Category: Music

Sunday afternoon, is in many ways, is the worst time to go to a chamber music concert because it interrupts my ritual Sunday afternoon nap.  I don’t nap long, but that 20 minutes or so, between 4 and 5 on a Sunday afternoon is a treat I treasure. It is the perfect denouement to perfect Sunday of unwinding from the week gone-by.

But we have attended several afternoon concerts over the course of the last few weeks, and I have been amazed at the quality of the concerts and the fact that I have not even been tempted to fall asleep, even though that 4:00 to 5:00 PM time is always the most difficult hour in my day.

A few weeks ago we heard the Attacca quartet in a truly spectacular performance, which I did not write about because so much else was in an uproar in my life that I felt I would give the performers short shrift and slide into a maudlin  exploration of self pity.  That past, I can now say it was spectacular and will not be forgotten.  Find this quartet.  Listen to them.  I can tell you no more.

Last week we heard Till Fellner at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon and it was another wonderful performance, not only because I am somewhat partial to solo piano music.  I can be rather critical, too critical G tells me. 

And today we heard the Coryo quartet up in Rhinebeck and it was another wonderful concert, part of their "Emerging Artist" series.  We started with Haydn which I loved.  Supposedly Schumann was to follow but we got Bartok instead.  An announcement was not made, and that 4PM daze must have crept up a little bit because it took me a few measures of the first movement to get from "that is the strangest opening to a Schubert quartet I have ever heard" and "Schumann only wrote 4 string quartets, have I not heard this one before?" to realize that I was most definitely not listening to Schumann.  Even then I didn’t recognize that it was the Bartok until the second movement, which could have been by no-one else. Shame on me.

The Schumann, when it appeared, was wonderful as well and the concert was quite excellent, although I felt that the Bartok was a little harsh following the Haydn and would have been better served had the Schumann remained interjected between them.  I don’t know if there is any validity to this point of view, or if it is simply that I had made up my mind that I was going to hear Haydn, Schumann, and Bartok and then I couldn’t accept an alternative ordering.

Either way, perfectly nice end to the afternoon.

For the last several days thoughts have been rolling around my head about the concerts we attended last weekend, but nothing has been forthcoming in terms of coherent thought.  The further I get from the event the more difficult this seems to become so I must put down something, pathetic though it may be. 

Actually, we are listening to Shostakovitch’s Jazz Suite #1 as I write this and this has jogged my memory in that part of the weekend’s concert included Shostakovitch, although nothing as light-hearted as the Jazz Suite.

Friday night we had a rare "movie date" except that it was not just any movie date.  We went in to NYC to Lincoln Center to hear the New York Philharmonic perform Alexander Nevsky live during a screening of Eisenstein’s 1938 of the same name.  I have heard the music and I have seen the film, but I don’t think I have ever experienced the two together and it was a spectacular experience.  The film is absolutely stunning, although obviously programmatic and at times dated.  There were several parts where the audience laughed at the dated silliness of it, but overall it was quite good.  The music meshed with the film beautifully and was very lushly performed.   The music could be comedic and bumbling during the antics of the two suitors for  a young maiden’s hand in matrimony, noble and filled with the glory of war and victory, and also dark and brooding, especially during the terrifying scene where the German invaders nonchalantly drop crying infants into the fire.   Prokofiev was a great composer, Eisenstein, one of the great filmmakers and this film is a masterpiece, but together the two of them created something far greater than either of the pieces individually, and that is a tremendous achievement.

Saturday night we attended another concert.  Luckily this one was nearby, in Rhinebeck.  The Cavani Quartet played at the Rhinebeck Chamber Music Society and it was a truly spectacular concert.    The quartet opened with Mozart’s Divertimento #3 in F major, K 138, which was light, charming and playful, the perfect opening to a concert which was soon to take a turn of another sort altogether.

The second piece was Shostakovitch’s String Quartet #8 in C minor Op.110 and it was a truly spectacular performance.  The opening was soft lush and cushioning.  But then the horror of war burst around us with the furious, staccato, harsh second movement.  The listener was truly jerked out of repose with horror, forced to sit on the edge of one’s seat.  The tension and fury were completely palpable.  During the demented waltz, one felt that kind of existence that one carries on in the face of disaster, the mask of normalcy, hiding the terror and chaos that exist just below the surface, and the sounds of war once again interrupted.  The work is intensely emotional and gripping and the quartet played on this emotional outburst to great affect.  I think no one in the audience was unmoved.

I haven’t been able to help but contrast the two works in my mind since the weekend, the Prokofiev and the Shostakovitch.  Both show horror in war, but the Prokofiev also celebrates the glory and national pride.  Of course the Prokofiev was written for Stalin and meant to appeal to national pride.  Still, both keep running through my mind.

Oh, and I do not want to forget, the concert closed with the Beethoven  String Quartet # 14, powerful and tragic also in its own way, and in some ways probably one of the few pieces that could have followed the Shostakovich and held its own.  The performance was quite magnificent and was roundly applauded and by the audience.  My own quibble was perhaps small.  The performance was profound, perhaps too profound, the musicians fell prey to the current trend toward ponderous Beethoven.  Perhpas there was too much of a slowing of work, an overplaying of the tragedy without the contrapuntal lightness that is also present in Beethoven.

Just sayin’.

The New York Philharmonic season has begun, at least for us, again. 

We went in to NYC for our first concert last night and it was truly spectacular.

The program started with Ravel’s "L’Enfant et les Sortileges" which was beautifully magical.  What a stunning performance.  All the performances were .  Susanne Mentzer was wonderful as the boy, Patrizia Ciofi was spectacular, but all the performances were very very good.  And the piece was both restrained and magical without the kind of cutsey Disney-like niceness that seems to plague things written and performed for children today.  The performance was restrained and yet lush, with a very French feel.  It was both cruel and kind, terrifying the way I remember children’s stories being in my youth, and yet with peace and resoltion in the end.  Absolutely lovely. 

The second half of the program was filled by Saint-Saen’s Symphony # 3, the Organ Symphony, which was splendid also, a really spectacular performance.  G was thrilled by how long the organist drew out that final chord…he kept remarking.  He is something of an organ lover my G, not that I object, but I do not get quite the same thrill.

We came home on a cloud.  A splendid evening!

I can’t believe that it has been a week since I was in Knoxville.

One of my last evenings there, I listened to Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz on the radio with Rich while Miriam was feeding little Owen.  I have long loved that show but we don’t get it on our local public radio station any longer — I am not sure they don’t broadcast it, but if they do it is at a time that my local repeater station switches over to the local university and we get a different kind of music altogether.

That particular night the guest was Linda Ronstadt who was singing a wonderful selection of old standards.  Since I was reaching the point where I realized I needed to leave the kids on their own, and I was homesick for my own place and my own beloved, it was a very poignant hour, and I sat silently knitting and singing along to myself.  I did think to myself that Linda has really made great strides over the course of her career and has obviously tried to work on her interpretative ability.  She was quite good.

Now I have long loved Linda Ronstadt.  I have some of her early albums and I always thought she was a great technical singer with a wonderful voice.  But interpretive ability — bah.  In the early years it was just not there.  Let’s just say that I was suitably impressed, impressed enough to seek out an album when I came home.  Oh, I’ll admit she’s not Frank Sinatra or Billie Holiday, but I think I could enjoy Linda singing some of these songs as well. 

So I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a few things — in fact I went  a little overboard.  I used to buy a lot of records in a lot of genres, but lately, as G is mostly interested in classical music to the exclusion of all else, our purchases have revolved around the classical department.  I hadn’t realized I was positively itching for a little more variety. 

The first three of my purchases have been played frequently this week and I think they are winners. Two of them feature Linda Ronstadt.  (And by the way,  I know you can listen to the music at the store, and I do, but I find that those little snippets just give me a hint.  It is not until I play an album or a song over and over that I know whether it is a keeper or just bores me to tears.)

And so back to Linda.  The first album I bought is an old one, What’s New:

I purchased it specifically because it contained some of the songs Linda sang on the show, especially "Someone to Watch Over Me". 

I actually do remember considering this album when it originally came out (23 years ago?) but at the time was too much of a snob to take it seriously.  I was still convinced that Linda was great with country-rock but couldn’t handle the standards.  I was 25, still  plagued with the confidence and arrogance of youth and had just come out of a college experience where swing dancing to big band music was in and I had been introduced to Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.  (that mixed with standard disco and late 70’s early 80’s rock).  Besides I was having enough trouble at that stage of my life with young men thinking I was too old-fashioned and serious for my own good, that I didn’t think I needed to add another album of standards to my collection.  Ahh, the insecurity and ignorance of youth.

But back to the here-and-now.  When I first listened to What’s New, I will admit I was a little disappointed.  It was lovely, but not as lovely as the greats.  Of course I also listened to it under full stereo power in the family room.  Although an albums of songs is not the same as a symphony or Chamber work, the full-scale treatment provided by good speakers does draw more attention to any absence of nuance.  It is not that the performances were bad.  They weren’t.  Linda Ronstadt, as I recall, partially took on this project as an attempt to grow as an artist and it is obvious she learned a lot.  It is also obvious to me that she has learned more in the intervening 20 some years.  On the Ipod however, the songs shine.  At first I would say that Linda’s performance of "Someone to Watch Over Me" on the radio was better than that on the album.  After listening on the Ipod I am not as sure.  Radio broadcasts have their own problems with reproduction of sound, and Rich and Miriam’s stereo, although nice, does not have the sound quality of ours.  The Ipod with speakers is pretty good, but it is much closer to what I originally heard on the radio broadcast than what I heard at home in the family room.  So I have been singing along with Linda all week, and enjoying every minute.

The second Linda Ronstadt album I purchased is a new one: Adieu False Heart  with Ann Savoy.

I will admit that I know precious little about Ann Savoy; I have heard of her, I know she sings traditional Cajun songs, but otherwise I am completely in the dark.  I am not aware that I have ever heard her sing.

But the album sounded tempting in the little "play the CD" thingy at the store so I bought it.  I am very happy that I did.  This is a wonderful album if you like albums of slow songs lovingly and beautifully rendered and sung.  The performances run more toward the art song than traditional Cajun fiddle music, but the songs are all beautifully performed and mastered.  The album as a whole works well, there are really no disappointments here, and although there is a wide variety of song there is a consistency to the performance that helps tie them all together into a unified whole.   The vocals themselves are just exquisitely beautiful.  Ann’s voice is much more expressive than Linda’s but there are still few who can match the absolute beauty of Linda Ronstadt’s tone.  The two blend together and compliment each other fabulously well, and there are songs where they are so well matched that it seems impossible to determine where one ends and the other begins.  I think this is an album that I will listen to frequently and for a long time.

My third musical selection this week was in a totally different vein, one that had me dancing around more than listening.  I bought A Bigger Bang by the Rolling Stones.  Who knows what came over me,
this is not completely in character, although I have long loved good rock, but I am not complaining, as this album really rocks.  As I said, this album had me dancing around the house.

The songs are good, the music rocks, the album is consistent.  I don’t think there is a lemon here, but I will admit that I don’t really have a feel for the songs yet — I’m too busy dancing to slow down and pay attention to the words, but occasionally something catches my attention and I pause for a minute before the beat gets back into my blood and I boogie off again.  Jagger’s voice is amazing. Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, when they just get into the music, can drive a beat like no one else.   I might be middle aged, the stones might be middle aged, but its nice to know we still rock.

I think the album will continue to grow on me, even as I grow more familiar with the lyrics:  Heartbreak and breaking hearts, the terrible things that women (and men) do. It seems like this is a return to, or an acceptance of, what The Stones do best.

But I must admit that although I love the pure rock and roll sound of The Stones, I have never been the biggest fan.  During their youth, I was just too young, or too naive.  I learned to like the music; it grew on me with time.  I was in college before I really paid attention to The Stones, and they were just one of so many new references that were being thrust upon me. 

I arrived on the East Coast, at Vassar, a naive girl from West Texas who was really culturally out of her depth.  I learned fast.  I reveled in the experience.  It was a tremendous change.  Here I was, a simple girl who listened to Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, and John Denver, but not the real country singers that my Texas peers adored.   I was immersed in "The Three B’s" (Back, Beethoven, and Brahms) and loved Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys, Delbert McCLinton, and Disco.   The Stones did not really figure in my life before college.  Then there were too many new things to absorb:  Swing Bands, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, King Crimson, The Stones, Joan Baez, Stravinsky, Hovanness, John Cage; the list could go on and on.

The Stones were too much angry young men for me to really appreciate when I was young.  But I always loved the beat, loved to hear the sound.  It always made me want to dance.  Gradually they grew on me, but I didn’t buy their albums until Tattoo You, the only other Stones album I ever purchased (although we did make tapes of Beggars Banquet and Let it Bleed while George and I were dating and he was taken with both albums at a friend’s house.  I still can’t explain that, and even he admits it is completely out of character — must have just been that post-divorce state of mind.) Some of my friends, the ones who were hard-core Stones fans, were appalled at my choice, since they pretty much agreed that the Stones’ momentum had run dry and felt I should buy one of the older, classic, Stones albums.  And I can’t really explain it, although I still smile whenever hear "You Make a Grown Man Cry".  I think it was the presence of Sonny Rollins, even though he appears only on three tracks.  Those tracks seem to affect the entire album, as if he was raising a bar that the Stones then had to challenge themselves to meet.  And successfully they did.  The R&B overtones on this album really roar, and threaten to go out of control, but they are always reigned in, just barely.  Maybe it’s because this album doesn’t seem as contemptuous as previous albums and I was just more comfortable with the songs.  Anyway Tattoo You has long been my favorite Stones album.  Maybe we’ve all just matured, but A Bigger Bang  will probably run a close second.

The opening concert of the South Mountain Chamber Music series was this afternoon, and, as usual, it was absolutely wonderful.  The Mendelssohn Quartet gave a wonderful performance of Haydn, Dutilleux and Mendelssohn with an encore of Puccini.  It was a lovely Autumn Sunday.  How quickly the seasons have seemed to change. 

The Dutilleux was difficult but interesting, and the audience applauded politely but was not probably universally thrilled.  I thought the piece was interesting, but not as ethereally breathtaking as the cellist described it before the performance.  And this dichotomy has made me think about music and new music (although a piece written in 1978 is hardly new) and how we listen and approach music. 

I have only fairly recently come to an appreciation of Haydn.  In my youth it bored me and I found it uninspiring.  I was exposed to classical music, but mostly of a later period, Beethoven through Brahms, perhaps, but Haydn missed out.  In my adolescence I discovered the romantics; much more appropriate to the hormone-ridden years.  Only recently have a really listened to Haydn, discovered what a great composer he truly was, and come to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the music.

This appreciation did not come in a vacuum however.  I listen to music.  Composers are influenced by each other.  Popular pieces are played over and over, are incorporated into soundtracks, commercials, movies, and televison shows.  If you have lived for a few decades and attended any concerts you come to have an expectation of what you will hear at a concert.  If you attend local symphonies or listen to classical music CD’s you begin to recognize certain genre’s or composers.  “That is Baroque” you might say.  Or, “That sounds like Brahms” even though you are not a musical scholar or particularly music-minded.

But this does not apply as much to 20th century composers.  The music is difficult because we do not hear it every day.  We have little or no frame of reference because it is not performed often.  We fall back on the familiar sounds.  But I seem to recall that even the “great” classical composers were not always appreciated in their time.  I also recall that some of the complaints we make today, “but you can’t hum it” were applied to composers of the caliber of  Mozart and Beethoven, the most humable of composers by modern standards.   Perhaps if we listened to modern music more it would become part of our mental framework and we would appreciate it more.  Perhaps I would have picked up on that “ethereal” tone.  Perhaps it would even be humable.

Perhaps future generations will look back on our time and wonder how we couldn’t “get” Dutilleux.

I realize that I have been very bad about posting lately, here and elsewhere as well.  As you know the entire summer has been busy and distracting and there have been many threads pulling at my time. 

The last two weeks have not been busier, but they have been more distracted.  I realized that I never even posted about the second Bard Music Weekend because my thoughts were drawn elsewhere almost immediately.  I still have the notes.  I might try to reconstruct my thoughts just because I too might like to remember.  But then again it might be too late.

We did receive the newly rebuilt woofer’s for my old EPI speakers (last week actually) and I installed them last night.    We have been talking about repositioning the speakers and rearranging bookcases, and so I had put off the installation.  But it finally occurred to me that this remodeling is just in its early theoretical stages and if I wait we will never hear music.  I don’t see how these speakers are going to be moved during the remainder of 2006.

Of course I had to test the stereo system.  We listened to Gorecki’s Third Symphony, The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, and it was spectacular.  I had forgotten how good these speakers were.  Oh I am sure they are not the world’s best speakers, but they are better than anything G had when I met him, and with the new Woofers installed, my 26 year old EPIs sound incredible!  The deep base at the beginning had shivers crawling up my spine and I could feel the vibration in the floors and walls.

Obviously the woofers had degenerated over time and we had been losing sound quality without even being aware of it.  What an incredible difference.

I must admit that I approached The Bard Music Festival with a bit of apprehension this year, if not outright caution.  It is not that I dislike Liszt, but more that I was not convinced that there is enough Liszt around which to shape a music festival.  I also must admit that although I enjoy listening to Liszt’s piano works, I am not convinced that he commands the same place in the musical firmament as the likes of Brahms, Haydn, and Shostakovich.

And so, at the end of weekend #1, I can say that I have been surprised and yet also justified in some of my pre-conceived notions.  Leon Botstein, in his opening address stated that Liszt was a highly innovative and influential composer in his day, as well as a virtuoso performer, and that he was, indeed, far more than a pretty face.  But his works have become neglected.  At the end of the weekend I can only say, that to some of extent the neglect is justified, but perhaps not the dismissal.

This is not to say that I did not enjoy the concerts.  The entire weekend was enjoyable and there were fabulous moments.  The opening concert thrilled and promised interesting discoveries to come.  The first piece, Réminiscences of Don Juan, was a spectacularly dramatic opening to the weekend, highlighting the characteristics of Liszt with which we are all familiar, the dramatic, preening virtuoso.  An incredibly difficult and virtuosic piece, it was spectacularly performed by Valentina Lisitsa to tremendous applause. 

But then the opening concert moved on to the lesser known Liszt, the list who wrote incredibly beautiful songs such as Die Lorelei, which in a performance by Nicole Cabell, could stop the heart and bring tears to the eyes.  Also performed were the simple choral works written by the late Liszt, Liszt the Abbé and these songs, such as the benedictus were incredibly affecting. 

So there were surprises.  But for the most part they were few and far between.

The programs were lovely.  There were many performances of mostly lovely but uninspiring works by very good but uninspiring performers.  It seems it is difficult, if one goes to many concerts, not in the end to become a critic of sorts, and this is a subject that is brought more to mind in a program that is as much about performance and virtuosity as it is about the writing of music. And this to me is the difficult thing.  There were many excellent pianists, who are technically extraordinary but in the end the performance is unmemorable.  I know that the level of competence in conservatories has increased phenomenally in my lifetime.  But what makes a virtuoso, a performer who makes your heart sing when they command the keys?  I cannot explain this.  One cannot expect that every concert will change one’s life, and the pleasure of hearing music, although dependent on the skill of the musician, does not require transformation.  The Scientific American magazine ran an article last month on what it takes to become an expert and I am sure this applies to expert pianists as well.  But what does it take to make the transition from outstanding pianist, from being an expert, to being a true artist?  I know that, for me in this first weekend, that only moment of transfiguration came during the Saturday evening concert, when Arnaldo Cohen performed Liszt’s Piano Concerto #2 a performance filled with bravado and virtuosity as well as quite reflective sensitivity.  It haunts my memory. 

The remainder of that Saturday Evening concert was less memorable.  Liszt’s symphonic works left me cold, although the orchestra itself performed beautifully.  Liszt may have been important for developing the symphonic poem but later composers mastered the idea.  The only other bright spot of that evening was when the violinist Alexander Markov played Heinrich Ernst’s Concerto Pathetique in F Sharp Minor.  Even G, who tends not to be particularly fond of solo violin was thrilled.  No matter how much I admired that performance however, I was far more carried away with the same Mr. Markov’s performance on Sunday afternoon, when he performed selections from Paganini’s 24 Caprices.  Judging from the applause, I would say I was not the only one who fell under his spell.  None of the variations on this work, which followed Mr. Markov’s performance, had any of the pure breathtaking beauty of that which we had just heard.

Which brings me back to the pianists.  Any program about Liszt must have piano music and there was a great deal of it.  I love piano music; I always have.  And there was a string of stupendously competent pianists, technically very good, but not brilliant.   Some of the pianists sat and played the piano wonderfully, performed difficult pieces with aplomb, but they were just competent people playing the piano.  Others commanded the piano, made it theirs with the first touch, but still, in the end there was nothing special.  On Saturday I would have to say the prize went to Michael Abramovich who played a piece titled le Vent by Charles-Valentin Alkan with elegance and finesse, the wind transformed into music was breathtaking.

But overall the pianists were less memorable.  Janice Weber is technically excellent.  Peter Orth is very good.  I love watching Martin Kasick’s expression as he plays. But they were in the end unmemorable performances of unmemorable works.  Oddly what sticks in my mind most about the afternoon concerts, aside from Mr. Markov, where the things that struck a sour note, namely the performances of Simone Dinnerstein and Valentina Lisitsa.

Simone Dinnerstein is a young soloist who played very well.  Unfortunately I was sitting on the right, where I could see her face as she performed, and this was so painful that I had to close my eyes because I could not bear to look at her expression.  The pieces were not sad, but Ms. Dinnerstein’s strong and lovely features were transformed into an expression that was almost a caricature of tragedy and pain.  Her deep set eyes are framed by strong eyebrows that slope at a sharp angle from the center of her face.  As she played, she drew them in toward the center of her face making a deep triangular shadow at her eyes, almost like a deeply shaded diamond formed by a greater-than and less-than sign.  Below she pursed her lips in concentration.  It was as if a clown face had been painted.  A clown face of pain:
< >
o
It is most sad because I am certain this something she cannot control, but it has the potential to control her career.

The other disappointment, for me at least, was Valentina Lisitsa, with whom I was so impressed in the first performance.  Oh, she handled the Réminiscences quite well.  At that performance I was sitting on the left and was able to watch her amazing technique and that shaded my perception of the concert, because what we hear is also shaped by what we see.  Lisitsa played very fast with very well-oiled elbows and wrists.  It was almost as if her arms were plastic, as if Gumby were playing piano in overdrive.  It was an amazing display.  But when she performed on Saturday, I could not help but notice that yes she is a virtuoso, and yes she draws tremendous audience applause, but she plays like a 3 year old turned loose in a toy shop.  With bravura and energy and gusto and absolutely no subtlety.  When I got home that night, tired though I was, I googled her, but all I found were exclamatory promotional writings, but no reviews.  Perhaps I am wrong.  But I was disappointed.

The last concert of the weekend was titled Grand Opera Before Wagner and I had not been sure what I would be thrilled mostly because I just am not that familiar with opera.  I have enjoyed what I have seen and heard, but G is not an opera fan and I think his willingness to listen to opera was worn out by his first wife, who apparently was a big opera fan.  At any rate I enjoyed the opera very much.  The excellent young bass, Christopher Van Horn performed again – we had heard him before in the weekend and I had been thrilled by his songs.  In fact all the male vocals were good.  And there were also several roles sung by Nicole Cabell, who although I am no judge of vocal ability, I think must be a fabulously promising young soprano.  In fact if I were in Chicago and they were performing, I would go to the Lyric Opera just to hear Cabell and Van Horn.  The other soprano, who unfortunately sang far more than Nicole Cabell, was shrill and unpleasing to listen to, but the Bellini operas as well as the Rossini, were lovely.  I admit to being partial to Rossini; his oboe concerti were one of my first musical loves, and Rossini’s works will always hold a fond place in my heart.

I suppose from all I have said it sounds like a less than fabulous weekend, but this is not true.  Bard Music is quite addictive.  One doesn’t want to miss anything.  You never know when some fabulous piece will turn up or some spectacular young performer about whom you know nothing.  Immersing oneself in a musical milieu draws one in and out of normal life.  It is exhausting and exhilarating all at once.  I had a marvelous time.

Opening night at the 2006 Bard Music Festival.  An evening of Liszt.  Fabulous piano, song, and choral works.  Exhaustion.  The first of many three hour concerts.

Bed.

More to follow.