Geez, 2016 already! Saturday the 16th found me in an Upper West Side church
for a Carnegie Neighborhood Concert—Michelle Bradley, soprano, and
Michael Gaertner, piano.
Ah! perfido, Op. 65 – Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Ständchen, Op. 17, No. 2; Freundliche Vision, Op. 48, No. 1; Ich trage meine Minne, Op. 32, No. 1; Cäcilie, Op. 27, No. 2 – Richard Strauss (1864–1949)
La vie antérieur – Henri Duparc (1848–1933)
Notre amour, Op. 23, No. 2 – Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)
Les chemins de l’amour – Francis Poulenc (1899–1963)
Chère nuit – Alfred Bachelet (1864–1944)
He’s got the whole world in His hands – Margaret Bonds (1913–1972)
My notes for the Beethoven started out with “Cantata? Scena?” Turns out I was on the right track, as it’s properly called a concert aria, consisting of a recitative and aria. Ms. Bradley produced a powerful sound that did not seem to be pushed, or forced. This was good and bad, in that the church produces a lot of reverberation. While she didn’t pull back and try to let the room do some of her work for her, even without pushing or forcing, variations of volume were a little bit difficult to control. The piece itself was mostly dramatic with a few touches of quiet sound.
The four Strauss songs featured tinkling, running accompaniment (provided by
Mr. Gaertner very nicely, here and throughout the entire recital), and a brisk setting of the text, with a nice contrast in the fourth verse of the first song. The second song was gentle in both accompaniment and text setting, and also included Strauss’ stretching of the boundaries of harmony, while the third had a slightly darker approach to lieder. The fourth was a vocal love letter, full of positive energy, both compositionally and in performance.
The four chansons were gentler in nature over all, though Ms. Bradley’s powerful voice didn’t really lend itself to these, in my opinion. The Fauré sounded familiar to me; the Poulenc had a lovely waltz feel and seemed quasi-operetta-ish, though with a distinctly serious solidity. The Bachelet, a composer new to me, seemed to be trying a bit too hard, as a composition. The artists left the stage after these four and then returned for “He’s got the whole world in His hands,” which arrangement also seemed familiar to me. It sounded to me as though Ms. Bradley had a little trouble with the uppermost notes toward the end. That said, it, and the entire recital, was quite pleasant and well received by the audience. However, coming onstage for the final piece and then leaving, made it a little awkward for returning for additional bows and an encore.
Of note, the concert was part of the Marilyn Horne legacy at Carnegie Hall, and Ms. Horne was in attendance. On top of that, it was her birthday, so I chimed in on an impromptu singing of “Happy Birthday to You!”
Tuesday the 20th found me at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York for (I’m not making this up, you know) The Wiener Tschuschenkappelle, a quintet of emigrants from various European countries, to Vienna, who presented a wide variety of folk music.
From the program:
Slavko Ninić, from Croatia, presentation, guitar, vocals
Hidan Mamudov, from Macedonia, clarinet, vocals
Maria Petrova, from Bulgaria, drums, darabouka
Mitke Sarlandžiev, from Macedonia, accordion
Jovan Torbica, from Serbia, double-bass
Also from the program notes, the “tschusch” in the title above is a kind of Austrian derogatory term for ethnic minority immigrants, and used as politically charged irony in the group’s name. And that’s about all that the program and notes were good for.
The group played nine or ten pieces, all variations of folk music that included Balkan, klezmer, gypsy, and Croation, all of which sounded pretty similar to me. When each player was featured in a solo, each shone. The clarinetist was astounding; a drum solo was tight; the double-bass (misleading, it was more like a large regular guitar, with a deeper, lower range) was quite interesting; the accordionist was also fairly virtuosic; and the presenter/guitarist more than held his own. When they played as a group, however, there was a sameness over and over that was not totally appealing to me. But the crowd loved it, including the obligatory, dreaded, “clap along” song. The vocals and vocal harmonies were bare bones and repetitive. The group was also called back to the stage for an encore. It sounded a lot like everything else that had been played before it. It was an interesting if slightly less than fulfilling musical experience for me. Hey, they’re not all home runs, and as I said, the crowd loved it.
Monday, January 25, 2016
Saturday, January 9, 2016
F Is for Fun (1/4/16)
Happy New Year! Mine got off to a good start with a program called Fie! Fie!
Fi-Fi! I know, I know, that’s a lot of exclamation points. The subtitle of the performance was Forgotten Songs of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yes, indeed, Fitzgerald wrote the libretto and lyrics to Fi-Fi, which was presented by the Princeton University Triangle Club in 1914. In addition to hearing some of the songs from Fi-Fi, Monday evening’s performance also had a couple of scenes from the show, as well as a recitation of three of Fitzgerald’s poems, and some lively discussion with Andrea Olmstead who has written an e-book, Who Was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Daisy? The crackerjack cast included Nancy Anderson, Nicolas Dromard, Karen Mason, Alli Mauzey, Nick Verina, and Teal Wicks, accompanied by Glen Roven, all under the direction of Ben West.
On to the music. While the setup of the evening was being explained, Mr. Roven provided some period-style underscoring that led us to Ou-La-La, a sweet waltz-song that had a youthful flair—quite appropriate, since Fi-Fi was a student musical. Love or Eugenics, also a waltz, had more of a story, then a march section followed by a jazz section, finishing up with a bit of a vamp. You could have said a bit of a camp about the original production since the Triangle Club was an all-male organization, so the women’s roles were played by male students. In fact, we learned that Fitzgerald was supposed to be in the show but was not allowed to owing to his poor scholastic performance. Yep, bad grades kept him off the boards. But he did get some good press. The show (as did others he wrote with the Triangle Club) traveled after their Princeton performances, to places like Detroit, Louisville, Brooklyn, and Baltimore, where The Sun wrote, “The lyrics of the songs were written by F. S. Fitzgerald, who could take his place right now with the brightest writers of witty lyrics in America.” [This was referenced at the performance I attended; I went to Yahoo! to find the quote.]
The plot of Fi-Fi, as explained by Evan Leslie, of the Library for the Performing Arts, was so convoluted that I couldn’t grasp enough of it to even consider recounting it here. Suffice it to say that there were people pretending to be other people, at least two he-loves-her-but-she-loves-other-he triangles, and … well, I think you get it. Round and Round had its own little convoluted plot and was witty. One of my favorite songs in the show was A Slave to Modern Improvements, which had the character Clover Blossom singing about all of the medical techniques her father had subjected her to. It was very funny (the actress sang with impeccably bad technique), and had lyrics that included “vivisection” and “herbicide.”
Rose of the Night took us back into waltz territory but with a little Latin flair thrown in via tango and cha-cha rhythms. A scene followed with a character named Tracy and a character named Mrs. Bovine. Remember, this is student comedy we were hearing. Tracy was masquerading as the Prime Minister of Monaco, while Mrs. Bovine was the mother of the girl the Prime Minister was courting. Not the real Prime Minister, of course. He was off … see convoluted, above. There was some real humor here; the touches of plot we were hearing matched the snippets of songs. The composers (also Princeton students) were D. D. Griffin, A. L. Booth, and Paul Dickey.
Men was a song that also had heavy vamp appeal. The poems recited—Staying Up All Night, To My Unused Greek Book, and My First Love—were also written during Fitzgerald’s college years. My First Love had underscoring from Reminiscence, the gentle song that preceded it and that indeed had a small reprise after the poem ended. That was a nice directorial touch. The evening ended with The Monte Carlo Moon, also sentimental and very pretty, and then the entire cast singing the patter-style words of Fie! Fie! Fi-Fi! This was an altogether enjoyable experience—good music, fun lyrics, and learning something new about F. Scott Fitzgerald. Happy new year, indeed.
ConcertMeister
Fi-Fi! I know, I know, that’s a lot of exclamation points. The subtitle of the performance was Forgotten Songs of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yes, indeed, Fitzgerald wrote the libretto and lyrics to Fi-Fi, which was presented by the Princeton University Triangle Club in 1914. In addition to hearing some of the songs from Fi-Fi, Monday evening’s performance also had a couple of scenes from the show, as well as a recitation of three of Fitzgerald’s poems, and some lively discussion with Andrea Olmstead who has written an e-book, Who Was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Daisy? The crackerjack cast included Nancy Anderson, Nicolas Dromard, Karen Mason, Alli Mauzey, Nick Verina, and Teal Wicks, accompanied by Glen Roven, all under the direction of Ben West.
On to the music. While the setup of the evening was being explained, Mr. Roven provided some period-style underscoring that led us to Ou-La-La, a sweet waltz-song that had a youthful flair—quite appropriate, since Fi-Fi was a student musical. Love or Eugenics, also a waltz, had more of a story, then a march section followed by a jazz section, finishing up with a bit of a vamp. You could have said a bit of a camp about the original production since the Triangle Club was an all-male organization, so the women’s roles were played by male students. In fact, we learned that Fitzgerald was supposed to be in the show but was not allowed to owing to his poor scholastic performance. Yep, bad grades kept him off the boards. But he did get some good press. The show (as did others he wrote with the Triangle Club) traveled after their Princeton performances, to places like Detroit, Louisville, Brooklyn, and Baltimore, where The Sun wrote, “The lyrics of the songs were written by F. S. Fitzgerald, who could take his place right now with the brightest writers of witty lyrics in America.” [This was referenced at the performance I attended; I went to Yahoo! to find the quote.]
The plot of Fi-Fi, as explained by Evan Leslie, of the Library for the Performing Arts, was so convoluted that I couldn’t grasp enough of it to even consider recounting it here. Suffice it to say that there were people pretending to be other people, at least two he-loves-her-but-she-loves-other-he triangles, and … well, I think you get it. Round and Round had its own little convoluted plot and was witty. One of my favorite songs in the show was A Slave to Modern Improvements, which had the character Clover Blossom singing about all of the medical techniques her father had subjected her to. It was very funny (the actress sang with impeccably bad technique), and had lyrics that included “vivisection” and “herbicide.”
Rose of the Night took us back into waltz territory but with a little Latin flair thrown in via tango and cha-cha rhythms. A scene followed with a character named Tracy and a character named Mrs. Bovine. Remember, this is student comedy we were hearing. Tracy was masquerading as the Prime Minister of Monaco, while Mrs. Bovine was the mother of the girl the Prime Minister was courting. Not the real Prime Minister, of course. He was off … see convoluted, above. There was some real humor here; the touches of plot we were hearing matched the snippets of songs. The composers (also Princeton students) were D. D. Griffin, A. L. Booth, and Paul Dickey.
Men was a song that also had heavy vamp appeal. The poems recited—Staying Up All Night, To My Unused Greek Book, and My First Love—were also written during Fitzgerald’s college years. My First Love had underscoring from Reminiscence, the gentle song that preceded it and that indeed had a small reprise after the poem ended. That was a nice directorial touch. The evening ended with The Monte Carlo Moon, also sentimental and very pretty, and then the entire cast singing the patter-style words of Fie! Fie! Fi-Fi! This was an altogether enjoyable experience—good music, fun lyrics, and learning something new about F. Scott Fitzgerald. Happy new year, indeed.
ConcertMeister
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