Category: Music

We are having yet another dark, dreary day filled with rains.

Then it seemed like a perfect time to come inside and listen to Philip Glass's Waiting for the Barbarians.  Although I once would have said that I was not a person who listened to operas (although I attending performances), it seems that I have been mistaken. 

Somewhere along the line it seems that I stopped writing about concerts we have attended, and although I have thought about writing about things I was listening to and thinking about, I never quite managed to get around to it.

Then, on Friday, I took M and grandson Owen to LaGuardia.  On the way home I listened to my own music pretty much for the first time in a week and it struck me that no matter how much I loved the company, and no matter how nice Owen’s music was, music for a 2 ½ year old is still rather simple and repetitive, and I really missed playing my own music.  Luckily for me I had a 2 hour drive home, alone in the car with my CD changer,  allowing for a perfect bit of musical indulgence.

I had intended to listen a couple of new albums, new to me at least.  We now have one of those little tape jobbies that allow you to connect your Ipod to the car stereo, which had been used to play Owen’s music in the car, and I was looking forward to listening to some new sounds on the way home, but the new album was grating in the car: the base rumbled, the high notes were shrill.  I have a pretty decent car stereo but a car stereo, combined with road noise is not the best music venue; it is not as good as an Ipod with headphones, which in turn is not as nice as a really good stereo with decent speakers, and it was not suitable for the album in question.  I will report on that another time

What did I listen to?  Old favorites in my CD Changer.  Hazmat Modine’s Bahamut and a CD reissue of two Delbert McClinton albums:  Victim of Life’s Circumstances and Genuine Cowhide.  Both are old and familiar, and yes, repetitious.  I have listened to them more times than I can count, and will continue to listen again and again.

I’ve had Bahamut a couple of years now (it came out in 2006) and I absolutely love it.  It makes me profoundly happy every time I listen to it.  In the car, it perks me up and I sing along and bounce (very subtly) in my seat as I drive.  I learned about the group from an e-mail conversation with several friends revolving around Tuvan throat singers, who perform on three of the songs, accompanied by drums, tuba, and Hawaiian steel guitar.  As you can see, it is not quite what you would expect.  In fact the whole album is not quite what you would expect and yet it is also completely accessible and comfortable, somehow bridging that gap between surprise and familiarity in a way that seems perfectly natural, at least to me.   

I really don’t know how to classify this album although I tend to think of it as heavily blues based. I’d describe it as gritty delta blues with a heavy dose of harmonica and New Orleans jazz, with a touch of calypso, klezmer music, Native American, and other influences.  Just writing all this makes it seem so pretentious and “arty” but that is not the effect I get.  I love Wayne Schuman’s vocals, he is marvelous on the harmonica, and I suspect that he is the glue that ties everything together.  “Lost Fox Train” is a fabulous harmonica solo which made me wish I could share it with Owen (maybe someday) who is fascinated with harmonica right now (and drums).  There are moments of pure Blues, and moments that kind of hazily merge word fusion with blues and traditional forms.  It is pure happiness, but happiness tinged with knowledge of the darker edges of the world. 

As for Delbert McClinton, he is something else entirely; although there are definitely blues influences in both of these albums. I guess I would call it kind of a rockin' country/blues hybrid.  I discovered Delbert McClinton in college in New York, even though he is Texan and I am Texan. At the time McClinton’s music seemed amazing to me, music I certainly had never encountered in the traditional country music world where I grew up or in the art-rock, big band swing milieu of my college “set”. I spent my summers in Texas searching out his older albums in record bins and used record stores, and when half of my record collection was stolen (including Delbert) the summer after graduation, I was heart-broken.  Gradually Delbert drifted to the back of my mind.

When I discovered that Victim of Life’s Circumstances/Genuine Cowhide and been reissued in a single CD I was eager to give it a try and I was thrilled to learn that the music speaks to me as much now as it did 30 some odd years ago.  If anything I am more impressed now at how really remarkable the songs are.  McClinton wrote all the songs on Victim of Life’s Circumstances, and they are just marvelous.  The album’s hard-stomping, rocking country music shows deep influence of blues, R&B, and funk and fits McClinton’s Texas twang perfectly.  When I listen to these albums today, I can see why they were so hard to find at the time; they are like nothing else I remember. The second album, Genuine Cowhide, is a mixture of a couple of original songs with a collection of some of the great R&B and Blues covers.  It must have seemed outrageous in 1976.  McClinton makes each song work, and he makes the entire album seem of a piece.  Each song is recognizable for itself and yet each one is also perfect McClinton.  This album was my introduction to Blues and R&B and it lead me to explore these genres further, and yet it still stands on its own.    There is more R&B and Blues here than probably any Texas White Boy could have been expected to pull off, and it smokes and rolls. 

It is definitely not music for a 3 year old.  But it is music that speaks to the heart of a 50 year old, perhaps even more so than it did to her youthful former self.

Last weekend we went to a piano recital, part of the annual piano fesitval hosted by the Howland Chamber Music Circle.    I look forward to almost every concert in this series and for the most part the concerts are a joy.  

We had planned to go in to New York to see Gustavo Dudamel conduct the New York Philharmonic.  He was conducting Mahler's Fifth, one of his signature pieces, and one of my favorite works, so the concert was eagerly anticipated.  Alas, fears and concerns over the weather interfered with our plans.

We did however make ti to our Sunday afternoon concert, the first concert of the Howland Chamber Circle's Piano Series, featuring Gilles Vonsattel.

I was not disappointed.  We never are at this venue.  I was completely unfamiliar with the opening work, "Les Soires de Nazelles" by Poulenc.  It was lovely although rather a frivolous indulgence, not the way I think of most of Poulenc's work.  G did not like it.

It was the second half of the concert that I found the most fabulous.   Vonsattel began with Nico Muhy's Booklet, which was something of a tour-de-force.  I really don't know anything about Muhy, but I certainly want to hear more.  Often with modern works I feel one needs to listen over and over until one has almost absorbed the music before it really begins to make sense, but I think perhaps this piece reaches out to the listener a little sooner.  There seem to be hidden echoes of early church music in this otherwise very modern composition, or at least so it seemed on this my first listening.  I have an impression of an interesting and moving combination of massively pounding and dominant waves of sound contrasted with the very delicate and almost frivolous.  The work combined pedal octaves with a very loud, at times massively pounding, toccata-like structure played with the left hand, while the right was tripping along with soft harmonies and melodic bits.    This is a work I would dearly love to hear again.

The Muhy was followed by Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, another technically demanding work but completely different from the Muhy.  I would have liked to be in a position where I could have watched the pianist playing, but that might have also distracted from my pure enjoyment of the music. Sitting in the back, my head resting on a pillar behind my chair, letting the music of Ravel wash over one is a perfectly fine way to end a Sunday afternoon. 

So, we had a fabulous concert, followed by a lovely little dinner, and an absolutely horrendous drive home in a combination of slow and sleet with about 1/2 inch of slushy slippery stuff on the roads and very little visibility.  

We went to a fabulous concert today, the last concert of the Howland Chamber Music Circle, and it was truly lovely.  In fact I rave about most of these concerts and the last two have been exceptional. 

Today we heard the Peabody Trio perform the Beethoven Trio in B-flat major, the "archduke" and the Schubert Trio #1 in B-flat major.  Somehow it didn’t connect in my brain that both were in B-flat major until I wrote this, I suppose it is not the kind of thing I notice or would notice, another sign of something lacking in my education and perceptions of the world I suppose.   

G tells me that the Beethoven "archduke" is one of his favorite pieces of music and this performance was fabulous.  I love this trio, and although I wouldn’t quite call it a favorite, there is something about Beethoven that just thrills me to no end.  I love the mix of fun and seriousness, humor and pathos, like everything in the world is wrapped up in a piece of music.  In the B-flat major trio, the third movement is incredibly ethereal and moving, one can almost get lost in its beauty.

But then, just in case you have allowed yourself to wallow off in a fog of otherworldly beauty, Beethoven slaps you upside the head with the beginning of the fourth movement, which proceeds without pause like a jolt of lightening.   Now that the listener has been shocked out of his or her reverie, it is hard not to smile at the irrepressible humor in the final movement, bubbling along and escalating into the fabulous conclusion.  The audience almost rose up in unison at the last note with great applause (and this must have been the practice run because the swell of rising listeners was perfected for the repeat performance at the end of the Schubert)

Ah Beethoven and Schubert, how better to end the season.  Not only that but we had more Beethoven three weeks ago, when I was indulged in a breathtaking performance of my favorite quartet.  The Alexander Quartet played Beethoven’s String Quartet #13 Opus 130 with the concluding Grosse Fuge.  I don’t know why I don’t think of this piece more often.  Each time I hear it in its entirety I think it is just perfect.   I don’t believe I always heard the quartet played with the fifth movement (the Grosse Fuge) and I do remember that the first time I heard the complete original work with the included Fuge, I was STUNNED.  I can’t imagine the quartet without that ending, it ties everything up .  I am amazed that it was dropped, although not surprised at Beethoven’s chagrin that it was not liked. I believe he is reputed to have said "asses", or did I dream that?

Now of course I was aware of the Grosse Fuge before, and I don’t really remember if my father’s recordings of Beethoven’s quartets played the 13th in the original version (5 movements) or in the altered version as I heard the music and absorbed it but didn’t really think about it until after I left home. But I certainly know that I have heard quite a few performances of the four-movement 13th, more than the five-movement version.  It is such a shame too.

So, two fabulous concerts. 

Oh yes, the Schubert was nice too, how could it not be?  It is such a fresh, bright, cheery piece, and as I said before it was followed by a great welling-up of the audience in appreciation.

I wonder what this says about me?

I hear a piece of 12-tone music, such as Anton Webern’s Five Pieces, Op 5, and I immediately start to smile and I want to dance.  I get a little thrill, as if all the cells in my body feel a little spark.  Obviously these were youthful pieces, perhaps a little rough.  But still they make me happy.  Almost all 12-tone music does, even the somber pieces seem to wake me up in special way. 

Oh, I know, no one "does" 12-tone any more.  Oh well.

And by the way, Ravel’s Quartet in F Major makes me very happy too.

What a lovely evening.

It seems sad to report that the most enjoyable and memorable event of last night’s trip to NYC for a concert was the roast beef sandwich consumed at 11:30 on the train home.

In an ideal world of course, the plagues, stresses, deadlines and distractions of life would not interfere with one’s enjoyment of music and the sheer pleasure of the event itself would outweigh and eliminate ordinary stresses from the mind. But I do not live near a venue for great music and cannot easily decide on a whim to attend a concert, and in this day of scheduled events tickets are often purchased long in advance. Not that the anticipation lessens the enjoyment of the work. An impending concert is normally a source of joy and anticipation. But I have felt distracted of late, unable to focus, without perspective, and to some extent attention. It seems the demands of others have sucked away all my time and attention of late and I have felt deprived of the ability to pursue my own interests. I had hoped that a concert would lure me back into my own piece of the world. This proved not to be the case.

Alas, my loss.

But the evening was not, in fact wasted. I read. I let my mind wander. I thought about my book. It felt like the first time in weeks that I had actually been able to concentrate on anything without constant interruption and disruption. It was a blessed relief.

I took Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals with me for the train. I had started this book months ago, had gotten all wrapped up in it, devouring the first few chapters before my chain of thought got interrupted with whatever minor household or familial crisis was swirling around last fall. I picked it up occasionally, luckily finding that I retained the details easily and was often able to resume wherever I had left off as if only a day had passed, but then it drifted further out of my thoughts. I did a lot of reading in January but did not return to that book. By the time I was ready for it again, the opportunity was gone, swept up in the demands and distractions of other peoples crises.

And here I was, after a disastrous day, a day where I almost decided not to go in to the city, finding myself finally at my wits end ready to escape, tired of being patient and helpful, ready to wrap myself up in a book and lose the world.

And I did. The train trip was far too short. And I found the key to that part of my brain that I had felt was missing.

Actually the concert seemed promising. The entire evening was devoted to Richard Strauss’s “Ein Heldenleben” and G had been anticipating it and eagerly awaiting the concert for weeks. I, not so much, but it is not one of my favorite works. That we didn’t enjoy the performance really had nothing to do with the musicians. I was bored with the “behind the music” production that occupied the first half of the program. It was an interesting exercise, and I can see its purpose to appeal to different audiences and reach out beyond the “stuffy” and “highbrow” monikers that are so often flung at classical music. But it did not appeal to me. It was well done. But I personally did not like the changing photographs and images, the bits of the music pasted together to illustrate points. To me it seemed too fast, too much like a pastiche of ideas with no depth. The presentation reminded me of nothing so much as the Nicole Kidman movie, Moulin Rouge, which I also hated. I was bored to tears.

I was looking forward to hearing the work. The week had been stressful; a little bombast seemed like the perfect antidote. But I had also probably already closed off a part of my brain and I was not really receptive to something new. I wasn’t really listening to the music. I wanted the familiar, overblown Germanic heroicness that is “Ein Heldenleben”. But flash and bombast was not Alan Gilbert’s take on the piece. The performance was beautiful. It seemed to accent the romantic nature of the piece, the intricacies, which had I been more receptive I might have enjoyed. But instead I was bored and closed off. It was unfortunate.

I would like the opportunity to hear it again. But now the opportunity is lost and I missed my chance. It reminds me of that phrase from Frank Herbert’s Dune, “Fear is the mind-killer” but I would restate this as: Boredom is the mind-killer.

G was bored as well and we snuck out a few minutes early. G wanted bombast. He loves bombast. Strauss and Bruckner are his favorite composers. I don’t think he was looking for a different perspective. He wanted the comfortable and familiar. But when things get too familiar we stop noticing.

Oh well. I read more of my book on the way home. I would love to spend time over the next few days curled up with it, tuning out the world, thinking about Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet. This may not happen. The lives of others are once again about to rule my schedule and attentions. But a switch has been flipped back on and I am loath to let it get shut off again.

Sunday was the last concert of the South Mountain Chamber Music Series for this year.  It went so quickly, already the concerts are all a blur in my head.  I suppose I need to focus more.

Still, it was a lovely concert.  We heard the Saint Lawrence Quartet and for the final piece they were joined by Menachem Pressler for the Shostakovich  Quintet.  Of course the Shostakovich was spectacular.  It is one of my favorite pieces of music, one I listen to often and with which I am quite familiar. We have two recordings, each quite diffferent.  The performance on Sunday was like neither of the recordings.  Oh it was obviously the same piece of music, and some parts were like one recording, some like the other, some like neither.  I found it fascinating and quite enjoyable.  Increasingly the more I hear a work, the more familiar I become with it, the more I can sometimes appreciate different interpretations — they add something to the experience, perhaps cause me to look at the music differently, to discern something I had missed before. 

Of course that is not always the case, sometimes I suppose one just does not like the way someone else interprets a particular piece of music.  For example I love to listen to Mitsuko Uchida play Chopin but when I heard her playing Beethoven I was not moved.  There are other pianists I would chose to play Beethoven.  I don’t know that any of them are more "right", they are just what I prefer, and I am not sure that my preference is based on any particular knowledge of the music, but probably more by my experience of listening to it performed a particular way.

I suppose if I actually knew more about music and pursued it with a more single minded devotion I might have more firmly held opinions about what is good or "right" and what is not.  But then again I might not.  I would hope that I would be better able to vocalize or pinpoint what I did or did not like about a performance, but I would also hope that greater familiarity would not close my mind to the possibility of being surprised by any given performance.

So many people I that also attend these concerts seem to be more conscious of the music and how they expect it to sound.  They remember what they heard in the past and how so and so played such and such.  I suspect I need to be more focused.

I would for example like to know how one determines if a performance is good or bad.  I don’t want to know this so I can judge performances, I really just want to sit back and enjoy the music and perhaps be transported or see the world a little differently because of the experience.  This may be a naive expectation on my part.   

The Saint Lawrence is fairly well regarded, I am not sure they would actually do anything badly but then again I am no critic.  During intermission I walked outside to hear someone loudly proclaim "They played the Schumann badly".  I wished I had been able to pinpoint who made that statement, not because I wanted to argue with them, but because I would have liked to know why they thought so.  What was disappointing in the music?  What had they expected?  Perhaps I would learn something.  I like to listen to Schumann, but I am really not at all knowledgeable.  Other people loved the piece.  Why?  I was actually rather indifferent.  I am not sure it was the Schumann, I think that I was just still so wrapped up in the opening Haydn quartet that I hadn’t gotten my head quite wrapped around the Schumann yet, perhaps another reason that I need to be more organized and disciplined in my approach. 

As it is I have no complaints.  I heard two really fabulous concerts this weekend:  one in NYC and one in Pittsfield.  And we went to Ben & Jerry’s after the South Mountain concert, another Pittsfield tradition for us, one we had not indulged in yet this year.  It would have been a shame to end the season without once going out for ice cream.

We went to our first concert of the season at the New York Philharmonic Friday night and it was a lovely and luscious evening.   The program was the third of the Philharmonic’s Tchaikovsky Experience  and featured violinist Janine Jansen playing the Violin Concerto in D major, Op 35.

The violin concerto was first on the program and the audience went wild.  At the end of the first movement there was thunderous applause, there was shouting and screaming and the pounding of feet.  In the orchestra people were leaping to their feet and storming the stage, articles of clothing flying through the air.  From my perch in the third balcony it was an amazing spectacle.  The gentleman on my right leaned over and said "If this is the first movement, what will happen at the end of the work?". 

After a brief pause for everyone to calm down and contain themselves, the piece progressed.  The performance was spectacular.  The violinist was excellent.  The orchestra played beautifully, the interaction between soloist and orchestra was almost a courting.  It was an absolutely wonderful concert. And yes the audience seemed to erupt at the conclusion with more applause and yelling, a wave of people surging forward toward the stage.  Several ushers and security people quickly moved to the front of the orchestra, standing between the audience and the soloist.  It reminded me of nothing so much as a slightly more genteel version of The Beetles first US tour with the young girls swarming the stage.  It was a rather remarkable scene.

I used to believe that the Friday night audiences at Avery Fisher Hall were perhaps a little more blasé and jaded than the Saturday night suburban crowd.  Apparently not.  I suppose I am just not inclined to rush forward and scream in exultation at a marvelous performance.  It was very good, but it did not bring out that impulse, although George does recall the first time I heard a quartet by George Tsontakis and I moved quickly forward at the end of the concert to tell the composer how much I loved the work.  Still, he was only sitting 3 rows ahead of me, and I waited my turn peacefully in a line which I felt was all too brief.  Perhaps it is me, but the response seemed a bit excessive if entertaining.

G reminded me that several things probably conspired:
1.  Everyone loves Tchaikovsky "even if they don’t like music".
2. She was very very good.
3. She is very pretty.

Ah, yes.

I am not even going to go there.