Category: Music

More or less around the time I began my blog break, I attended three concerts in Knoxville.  There had also been hopes of an opera in NYC, but that fizzled, probably due more to my preferences than due to my friend's. 

 

My mini music series was bookended by two concerts on the lighter end of music fare.  First the Knoxville Symphony's pops concert, which was titled "A Celebration of Rogers and Hammerstein" on February 13th, and a week later, also on a Saturday evening, the Knoxville Choral Society performed a concert called "The people's voice" which focused on American songs, mixed between spirituals and folk songs.  I've come to appreciate my pure enjoyment of these concerts, enjoyment in a particularly non-intellectual way, especially the concerts of the Symphony's Pops series.  The guest artists are usually quite good and the music touches on a human aspect of shard experience and renders it into a kind of shared memory, a process of commonality and bonding. I find a joy in these performances, a balance perhaps, between the yearnings for something greater, the aesthetic, and the actuality of life, often touching, often tawdry, filled with sentiment and even the rather ironic touch of kitch.  I don't mean this in a bad way, these things, are what makes us human, and popular music celebrates all of the many aspects of humanity. Music is more than art, it can also be memory, it can be yearnings. it can form bridges in ways words cannot.

 

In the midst of this popular upswelling was the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra's February concert.  This proved to be a much more problematic event from my perspective and my commentary is made far more difficult by the fact that I somehow stopped writing about concerts over the course of the previous months.  This concert featured the fourth of the candidates for the position of the Knoxville Symphony's new music director, Eckart Preu.

 

I will just come right out and say that I did not enjoy this concert.  I thought it was the worst concert I had heard this season, and I spent a considerable amount of time in the days following the concert trying to sort my reactions.  I know I was tired.  I don't know how much my tiredness affected my disappointment.  I may never know.  I can only explore my own reaction, and  I only attended the second half.  Several people who enjoyed the concert told me this was the "best half" which left me struggling with my own frustrations and inclinations, my own biases and joys, and where these various paths may be leading.

 

I missed the soloist.  In retrospect I do not regret this, although I missed the first half of the concert because my plane was delayed rather than out of any intentional action on my part.  It was, in fact probably good that I missed it.  Based on the reviews, which I have since read, (generally far more positive toward the concert as a whole than my own opinion) and the fact that I have in fact heard Alon Godstein's recording of the Mozart Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 20 in D minor and found it lacking, I would probably have had difficulty being open-minded enough to appreciate that performance.  Much as I love going to our symphony, and much as I have heard performances that have taken my breath away, I have also heard Uchida, Perraia, and Brendel peform this work, and I have several recordings of my favorites, each remarkably different.  There are times that, despite my best intentions, I cannot completely divorce myself from expectation, and it would have been difficult for me to separate my disappointment in the soloist from the rest of the performance.

  

Here's the thing.  I didn't think I remembered Eckart Preu, although I should have.  I didn't remember him from his photo, I didn't remember him from his biography.  Perhaps this should hae told me something in and of itself.  But as a conductor, on the stage, I remember him.  He has a rather distinctive style, and this is not a criticism.  I remember Ekart Preu from the Bard Musical Festival, which I faithfully attended from its inception until I moved out of the area.  I can't say I was thrilled with him then, although I certainly liked him better than Leon Botstein as a conductor (although I admire Botstein in many ways) which of course can explain how I had forgotten.  Although he has grown musically, I still can't say that he would be my first choice, although I can see how his skills, and his focus, may be appealing to an orchestra in a small city which is doubtless trying to find some happy meeting point between the demands of a concert schedule and the costs incurred in producing it.  Perhaps my expectations are not in line with where they should be.  My intellectual side wants adventurous programming while my heart want magic.  What I got on Friday February 19th was not magic.  Oddly, the previous performances had been magical, especially the January concert with the young conductor Aram Demirjian, a concert that was unfortunately not well attended due to threats of bad weather.

 

I am admittedly spoiled. I attended the New York Philharmonic for over 25 years.  I've heard heard other notable symphony orchestras, and many of the world's great soloists.  But I've also heard boring performances in New York.  And I've hard music that moved my soul in smaller venues.  I've heard music that thrilled me, that brought me to tears, music which I can hear in the back of my mind in Knoxville.  But I did not hear it that night.

 

What did I hear?  I heard Jennifer Higdon's Blue Cathedral, a charming and evocative piece, which although fairly lightweight, can be both ethereal and emotionally moving, if not overdone by playing up its new romantic qualities, or underdone, by ascribing to it too much of a foreign, intellectualized zen-like quality.  The latter was the problem with this performance, and Preu seemed to accent the "otherness" of this piece.  To my mind the work seems to seek a balance between art (the zen-like qualities) and emotion (the more romantic impulses), but it is subtle and requires a delicate hand, a gentle teasing of the music. But perhaps this is where having heard a piece performed numerous times is a disadvantage.  The orchestra itself performed well.  I felt the interpretation was lacking, felt the music sounded like it was unfamiliar, and although the flute and clarinet solos were beautifully performed, the middle section of the work, which can sound like filler if not handled with the deftest touch, seemed like exactly that, filler. To my ears, the work felt more like an intellectual set piece, something that appealed more to the head than the heart.

 

The same measured quality, seemed to follow with the Prokofiev.  It was as if the emphasis was more on the intellect, on tackling a challenge, rather than on finding the music.  I felt Preu's rather expressive conducting style was not reflected in the actual music, which was more restrained, something that I found quite unsettling for excerpts from Romeo and Juliet.    The performance was, in fact, of a piece with the performance of the Higdon: accenting the dissonance, in fact playing the contrasts well, something I had once found lacking in prior years.  Normally this was something I would applaud, but I still felt that an idea of music was being painted, but not music itself.  The performance seemed oddly devoid of joy and emotion.  Ultimately, that is what I am looking for when I attend a concert.  My brain wants to be engaged but my heart wants to sing.  

 

I shall reiterate:  perhaps my perceptions were shaped more by the fact that I was tired, and possibly easily disappointed.  Yet I had been so eager to hear this concert.  Every concert this year has surprised me.  This was the first concert that surprise me in a not so good way.  Perhaps, once again I am looking for something that is impossible.  I don't expect the magic to happen every time.  But the one time, the time that is an audition, that is important.  It is important to me at least, but my opinion is but one among many, and I recognize that what is magic to me may not be magic to someone else, and vice versa. I am not trying to change the outcome.  I am not always even comfortable writing about my disappointments, but how can one appreciate joy without accepting disappointment?  Perhaps this was the wall I needed to climb before I could resume writing about my own, highly personal, reflections on music.

 

And now it is March.  There will be more concerts.  There will be another new conductor.  Eventually a decision will be reached.  Where will we go from here?

 

 

 

I disliked Gershwin when I was young.  No that is not true.  I had no feelings for Gershwin himself one way or the other, and I didn't actively dislike his music, but I also can't say that I was particularly fond of it either.   I did however rebel at having to play Gershwin in my piano lessons.  After wanting to play the piano for as long as I could remember, I finally got to take piano lessons my junior year in high school.  My teacher wanted me to play Gershwin and I hated it.  I wanted to play Bach and Beethoven.

My tastes in music at that time were probably heavily influenced by my father.  The music in our house revolved around the "three B's" (Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms), although I remember being allowed to play recordings of Corelli and Couperin, which I checked out of the Tarleton University Library.  I did have a small portable transistor radio, but I mostly heard popular music at friends' homes, and my tastes, until I went away to college, were mostly shaped by my friend's tastes.

In college, the influences were wider, and I moved on to exploring music on my own.  I fell in love with Tchaikovsky and Mahler and from there to Shostakovich and Stravinsky on the classical front.  Swing dancing was popular, which led me to explore jazz, although I still claim bop as my first jazz love, a preference that continues to embarrass some of my jazz-loving friends.  And of course there was rock, punk, reggae and much much more…

Eventually, I came back to Gershwin, although admittedly that took me a little bit longer, not because the music isn't worthy, but because shaking old biases sometimes requires a deeper look at the roots of that bias before one can be clear-headed.  I came to love the music of Leonard Bernstein too, although he is another composer I did not take to on first listen.  Odd as it may sound, I probably came to appreciate both Gershwin and Bernstein through my love of Shostakovich.  What can I say?  Some of us seem born to take the complicated and complex path.

But why Gershwin? Why Bernstein?

Last week was the opening concert of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra season, and both Bernstein and Gershwin were on the program.  Opening concerts are rarely adventurous and this was true to form:  lovely, enjoyable, but hardly inspiring.  In fact the combination of Gershwin's Concerto in F with Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and Samuel Barber's Adagio, is a fairly popular combination, and we once had an LP, conducted by Bernstein, that contained just that program.  George Chadwick's Jubilee was also in the program and it was well suited to the program, which was, overall, well performed.

Despite my late start with Gershwin, the Gershwin piece was one of the highlights of the evening. There is perhaps an advantage in coming to something by way of a roundabout path, in that, having discovered something one had missed, one may be able to listen more closely .  The problem with most of the pieces on the program is that they are in fact so popular that they almost become background music.  They are familiar and comforting, and one can easily escape into melody and memory and expectation.  The Concerto in F in particular alternates bold, almost jarring brashness with subtle sophistication, a contrast that I have only heard effectively captured on rare occasions.  That does not make the piece less enjoyable however; it may be in fact be more enjoyable when the performance is less unsettling, and there was enough emotional resonance in this performance to be enjoyable. Sean Chen's performance on the piano, particularly, brought a strong consistency to the music, with an understanding of how the melody provides a unifying structure in both its contrast and eventual unification with the clashing dissonance of the piece.

The blues influences of the Gershwin piece also meshed well with Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, an intensely meditative work filled with tranquility, but also powerfully rich with emotional depth.  The interpretation of the piece was perfectly balanced and sonically rich, with a sensuously lush performance by the strings.  The memory still makes my heart sigh.

It was, of course, the Barber that prompted this trip down a musical memory lane.  The Adagio is often played to mark occasions of public grief, such as at the funeral of J.F.K, and in movies to mark strong emotion.  I could not help but recall its use during the movie, Platoon, and this layering of memory with the sound of the music only intensifies the experience.  Listening to the Barber reminded me first of George, much in the way funerals always remind us of those we have lost, and his love of the music of Leonard Bernstein, and then of my father and my own delayed understanding of Gershwin. 

Connections within connections, loops within loops of memory and experience.  We think when we are young that life will get easier as we age, and it does, in that we hopefully learn to hold things more loosely, but our associations also grow richer and more complex, perhaps holding us more than we hold them.

 

 

 

 

 

I discovered soundcloud yesterday.  So much to listen to.

 

 

I don't know what I think yet, but this makes me smile and dance around the house and I've been playing it over and over.

Friday May 15th was the final concert of the season for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, and it was also Maestro Lucas Richman's last concert as music director.  The concert was eclectic, a retrospective of sorts, and was greatly appreciated by an audience quick to shower the orchestra and its conductor with thunderous applause. The concert closed on the perfect note with an encore of Variation IX, Nimrod, from Elgar's Enigma Variations, a beautifully and poignantly performed tribute which provided the perfect finishing touch on a concert that, for me offered a summing up, as well as a series of questions about the KSO itself and how it defines itself, its life in music, and the search for a new Music Director.

The concert began with a fairly uninspired but comfortingly familiar performance of the  Egmont overture by Beethoven, and moving from there to a marvelous performance of Tchaikovsky's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra.  The soloist for this piece was the orchestra's own concertmaster, Gabriel Lefkowitz, who is also a highly skilled and talented soloist, and his breathtaking performance showed great understanding and nuance, intelligence and passion.  But what truly made the piece shine was the  way the orchestra played with the soloist as opposed to against him, as has too often been the case in concerts I have attended. The softly overlapping conversation between the violin and the orchestra at the end of the cadenza was heart-wrenchingly beautiful.  In fact, the entire ensemble worked well together, giving each other the space to shine in their own time, especially the brass, who managed a harmonious interplay combining both controlled boldness and a softer counterpoint as needed, and the woodwinds whose questioning interplay floated in and out with a memorable clarity that haunted and shaped the music around them.

But of course this performance, more the exception than the rule, lead my perambulating thoughts toward musings on the nature of the relationship between soloist and orchestra, and yes, even the role of the conductor. Because of course, a concerto, a work that combines a soloist and an orchestra, is not a battle of wills between a soloist and orchestra, but a choreographed (or orchestrated) conversation between the soloist and the orchestra, a give-and-take that allows each party to both strut their stuff in turn, but also to facilitate and provide the perfect background for this musical relationship to assume its own space.  This requires that the soloist and the orchestra, with the assistance of the conductor, work together, be willing to work together.  From the distance of the audience, one is often inclined to lay the blame or praise on the conductor, and although the conductor should play a role, the members of the orchestra itself are also a participating body, a body which may or may not cooperate.  I was reminded of this at the after-party, when an orchestra member, upon receiving a compliment on the Tchaikovsky piece, stated that the orchestra wanted to support and work with Lefkowitz, but that often, with other soloists, they "just don't care".  I found this simultaneously elucidating and disturbing because, simply stated, if you don't care, you can't make beautiful music.  It is that effort to connect, that interaction, that willingness to both give and take, between the soloist, the conductor who must act as a bridge between he soloist and the members of the orchestra, and the members of the orchestra itself, that makes music into something magical that elevates the soul.  You can have all the technical virtuosity in the world, every note can be perfect, but if you are disparate groups, even hitting perfect notes, you are defined by the disparateness of your efforts.  It is in the coming together that music is made.

All this and the intermission is just ending; let us move on to the second half of the concert: 

First up is Mahler's Symphony #10, Adagio.  Richman noted that this work was new to both himself and the orchestra.  Alas it is not new to me.  I have heard at least 4 performances of this work, some even by great Mahler scholars and interpreters, and I have heard recordings of it as well, some very good.  In answer to the comment that you can't just listen to a recording of Mahler, I would both agree and disagree.  A wonderful live performance is enlightening, but a recording can be edifying as well, although in completely different way.  I do not play an orchestral instrument, and would consider myself but a novice pianist, it seems to me that music needs to be both heard, actively, and performed, also actively, so that both heart and hands, mind and music can form their own conversation. 

But onto the performance. 

The Mahler was obviously lovingly an passionately played by the orchestra. It seemed that the musicians were invigorated by the performance but Mahler can be complex and notably difficult.  The music can appear to be a mishmash of things that don't go together and make sense, and the difficulty is in getting to that point where they can not only be performed but where the performance finds that sweet spot where everything fits together and makes some kind of sense of the mishmash that is modernity, or was modernity in Mahler's time and still is today.  The orchestra did not quite pull that off, that magical integration where it all comes together and lifts the soul, although the violas were absolutely brilliant, capturing mystery in a lush richness that provided the glue that held the brashness of the rest of the work together.

The final piece was Ravel's La Vase. Again it was a piece the orchestra obviously enjoyed performing. It was also a piece that I believe most of the audience loved.  To me, the performance seemed to lean too heavily toward the Germanic, toward the spectrum of Strauss and Viennese waltzes.  Yes, I know this sounds strange, because, la valse, the waltz, revolves around a waltz, a classical waltz.  But it is so much more than a waltz, it is a study of a waltz, of the end of an era, and there is a strong sense of emotion and loss, but emotion and loss shaped by distance and intellect. I found the performance lacked that sense of intellect.  As I said earlier it was too German, and not French enough:  heavy handed in its decent into darkness, it lacked the clarity and opulence I associate with Ravel, and that complex intermingling of intellect and distance playing off the lush emotion and bitterness that marks Ravel's farewell to the end of an era.

And of course all this leads to my other big question of the evening.  Where is the orchestra going from here?  Next year's program looks fascinating.  We will have several conductors, all of whom are interviewing for the position of music director and, given that the best performances of this past season were, to my mind anyway, lead by young guest conductors, I cannot help but be intrigued.  But of course there is more to being music director than conducting, and more to that even than my solo opinion.  And this is good.  Because the simple truth is, that from the perspective of the audience, sometimes too much attention is given to the conductor and not the musicians.  From the perspective of the audience, I do not know if that fabulous performance I heard was because the conductor and the musicians worked well together, truly collaborated and lead each other to new discoveries in the music, or if the music  heard on the night of the performance was the result of a battle of wills unsustainable in the long run, or even if the conductors were truly awful and the musicians pulled themselves out of mire only out of force of will in defiance of the conductor.  I also do not know what the musicians themselves want.  Choosing a Music Director can be like walking a tightrope through a minefield of conflicting interests and petty fiefdoms, although I would like to hope it is not so. 

But, for the most part an orchestra needs a conductor.  Yes I have heard the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the famous conductor-less orchestra.  But even they chose a core group of musicians who direct the performance of each piece.  There must be a unity of vision to a performance and unity is hard to achieve in a large body of trained and skilled professionals, each with their own opinions. The musicians may have performed a work so many times they know it in their sleep. It may be true that for a certain orchestra playing a particular part of the repertoire, the conductor is not necessary.  But another orchestra member, equally experienced, may see things differently, and even if there is no disagreement, to fall into the path of the familiar risks the danger of falling into the trap of believing there is nothing more to learn from the music.  For what is the point of performing a work again, other than to find new depth and meaning?  What is the point of going to a concert to hear something so old and tired you can hum it in your sleep unless you are looking to find something more, something that touches your soul and shows you something you hadn't recognized before? 

A great music director needs the sensibilities of a great artist and skill as a conductor; the music director also has to be willing to work with the orchestra, to listen, to facilitate, to guide a body of musicians who also have to be willing to work together, to listen, and to recognize insight and leadership when they see it and have a willingness to care, to create that conversation that makes music into something great. Of course harmony of will is not always achievable. We are all, musicians, conductors, and the audience itself, but human. The question now is where will this search lead? Where will this orchestra, which I have seen incredible growth over the course of the last four seasons find itself headed next? Or am I wishing on a star, or a mythical orchestra and a mythical music director that don't really exist, in my own hopes for something more?

 

 

 

 

On Sunday night Friends of Music and the Arts presented an organ concert by Olivier Latry, one of the titular organists at the Cathedral of Norte-Dame.  I am really not particularly knowledgeable about organ music, and although I always enjoyed listening to it in a church setting, I have to admit that when I was young I was not always thrilled when George dragged me off to organ concerts.  I suppose that, over time, he changed my mind, just as I too broadened his musical horizons, and I now look forward to organ concerts.  I was particularly looking forward to hearing Latry, as George and I had heard him play in Paris and I adore his recording of the complete Messiaen organ works.  Although I did not expect Messiaen, I figured there would be at least some organ music by French composers and I have learned that my taste, in organ music at least, runs mostly French, with my favorites being Couperin, Messiaen, Alain, Vierne, and Widor.

The concert opened with Couperin's "Offertoire sur les Grande Jeux" from the "Messe des Paroisses".  I was not disappointed.  The music of Francois Couperin always speaks to my heart, and this piece was beautifully performed and seemingly perfect for the season, as it spoke to me of spring and new birth and life, a perfect piece in a world filled with the birth of new green leaves.  The contrapuntal texture of the final movement, gigue-like, reminded me of dancing, a dance of the Holy Spirit if you will, an idea perhaps more familiar to audiences in Couperin's time than those who follow the more extreme of the modern protestant practices.

There were some other lovely pieces by unfamiliar composers, some Bach, about which I feel inadequate to comment, and an improvisation by Latry, very much in the French manner, which was gorgeous, but probably tedious to those who are less appreciative of the French school of organ performance.

Not surprisingly the other pieces that really stuck in my heart were the two pieces by Jehan Alain, the "Litanies" and the "Postlude pour l'office des Complies".  Admittedly I have only heard these pieces in recordings by Marie Claire Alain, another great French Organist and sister of the composer.  Latry's performance was subtly different to my ears, and this difference was more than just the distinction between a live and a recorded performance.  Alain plays the opening movements with a lighter and brighter touch, almost airy, whereas Latry's touch was heavier and slower.  I liked the weight he gave the opening and the way its fullness seemed to fill the space.  However the final movement, although still faster and more furious, did not quite seem to take on the frenzy I expect of the conclusion of this piece. Overall, I enjoyed it however, and it brought a new appreciation and understanding to the music.

It was the performance of the "Postlude pour l'office des Complies" that I found particularly moving.  Again, I found this performance to be  quieter and richer than I expected, almost sonorous at first before lifting and lightening.  The music seemed to fill the space in a series of ever expanding circles, almost like bubbles, growing out of the sound and encircling and enclosing us all.  Bubbles within bubbles.  A magical experience.

 

I will be off for blog break for the rest of the week and will return with a post next Tuesday.