Shhh! The Silent Clowns Have Returned (9/22/12)

A new season has started at the Library for the Performing Arts. The kickoff of the series of silent films brought us Just a Husband (1927) and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928). Here’s a shout out to the team of Bruce Lawton, Steve Massa and Ben Model.

Just a Husband was a slight two-reeler that had some nice slapstick moments. I was rather fond of the title slides that read, “The road to Marriage is paved with good intentions,” and (regarding the ex-husband of the divorcée getting married) “They wanted him to be the Best Man—he just wanted to give the bride away!” After the ceremony, the happy couple head off to the desert for their honeymoon. Falling rocks and a screwball sign reversal end up with them being stranded in Death Valley with no food or water, paired up with three ne’er-do-wells, and then threatened by four other fellows (the real bad guys). Who knew the desert was so well populated? After the bad guys steal the new bride, the other four find, attack, and drive off the four bad guys. Then the three ne’er-do-wells and the happy couple celebrate with GROCERIES. Did I mention that this was a slapstick comedy?

Steamboat Bill, Jr. is a true Buster Keaton classic. Buster is a Boston boy sent out to the Mississippi to join his father, the captain of the Stonewall Jackson. But there’s a new riverboat in town, the King, sponsored by Mr. Rich Guy, by the name of King. Mr. King’s young daughter is also on the scene—and she and Bill, Jr. (Keaton) know and love each other. Of course, both fathers are dead set against the kids getting together. Stormy weather causes all kinds of problems (and all kinds of cinematic slapstick). One of my favorite scenes involved Keaton taking bread to his father who is in jail. Of course, all sorts of tools were baked in, which then fall out and get Bill, Jr. in trouble, as well. During the storm, many buildings are destroyed or fall over, including a famous scene where a wall falls on our hero, but the open window on the second story miraculously falls right where our hero is standing, so he remains unscathed. In the end, Bill, Jr. saves the girl, saves his dad (by piloting the Stonewall Jackson through the floating away jail), then jumps back into the river and saves the girl’s father, too. Everybody is happy! So why does Bill, Jr. jump into the river one more time? To rescue a parson so that our two youngsters can get married! Did I mention that this was a slapstick comedy?

Once again, Mr. Model at the keyboard added a great amount of enjoyment to the afternoon.

It’s good that a great series is back. Also, autumn brings the return of other performance series. And a new season that I am definitely looking forward to.

 ConcertMeister

Moving Sounds—JACK Is Back (9/15/12)

Boy, I really wanted to like this better than I did. Too much of a downer?

So this was my second hearing of the JACK Quartet and my second concert of the Moving Sounds festival. There were two pieces on the program—String Quartet No. 5 (2007), Georg Friedrich Haas; and häuten: Paramyth (String Quartet No. 1) (2012) (World Premiere), Clemens Gadenstätter. (I’m not making this up, you know.)

In the first piece, the quartet members were spread throughout the hall—two on stage (violin and cello), one in the back of the house (violin), and one in the balcony (viola—I know, because I was there, too). From the program notes: “The listeners find themselves inside the sound, inside overtone chords …” OK, I heard overtones; in fact there was a lengthy overtone section. But once I experienced it, I didn’t need to be listening to it again and again and … well, you get my drift. The opening was a long glissando (slow) that led into the lengthy overtone section. Next, a tune (a snippet) was actually introduced, but it didn’t last long. I actually saw a man in the front row covering his ears. I’m glad I was in the balcony. There was, once again, no discernible movement format.

Moving on to häuten: Paramyth. It had an explosive opening leading into tone bending, biting bow strokes, quite a few screeching, scratching sounds and aggressive bowing, exploring sound for sound’s sake not (to my ear) music for music’s sake. Every once in a while, there was a “meow-like” sound from individual instruments. Really, that’s the entirety of my notes. Oh, wait. Both the cellist and violist had horsehair(?) dangling from their bows—the violist from both ends of his bow. The cellist pulled horsehair(?) off three times. The violist never did. As stated earlier, I really wanted to like this more.

In fact, I think I’d like to hear JACK play some mainstream string quartet repertoire. Maybe Mivos quartet, too.

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Moving Sounds—Mivos Quartet (9/13/12)

Moving Sounds is a festival sponsored by the Austrian Cultural Forum NYC. In this case, it was a series of concerts, lectures, and performances over a three-day period. On Thursday, after work, I wended my way to the German Consulate General, near the UN, to hear the Mivos Quartet (Olivia de Prato and Joshua Modney, violins; Victor Lowrie, viola; Mariel Roberts, cello) play works of Reiko Fueting and Carl Christian Bettendorf. Not exactly household names, though perhaps they will be, eventually.

Moving Sounds is giving us contemporary—as in up-to-the-minute—classical music. The pieces were, in order, Il y a l’Océan for string quartet (2005, rev. 2007), Bettendorf; tanz.tanz for solo violin (2010), Fueting; Souvenir for viola and live electronics (2012), Bettendorf; and “…und ich bin Dein Spiegel” after Mechtild von Magdeburg for soprano and string quartet (2000), Fueting.

As this was “new” music, there are few noticeable (to me) forms, so my notes on the pieces and playing are also pretty much free-form. The first piece opened with all of the players playing at the same time and usually together. The first section was quiet, with unisons/octaves and a bit of pitch bending. This was followed by a louder, more forceful section—a lot of rapid bowing (a lot like the rapid portions of Vivaldi string writing), and then a return to a quiet section, but with a little more tonal variation.

The second piece was played by Ms. De Prato. The score was spread across three music stands. From the program notes, the general form is based on an analysis of a Bach Chaconne. What we got were fairly small snippets of phrases that were linked together. The piece used pretty much the full range of the violin, and had a repetition of phrases with subtle differences. Toward the end, a mute was added, which sort of “dulled” the string sound. The overarching form of the piece was the violinist slowly moving down the length of the score. When she got to the end, the piece ended.

After a brief panel discussion with both composers, we returned to the music.

The third piece, for viola and live electronics (Nina Young, offstage), contained some of the same types of electronic sounds I experienced at the last Rite of Summer concert—a looping/echo repetition of part of the phrase that had just been played by the violist. And then there were some other electronic sounds introduced that complemented the viola phrases. (I think I even heard part of the theme song from the “Twilight Zone” —doo-dee-doo-doo, doo-dee-doo-doo.) And sometimes the electronic echo sounded “beefier” or more “amped up” than the original. Speaking of original, apparently there was a first version of this piece for solo viola. I think I wouldn’t mind hearing that version.

The last piece, for soprano (Nani Fueting) and string quartet had, from my notes again, small segments strung together, including some spiky vocal intervals. There was also an extended sequence of dramatic/loud/angry(?) phrases for all four strings. The vocals were secure throughout, including spoken and whispered portions.

So, my take? The playing was quite good throughout, but I found the compositions just a little disjointed. There were many small phrases and segments but very few through lines (with the exception of the violinist in tanz.tanz). However, compared with some of the other avant garde music I’ve heard along the way, this was quite a bit more enjoyable.

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2012 Rite of Summer Music Festival (9/3/2012)

Kudos to the artistic directors for this second annual series. I stumbled on the inaugural season on Governors Island last year, and I’m pleased to report that I attended all three concerts this summer season. I didn’t necessarily embrace all of the music I heard but at least I expanded my aural horizons. This included the Labor Day Monday concert—Todd Reynolds and Friends. Those friends were Mathias Kunzli, drums/percussion; Michael O’Brian (sp? his name was not in the program), bass; Johnny Rodgers, glass/electronics/mandolin(?); Jordan Tice, guitar; and of course, Mr. Reynolds, violin.

I guess the overall description would be bluegrass/newgrass/electronics/eclectic. I wish I could claim ownership of newgrass but it was unashamedly stolen from Mr. Tice’s bio.
Mr. Tice and Mr. Rodgers were also the bulk of our composers for the one-hour concert. I caught the 1:00 p.m. performance but didn’t feel compelled to stick around for the 3:00 p.m. rendition.

Well, what  can I say? Bluegrass/newgrass pretty much sums it up. The percussionist had a nice variety of instruments at his disposal. Mr. Rodgers and his tuned wine glasses (per bio—not seen) had some of the more interesting sounds. He also included electronics, in that he would lay out a glass-tune phrase, then you were suddenly aware that it was looping. He’d add keyboard and/or vocals, and then they were looping as well, at rhythmically interesting intervals. I’m not a huge electronics fan, but this was very effective.

Some of the bluegrass/newgrass was also effective, though I preferred the bluegrass. Some of the other was a bit too New Age–ish for my taste. That said, the eight pieces I heard were relatively varied, the performances were uniformly good, and I’m glad I went. The musical offerings might have been a bit too experimental for some, as I saw more than a few folks leave during the set. Maybe they were just headed to other excitements on Governors Island. Maybe. I don’t think so.

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Bryant Park After Work (8/29/12)

Fortunately, I made it to this concert, the last in a 13-week series. I had planned on attending at least two others, but 6:00 p.m. in summer in NYC is always iffy weather-wise, and the weather, indeed, put the kibosh on my earlier attempts. This concert, the John Farnsworth Quintet, was a great way to cap off the series.

Many years ago, I penned my first online profile which stated that I like classical music and “not-too-frantic” jazz. When the quintet—John Farnsworth, tenor sax; Freddie Hendrix, trumpet; Harold Mabern, piano; Paul Gill, bass; and Peppe Merolla, drums—began, I was a little bit afraid that it just might be too frantic. The first piece featured really driving rhythms and the volume was up there. So I moved farther away from the speakers (and I think they made some sound system adjustments), and the next piece, “Junior,” was gentler but still powerful, with more of a discernible tune. I was safe from “too frantic.”
The first piece was composed by Mr. Mabern while the second was composed by
Mr. Farnsworth.

This was followed by “Unchain My Heart”(?)—the tunes were announced on the fly, so my notes can be a bit faulty—which had more of a Latin beat. Next we heard a boogie-woogie piano solo, composed by Mr. Mabern. There were two more pieces on the program that were pretty much in the same vein as the others. In general, while the playing was heavy on unison sax/trumpet lines, each player—really all five of them—got a chance to shine (both the sax and trumpet would occasionally step out to let the others be featured), and the overall playing was quite good. And when the sax and trumpet separated and gave us some additional harmony, I liked it even better.

This was really good playing to round out a series that I hope to see more of in the future.

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Bargemusic (8/18/12)

OK, so I took my birthday (week) off from posting. Saturday’s concert was piano/violin/cello music, with Olga Vinokur, Mark Peskanov, and Eugene Osadchy, respectively. As always, the program was announced from the stage and it began with the first movement of the Piano Trio in C Major, K. 548 by Mozart. Because it was so well received, the trio played the two movements that completed the work.

Next was the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50, with the Schubert “Rondeau Brilliant” (in B minor, D. 895) rounding out the program.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a huge Mozart Fan but this piece had enough heft and variability from movement to movement to make it interesting without the cloying sweetness and sentimentality that I sometimes experience with Mozart. There were many repeats, as usual, but the second movement had some legato (smooth, gentler) lines while the third movement was bright and dance-like—but my notes also included bouncy. Bouncy, yet not frivolous sounding.

My notes are almost nonexistent for the Tchaikovsky, but I remember it as being well balanced and full of themes that (we were told) would be expanded on in the movements we weren’t going to hear.

The Schubert, for piano and violin, was firmly steeped in the Romantic tradition—rich harmonies, many phrases that didn’t end quite where or when I thought they would, and a few false endings, harmonically.

One minor quibble—a page turner for the pianist would have been nice. There were a couple of loud “thwaps” that were a bit disconcerting.

This was almost a dress rehearsal, since these three works were on the regular schedule for Saturday night at 8pm and Sunday afternoon at 2pm. Who knows, maybe there was a page turner for those concerts. Also as usual, there was a brief Q&A session after the concert and one question was about how often the performers practice scales. The general consensus was that with so much music to practice for performance, strict scales were not high on the list. That said, I spoke up and said that any time I’ve been at the “Barge,” Mr. Peskanov is never without his fiddle in his hands—whether he’s on that afternoon’s program or not. He’s always running his fingers and bow over the strings.

Thanks, Brooklyn. I’ll be back at Bargemusic from time to time.

ConcertMeister

Nuevo Tango—Very Delayed (8/7/12)

I waffled back and forth on this, and then finally decided to post. This was the fourth (and final—and I actually attended all four this year) Naumburg Orchestral Concert; Pablo Ziegler (piano) and Lara St. John (violin) with Andrew Roitstein (bass), Claudio Ragazzi (guitar) & Héctor Del Curto (bandoneón). Of special interest was the fact that six of the twelve pieces on the program had been played by Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992) at a Naumburg concert in 1987. In addition to those six Piazzolla pieces, there were four more Piazzolla and two pieces by Pablo Ziegler.

And therein lies the problem for me. Once I’ve heard the fast version of the Nuevo Tango (a fusion of tango, jazz, and classical) and then the slow version, the other ten pieces on the program are variations on the first two, without enough variation (for me) to be totally enjoyable. On top of that, the two Ziegler pieces were very similar to all of the Piazzolla pieces.

All of the artists played extremely well, and seemed very committed to the music—the individual pieces and Nuevo Tango, in general.

For the record, the six pieces Piazzolla played in 1978 and included in the 2012 concert were: Michelangelo, Muerte del Angel, Tanguedia (La Camorra), Mumuki, Adios Nonino (which I think I’ve heard once before), and Lunfardo. Mr. Ziegler’s (1944–) works were: Milonga del Adios (a piano/violin duo) and Muchacha de Boedo.

That said, the Naumburg organization is by far one of the classiest in the business, and it was a treat for New Yorkers (and beyond) that all four concerts in the series were broadcast live by WQXR (105.9 FM, wqxr.org). The host, Midge Woolsey, was a great MC for all four concerts, as well—dealing with the live audience and with performers from each concert being included addressing the radio audience. I’m glad I heard Nuevo Tango—I just need it in smaller doses.

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