Blog Archive
| July 2006 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | ||||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 | |||||
Master Archive
Recent Entries
- There really is Free Lunch...
- Saying Something Through Music
- Happy Birthday John Williams!
- On the Air This Week
- Simply Stupendous!
- Benjamin Zander on music and passion
- Roll Credits: 02/06/2012
- The Short Version: The Blue Train
- Lara Downes Goldberg Reimagined CD Giveaway
- Awesome review in the Times for the Minn Orch
Categories
Contact Us
- Questions about the playlist?
Contact MPR's Member Benefits Team.
Purchase the Music
- Buy the music you've heard on-air! Your purchase helps support our classical service.
ArkivMusic
Services
Classical Notes: July 2006 Archive
Maelzel's magic automata
Posted at 2:18 AM on July 1, 2006
by John Zech
Filed under: The blog
Since we've been on the subject of robots and music recently, I'd like to call your attention to the master robot maker of Beethoven's time, Johann Maelzel, the man most often credited with inventing the metronome.
Maelzel got the idea for the metronome from a Dutchman named Winkel, secured a patent, and was soon manufacturing and promoting his invention throughout Europe. In Vienna, he convinced Beethoven that metronome markings were indispensable for preserving the exact tempo of his Symphonies. Maelzel even convinced Beethoven to write a big battle piece, "Wellington’s Victory," for another of his inventions, the Panharmonicon, a sort of music box on steroids. The collaborators fell out when Maelzel claimed "Wellington’s Victory" was his personal property. The friendship soured when Beethoven filed suit and Maelzel lost…But before all that, in happier days, Beethoven teased his friend with a song called "Am Maelzel," and he made a subtler musical tribute in the tick-tock scherzo of his Eighth Symphony.
Maelzel's greatest invention was an automaton chess player known at "The Turk," who defeated many of the best players in Europe. The story of the Turk is of particular interest to students of the history of magic. The Amazing Randi has a detailed account of Maelzel and his Turk in the archives of his website. The first part of the story begins here. If you want to read more, here is the rest of the story.
Piano e-Competition
Posted at 5:16 AM on July 2, 2006
by Valerie Kahler
Filed under: Piano eComp
Well, Thursday's event in the Forum was great fun. We had a nice turnout and it was wonderful to see the Yamaha concert grand here in the building.
Listen to the forum event (1:04:21s)
Melissa hosted a Q&A with Competition founding director Alexander Braginsky and a couple of techs from Yamaha who explained the ins & outs of the Yamaha disklavier.
Pianist Denis Evstioukhine � a student of Braginsky�s, and 3rd prize winner at the 2004 competition - demonstrated the gorgeous concert capabilities of the instrument. He played Balakirev's Islamey and a Chopin Impromptu for the enthusiastic audience. Both those performances made it to the airwaves on Friday June 30th. Ain't technology swell?
It was great to see how the disklavier worked, as well. Alexander played Debussy's L'Isle Joyeuse (delightfully) as the Yamaha guys recorded to the disklavier and videotaped him at the keyboard. Then they played it back and we watched Alexander's performance on the monitor screen as the disklavier played, perfectly synched. It's always odd to see the keys moving with no one at the keyboard, but even stranger to see the pedals working. Speaking of which - we learned that the pedals have 120 gradations of pressure from completely up to fully depressed. And the keys? a THOUSAND and change. That means the subtlest caress of a key is reproduced absolutely faithfully. Can you tell I was impressed?
This afternoon, Melissa and I are going to pop in to Sundin Music Hall to get our first glimpse of the contestants. They'll be drawing numbers to determine their competition order, as well as trying out the two Yamaha disklaviers to see which one they prefer for their performances.
We'll try to get some pictures online soon. Stay tuned.
Piano-e-Competition Web site
Watch live video of the competition.
Previous Posts
Piano-e-Competition, June 29, 2006
Symphony in e(Bay): Finale and Coda
Posted at 7:06 AM on July 3, 2006
by John Birge
(2 Comments)
Filed under: The blog
Last night, the bidding was up to $127,000, and the eBay auction for the Beethoven Academie Orchestra was set to end early tomorrow. But I found this morning that the auction had evidently been withdrawn by the orchestra (which started the whole thing as a very effective publicity stunt to protest funding cuts from the Flemish Ministry of Culture).
Here's the message added to the auction page: "Mensen die ons een hart onder de riem willen steken, kunnen intekenen op onze petititielijst die aan Minister Anciaux zal worden afgegeven. http://www.axci.nl/?ln=ned&id=55 Wij danken u voor uw steun "
Flemish translation, anyone? Please? Looks like they're asking would-be bidders to go to their website and sign a petition. But all of this is in Flemish, so I'll appeal for either a free translation or a suggestion for an automatic online Flemish translation site.
Symphony in e(Bay): Final Finale
Posted at 2:50 PM on July 3, 2006
by John Birge
Filed under: The blog
Here's the latest on the eBay orchestra auction, why it was pulled, and how no little shill bidding was involved (highly illegal in the eBay community, btw). Great story, even if it's not a happy ending...
An embarrassment of riches
Posted at 10:25 AM on July 4, 2006
by Melissa Ousley
(3 Comments)
Filed under: Piano eComp
The International Piano-e-Competition is in full swing and the level of playing we heard on Day One set a very high standard. For the Recital Round, which lasts all week, each of the 24 contestants is to present a solo recital program of his or her choice lasting between 65 and 75 minutes. Two of Monday's pianists are returning to this competition after having done quite well in previous years. Hanna Shybayeva placed 5th in 2004 and Victoria Korchinskaya-Kogan placed 2nd in 2002. Chances are they are hoping to do even better this time around. If there was a composer of the day, it was Sergei Prokofiev. We heard three of his sonatas (#2, 6 and 7)!
Piano-e-Competition Web site
Watch live video of the competition.
Listen to the forum event (1:04:21s)
Competition founding director Alexander Braginsky and pianist Denis Evstioukhine demonstrate their chops on the Yamaha Disklavier.
Previous Piano-e Posts
Piano-e-Competition, July 2, 2006
Piano-e-Competition, June 29, 2006
Did you hear that?
Posted at 10:09 AM on July 5, 2006
by Melissa Ousley
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Piano eComp
The Juilliard School was well represented during Day Two of the Minnesota International Piano-e-Competition. Three of the five contestants on Tuesday, all in their early 20's, are Juilliard students. This includes Rui Shi who presented a very demanding program with sonatas by Elliott Carter (from 1945) and Johannes Brahms (his 1st). And, if you were anywhere near Sundin Hall at about 1:30, that piano playing you thought you heard was Darrett Zusko playing the Sonata in b minor by Liszt. He got a huge sound from the piano!
Listen to Darrett Zusko playing the final portion of the Sonata in b minor by Liszt
The Recital Round continues this afternoon at 12:30. Visit the e-Competition web site to hear their live stream and find out more about these remarkable musicians.
---------------------------
Piano-e-Competition Web site
Watch live video of the competition.
Listen to the forum event (1:04:21s)
Competition founding director Alexander Braginsky and pianist Denis Evstioukhine demonstrate their chops on the Yamaha Disklavier.
Previous Piano-e Posts
Piano-e-Competition, July 4, 2006
Piano-e-Competition, July 2, 2006
Piano-e-Competition, June 29, 2006
I really should be practicing
Posted at 5:48 PM on July 6, 2006
by Melissa Ousley
Filed under: Piano eComp
Day Four of the Minnesota International Piano-e-Competition is almost over which means about 24 hours from now the judges will have all the music in their ears needed to decide who will advance to the next round. I don't envy them. I guess I don't really envy the pianists either. The pressure is intense and the number of hours some of them spend in the practice room this week can creep into double digits. For those who are advanced to the next phase of the competition (9), there is no rest. Saturday they will compete in the Schubert Sonata Round. After that, the field is narrowed to six finalists who join the Nicollet Quartet for the Chamber Music Round on Monday and then the Minnesota Orchestra for the Concerto Round next Wednesday and Thursday evenings.
Piano-e-Competition Web site
Watch live video of the competition.
Listen to the forum event (1:04:21s)
Competition founding director Alexander Braginsky and pianist Denis Evstioukhine demonstrate their chops on the Yamaha Disklavier.
Previous Piano-e Posts
Piano-e-Competition, July 5, 2006
Piano-e-Competition, July 4, 2006
Piano-e-Competition, July 2, 2006
Piano-e-Competition, June 29, 2006
Einav Yarden!
Posted at 9:46 PM on July 6, 2006
by Valerie Kahler
(27 Comments)
Filed under: Piano eComp
I had the good fortune of catching Einav Yarden's recital this evening. Holy mackerel.
Wow. Right out of the chute she had me sitting on the edge of my chair. She played a bunch of Gyorgy Kurtag's "Games" and they were alternately percussive and gossamer, playful and menacing. The opening movement (Perpetuum mobile)was one back-of-the-hand measured glissando after another. Her control was deadly - there were so many ways that could have sounded like a parlor trick, but it was SO perfectly precise as to be remarkable. She played another set of Kurtag's Games after her Haydn Sonata, and the last one (The Mad Girl With the Flaxen Hair) made most people laugh out loud. Imagine Debussy's Girl...from an alternate dimension.
Listen to Einav Yarden play Gyorgy Kurtag's "Games"
The Haydn sonata was a lovely balance between sit-up-straight precision and beer-garden minuet, the Schumann Kreisleriana was wonderfully colored & emotionally nuanced...but it was the finale that made my jaw hit the floor.
Frederic Rzewski's Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues was a gutsy closer, both in terms of the extreme physicality of the performance and and because the piece is so unusual.
Listen to Einav Yarden play Frederic Rzewski's "Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues"
It starts with a growlygrindy factory rhythm in the bass which grows until she's playing with her forearms. (!) Again, it could be, SHOULD be messy and vague but somehow it isn't. It's absolutely crazy. And then...a reverie. You hear a sweet bluesy tune (classical blues, ala Andre Previn) before returning to the spooling of the cotton. She knew this was a crowd-pleaser and obviously enjoyed it herself, taking her bows with a huge grin.
What a ride.
Piano-e-Competition Web site
Watch live video of the competition.
In Our Concert Halls
Posted at 9:10 AM on July 7, 2006
by Rex Levang
(1 Comments)
All the piano e-activity that you've read about gives me a chance to put in a plug for the auditorium where this current phase of the competition is happening -- the gracious Sundin Music Hall, which may be the best space that the Twin Cities have for chamber music. (Other nominees?)
On Tuesday, no less than Glenn Gould will be heard at Sundin. Gould, of course, has been dead for some years, but John Q. Walker is going to use some computer and robotics wizardry -- the same kind that puts the "e" into E-Competition -- to let his playing live again in this lecture-demonstration. This one's free, by the way.
Then it's off to Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, where the wind-up of the competition morphs into the beginning of Sommerfest.
Nothing ever happens in the summertime, right?
Sweet 16
Posted at 6:18 PM on July 7, 2006
by Valerie Kahler
Filed under: Piano eComp
Many of you heard a snippet or two of Melissa's interview with the youngest performer in this year's Piano e-Competition, 16-year-old Claire Huangci. She's a charmer - well-spoken and enthusiastic. A wunderkind...but then again, each competitor here has been (or still is) the wunderkind in his or her respective circle.
Often, musicians who compete at this level are tutored & test out of junior high and/or high school. They know exactly where they're going, and quite reasonably decide to focus all their energies on music. Like many of her colleagues in this competition, Claire is unmistakably destined for Big Things. But. She's chosen to finish high school the old-fashioned way, kind of. Up early for half days at public school and then on to The Curtis Institute three afternoons a week. Throw in an hour or two of homework and the requisite 4-8 hours of practice every day and you've got a very busy teenager.
Did I mention she thinks calculus is fun?
As I type this at 6:34 pm, the last of the 24 contestants is probably beginning the final piece of the recital round (Cheng Chen playing Pictures at an Exhibition, if you're curious) and then the judges will announce the names of the 9 pianists who are advancing to the next round. Will Claire be among them? Who knows? But if her recital earlier today was any indication, we haven't heard the last of Ms. Huangci!
Piano-e-Competition Web site
Watch live video of the competition.
And Then There Were Nine
Posted at 8:01 PM on July 7, 2006
by Valerie Kahler
Filed under: Piano eComp
8:00pm Friday night
Just got a phone call from Melissa over at Sundin Hall, where Alexander Braginsky took the stage to announce the names of the nine contestants who will advance to the next round. Here they are, in order of appearance for tomorrow's Schubert round:
Victoria Korchinskaya-Kogan
Gregory DeTurck
Edisher Savitski
Konstantin Krasnitsky
Angelo Arciglione
Mikhail Mordvinov
Ryo Yanagitani
Einav Yarden
Claire Huangci
Congratulations to these nine performers! Also, a heartfelt ovation for the other talented pianists - thank you for your outstanding contributions to five days of incredible musicmaking. We hope you'll be sticking around for the remainder of the two-week run to cheer on your colleagues, and to enjoy the sights & sounds & tastes of the Twin Cities.
Onward. The Schubertiad begins promptly at noon tomorrow (Saturday). It will wrap by 8pm, with an hour break from 2-3. Are you going to attend? You really should. There's nary a better return on your entertainment dollar than the cost of a day pass to this competition.
P.S. If you're planning to come, bring a sweater! It's freezing in the hall.
Piano-e-Competition Web site
Watch live video of the competition.
Schubert Round - 7:00pm
Posted at 7:07 PM on July 8, 2006
by Valerie Kahler
Filed under: Piano eComp
Greetings from Sundin Hall. The crowd is milling about as we await the final performer of this competition round. It's a good showing, with the lower half of the hall filled to about 90%. Many (if not all) of the other performers are all in the audience, some following along with scores. What a good idea! I think I'll see if I can lay my hands on some of the quintet scores before Tuesday's performance.
There's really something to this notion of "star quality." The pianists I've seen today have oceans of it. I spend so much of my time shut in a glass booth with a stack of CDs and a microphone that sometimes I forget how spectacular a live performance can be.
Piano-e-Competition Web site
Watch live video of the competition.
We're down to six
Posted at 8:35 PM on July 8, 2006
by Melissa Ousley
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Piano eComp
Moments ago, Alexander Braginsky announced the six finalists who will go on to compete in the last two Rounds of the e-Competition. He also told us that a Schubert prize winner had been selected, but we won't find out who that person is until Thursday night at the Awards Ceremony. I know you're dying to know the names of the six, so here we go:
Victoria Korchinskaya-Kogan
Gregory De Turck
Edisher Savitski
Mikhail Mordvinov
Ryo Yanagitani
Einav Yarden
Tomorrow, they rehearse with the Nicollet Quartet and on Monday each will perform in the Chamber Music Round. By the way, I hope you like Brahms because four of the six will be playing his Piano Quintet--and those are back-to-back performances! The Concerto Round is another story. Six different pieces and six different composers. Click on the link below to learn more.
Piano-e-Competition Web site
Watch live video of the competition.
Gouldbergs
Posted at 7:53 AM on July 11, 2006
by Rex Levang
I mentioned the Glenn Gould Plays ‘Live’" event the other day but forgot to give the repertoire. It’ll be the 1955 Goldberg Variations.
Opera in Duluth
Posted at 9:01 AM on July 13, 2006
by Rex Levang
Bob Kelleher has a nice piece on the opera that’s going into production in Duluth. But this isn’t the first time that opera has been given there, as old Duluthians (such as yours truly) will remember.
A couple quick memories … seeing Tosca in the auditorium of Denfeld High School. My memory tells me that Teresa Stratas was in the lead – can that actually be so? But I’m pretty sure that we heard singers like Martina Arroyo and Sherrill Milnes.
And there was the time that the opera folks went to New York and signed up an outstanding soprano, though not a household name. As is usual, the contract was signed a few years in advance of the performance. But in the time that elapsed between the signing and the performance itself, the soprano got one of those magical career boosts that did indeed make her a household name – it was Beverly Sills.
The Concertos Begin
Posted at 9:29 AM on July 13, 2006
by Melissa Ousley
(2 Comments)
Filed under: Piano eComp
The intensity of the Minnesota International Piano-e-Competition was at full throttle last night as the first three of six finalists presented their concertos with the Minnesota Orchestra. Rehearsal time with the orchestra was fairly minimal, (40 minutes at most), but all of the soloists I spoke with seemed thrilled to be playing with an orchestra of this caliber. Last night we heard Mikhail Mordvinov play Schumann's Piano Concerto in a minor. Gregory DeTurck followed with Rachmoninoff's Concerto #1, and after intermission, Victoria Korchinskaya-Kogan gave a rock-solid performance of Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto. As I was leaving the parking ramp at Orchestra Hall, I bumped into Alexander Braginsky. He's the President, Artistic Director and Founder of the e-Competition. I told him how impressed I was with the performances and he gave he a smile and a wink and said, "Wait until you hear tomorrow night!"
If you can't make it to Orchestra Hall to hear this evening's performance, please join us for another live broadcast on the Classical music stations of Minnesota Public Radio. Start time is 7:30.
Congratulations to eCompetition Winner Edisher Savitski!
Posted at 10:04 PM on July 13, 2006
by Valerie Kahler
(5 Comments)
Filed under: Piano eComp
Alexander Braginsky just took the stage with the 7 members of the jury to announce the winners of the 2006 Minnesota International Piano eCompetition. From the original pool of 138 applicants, the final six were ranked as follows:
First Place - Edisher Savitski
Second Place - Ryo Yanagitani
Third Place - Victoria Korchinskaya-Kogan
Fourth Place - Michael Mordvinov
Fifth Place - Einav Yarden
Sixth Place - Gregory DeTurck
This is the second visit to the Piano eCompetition for Edisher. Four years ago, he came in 4th...and as he mentioned to Melissa, a lot can happen in four years! More conversation with Edisher Savitski and an encore performance of two pieces from his recital program tomorrow at noon...LIVE from the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown Saint Paul. It's FREE.
Classical Minnesota Public Radio will broadcast the event live, but you'd rather be right there in the audience to see the debut recital of Mr. Savitsky. You can also lay eyes on Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, Competition director & founder Alexander Braginsky and pianist Awadagian Pratt, who was one of the seven jury members.
See you noon Friday at the Fitz.
PS - Schubert Prize
Posted at 10:45 PM on July 13, 2006
by Valerie Kahler
(81 Comments)
Filed under: Piano eComp
The Cinderalla story of this competition must be that of Canadian performer Ryo Yanagitani. Ryo had never played a Schubert sonata in recital before this competition. In fact, when it was announced that he was one of the nine who were advancing to the Schubert round, he said he was torn between exhilaration and complete panic. He told Melissa Ousley that as soon as those names were announced, there was a mass exodus - nine pianists running for the practice room. No one ran faster than Ryo, who wasn't sure he even had the piece memorized yet. Obviously, he had it more than memorized. He had absorbed it. He walks away with the $4000 Schubert Prize in addition to the 2nd prize in the overall competition.
Congratulations, Ryo!
Not your father's Muzak
Posted at 3:20 AM on July 15, 2006
by John Zech
(2 Comments)
Filed under: The blog
We tend to call any background music "Muzak," but the Muzak name is the brand for a 70 year-old marketing company that now uses "audio architects" to design musical backgrounds for some 400,000 clients ranging from Dunkin' Donuts to the DSW shoe outlet to Bank of America.
They are very sophisticated, as the Christian Science Monitor just reported.
On another note, in the summer of 1980 there was a festival in Minneapolis called "New Music America." Besides David Byrne of the Talking Heads, another rock musician represented at the festival was Brian Eno. Eno had been so irritated by the inane, chirpy "muzak" he heard while traveling that he composed a soothing ambient synthesizer score he called “Music for Airports.” Appropriately enough, during the 8 days of the Festival, Eno’s score was broadcast 24 hours a day throughout the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
Read any good music books lately?
Posted at 11:36 AM on July 19, 2006
by Don Lee
(3 Comments)
My wife wishes I would share more of what I know about classical music. "I wish I knew enough to share more," I tell her…not in false modesty.
A week ago she took matters into her own hands, checking out a music appreciation tape from the library. On a drive to the lake Sunday we listened to the tape, a recorded lecture on the life and work of Mozart. That got me started talking.
The guy had interesting information and opinions, but his style got under my skin. He's the type who'll flaunt his erudition one moment and shift into phony informality the next.
I post this not only to vent, but also to ask for recommendations. In our biz, we often get asked if we know any good introductions to classical music. It's surprising how hard it is to think of many. Any nominations?
A Good Music Book
Posted at 2:15 PM on July 19, 2006
by Rex Levang
(9 Comments)
Don -- how about The Joy of Music by Leonard Bernstein?
Good suggestion
Posted at 10:04 PM on July 20, 2006
by Don Lee
You know, I haven't read the Bernstein, Rex. And I should.
You've also reminded me that I should go back to Aaron Copland's "What to Listen for in Music," which I was enjoying before I abandoned it (for no good reason) a year or more ago.
From a browsing standpoint, Ted Libbey's new "NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music" looks good. But I'm wondering more about friendly how-to guides geared toward novices...in print and in audio, or even video.
Cow, Colleges, and Village Band Concerts
Posted at 8:43 PM on July 21, 2006
by John Zech
Filed under: Concerts
In the summertime you can find a lot of concerts in the parks of our region, but next week in Northfield you can hear band concerts the way they would have been given more than a century ago.
The Vintage Band Festival will feature more than 15 European and American bands with over 40 outdoor concerts in four days. Each day begins with noon concerts in several city parks, with continuous music into the night.
These are very experienced bandsmen (and women??) who wear period band uniforms and play authentic period instruments.
As an old bandsman myself, I wanted to give you the heads up on what promises to be quite a festival in a lovely town just south of the Twin Cities. You can find out the complete list of ensembles, schedules, etc. at their website.
Maybe I'll see you there!
Tim likes Ted's book
Posted at 2:32 PM on July 24, 2006
by Don Lee
I asked the other day for music appreciation recommendations. Tim Smith in The Baltimore Sun had lots of good things to say about Ted Libbey's new encyclopedia, which I mentioned in a follow-up post on July 20.
I'd still love to hear from others about a book (or recording) that opened a door to classical music in a welcoming, truly useful way.
There'll be viols in that village too
Posted at 2:45 PM on July 24, 2006
by Don Lee
What John didn't say in his post about the Vintage Band Festival is that there's another gathering of old instrument enthusiasts going on in Northfield this week: the 44th Viola da Gamba Conclave.
In my dreams I hear the ophicleides and saxhorns heading toward the center of town from the east and gambas and braccios marching, Woody Allen-like, down St. Olaf Ave. from the west, converging in Bridge Square for an Ivesian, historically informed jam session.
Music@Menlo
Posted at 5:04 PM on July 24, 2006
by Brian Newhouse
Filed under: Concerts
And we're off! Music@Menlo gets underway tonight with the first of the Encounters, a multimedia lecture/presentation designed to open up the music we'll hear tomorrow in Menlo's first concert. It's going to be very interesting to watch audience turnout this year. As my dad would've said coming in from the field in late July, It's hotter'n heck out here. Up and down the Bay Area of California, communities are being walloped with heat they’ve never seen before. Late Monday afternoon right now and it's nearly 100 degrees in Menlo. Normally, you’ve got 82 sunny degrees and a light breeze off the Bay, day after day after day—one of the reasons that real estate runs something like a thousand dollars a square inch here. But this is smashing through records and knocking out power grids and emergency shelters are trying to get seniors inside where it's cool. So, when they're used to Paradise will audiences venture into what feels a little like Hades? (Coming from Minnesota, concert presenters ask the reverse when it's January and a zillion below zero. Always the risk, which smarts in light of the endless hours of rehearsal, planning, fund-raising… ) I'll let you know.
If they stay away, it won't be for unimaginative programming in the concerts or the level of artistry. Check out this great lineup: http://www.musicatmenlo.org/
Menlo: close encounters
Posted at 12:33 PM on July 25, 2006
by Brian Newhouse
Filed under: Concerts
The 100+ heat broke at sunset, so the Festival's first event was a sellout. This crowd is rabid for classical music and just as hungry for information about it. So guest lecturer Bruce Adolphe launched into the first of several talks that'll take us into the world of Mozart, who turned 250 this year (had you heard?) and is a central focus of Menlo 2006. Bruce has as many hyphens as Bernstein: composer-pianist-broadcaster-educator-lecturer-impresario, and every week on NPR's Performance Today he also plays a stump-the-audience game where he sits down at the piano and disguises a pop tune in the style of a famous classical composer. You can tell he adores having an audience in front of him, and if you picture a whip smart classical-music-loving Sid Caesar going deep into Mozart's Piano Quartet in G Minor, you have a good idea of how I spent 90 minutes last night.
The audience laughed nearly the whole way through. But Bruce also had a serious and surprising point for most of us: Mozart's music isn't just grace and beautifully classical proportion all the time. Mozart has as much to do with a kind of 'spoken' music. Listen to it and you can hear a kind of everyday language turned into notes. A sentence here, a half-repetition of it there, an emphatic aside to make sure you got the point—all very human and approachable. A great set-up to hear the whole Quartet in tonight's first Menlo concert.
Menlo: Mozart festival heats up
Posted at 9:21 AM on July 26, 2006
by Brian Newhouse
Filed under: Concerts
You know those big industrial fans you can rent at Menards after your basement floods? I got to St. Mark's Episcopal Church an hour before the first Menlo concert last night and three of those monsters were going full tilt in the church aisles. No floodwaters anywhere, just another day of heat that made page one of USA Today. The fans were trying to shove the heat outdoors as if it were a batch of unwelcome freeloaders who hadn't bought tickets.
They did a good job and by eight the place was cooled down and every seat taken, as are all the seats for every single Menlo concert. Silicon Valley has been waiting a whole year for this.
The Festival's subtitle this year is "Returning to Mozart" and most of the concerts are programmed along these lines: on the first half last night we heard Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2, written in the horrible year of 1944. The cello starts all alone, high, strained, and utterly bereft—like an orphan crying in the back corner of some wartime cave. But after intermission, here came Mozart's C Major Piano Sonata for Four Hands and his G Minor Piano Quartet. Especially the slow movement of the Quartet—it was a balm, as if someone had gone into that cave and picked the little one up and carried it into the sun.
That's Menlo's point this year, that Mozart's humanity still helps our souls in a way that 200+ years haven’t dimmed in the least.
As Seen on TV
Posted at 7:58 AM on July 27, 2006
by Rex Levang
Classical music fans show up all over the place, including the Twin Cities media world.
Any guesses who's describing his/her musical tastes here?
As far as music goes. That's extremely varied. I can't list them all obviously, there are too many. I'm a HUGE classical music fan, and love anything with a french horn, organ, or strings. But I do really love almost all music. Classical takes up the majority of my space. Some of my favorite pieces are Mozart's Requiem in D, and almost anything by Bach.
Your comments below, or go here for answer.
Menlo: no one's anonymous
Posted at 10:38 AM on July 27, 2006
by Brian Newhouse
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Concerts
It was just a little side comment, but it opened up this whole festival for me. I was talking with Patrick Castillo, artistic administrator for Music@Menlo, and mentioning how much the Festival seems to have grown since I was here two years ago. Three weeks of concerts instead of two, over 100 volunteers instead of a few dozen, a burgeoning cadre of interns who want to learn festival-izing from these pros...Menlo is bigger than ever—oh, and every concert is immediately sold out. In the parlance of Silicon Valley (where Menlo's nestled), all of this means that demand is ahead of supply, a metric the Valley learned the hard way a half-dozen or so years ago. So with growth all around you, Patrick, what’s next? Just more and bigger?
He smiled and looked out the window. "One of the things that makes this all work is the scale. For now, it's small enough so that no one's anonymous here."
I love that. No one’s anonymous. You see one of the world's greatest musicians in intense rehearsal with a group of 18-year-olds, or the lead administrator helping a cellist schlep his instrument and a clutch of music stands across campus before a concert, and a dozen similar acts of community every day. You're known here. Can you say the same of your workplace? If not, why not? And is "we're too big" a very satisfying answer?
Music@Menlo may become the next big American music festival, just as big Aspen or Marlboro, but for now small is definitely beautiful.
More Books
Posted at 8:26 AM on July 28, 2006
by Rex Levang
Continuing Don Lee’s thoughts about books on music: Copland’s What to Listen for in Music remains a good, sensible introduction to basic musical concepts (I've had my say on it elsewhere). And might I also put in a plug for Joseph Kerman’s Opera as Drama? It’s by no means a “beginner’s introduction to opera,” but it is an intelligent and very well written book, directed at the interested non-specialist. Which, Don, may have been one of the things you were getting at. . . .
Menlo: Joseph Silverstein conversation
Posted at 11:22 AM on July 28, 2006
by Brian Newhouse
(1 Comments)
Filed under: Concerts
Temperatures around the Bay Area are blessedly cooling, but Music@Menlo kept a little bit of heat going yesterday by taking on the incendiary topic of…vibrato! Joseph Silverstein led a public conversation over the lunch hour about the role of research in violin performance. Silverstein's had a great career as the longtime concertmaster of the Boston Symphony and conductor of the Utah Symphony, but I had no idea he was such a scholar as well. He's read enormous amounts of the literature on violins going back at least 250 years—one author contradicting another while a third has an ax to grind against a fourth, and then come modern researchers who have biases and publish-or-perish agendas—all of them with a slightly or grandly different take on how much vibrato a player should add to each note. Questions were flying around the auditorium yesterday about what Leopold Mozart said in 1756, or Geminiani in 1751, and whether the great violin inspiration of Brahms, Joseph Joachim, really was 'dry' in the whole vibrato department? Oy. What’s a violinist to do? I guess flock to Menlo to have this exact kind of conversation.
Menlo: noisy world
Posted at 9:49 AM on July 31, 2006
by Brian Newhouse
Filed under: Concerts
There's a pretty good chance that if you're reading a classical music blog, you have yet to experience the phenomenon of Aly & AJ. (If you're a parent of a girl 6-16 years old, all you need to do to get up to speed is ask your daughter.) For the newcomers, Aly & AJ are 16-year-old California pop-rockers. Tall, slim, blonde twin sisters who write songs in their bedroom, a couple years ago they made it very big. Your 6-16 year-old girl wants to be Aly or AJ. Heck, I wouldn't mind being Aly or AJ.
My two daughters are frantic fans and their most outlandish dream came true last week when they called a San Francisco radio station and won four tickets to a concert, the first time anyone in our house has ever won anything by calling a radio station. They even got backstage passes. When she heard she'd won, my nine-year-old let out a scream that I felt in my eyeballs. She and her little sister then jumped on the bed and pretended to faint.
So Friday night, my wife and I and two extremely excited little girls left the classical music Valhalla of Music@Menlo for an open-air theater south of town. We were surrounded by 5,000 other extremely excited little girls. Ours were wide-eyed at the fashions in the crowd and the mountains of speakers onstage. When Aly and AJ bounded on we were swamped by that same scream I'd heard the day before—times 5,000. Our daughters danced in the aisles to music that was peppy and loud and unintelligible. They tried to get me to dance and they screamed themselves hoarse. We had a blast. Backstage afterward, Aly and AJ were as nice as could be to my girls.
The next night I was back at Menlo for chamber music. As much as I love this stuff, I have to admit that I was ready to feel let down; after getting my ears pasted back by 60,000-watt speakers and feeling (if only for an evening) With It, Schubert was going to sound just a little antique, a little too polite.
But Wu Han and Jeffrey Kahane opened the concert playing Schubert's Fantasy in F Minor for Four Hands on a wide-open nine-foot Steinway and I have to tell you that that being 30 feet away from a world-class concert grand played by two such athletic pianists made an impression that Aly & AJ with all their watts could do well to contemplate. Schubert made the bigger impact. His Fantasy unrolls like a brooding and twisted story but interrupted by moments of hope… Wu Han and Kahane put me on the edge of my chair.
I know I'm in apples and oranges land here by comparing. But this is the way my mind has always worked, jostling experiences to make sense of a noisy world. Don't you do the same? These two concerts were as different as they could be and I liked them both. But when I hear stories of pop music's omnipotence and classical music's irrelevance, it's nice to road test the assumptions once in a while. On a northern-California weekend, classical did just fine, capturing at least one heart and mind to a depth that no other music can.
Oh say can you see...
Posted at 9:07 PM on July 31, 2006
by John Birge
Filed under: The blog
The New York Times reports that Cynthia Phelps, principal violist of the New York Philharmonic, will perform the national anthem on her viola before the Padres/Astros game at Petco Park in San Diego this Wednesday.
Somewhere in this story, there's a great new viola joke waiting to be born, and added to the vast heritage of viola jokes.
So here's where you come in. Come up with a good viola joke involving a baseball game and/or the national anthem (Roseanne Barr references optional), and click on our comments link below to share with the group. Go nuts widdit.
- Become a Member
- Member Connect Accounts
- Leadership Circle
- Sustaining Members
- Member Discounts
- Become a Sponsor
- Tax Information
- Planned Giving
- Vehicle Donation
- Donate Stock
