Classical Notes: March 2007 Archive

A pair of 75-year-olds celebrate

Posted at 2:47 PM on March 1, 2007 by Don Lee

Both the Fargo-Moorhead and the Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestras are celebrating 75th anniversaries this season. I guess 1931 and '32 were banner years for making music across state lines.

The coincidence made me curious. Do our other "regional" orchestras date from that same time? Well, basic Web research tells me the South Dakota Symphony is about a decade older. And the Rochester Symphony was founded a little earlier than that, in 1919. (For the record, the Minneapolis Symphony gave its first concert in 1903.)

So we're not left to wonder about some kind of seismic shift in the Upper Midwest's symphonic landscape during the early 1930s. Still, it's remarkable enough that the Twin Ports and Fargo-Moorhead had the faith and gumption to get these organizations going just a couple of years into the Great Depression.

Gergiev Imagery

Posted at 4:23 PM on March 1, 2007 by Rex Levang

In case you were left wondering by a previous posting and its vivid description of conductor Valery Gergiev: here's just one image of the foremost Russian conductor of his generation.

School for Scandal

Posted at 3:31 PM on March 2, 2007 by Rex Levang

My fellow bloggers have been too noble to bring this one up, but I suppose this space should take some notice of Hattogate, the scandal that's been lighting up the classical blogosphere lately. (Basically, the piano recordings that everyone thought were by Joyce Hatto were not by her at all.)There's been a lot written about this one; this Gramophone article is a good place to start.

(But as Alex Ross suggests, Joyce Hatto has received much more attention as a result of this imbroglio than she ever did in her life and career.)

Where do you stand on Norrington's Brahms?

Posted at 2:02 PM on March 6, 2007 by Don Lee

Did you hear last Friday's Minnesota Orchestra concert in person or on the air? I'd love to know whether my impressions match up with anyone else's. No water cooler opportunities yet, and neither the Star Tribune nor the Pioneer Press seems to have reviewed it--perhaps because Thursday's performance was snowed out.

Sir Roger Norrington's historically informed approach to Brahms' German Requiem left me feeling just a little cheated. At the start, the musicians seemed tentative, as though they weren't sure they could be convincing without vibrato. (Norrington defends his no-vibrato stance in an interview with Brian Newhouse, which you can find here.)

My main let-down was in the second movement, the ominous "Denn alles Fleisch," which ought to have the power of a juggernaut. With Norrington at the reins, it was closer to light cavalry.

But after that, it got better. Norrington's lean approach helped clarify the flowing, melodious "Wie lieblich" (a surprise) and (more predictably) effectively underscored the punctuation in the next-to-last movement, "Denn wir haben hie."

The performance got a standing ovation at Orchestra Hall. But that's not necessarily a sign that I'm the only one who had reservations about Norrington's Requiem. Am I?

An Embarrassing Moment at the Opera

Posted at 4:09 PM on March 7, 2007 by Rex Levang

So a few weeks ago, I was at the Minnesota Opera's world premiere production of "The Grapes of Wrath." "That's interesting," I noted, looking at the program. "One of their singers has the same name as a well-known singer."

And then--this is the embarrassing moment--I realized that not only was she named Rosalind Elias, she was the Rosalind Elias.

(If you're not familiar with Rosalind Elias, she is a very distinguished American mezzo who, among other things, appeared in the world premiere production of Samuel Barber's Vanessa. And if you are familiar with her, from a decades-long career, you'll probably be cheered to know that she keeps up a lively schedule of performances: she's still singing in "Vanessa," though now in the role of the Old Baroness, not the young Erika--and later this season, she'll be in another world premiere: "Anna Karenina," by David Carlson, which debuts at Florida Grand Opera. She plays one of those wise, earthy Tolstoyan peasants--a role in which she'll no doubt be applauded just as warmly as she was at the Ordway in February.)

An award for Warland

Posted at 12:22 PM on March 8, 2007 by Don Lee (2 Comments)

Choral conductor and composer Dale Warland adds another honor to his resume Saturday. He'll receive the Robert Shaw Award in Choral Music from the American Choral Directors Association at its convention in Miami. The association makes the award every other year "to honor an individual for lifetime achievement in the choral art."

After more than three decades of standard-setting performances, the Dale Warland Singers gave their last concert nearly three years ago. But Warland stays active composing and guest conducting. And the Singers' final CD is still to be released; Lux Arumque comes out in May.

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The Harp Store

Posted at 2:09 PM on March 9, 2007 by Rex Levang (198 Comments)

Here's a radio piece that takes a look at an L. A. store specializing in harps. (Go to Offramp and find the "Harper Woods" story.)

It's not strictly classical, but it deserves a place here because it mentions harps, glissandi, pitch classes, a symphony orchestra -- also because in its unpretentious way, it's very effective radio.

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Gould lives

Posted at 1:44 PM on March 13, 2007 by Don Lee

Glenn Gould's playing has been brought back to life by a computerized piano. Writers for The New York Times and The Washington Post were among those on hand for an event last week that re-created Glenn Gould's 1955 recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations. The process reportedly delivers an unprecedented level of nuance and detail.

In their stories, both Edward Rothstein and Tim Page ask themselves how closely the "re-performance" resembles the Gould original. They don't ask, why go to the trouble?

Page does call it "one of the most celebrated recordings ever made," and I can hardly disagree. But I can't help but think of this specially programmed Yamaha Disklavier as a shrine belonging to "the cult of the performer" (writer Joseph Horowitz 's term). As such, it exists mainly to foster, as Horowitz put it, an "anachronistic new audience for old music."

Standing and Clapping

Posted at 1:05 PM on March 14, 2007 by Rex Levang

Audience members were on their feet last Friday at Orchestra Hall, but not for the usual reason.

One of the pieces on the Minnesota Orchestra's New York-themed program was a section of John Cage's "Living Room Music" -- a percussion piece played on ordinary objects one might find in a living room: a table, a newspaper, and so on. To set the scene, four well-upholstered armchairs were set up on a corner of the Orchestra Hall stage. Unfortunately that corner was invisible to some of the people sitting in the side boxes -- but by dint of standing up, they were able to get a full view. (It was a Casual Classics concert, after all.)

The Cage was followed by Steve Reich's "Clapping Music," which is indeed scored simply for clapping hands. The clapping that followed, from the audience, felt more enthusiastic than some of the obligatory Standing O's I've experienced.

New Web station for new music

Posted at 12:17 PM on March 15, 2007 by Don Lee

Interesting news from the New York-based American Music Center, which exists to serve and promote living composers and their work:

The American Music Center is pleased to announce the launch of Counterstream Radio, a showcase for new music by United States composers, on March 16 at 3 p.m. EST.

To mark the official station launch, Counterstream Radio will broadcast an exclusive conversation between two extraordinary vocal artists: Meredith Monk and Björk.

Assuming, despite the "EST," that they don't really mean standard time, that would be 2:00 p.m. tomorrow for those of us here in the Central Time Zone. I'm sending myself a reminder to tune in.

The Bjork-Monk conversation, btw, grows out of a Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media initiative.

The Center already has a site called New Music Jukebox, where you can see scores and listen to streaming audio files of music by contemporary American composers.

R. I. P., Julian Budden

Posted at 8:52 AM on March 16, 2007 by Rex Levang

I'm surprised to find only one online obituary for Julian Budden, the writer on opera who died in late February.

His great scholarly accomplishment was his book, "The Operas of Verdi," in three volumes, analyzing all of Verdi's operas in ever-increasing detail. (Each of the early operas gets about 20 pages; by the time he gets to the late works, each opera gets well over 100 pages.) Not a work for beginners, but indispensable for opera fans of a certain degree of experience and obsessiveness, who have been known to refer casually to looking something up "in Budden."

In DC, music incites the savage breast

Posted at 12:18 PM on March 20, 2007 by Don Lee

In case you missed the news, Washington public radio station WETA-FM is once again broadcasting classical music. The station moved to an all-talk format two years ago, but brought back classical in late January after DC's longtime commercial classical mainstay, WGMS, was sold and became a classic rock station.

On its blog, WETA invited listeners to comment on the transition. I hadn't checked it for a few weeks, but some e-mail yesterday prompted me to go back to see what's up.

In the two months since the change there have been hundreds of posts on the blog, with news and classical partisans tossing more than a few bombs back and forth. There's also been occasional sniping within the classical ranks. It makes pretty interesting reading.

More on Julian Budden

Posted at 9:59 AM on March 21, 2007 by Rex Levang

This very informative note points out more online information on the late Julian Budden (in English and Italian).

Though the writer, Michele Girardi, is too modest to say so, the website to which he refers us is the leading scholarly Puccini website, and he himself is one of the world's foremost Puccini scholars. Our humble blog is honored by such visitors.

I Is for Inefficiency

Posted at 8:14 AM on March 23, 2007 by Rex Levang

From NewMusicBox.com comes this article, explaining why the performing arts are immune to those cost-cutting efficiencies that can be introduced into the production of automobiles, machine tools, and the like.

Inefficiency in the arts is also the subject of an old-but-good bit of musical humor, the one about the efficiency expert who went to a symphony concert. Available here.

TV news notes

Posted at 2:06 PM on March 27, 2007 by Don Lee

Having been addicted to the tube as a kid, I carry around old TV show themes in my head. For several years, that was about the only place I could hear such music. At a certain point in TV history, producers started plunging right into the action without a preamble of any kind. But now, as The Christian Science Monitor points out, shows like Desperate Housewives are bringing themes back.

It occurs to me that news shows never banished theme music. But they don't use many classical tunes anymore. Where once Beethoven's 9th announced NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report, we now hear a John Williams fanfare. Back in the days of Edward R. Murrow, CBS Reports started out with Appalachian Spring. That big Bach fan William F. Buckley introduced Firing Line with a Brandenburg Concerto.

One show that has held on to a classical theme (by Rimsky-Korsakoff) is the syndicated pundit fest Inside Washington.

Surely there must be more. What am I missing?

Chanticleer calls

Posted at 2:00 PM on March 29, 2007 by Don Lee

The celebrated men's singing group Chanticleer has a young man from La Crosse under strong consideration for membership. The La Crosse Tribune has the story about Matt Curtis, 21, a junior at Viterbo University.

Not to shortchange Minnesota's own Cantus, but having been around for nearly 30 years, Chanticleer is the standard-setter in the field. So being invited to San Francisco for the final round of the group's auditions looks pretty good on a young singer's resume.

As the story and Chanticleer's Web site indicate, making it to the finals can be an end in itself. The group holds auditions every year, even if it doesn't have openings. Right now Chanticleer isn't looking for a new tenor.

Michael Tilson Thomas

Posted at 2:24 PM on March 30, 2007 by Rex Levang

Tantalizing idea from Michael Tilson Thomas ("MTT"):

Now I have this funny theory that Varese's music may have come out of his attending rehearsal of Stravinsky's music in the early days in Paris.

Lots of those rehearsals were completely chaotic. The players didn't know where they were, they were coming in, and, you know, barking and screeching…. Then I have a feeling that when Varese heard it all played correctly later he decided that it really wasn't as interesting, as chaotic as he wanted. So he decided he would compose music which sounded like those early chaotic read-throughs he had so grown to love.

"The MTT Files" starts Monday at 7 p.m. The first show (from which this quote comes) is "You Call That Music?"

Suppose you're shipwrecked on a desert island...

Posted at 3:05 PM on March 30, 2007 by Alison Young

The other night, I played a piece of music that is so utterly beautiful that I introduced it by saying "If I were stranded on a desert island, I would want this one along with me." It was the Adagietto or "Little Adagio" from Mahler's Fifth Symphony. It's a movement the acts as a bit of a respite from the emotional upheaval and melancholy of the rest of the symphony, but even alone seems to provide a sense of refuge and safety. Mahler only uses the string section with most of the orchestra sitting silently, except for the harpist. Somehow, introducing this plucked harmonic underpinning is the genius touch. It adds just enough of a gentle beat, like someone singing a cradle song, and the movement doesn't become overly bogged down in sentimentality.

I received an e-mail from a listener that pointed out as much as he liked the piece, he would prefer a piece more substantial and complex, like a Beethoven sonata; something to keep his mind active.

Interesting point. If we were all alone, far from civilization, and were offered a selection of pieces of music to have with us, what would they be? Something to comfort us, or something to keep our minds sharp?

For me the answer would be to have both!

What about you?