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5.

1/20 Carnegie Hall. American Symphony Orchestra/Leon Botstein. Stravinsky: The King of the Stars; Mavra; Requiem Canticles; Canticum Sacrum; Babel; Symphony of Psalms.

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“Pina,” Wim Wenders’ 3D Dance Film

Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

By Rachel Straus

“You just have to get crazier.” These words came from Pina Bausch, the late choreographer, whose dance troupe made the industrial city of Wuppertal, Germany an avant-garde theatrical destination for 36 years. In Wim Wenders’ 3D documentary “Pina,” screened on October 15 at Alice Tully Hall for the New York Film Festival, audiences got a taste of what Bausch’s crazy looks like. In one scene, a Bausch dancer walks through a park in a floor-length dress like a zombie queen. The woman careens to the ground, flat as a board. Right before smashing her face, her suitor scoops her up like a crane lift. Then she falls again, and again. The effect is part amusement ride, part suicide watch.

Bausch’s surrealistic collage-structured dances revel in the frightening, funny, fragile inner states of the human psyche. On Bausch’s stage compulsive disorders, misogynism, sadism, and run-of-the-mill cultural oppression cavort like lunatics at an insane asylum. Fortunately, Bausch chose her inmates well. Her cadre of dancers resemble one-of-a-kind flowers, grown in places as far afield as Brazil and Tokyo. Before one’s eyes, their limbs uncoil, tendril-like, always searching for something to grasp. Inevitably they fall. The metaphor is an obvious one, but Bausch won die-hard fans around the world with this trope in her 40-plus works. Her dances evoked desperate perseverance, in all of its illogical inanity. Her singular message was digestible because she made human effort, and failure, look beautifully irresistible.

Pina Bausch, 68, died June 2009, the night before Wim Wenders was to begin shooting their long-postponed film collaboration. Since 1985 Wenders, whose films include “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Paris, Texas,” and “Wings of Desire,” had been discussing with Bausch a project featuring her choreography. On stage Wenders explained that it wasn’t until he saw 3D film technology, he felt he could do Bausch’s work justice. Regular film, Wenders said, creates an “invisible wall” between the dance and the celluloid image. “Something,” he said, “did not work.” With that comment, Wenders invited the audiences to consider whether his 3D “Pina” does.

When Wenders’ 3D segments captured Bausch’s dancers on tramcars and busy roadways, in parks and glass houses, the film became bigger than life. The dancers’ gesture-driven performances in these hyper-pixilated landscapes grew mesmerizing with the sharp, glistening quality of the film. Among the rush of cars, swaying of  trees, and presence of pedestrians, the dancers became absorbed into a heightened but familiar reality, a piece with Bausch’s style of magic realism.

When the dancers were shot in the theater, however, Wenders encountered less success. His close-up camera work felt intrusive and aggressive. In one segment, Wenders’ camera closed in on a woman’s squirming back in Bausch’s 1975 “Rite of Spring.” By zeroing in on her struggle, Wenders made the moment personal instead of archetypal. In “Rite,” the cast resembles primitives. Their landscape is a dirt-strewn stage. The proscenium frames them the way an icon painting is framed by an architectural portal. The dancers become effigies; their individual features are abstracted through their unison, slicing movement.

Though Bausch’s performers occasionally saunter through theater aisles looking glamorous and talking to regular folk, when they represent universal beings, they do it on stage at at remove from the audience. Bausch didn’t offer ticket holders intimacy. She created a theatrical portal for her vision to be perceived. Her method was simple: She distanced the performer from the spectator. She created just the kind of wall that Wenders wants to permeate.

Whether 3D films like “Pina” will fan the flames of the American dance audience is much in discussion. Thus far a handful of 3D dance films have been produced, including The Kirov’s “Giselle,” Matthew Bourne’s “Swan Lake,” Michael Flatley’s “Lord of the Dance, and “Step Up 3D.” Turning a dancing body into a 3D piece of digitalia is fascinating, but whether it can compete with the power of live dance performance isn’t a slam dunk. When Wenders’ camera gave Bausch performers the space to disport themselves, he captured their beautiful craziness. He transmitted their quality of dangerous freedom. He didn’t come in for a close up. At these moments, I think, Pina Bausch would have been pleased.

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Mostly Mozart/Some Stravinsky

Friday, August 12th, 2011

by Sedgwick Clark

Lincoln Center’s attempt to add variety to Mostly Moz is just fine with me, especially if the variety is Stravinsky. Audiences seem to agree too, for a Saturday afternoon of Stravinsky films and two concerts of his chamber music by the spiffy International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) were packed.

The first of the films was the familiar CBS New Special on the composer, narrated by Charles Kuralt. There’s a lot of good material here (unfortunately in a washed-out video source so typical of the 1960s), particularly an appearance in Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, where Le Sacre du printemps received its scandalous premiere on May 29, 1913. The aged composer tells of that infamous occasion and walks to the seat in which he sat that night. But not for long, as the audience’s catcalling began almost immediately and the infuriated composer arose from his seat, shouted “Go to hell,” and headed backstage.

The second film documents a powerfully emotional 1963 Budapest performance of the composer leading the Hungarian Radio Orchestra in his Symphony of Psalms. Ensemble is iffy, tuning of the winds is wishful, and the orchestra is obviously following the concertmaster rather than Stravinsky’s jerky beats. But none of this matters in light of a mesmerizingly slow third movement that never loses its rapt concentration and buoyant rhythm. How could he ever have said — even to make an anti-Romantic point — that “music is powerless to express anything”?

The third film was choreographer Pina Bausch’s 1978 rendering of Le Sacre (to Boulez’s Cleveland recording), overpowered by the music as usual. The fourth film was Julie Taymor’s fanciful production of Oedipus Rex, which was about as far from the composer’s austere conception as could be imagined, and presumably welcome to those who find the music marmoreal. Jessye Norman and Philip Langridge sing well, with Seiji Ozawa leading the Saito Kinen Festival Orchestra.

Stravinsky on ICE

The pair of ICE concerts on Monday, August 8, offered rarely played works in sterling performances. The 7:30, in Alice Tully Hall, was all Stravinsky, and the 10:30 concert in the Kaplan Penthouse was Stravinsky and several short works written in memoriam to him by Denisov, Berio, Carter, Finnissy, Schnittke, and Zorn. (The complete listing of works is at the end of my previous blog.) So, let’s talk about the guest conductor, Pablo Heras-Casado. The day after this concert, my friend Mark Swed, music critic of the Los Angeles Times, called to ask if I had heard these concerts (silly question) and what I thought of Pablo. To tell the truth, I hadn’t heard of him before reading Steve Smith’s Times review on Monday of an earlier concert in which H-C reportedly set very fast tempos in Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, which is the only way I can abide the piece (after all, Wolfy did specify Molto Allegro and Allegro assai for the outer movements). But now that I have I won’t miss his next local appearances. His bio says he’s “A champion of contemporary music” and that he has the imprimatur of Pierre Boulez. Oddly, however, there’s no mention of his home country and age. He’s 34, hails from Granada, Spain, and has a bush of dark, curly hair that rivals Gustavo’s. He, too, is blessed with matinee idol looks. From the Tully balcony he looked to be all of 20 when he smiled, but seemed closer to his given age in the intimate Penthouse.

He certainly knows his way around a score. Stravinsky’s Ragtime, “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto, Eight Instrumental Miniatures, and the Octet downstairs zipped along delightfully. He might have reined in his ICE players a bit and achieved crisper textures, but such sins of youth are forgivable in light of such clean rhythms and lively tempos. Only the thorny Concerto for Piano and Winds disappointed; had I not heard the revelatory performance last season at Zankel by Jeremy Denk and John Adams conducting the Ensemble ACJW, the performance in Tully would have seemed impressive. But Peter Serkin’s technically unimpeachable yet comparatively monochromatic solo work paled next to Denk’s fleet-fingered, balletic romp.

Perahia’s Bach

A Sony Classical re-release in a three-CD set (88697 82429 2) of Bach keyboard concertos played by Murray Perahia is so darned musical that one wonders where nearly everyone else went wrong. So warm, expressive, joyous, naturally paced—if you don’t have these recordings already, don’t hesitate.

Contents: Keyboard Concertos Nos. 1-7; Concerto for Flute, Violin & Harpsichord in A minor, BWV 1044; Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050; Italian Concerto in F major, BWV 971.

Looking forward

8/12-13 Bard Music Festival. Sibelius and His World.

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Precision Isn’t Everything

Friday, August 5th, 2011

by Sedgwick Clark

We’ve been in the thrall of “perfect” playing for so long that sometimes it takes a less than precise ensemble to remind us of genuine character. The Royal Danish Orchestra, under its music director Michael Schønwandt, had it in spades last week in its delightful program of native son Carl Nielsen’s strange little Pan and Syrinx and his irresistible Clarinet Concerto, followed after intermission by Stravinsky’s complete Pulcinella.

Nielsen’s tongue-in-cheek sense of humor informs both of these works. Nila Parly’s program notes on Pan and Syrinx tell us that “Five days prior to the premiere, Nielsen’s daughter, Anne Marie, was married to Hungarian violinist Emil Telmányi. Nielsen had been slow in granting his permission for the marriage, and the fact that his wedding gift to the young couple was the dedication of this particular symphonic poem about a lascivious musician who pursues an innocent nymph and transforms her into his instrument, speaks volumes about Nielsen’s own perceptions of his son-in-law.” Perhaps, except that Telmányi soon became his father-in-law’s closest friend and a lifetime champion, performing and recording his Violin Concerto and other works as well as conducting the first performance of the Clarinet Concerto.

The clarinet is hardly overrun with solo vehicles, yet Nielsen’s high-spirited, thoroughly engaging concerto is not often played. (Nor, mysteriously, is his more playful Flute Concerto.) He had intended to write concertos for all his friends in the Copenhagen Wind Quintet but only finished two before his death. Both pieces were impishly tailored to their soloist’s personalities. The hot-tempered clarinetist’s fiery solo line was challenged by the subversive rat-a-tat-tat of a snare drum; the fastidious flutist was pursued by a buffoonish trombone, interestingly the instrument that Nielsen himself played in military band.

The Nielsen works received superbly committed, idiomatic performances by all, notably the orchestra’s principal clarinetist, John Kruse, in the solo role.

I was sitting way down front on audience right of Alice Tully Hall. Balances would have been better in a central location, but I might not have appreciated as much the wonderful double bass players in my lap or the virtuoso bassoonist in my sideways sight line. Under no circumstances could I have overlooked the fine concertmaster, Tobias Durholm, but never before have I been so aware of his quasi solo role in Pulcinella. On the debit side, while the strings were always expressive, ensemble was untidy at times; moreover, the oboe’s quacking tone was not to my taste, and the flute couldn’t always negotiate Stravinsky’s scurrying passagework. The singers were challenged, as ever, by the composer’s unrealistic demands. This is a really difficult piece! But music was being made, and I walked out of Tully a happy concertgoer.

Woody and MoMA

Sunday afternoon at MoMA followed by Woody Allen’s latest film, Midnight in Paris, turned out to be the most enjoyable artistic couplet since the last time I saw Paris. Entranced in the flesh, so to speak, by Picasso’s Seated Bather (1930) and then seeing it onscreen hours later was a treat available only in New York.

“You’re Next! You’re Next!”

. . . shouts Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) as he stumbles frantically between cars on a California freeway, trying to warn the drivers of impending doom in the classic 1956 sci-fi film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott did a well-timed piece on this celluloid shocker in the paper’s Web site on Tuesday (8/2), the day of the final congressional vote on America’s debt ceiling controversy. The plot: Seed pods from outer space take root in Santa Mira, California. They reproduce themselves in identical human form, complete with the minds and memories of the local inhabitants—except that they are devoid of emotions and their only instinct is survival. Fifties’ critics saw it as a commentary on McCarthyism or Communism. Today one might imagine the pod people as Tea Partiers or the Republican Party.

I was struck by a readers’ response to Scott from Brian in Philadelphia:

“As far as I’m concerned, ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ has already occurred in my lifetime. As a middle-aged man who can easily remember a time when no one cell phoned, blackberried, or even wore a beeper, I think I perceive what a good many cannot, apparently: That the world is now cluttered with the bodies of people who simply are no longer present.

“If you happen to look up from your glowing handheld device, you too may see them wandering down the street, texting as they walk, oblivious, for all practical purposes, gone. Persons to whom one might pose a question, who stare at you blankly until they’ve removed their earbuds to blearily ask you to repeat yourself. Gamers lost in fantasy worlds, inaccessible, frozen. People who come to a sudden standstill in doorways, persons parked in the middle of public stairways, who have slipped into a cell phone coma, not so much expecting others to accommodate them but unaware that others exist at all. As everyone accepts this as normal.

“It is not my fault that I can see this. ‘Body Snatchers’ conveys what it’s like.”

In a slightly different take on Wednesday’s Op-Ed page, in a piece entitled “Washington Chain Saw Massacre,” Maureen Dowd evoked not only Body Snatchers but also Alien and The Exorcist as well as nearly every other horror film image from Dracula and Frankenstein to “cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive.” It would be hilarious if it weren’t so true.

Looking Forward

My week’s scheduled concerts:

8/6. Walter Reade Theater. Stravinsky on Film. 2:00: Janos Darvas’s 2001 documentary, Stravinsky: Composer and the composer leading his Symphony of Psalms in Hungary. 4:00: Julie Taymor’s 1992 production of Oedipus Rex and Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring with the Tanztheater Wuppertal and the Cleveland Orchestra.

8/8. 7:30: Alice Tully Hall. International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)/Pablo Heras-Casado; Peter Serkin, piano. All-Stravinsky: Study for Pianola; Fanfare for a New Theatre; Lied ohne Name; Epitaphium; Three Pieces for String Quartet; Ragtime; Concertino; “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto; Eight Instrumental Miniatures; Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments.

8/8 10:30: Kaplan Penthouse. ICE/Pablo Heras-Casado. Stravinsky: Pour Pablo Picasso; Bach (arr. Stravinsky, ed. Hogwood): Four Preludes and Fugues (sel.); Stravinsky: Epitaphium; Finnissy: Untitled piece to honour Igor Stravinsky; Denisov: Canon in Memory of Stravinsky; Berio: Autre fois: Berceuse canoníque pour Igor Stravinsky; Carter: Canon for Three Equal Instruments: In memoriam Igor Stravinsky; Schnittke: Canon in Memoriam Igor Stravinsky; Stravinsky: Octet.

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Second entry from our esteemed, don’t-make-me-do-this blogger

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

Why I Left Muncie. Half a dozen things to do every night without turning on a TV; Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall a stone’s throw from home; the Sunday Times on Saturday night; MoMA and the Met; theater and film; in the good old days, record stores. This title is kind of unfair to my home town because my move to New York 40 years ago was emphatically a positive one, not anything negative about Indiana. All I knew was that I, myself, didn’t belong in the Lynds’ Middletown U.S.A.

Bells of the Hall. By now everybody has read that Tully Hall’s Second Coming is the bee’s knees. But what about the icing on the cake: the intermission bells? No, I’m not kidding. Remember those exotic intermission bells at Philharmonic (now Avery Fisher) Hall? In 1965 Leonard Bernstein wanted a new signal for the audience to return to its seats, so he asked his assistant, the composer Jack Gottlieb, to select some felicitous 12-tone rows as prompters. “I chose rows written by the second Vienna school, Stravinsky, and Bernstein,” Jack recounted earlier this week, “and recorded them on a celesta for Lenny’s approval.” After Bernstein retired as music director in 1969 and George Szell, who detested 12-tone music, became interim “music advisor,” the bells were replaced by what sounded like foghorns. Soon after Pierre Boulez became music director in 1971, I urged him after a concert to reinstate the bells. Boulez hadn’t known about them, but he must have approved of Jack’s recording because they reappeared not long afterwards. They disappeared again at some point after Boulez’s departure, but now someone at Lincoln Center has had the brilliant idea to revive them at the newly reopened Alice Tully Hall. Bravo! Long may they resound.

A Revelatory Onegin. Tony Tommasini in the NYTimes wrote that Karita Mattila (MA’s Musician of the Year, 2005) as Tatiana was “a revelation” in the Met’s “Eugene Onegin.” Some critics wrote she was a bit long in the tooth. Peter Davis summed it up to me in conversation, “She’s astonishing—fifty and nifty.” [See his review.] The Met Tatiana I recall most warmly was the 57-year-old Mirella Freni in 1992. For me, on February 9th, the revelation was Thomas Hampson (MA’s Vocalist of the Year, 1992), who made me realize for the first time what an s.o.b. Onegin is. His singing was top-notch too, as was Poitr Beczala’s as Lenski. All of this fine vocalism was compromised by the flat-footed conducting of Jirí Belohlávec.

Classical Music in the Movies. OK, let’s see if anyone is reading this thing. Classical music was a natural for the early talkies: It was cheap (no copyright problems), and it was handy seed inspiration for a composer on deadline. My first strains of Liszt, Schumann, Schubert, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky were courtesy of the movies—in particular, Universal’s sublimely silly horror films, which I loved and still do to my wife PK’s bewilderment (“a guy thing”; “arrested development,” she says). The title music for Dracula, Frankenstein, Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Mummy—all made in the early ’30s—is Tchaikovsky’s sinister Black Swan theme from Swan Lake. A veritable treasure trove of this sort of thing is the 1934 Karloff-Lugosi thriller, The Black Cat. Its soundtrack is all classical, and I identified ten pieces when I watched it recently (on an inexpensive, decently transferred Universal DVD called The Bela Lugosi Collection). How many classical pieces can you identify? See what you can find, and we’ll compare notes.

Whatever Happened to Ben Zander? He has made several recordings for Telarc in recent years, most notably of Mahler symphonies—Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9. But after the Mahler First in 2005, not a peep. One hopes the Seventh will show up one of these days, but like many aborted Mahler cycles, we may never get the expensive Second and Eighth, or Das Lied von de Erde, for that matter. Too bad. Zander’s Eighth at Carnegie several years ago—with his Boston Philharmonic, a group of professional and amateur players—was the best I’ve ever heard live. Now, after nearly four years, he has turned to Bruckner—the Fifth Symphony (Telarc 2CD-80706). That this distinguished recording can even be mentioned in the company of Furtwängler’s extraordinary 1942 live performance (DG or Music & Arts)—possibly the greatest performance of any piece of music, ever—or Karajan’s immensely powerful DG recording, speaks highly for Zander’s accomplishment. As with his previous Telarc releases (all with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra), a second CD contains the conductor’s truly insightful comments into the music. I recommend them all.

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