Good Knights (6/24/14)

A beautiful summer evening saw the first concert in the 109th season of the Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, featuring The Knights, a nifty small orchestra based in New York.

Quintet in C major Op. 30, No. 6, “La Musica Notturna delle strade di Madrid” – Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805)
Mozart “Coronation” Concerto – Re-Composition – I. Allegro, II. (Larghetto), III. (Allegretto) – Timo Andres (1985–)
Light Screens – Andrew Norman (1979–)
Three Places in New England – I. The “St. Gaudens” in Boston Common
(Col. Shaw and his colored Regiment), II. Putnam’s Camp, Redding Connecticut,
III. The Housatonic at Stockbridge – Charles Ives (1874–1954)

The Andres and Ives were conducted by Eric Jacobsen while the Boccherini and the Norman (a quartet) were played sans conductor. A thoroughly charming piece, the Boccherini had eight small (not quite miniature) movements—the first had plucked pizzicato chords, simulating bells, and the second was all, or mostly all, percussion/drums. These were followed by a gentle dance, a simple but beautiful fourth movement, a fifth that was repetitive and increased in volume and speed, martial drums in the sixth, and capping off with the final movement of quite rhythmic, full string sound, tying everything together.

The re-composed Mozart concerto was a hit, as far as I’m concerned. Here’s the deal—as originally published, Mozart had many, many empty bars for the left hand of the solo piano part. He was playing it; he knew what he wanted to do; he did it. Later, publishers filled in those bars with what they thought Mozart would have done. The pianist/“composer” here played his own version of music for the left hand. Yes, indeed, the orchestra played pure Mozart, while the pianist played Mozart (right hand) and Andres (left hand). So we had jazz riffs, different types of scales, etc. I had an “Aha!” moment when I realized that it was akin to an organist re-harmonizing a hymn tune. It reminded me of Victor Borge, but not played for laughs. I’m sure there are many who feel that Mozart’s music should not be trifled with. I didn’t consider this trifling at all.

After intermission, Alex Sopp, flute; Colin Jacobsen, violin; Miranda Sielaff, viola; and Eric Jacobsen, cello played Light Screens (apparently inspired by stained glass window designs of Frank Lloyd Wright). The piece was modern in style, rhythmic, with a slight touch of bluegrass. I was sensing forward motion—maybe a train? The openness of the writing could signify light screens and stained glass, but it seemed a little forced to me. I also got echoes of Aaron Copland.

The first of the three movements of the Ives was slightly amorphous with a pastiche of dissonances. I found myself wondering what type of reception it might have gotten at its premiere in 1931—by that, I mean that while sounding modern to me (but not too far out or inaccessible), I wonder how a ‘new’ style like that fared back then. Just musing. The second movement was much more focused though still with pastiche qualities. The final movement was calm, similar to the first movement, but then had a tighter control and was, at times, shimmering and liquid. I liked the piece but was not bowled over.

That said, The Knights are top notch in my book (they’re also playing the third of this five-concert series), and I aim to be at all five of the Naumburg concerts this summer. They are a real New York treasure—both the concerts and The Knights.

ConcertMeister

Make Music New York (6/21/14)

Twice a year, at the summer and winter solstices, New York (and other cities) celebrate with Make Music programs. Often, I miss out on a lot of it because they fall on work days. So I was very pleased to see that Make Music New York was a Saturday this year, and I set a schedule for myself. There are about 1,000 different free events to choose from, ranging from classical to hip-hop, reggae to opera, grunge bands to popular music. I chose Fan Favorites, the American Composers Orchestra, Bargemusic, and Appalachian (Summer): Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” for 13 instruments. The best laid plans, etc.

The first event took place out of doors, in front of the Turtle Bay Music School at 11:00am. Sort of. Being an early person, and not knowing exactly what to expect, I arrived around 10:30, and they were just setting up. So I found a quiet place to sit and read for a while, returning at five minutes till eleven. They were still setting up; in fact, they didn’t begin until about ten after. The Unofficial Turtle Bay Trio (electric keyboard, electric guitar, and vocals) performed such favorites as In Your Eyes, The Luckiest, I Choose You, Starry Starry Night (at last! a favorite that I actually knew), It’s Not Easy Being Green, and, with a neat little nod to The Turtles, So Happy Together. They encouraged audience participation, so the approximately ten of us half-heartedly chimed in with, “Ba-ba-ba-ba, Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.” In general the trio was fairly laid back and adequate. An inauspicious beginning.

After an early lunch of a really delicious falafel in pita, I traipsed down to the Lower East Side and the Abrons Arts Center. Again I was early and heard one of the organizers noodling around on an upright piano. He even invited a little girl to play along for a bit. I liked this ad lib music as part of Make Music. The American Composers Orchestra arrived late, in stages, and as a result had to cut their performance a little short. We heard violin, viola, cello, flute, clarinet, and percussion play the music of six young composers. All of the short pieces had intrinsic value though some were more mature compositions than others. There wasn’t a clunker in the bunch, and members of the [kāj] ensemble played very well.

At this point, I decided to skip the barge and stick around for the next installation at the al fresco Abrons Center, which was Judith Sainte Croix and the Sonora Trio, with selections from Ms. Sainte Croix’s opera Vine of the Soul and her Acadian Suite. Her music was based on ecological themes and was a little too New Age-y for my tastes. Acadian Suite was played on a Native American flute, which looked like a large recorder and sounded like a small recorder. But I guess it and its sound were authentic. I didn’t stick around for all of it (see New Age-y, above), and then set off for the Upper East Side and Copland.

Arriving at the venue, volunteers were taking instruments inside and dismantling the outdoor performance site. Heading inside, I asked a volunteer where the Copland would be performed. Apparently not there, as they were done for the day. I wasn’t the only one who showed up there, either. Rather than try to scout out where and when the Copland might actually be, I decided to call it a day and go home.

Make Music New York is worthwhile, but I found the lack of organization and the misinformation a disappointment. The winter solstice is a Sunday this year so, depending on the weather and other situations, I might give Make Music another try. But I might not.

ConcertMeister

Jacqueline Jonée—“All Composers Gay”

Jacqueline Jonée, the Premier Drag Queen Diva, brought her performances to the Library of Performing Arts on Monday evening (there was also a matinée, and I’ve seen at least three earlier iterations). The fourth time was not quite the charm that I expected, though there was fun to be had. Her piano playing was great, as usual, and she had a guest artist this year, pianist Jean-Pierre Lemarié, and of course, the ever-present JouJou Jacquettes Philharmonic Orchestra. There were feathers, there were sequins (and that was some of the boys)!

The hook in “All Composers Gay” was—d’oh! there have been gay composers throughout history. So, we had a bit of a lecture/recital feel, with attendant biographical material and music. Ms. Jonée opened at the keyboard with a Cole Porter medley, Night and Day/Begin the Beguine, with the Jacquettes. Porter was pretty clearly known as being gay, but the next composers included a lot of speculation. G.F. Handel(?), we heard Chaconne in G Major, played well by M. Lemarié. There were many rolled chords and trills, thoroughly in the Baroque style. Schubert(?), we heard Three Concert Pieces, also played by M. Lemarié. The first was very Romantic, with a dramatic flair; the second was gentler, in general, still with some drama of its own; and the third was energetic right from the start and all the way through. What I did learn (and found quite interesting) is that these pieces were never heard in Schubert’s lifetime as they were published posthumously many years later by Brahms.

Ms. Jonée returned in a big, pouffey gown, and sat at the keyboard. With the skirt of the gown all pouffed up, she made a reference to the upcoming gay pride parade—“I’m my own float!” Apropos of the occasion, we next heard a set piece by Bernstein, the America/Nothing’s Gonna Harm You/There’s a Place for Us medley. It’s always effective and was so again.

Percy Grainger was gay? I did not know that. M. Lemarié joined Ms. Jonée for a four-hand version of Country Gardens (yes, you know it, Dum-dum-de-dum-dum, dum-de-dum-de-dum (all together now) “in an English Country Ga-ar-den”). Fortunately there was not a sing-along. After another short music history lesson (Tchaikovsky was gay!), we heard a four-hand version of Waltz of the Flowers from Nutcracker. Four-hand playing is as much fun to watch as it is to hear; shared pedaling, shared page turning; cross-hand techniques involving crossing the other player’s hands, etc. Most enjoyable.

While Ms. Jonée went away for a costume change, M. Lemarié (after leaving the stage because he’d forgotten his score, as he had for the matinée) and the Jacquettes launched into five movements from Saint-Saëns’ (try saying that three times real fast) Carnival of the Animals—The Swan, The Elephant, Turtles, Fossils, and the Finale. First off, I love this score and this was the first time I’ve heard any of it live. During The Swan, Ms. Jonée floated down the side aisle, across the front of the audience, up onto the stage, where she proceeded to die on her piano bench. This was some very funny stuff. After she floated off for yet another costume change, the double bass player was featured in The Elephant, in a nicely played performance. Turtles is truly fun, with Offenbach’s ubiquitous Can-Can theme played at a lugubrious pace. Next was Fossils, with its paraphrase of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, followed by Ms. Jonée back for more four-handed fireworks in the Finale. I totally enjoyed this portion of the show.

As a sort of lagniappe, we heard another little set piece, I Am What I Am/Over the Rainbow, with a tag “O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” While I enjoyed the show a lot, I felt that the biographical sketches were a little balky—when there was some humor injected, it fell a little flat since it was in the ‘serious’ portion of the show. It’s not a bad concept, it just didn’t hit the mark as well as some of her other shows have. Honestly, it’s only a minor quibble, and Carnival of the Animals more than made up for it.

ConcertMeister

Lecture Recital (6/9/14)

Pianist Daniel Beliavsky always puts on a good show. When I’ve heard him in concert before, I’ve noted that he speaks quite well about the music he plays, and on Monday evening he took that a step further. Cyclic Form in Music; A lecture recital on cyclic forms in Classical and Romantic music was really enjoyable.

Prelude in C Major, No. 1, from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, BWV 846 (1722) –
J.S. Bach
Italian Concerto, BWV 971, Movement 1 (1735) – Bach
Sonata in E Major, K. 380 – Domenico Scarlatti
Widmung (“Dedication”) (1840) – Robert Schumann (transcribed for piano by
Franz Liszt (1848))
Prelude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 3, No. 2 (1892) – Sergei Rachmaninoff
Fantasy-Impromptu Op. 66 (1834) – Frederic Chopin
Impromptu Op. 142, No. 2 (1827) – Franz Schubert

Without going into a lot of music theory, Dr. Beliavsky presented the basics of cyclic form—an ‘A’ section, followed by a ‘B’ section, with a return to ‘A’ (but with modifications, known as ‘A Prime’ (‘A'’)). He also likened this approach to the riddle of the Sphinx—What goes on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon and three in the evening?—and the myth of Oedipus, certainly demonstrating his points.

Throughout, for the most part, Dr. Beliavsky played examples of what we should be aware of before actually playing the pieces. While this was helpful, I found myself wondering whether he was playing the pieces the way he would normally in recital, or whether he was (consciously or subconsciously) emphasizing what we were supposed to be focusing on. The pieces were all quite familiar to me, and probably to you, as well—Google/Yahoo! any of them and you’ll see what I mean.

The Bach prelude was very fluid, if a bit foreshadowed, as mentioned above. The movement from the concerto introduced a ‘ritornello,’ which is a section that keeps getting returned to, and highlighted the difference between what would be a solo section against what would be an orchestral section. Through his examples played before the Scarlatti, he introduced the idea of rhythmic repetition into the cyclic aspect of composition; I found myself thinking that the cyclic function also led to different (contrasting) harmonic/tonal areas, as well.

One of the ‘A Prime’ techniques, as explained to us, was a sort of inflated restatement when the ‘A’ material comes back. This was very much in evidence in the Schumann/Liszt. While Liszt was already embellishing on the basic song structure as written by Schumann, when the ‘A’ section returned, it was with fantastically embellished material—yet we still knew that it was ‘A’.

The Rachmaninoff was my favorite piece on the program. As Dr. Beliavsky stated, one subtitle for it is “The Bells of Moscow,” and his pre-performance examples laid out exactly why that was the case. Note though, that this idea of “program” music is just that—an idea. For some, the music is just the music, while others like the idea of a story (or program) to attach to it. The ‘A’ section was quite clear, while the ‘B’ section was full of running, perpetual motion-style notes, and ‘A'’ was wonderfully inflated. An anecdote regarding this piece (and there were anecdotes about most of them) reportedly goes that because of the royalty payment system in Russia at the time, Rachmaninoff made very little money off of it and he eventually grew to hate it. It was almost always requested as an encore, and when he finally played it, it was the very last piece he would play at that concert.

The Chopin is a well-known piece, played very well here, and it reemphasized the cyclic nature of the performance pieces. The Schubert, which completed the program, was interesting in that it was written just one year before his death (at 31 years of age) and it was written at a time when the Classical period was just bridging into the Romantic. Indeed, the ‘A’ section was firmly Classical while the ‘B’ was definitely Romantic, and ‘A'’ was Classical but inflated—sort of melding both.

As I said earlier, Dr. Beliavsky played very well throughout, entertained with his commentary as well as his music, and even got a few laughs. At one point while he was discussing the Chopin, a cell phone went off—without missing a beat, he said, “Oh, maybe it’s Chopin calling.” You’re a better man than I, Dr. B.

ConcertMeister

CUT (6/2/14)

What a fun program. This was a discussion/performance of Songs Cut from this Season’s New Broadway Musicals (that’s the official subtitle). On hand were
Lynn Ahrens (lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty (music), with “Sometimes A Loser Can Win,” cut from Rocky; Jason Robert Brown (music and lyrics), with “You’ve Moved On,” cut from The Bridges of Madison County (sung here by
Elena Shaddow); and Tom Kitt (music), with “Cold Cold City,” cut from If/Then (lyrics by Brian Yorkey). While the music was good, hearing about how the songs are created and why they were cut was even more so, for me.

 

First we heard about an opening night tradition—Mr. Flaherty always presents
Ms. Ahrens a collection (in book or folio form) of all of the songs, underscoring, and transition materials that have been cut from the project opening that night. With Rocky, the song that was cut (performed here by Mr. Flaherty (Ms. Ahrens actually said, “I’m glad it’s not one of Adrian’s songs!”)) was an introspective, set-up song. Originally, it was supposed to go where “Fight from the Heart” is now, not that that means a lot to me. It’s a nice song, and it’s certainly dear to the songwriting team—they tried just about everything, including leaving it where it was, moving it around to the second act—but they couldn’t find a way to keep it in the score. And it turns out that it was one of the first songs written for the show, back in 2006.

 

Next up was Mr. Brown, who was quite the raconteur. He spoke about the main problem with Bridges, that being, how do you get to “dead, but happy”? To me, the song sounded like a film score from the get go, and it was performed beautifully here by Ms. Shaddow, who was a standby for Kelli O’Hara. While the show was written with Ms. O’Hara in mind, Ms. Shaddow was involved in earlier iterations, and it was quite evident in her powerful performance. This was real composing and real singing. The gist of what I got from Mr. Brown is that composers often end up writing the same moment over and over, and then sometimes the moment gets cut.

 

Mr. Kitt’s performance of his cut song had rippling accompaniment that was evocative of Paul Simon’s music. Indeed, Mr. Kitt said that Mr. Simon was a role model and that folk music in the park was also a source of inspiration. As an answer to a question from the audience (‘So, why was it cut?”), Mr. Kitt said that in this case, the character left the show (cut) so the song did, too. An overall theme from all of the panelists is that not all of the songs written fit the puzzle. In the case of If/Then, a full twenty-seven songs/cues were cut.

 

It sort of makes one realize that of all the shows that make it, there are lots that don’t. Of all of the songs that make it, there are lots and lots and lots that don’t. And there are lots of trunks out there with lots of tunes. The excellent moderator for the evening was Doug Reside, Digital Curator, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

 

ConcertMeister

And the Last Shall Be First (6/1/14)

ConcertMeister had a very busy weekend, recently. A double-header on Saturday and this organ concert by Andrew E. Henderson on Sunday at Temple Emanu-El. The hour-long program was varied and interesting.

Introduction & Toccata on Leoni, Op. 36, No. 3 – Seth Bingham (1882–1972)
Song Tune (from Peasant Cantata, BWV 212) – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750),
   arr. Harvey Grace (1874–1944)
Toccata in F major, BWV 540 – J.S. Bach
Sonata No. 2 in C minor, Op. 65; Grave, Adagio, Allegro Maestoso e Vivace, Fuga –
Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)
Three Pieces by Two Former Emanu-El Organists; Lullaby (1914), Serenade (1917) –
Will C. Macfarlane (1870–1945); Legend (1913) – Gottfried H. Federlein (1883–1952)
From Symphonie No. 6, Op. 42 (1878); (iv) Cantabile, (v) Finale – Charles-Marie Widor
(1842–1937)

Bingham’s piece was exactly what it purported to be—the hymn tune (as I know it) was played straight through; the toccata that followed broke it out, phrase by phrase, for what seemed to be about two and a half times, with each phrase getting treatment as a variation. Song Tune had a gentle opening and indeed was gentle throughout. It was Bach, but Bach filtered.

The Bach toccata opened in a very straightforward way and this Bach was the real deal. It used a great pedal point (one note held for a very long time while lots of other phrases get played over it), followed by an extended pedal solo, with Dr. Henderson doing the equivalent of tap dancing on a large keyboard. The second section of the work was quite extensive and expansive.

The Mendelssohn first movement also used a pedal point, though not in the actual pedal—it’s a technique that can also be used on one (or more) of the four manuals available on this particular organ. The movement segued neatly into the Adagio, which was gentle and interesting. The third movement had a very full opening and it made me think that it may have been based on a chorale tune. The fourth movement started simply and became more complex as it built to a full, though not overwhelming, conclusion.

Lullaby had a sweet, almost rollicking rhythm, and it featured pipes in the rear of the sanctuary, creating an echo effect that also included chimes from the rear to round out the piece. Serenade was tuneful and truly had the sound of an earlier era—and not in a bad way. It seemed to have a strophic feel to it though I’m not certain that there were actual repeats.

Legend was a treat, reminding me of a calliope. It almost turned into a novelty number, but ended up having enough heft and interest to raise it above that status. I expressed some of those feelings to Dr. Henderson after the concert, and he seemed to know exactly what I was getting at.

The Widor Cantabile was calm, with just a hint of what a dear friend of mine always referred to as “creepy-crawly French chords.” The Finale was just that—a rousing finale that included a couple of contrasting sections back and forth, ending with the full organ, in a great way to end the concert.

The relatively small audience present was thoroughly enthusiastic with their applause—and rightly so, in my opinion. Did I mention it was free?

ConcrtMeister