Category: Music

The symphony season opened last week, and I went to the Friday night concert. All in all it was a lovely concert; the music was enjoyable and although there were a few glitches here and there, they were really just that, glitches.  The evening was still lovely; in fact it may have even been remarkable.

 

The concert opened with a piece commissioned for the orchestra by a young composer named Michael Schachter.  It was titled Overture to Knoxville and I found it to be a piece of music that was both enthusiastic and brash but also softly melodic and even hopeful.  The brass section of the UT symphony was in the balcony with us and they played well, although not perfectly.  There were a few missed notes in the French Horns to my left, a few minor struggles here and there, but overall the work accommodated them and the charm of the piece absorbed these minor missteps.  The more melodic, soft, sections of the work were also lovely and I was actually happy that the composer  wrote an ode to Knoxville without falling back on Appalachian heritage, without making obvious overtures to bluegrass and country music.  Yes, this is a part of our heritage, and not just our past, but also a part of our present and our future.  But it is not all that we are.  It is good to hear something expansive and less chained to one aspect of being to the exclusion of everything else that we are. I would like to hear more from young Mr. Schachter.

 

I suppose I would say the core of the concert was a pair of works built around the words of Knoxville native, James Agee:  Samuel Barber's Knoxville Summer of 1915 and Aaron Copeland's orchestral suite, The Tender Land. Surprisingly to me, the high point of both pieces may have been captured in the readings, performed by RB Morris.  Morris read the opening part of the text as a prelude to the Barber, and it was only through this reading, poetically rendered, that one got the sense of the piece, of the story behind the music.  The music was beautifully performed and although the soprano, Joelle Harvey, has a beautiful and richly melodic lyric tone, the words were unintelligible, either due to lack of enunciation or projection.  The performance offered beauty without a foundation of meaning. For a piece that is meant to be sung, a piece that revolves around words and story, the absence of that story proved to be a setback, no matter how skillfully and beautifully rendered was the music itself.

 

 RB Morris read again before the Copeland, this time a passage from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.  He ended by singing a portion of Jim Reeves' song This Is Not My Home.  Oddly this kind of mixing of elements usually bothers me, and admittedly I am perhaps too attached to my little boxes, but this may have been one of the most magical and emotionally moving parts of the concert.  And. as you know,  I'm always a sucker for the magic.

 

But it was in the second half of this concert that the music had its greatest impact:  disturbing, unsettling, enchanting and enlightening, all wrapped in what should have been a familiar wrapper, except that it seemed like something else entirely.  And what was this music that caused such an inner uproar in this listener?  The piece was Sergei Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances, Opus 45.  Honestly, I struggled with the performance.  I can't say it was not beautiful, it was.  In places it was gorgeous and understatedly spare.  And yet although it was obviously the work I know and love, it wasn't;  And I didn't know what I thought.

 

The Symphonic Dances is late, Rachmaninoff's last work, and it is certainly far more Spartan and menacing than his earlier works.  But it is also still Rachmaninoff, and there remains a subdued lushness, almost a decadence, a holding on to the past in the face of an uncertain present.  And yet this is something I did not really sense in this performance.   Demirjian emphasized the sparseness — the isolation and the darkness — in the music.  It sounded like something I had never heard before, some newly discovered "lost" piece, but it is, in fact, a fairly frequently performed piece, probably familiar to most concert goers.  And yet, I often felt like I was listening to something completely unfamiliar. 

 

Initially, I was on edge, filled with hostile protest.  I felt the work was too slow, and it was slow.  Perhaps it was not radically slow, here is where I wish I played an instrument, had more musical training, but it was slow, intentionally slow, in a way that changed everything.  It was obvious in the very beginning, in that first, energetic, opening movement.  The pace was heavier, more threatening.  Yes the threat was always there, but Friday evening I heard it differently and I was not always convinced I liked what I heard.  And yet…  the meltingly beautiful melody in the center of the first movement, the saxophone solo, was more melting, more poignant that I have ever heard it to be, and this was more than just the superb performance.  The very tenderness rendered the harshness of the return of the military theme all the more threatening, bone-chillingly so.

 

The second movement is a waltz, not a strauss-like waltz, but a dance nonetheless.  It begins with hesitation, but pulls together, forming something lovely and sad before decaying and revealing an almost sinister edge.  I've heard the work many times and I always felt the pace, the movement of the dance here, even when it slows to an almost imperceptible echo of itself, the dancers barely moving, clinging together to a memory of a past that is crumbling around them.  But I did not feel the dance in this performance, and I am still uncertain of what I make of that.  Without the waltz, the sense of decay seems simultaneously harsher  and yet also more removed.  The poignancy is gone; the human touch removed.

 

As expected the last movement pulled everything together, disparate threads tied in knots, explosive trumpets and timpani, and even Rachmaninoff's lifelong fascination with sacred chant.  In the finale he quotes the Dies Irae, the day of wrath, or the last judgement.  And there is much wrath in the finale.  But Rachmaninoff also uses the chant "Blessed be the Lord" from his own All Night Vigil, and yet I almost missed it in this performance.  closes by quoting his own Vespers, as was done here on Friday night, and yet I almost missed it.

 

For the first time, certainly since I moved to Knoxville, and perhaps for the first time that I can recall, I wanted to hear the concert again. I wished I had gone to the Thursday night concert simply so that I could have gone again on Friday.  I came home Friday night, poured a glass of wine, and sat in the living room listening to a favorite version of the Symphonic Dances.  Perhaps I prefer the more traditional approach.  It is certainly less unsettling.  But as I listened to the recording I also began to more deeply appreciate what I had heard in the concert hall.  Now that I have heard a further depth in the music, I cannot un-hear it.  Nothing was done to that work other than an exploration of what was already there.  Perhaps in our gloss over Rachmaninoff, our affection for melody and a certain pacing, we have smoothed some of the edges, have grown so familiar with the melody we no longer think about the work itself.

 

Music is so much more than the physical act of playing notes on an instrument.  It is everything, the playing, the pacing, the expression of everything in the hearts and minds of the musicians.  The notes, the instruments, are just the tip of the iceberg.  I wish I could hear it again.  Even more I wish I could sit down and talk with Aram Demirjian and learn where he was coming from, what he was thinking.  Not just his head, but the thoughts of the musicians as well.  What has in their hearts?  What was in their heads?  Did the musicians accept or struggle with the pacing?  And how did that all play out in what I heard?  I may have heard he heart of Rachmaninoff revealed for a newer world, a world in which we no longer cling, waltzing to a romantic ideal. Or I may have heard something else entirely, something only time will reveal as the tendrils of the music wend their way through my memory.

 

Just when you think you have everything under control, just when you think you know what to expect, your world is cracked open and the old becomes new again.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The weekend before last I was in Chicago.  That first day, the day I arrived 2 1/2 hours later than planned due to flight delays, the day I missed an appointment, the day after I had closed on the old house and was still exhausted from moving out, I went to two concerts.  In fact I was running so late that I almost didn't make the first concert, and I was so tired I wondered if there was any sense in it, but I had bought the ticket, and it wasn't cheap, so I went.

 

I was glad I did.

 

Friday afternoon I attended the Chicago Symphony. Ricardo Muti was conducting the Brahms symphonies, and I was in town for the first two.  I perhaps feared a stodgy performance of Brahms, a gentle dusting off of the standard repertoire, and I feared that I would doze off.  My fears were unfounded. The first symphony opened with a strong sense of controlled drama.  I felt the second movement could have strayed a little further into lyrical territory, but that may be due to my own emotional yearnings more than any understanding of Brahms.  The rest of the piece came together beautifully with a thunderous and convincing release of restrained turbulence in the finale, like a distant thunderstorm approaching only to be cast aside just before its climactic arrival with a sudden break in the clouds and the arrival of a sudden burst of sunshine in the form of a horn solo.

 

The second symphony was also incredible, with an almost a pastoral undercurrent in the opening movement.  That Brahmsian restraint was still present, but it felt more lightly held here.  Again the second movement did not quite live up to my expectations.  It is, to my mind, a slow, ruminative work, deeply imbued with melancholy, yet never quite surrendering.  In this performance the movement felt rushed, as if the conductor had no time for meditative melancholy, or as if going to slowly would flirt too closely with a loss of control, I'm not sure which.  There was a palpable sense of "hurry up"  present in the performance which did not serve the work well.  I felt the conductor and the musicians, the music itself, felt at odds.  Yet all came together again in the allegretto, as if Muti's instincts and the music were more at peace, and the orchestra pulled off that balance between emotional release and intellectual control that marks Brahms's works, that flirtation with the pastoral without ever quite giving in.

 

In the evening I was back at Symphony Hall for a jazz concert.  I found this concert more difficult.  I wanted to go, and I enjoyed the concert overall, but there were times when I was also confused and even bored.  It brought to the forefront my struggles with Jazz; the way my expectations and my enjoyment don't always align, as if there is something I just don't understand, some frame of reference I am missing.  Every time I am bored with a concert, I think perhaps jazz is not my thing, but then, just as I am ready to say "never again", I am captivated by something new.  I wonder this is simply because I have not listened enough, or if it is something deeper.  Basically, the jazz concert reminded me that I really haven't quite figured out what I like or even why I like what I like.

 

The first part of the concert featured Regina Carter playing music honoring the late Ella Fitzgerald.   I felt that Carter successfully translated the theme of Ella's swing into something that suited them both, capturing both a sense of Fitzgerald while at the same time honoring Carter's own talents and interests. I did enjoy most of the music, and I liked the way she started with a reference, and a hit of swingtime but took it in different directions. Yet I also felt occasionally bored, and my mind would wander off, wondering if I was missing some key element.    There were moments that were heartbreakingly beautiful, and other times when I felt that the performance stayed in too long in a fairly narrow stylistic range, perhaps popular, but at times mind-numbing.  I yearned for greater dynamism and a bit more of the wonderful harmonic invention of which Carter is quite capable, but which did not seem present that night.  Or perhaps it was just me.  My neighbors, long time subscribers, seemed perfectly content. Anyway, by the time I figured this out, it was time for intermission and I was happy to stretch my legs.

 

The second half of the program was more to my taste and made me sit up and take notice.  Perhaps I just had better reference points, perhaps I am just more attracted to the edgier world of the SF Jazz Collecive.  Although I am familiar with both Ella Fitzgerald, and the work of Miles Davis, perhaps Davis is closer to my heart.  Perhaps also I am attracted to the way the members of the SF Jazz collective were willing to transform Davis's music, I treasured the riffs and the references.  Both my neighbor, the long-time subscriber, and I were chortling under our breath and rocking our seats during Sean Jones transformation of "So What" and I loved the playfulness of their take on "Feel the Groove".  Woolf's vibraphone playing was shimmeringly beautiful, but my favorite piece was Miguel Zenon's  rearrangement of Nardis with the incredible acuity and audacity of the high-velocity four-horn front line and Zenon's incredible solos.  The piece I least understood was David Sanchez's original work "Canto".  It was gentle and melodic and quite beautiful in places, but I was also bored and felt it lacked tension.  Or perhaps I was just tired.  The concert started at 8 Central Standard time, 9 by my east-coast body's time, and perhaps exhaustion simply played a role.

 

Two wonderful concerts, and they were exciting and soothing the way only music can be.  I missed a concert in Knoxville that weekend, but I think I got the better deal.

Two weeks ago I attended the November concert of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra.   It was the second concert conducted by our new music director, Aram Demirjian, and my second concert of the season as I had missed in October due to travel plans.  Generally, I was impressed with this performance and attending the concert made for a lovely evening.  Demirjian and the orchestra seem to be growing into each other and the evening's performance was for the most part smooth with a good sense flow and pacing.  It was a happy and satisfying evening, and although there were perhaps a few places where I disagreed with the interpretation of the music, I felt the performance was perfectly suited to this time and this place, and was able to relax and let my more intellectual neurons be lulled by happy sounds.

 

The concert opened with Charles Ives' "Variations on America", which is often whimsical, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes angry, and definitely the work of a brash young man with all of that combination of bitterness, hope, innocence and joy that is the purview of our teenage selves.   It was a fun piece and I enjoyed the performance although I felt that some of the snarkier bits had been muffled, but that is not such a bad thing, and the lighthearted music reminded me at least that we all too often take ourselves far too seriously.  In short it was a good introduction to an evening of American music.

 

The Ives was followed by William Grant Still's Symphony #1 (Afro-American Symphony).  It is a beautiful work, very American with its strong blues influences and jazz rhythms, and it was also very texturally interesting and engaging.  It is at times rather cinematic, and this from a listener who generally is not fond of the majority of composers who fuse cinematic with classical elements.  Most of these pieces simply sound shallow and boring to me, but this could not really be said of anything I have heard by Ives, and not by the Still piece as well.

 

In the second half of the concert we heard Jeff Midkiff's Mandolin Concerto: From the Blue Ridge.  I had been fortunate to attend a luncheon at which Midkiff and his wife were guests of honor and enjoyed speaking with them as well as hearing Aram Demirjian's thoughts on the programming, which he also repeated at the concert.  And the mandolin concert was a very easy to listen to piece, filled with familiar bluegrass inspired and "Appalachian" sounds but it wasn't at dynamic and interesting as the previous two pieces.  Midkiff plays an American mandolin, which is shallower and although wonderful in bluegrass music, has a flatter sound than its older historical cousins.  I suppose I could wish that the Midkiff was less a clichéd piece of Appalachian-inspired music, and although lovely, it seemed out of place among the other three pieces performed in the concert, all of which were more complexly interesting, and none of which succumbed to expected platitudes.  That said, it was enjoyable, and the piece received a standing ovation.

 

I believe the generous applause was primarily due to the music's familiarity and therefore high comfort level.  It has been my observation that the biggest applause at many a symphony performance seems to routinely awarded to those pieces that are, to my mind, the least deserving in terms of their merits in terms of music and performance, and yet are the pieces dearest to the audience's heart.  I have learned to accept this, although some inner part of me still clenches, thinking of one of the worst Beethoven performances I have ever heard, conducted by our former music director, which was rewarded with ovations and cheering and foot stamping galore.  I recognized, after talking to other members of the cheering audience, that most had relaxed into easy familiarity with a favorite piece, and this too is an important aspect of performance and audience building.  It is something I have done myself, especially in my youth, before George ruined me, and taught me to pay more attention.  But I have increasingly learned to lock my more analytical intellectual side in a closet when listening to a concert in order to simply enjoy the time and the experience.  She still gets out, and I cannot silence my inner critic, but at the same time, I also accept that an excess of criticism does nothing to aide in pure and simple enjoyment of life.  Increasingly, stepping back, and allowing enjoyment rule, seems more rewarding. 

 

The final work of that Friday, two weeks ago, was the orchestral suite from Aaron Copeland's ballet, "Appalachian Spring".  In keeping with the rest of the program, Demirjian emphasized this sense of stereotypical Americana and "Appalachian" spirit, which I frankly do not see as the dominant theme in this work, which is incredibly complex.  I enjoyed the performance nonetheless and I also recognize that it was the right performance in the right place and at the right time, less than two weeks after an election that has polarized many.   Besides I recognize that a symphony needs its audience, and a symphony that played exclusively to my taste might be hard pressed to survive.   I could listen to music as I think it should be performed in the sanctuary of my own home, on excellent recordings, but I would lose the frisson of live performance and I continue to enjoy and learn and grow from each performance I attend.  Life locked up in a stuffy tower, living in one's own head, is no one's path to wisdom or humanity.