Category: Music

It has been nearly two weeks since Big Ears and my notes from the Sunday concerts are still sitting on my desk, waiting for me to write this blog post.  And the delay was partially due to the general interruptions of life and Easter Week, but also due to the way that Sunday's performances and the close of the festival lead me to questioning what is meant by avant-garde. Don't worry.  I have no answers and won't wax too philosophical on you.

I suppose part of this questioning was simply due to the venues and performances I actually attended, and this may have been due to my own biases and choices.  It did seem to me though that much of what I heard, I would not classify as particularly avant-garde today, as it seemed to tap into or be a continuation of the music I first experienced in the 1970's and 1980's, when it felt very new to me, and now feels more comfortably modern but not necessarily something that makes me stretch my mental muscles.

This rumbling in my head started in with the first concert I attended on Sunday, the Kronos Quartet playing 40 Canons by composer Bryce Dessner, The piece was easy to listen to, including some fascinating interplay between the stringed instruments with some subtly interesting tweaking of melodies, but struck me more as an outgrowth of old-school New York minimalism, than as anything remarkably new.  I was more intrigued by the movements that focused more melody and the deconstruction and reconstruction of melody than on those that seemingly revolved mostly around variations in beat, but the younger members of the crowd seemed to be most enlivened by those very sections, the ones focused on beat more than melody.  This reminded me of my grandson, who seems to be focused more on beat and music that emphasizes a strong beat.  It made me question whether this is simply an aspect of youth — ie. was this how I listened to music when young — or a generational thing, and is my focus on melody, even deconstructed and fractured melody a sign that I am old, or at least out of touch with this generation of youth.  There are probably no clear answers, although I had also noticed the same phenomena at the Wu Man concert the previous day, with the greater applause and excitement being generated for the pieces which revolved around a more driving beat, and greater quietude along the softer more melodic pieces.  Perhaps this is as it should be.

After a short break, the Kronos Quartet returned to the stage with Tanya Tagaq for a stunningly gorgeous performance of Tundra Songs by Canadian composer Derek Clarke. In this piece the sense of rhythm and melody were more closely integrated, with Ms. Tagaq's throaty voice anchoring the at times ethereal and at other times wildly fractured swirling of the strings.  I had missed Ms. Tagaq's performance the previous day, but it generated a lot of talk.  I think this particular piece may have been a better experience for me, and I was happy to have heard it.  In the small crowded venue, with people standing packed together you could both hear the music with your head and ears, and feel the rumbling of Ms. Tagaq's deeper utterances through the souls of your feet up toward that sound.  It was an exciting performance.

Admittedly, at this point I was ready for a bit of rest and comfort, after nearly two hours on my feet and headed off to the Bijou Theater for to see Bill Morrison's film The Great Flood accompanied by Bill Frissell and his four-piece band playing the music he wrote to accompany the film.  The film and the music were lush, lyrical, and very moving, and well suited to each other, at times swinging and dancing, and at others mournfully flowing in harmony with the images on the screen. 

There was a break between The Great Flood and the next and final performance I wanted to attend, so I wandered around town.  It was at this point, as others stopped for a meal or a drink, that I thought about how nice it would be to have a concert buddy or two to attend concerts with.  I don't mind attending things on my own, nor do I usually mind eating at restaurants on my own, but on this day I would have appreciated having someone with whom to share and discuss.  Friends are available, but I hadn't yet made the effort to connect with them for this purpose, something to correct in the future.

The last concert I attended was Max Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed at the Tennessee Theater with members of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, and soloist Yuki Numata Resnick.  Before the performance even began, as I walked to my seat, a bourbon in my hand, I could not help but smile as I overhead a young man ahead of me state to his female companion something along the lines of how could he not be happy listening to Vivaldi with bourbon and popcorn.  It reminded me that during Symphony performances one is not allowed to bring refreshments into the theater, although it is allowed for other performances, and how, if classical music is to survive, I continue to believe a way must be found to make it more accessible, and fun and probably that word — fun — is an important part of the formula.   This particular concert was a step in the right direction.

But on to the performance, which was, for the most part, spectacular.  I was amazed at the intensity and precision of the musicians of the Knoxville Symphony.  Their performance was absolutely breathtaking, and I hope they pursue more events and concerts like this as they had me on the edge of my seat.  They far outshone the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, which played with less precision as well as without the warmth of the Knoxville musicians.  Unfortunately I was less thrilled than the audience at large with the performance of Ms. Resnick, who did not necessarily distract from the performance, but did nothing to enhance it. 

As to the music, to my ears I was clearly listening to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.  Yes it had certainly been disassembled and reassembled, and although there was a strong hint of minimalism in this remaining of the work, it was not a brash minimalism, but rather a softening of a work to make it accessible to modern ears.  It was Vivaldi and it wasn't.  It was beautiful but then it struck me that was perhaps too modern, too beautiful, too accessible and almost soothing to modern sensibilities.  That does not mean it wasn't worthwhile, wasn't worth listening to, and I think there are great opportunities here for the symphony to work on ways to attract larger audiences. I wish the symphony would work out a way to play more works like this along side the traditional repertoire, not separately from it.

And that led to my final thoughts about the weekend, and my musings on the nature of the avant-garde. As I listened to Vivaldi Recompossed it struck me that this new reworking of The Four Seasons was probably more accessible and less avant-garde than the original.  Of course, in its day, the work probably was shocking; but actually if you actually listen to it in depth, with attention, Vivaldi's work is actually more challenging, more upsetting, and more shocking to one's understandings and perceptions than Max Richter's was. 

It struck me that I had neatly bookended my weekend: First with The Bad Plus's Rite of Spring and finally with Richter's Vivaldi Recomposed. Both made me look at the works differently, understand them differently, appreciate them in new light, but both works were also victims of their very modernism, and both lacked the shocking emotional weight of the originals.  We need the new, but we can't really afford to lose the old.

So what is avant-garde?  Is it something new or unusual or different from what is expected and mainstream? Or is it something controversial and shocking, something that shakes your awareness into looking at the world or some aspect of it differently from the way you had perceived it before?  Perhaps both.  But in that case the avant-garde can be mainstream, and the mainstream can be avant-garde. Or can it?

I was not a concert-hopping fool this weekend.  I did not bop in and out of performances, did not try to go to everything, and I am perfectly content with my choices.  I had a good time.  I may have missed something amazing, but I am ok with that.

I intentionally took it slow on Saturday.  Slept late, puttered through the day, rushed nothing. Although it was tempting to wind myself tight as could be and go downtown and revel in the music, it was also all too apparent that time to unwind was a greater priority.  This one of those occasions where plans and reality actually aligned themselves. It had been a busy week.  Sunday was overscheduled and I knew that I would push myself to do and see and hear as much as possible.  I needed to refuel.

 I did go downtown to one concert, a performance by Wu Man at the Square Room.  Sitting on the floor, legs crossed in front of me I found the music at times to be very meditative and calming.  In fact Wu Man captures the world in four strings and the music had incredible depth.  It felt timeless: ancient and modern; alternately spiritual and worldly; simple and complex.  And yet, even in those worldly songs of battle and other human concerns, my inclination was to pull inward, and relax into the music. At one point even the sound of water, slowly gurgling beneath the melody, flowed through her strings. 

I could not help but think of an infant lying on a blanket very close to where I was sitting, could not help but hope that this was a good thing, this music filled with history and humanity, this oasis in a world often filled with dissonance, the now, and the rush to the future. 

I was lucky enough last week to attend two concerts. Both offered hard-won moments of renewal in a week that was already too busy and too hectic.  It was a week that left me exhausted, the culmination of a month of intense and often exhausting events and activities, and yet I would not change a thing. Everything that was done needed doing, and the ability to do it is a gift.

Tuesday night the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra opened their season with guest Monty Alexander.  Monty Alexander's joy at playing, his deft way of working with straight jazz and Jamaican sounds, of finding and expanding on the jazz roots of reggae, were joyful and profoundly powerful.  The energy on the stage flowed into the audience, and for long stretches of the 3-hour concert, it felt like the entire audience in the Bijou Theater was actively smiling, if not dancing in their hearts.  The energy in the hall was quieter toward the end, not due to a loss of interest but simply because the price of a three-hour concert in the middle of the week is high for many; the mostly 20-somethings around me in the balcony started seriously peeling out around 10:30.  Mr. Alexander did apologize, at the end of the intermission, for getting carried away with the music, and for playing too long.  

Did I regret staying? No.  Was I tired on Wednesday? yes.  But I got to hear Alexander's surprisingly moving rendition of Bob Marley's "No Woman No Cry".  And I continue to think that if we could all have something in our lives that we loved so much that we got carried away to a place outside of time and obligation, and even age, the world would be an entirely different place.

There was a brief moment on Wednesday, when, tired from the previous day's excess and flustered by a last minute addition to my calendar, I considered not going to the Wednesday night opening of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra's Concertmaster Series.  I did go however and I was happy to have done so.  The music offered a sense of calm, and revitalization, that although completely different than quiet time at home, was just as effective and necessary. It did not hurt that two of the pieces being performed were particular favorites.

The concert was held in the great hall of the Knoxville Museum of Art, which proved to be a perfect venue.  The presence of the art, the excellent acoustics, and the sense of the place, simultaneously intimate and expansive, enhanced the performance, which was also thrilling in its own right.  Concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz opened the program with Bartok's Romanian Folk Dances, which were excellent, and an added bonus was being treated to an encore performance of the powerful 3rd dance: Topogó / Pe loc. 

One of the things that struck me about the concert, was in fact, that all three of the works presented contained within them a particularly powerful intropective and contemplative movement, and yet the theme of the concert was neither contemplative nor melancholy.  The Bartok contains within it this introspective moment, but generally the dances are more vibrant. This was followed by the Brahms' Horn Trio in E-flat Major, a work which simulates the stages of of mourning, and which sat at the center of the concert. The 3rd movement, the Adagio, is particularly contemplative and the performance here was heartfelt and introspective.  But the Brahms work is deft, and generally light-handed in its handling of grief, and the final moment is filled with the joy of acceptance.

The concert ended with Cesar Franck's Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano, one of my favorite works.  It was written as a wedding present and it is, in fact anything but melancholy, although it is not romantic in the grand scale. It is an incredibly personal and powerful, work, and to me it seems to be more about the transcendent power of love rather than more immediate, romantic, love.  I find Franck's music to be filled with a kind of breathless joy, a joy that we, in this modern age, tend to allow ourselves to experience far too rarely. Once again, it is the 3rd movement that is the more introspective one, improvisatory in nature, with beautifully yearning contemplative solo passages, which Lefkowitz expressed beautifully.  

The conclusion of the work was a trifle less ecstatic and soaring than I would have preferred, but still beautiful.  But then again, I have been spoiled by being able to hear a few truly great artists perform this piece; my complaints may be uniquely my own, and not really related to the performance at hand. These niggling thoughts, arising as they do out of a cultural bias which aims more toward striving and criticism than acceptance, did not lessen my enjoyment of the concert however.  The performances were very good and the ensemble played very well together. The piano passages in the Franck, in particular, are notably difficult.

It was a joy to be able to attend and in many ways a very personal experience of the music.  But music always has that potential, if we let it.  George and I listened to Bartok's Romanian Dances, arranged for violin and piano, on our first date. (Our second date was to see the German Film Das Boot, go figure.) And as I said, the Franck is a favorite for its transcendence, for the way Franck has of combining the intellectual with the purely physical response in a way that seems to lead toward something greater. This concert, in particular, seemed to fill some inner resource that needed filling, and I am grateful. 

Spring seems to be the primary music season and one of the things I missed the most during my confinement was attending concerts.  To some extent, this caught me by surprise because earlier in the season I missed a few performances, fraught as they were with memories of shared expeditions with George. I had no way of knowing if a concert would be a joyous occasion or filled with tears, and I suppose, in a misguided attempt to avoid the tears, I would avoid the concert, thereby missing the joy as well.

Therefore it may come as no surprise that I was determined that, if at all possible, I would attend the last concert of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra last Friday even though it was a mere two days following my surgery.  Admittedly it was a bit of a stretch, and on Thursday morning it seemed like an impossible dream. By Friday morning however it was evident that I was most comfortable sitting and that I could easily sit for a couple of hours; I could also stand for long periods of time and walk, although stiffly and slowly for moderate distances.  A friend had offered to drop me off at the door to the Tennessee Theater, and it was an easy walk to my seat, conveniently located on the aisle, although I have requested a change for next year.  I managed to convince myself that the healing power of music is exactly what I needed.

Indeed it was.  I do believe that this was one of the best, if not the best concert I have heard the Knoxville Symphony perform. The concert opened with Beethoven's Overture to Fidelio and although it was an acceptible performance, I thought it sounded muddy in places.  It is possible that the problem lies at least partially with my ears.  I suspect however that someone or section is slightly off beat, but I can't really distinguish different instruments well from my seat, so I am hoping that, by moving up to the balcony next year I will have a different perspective on the performance.  At any rate the opening was lovely, and warmly received, and it certainly did not detract from the two highlights of the concert, Beethoven's Piano Concerto #4 in G, and Shostakovich's 10th Symphony.

The soloist was a young Pianist named Spencer Myer, a name I did not at first recognize. When he came on stage and began to play I realized I had indeed heard him play before.   He is an excellent pianist who plays with fluidity, precision and nuance. Listening, and watching, him play, I felt his sensitive phrasing helped me to hear parts of the music with renewed appreciation.  This was especially well realized in the second movement, where Myer and Richman worked well together in controlling the dynamic between the piano and the orchestra, and it was in this movement that I felt Myer's combination of subtle passion held by restraint was particularly effective.

The Shostakovich was surprising in just how good and enjoyable it was.  It is a piece I have heard performed enough times that I was cautious in my expectations.  Shostakovich is never easy, although I do think Richman excels in 20th century works and his affinity for the intersection between classical and popular works should work well with Shostakovich.  And I have to admit the piece was joyous and exciting.  Again there were sections that sounded slightly "muddy" to me, I suspect that there were discrepencies in timing which blurred the sound in my location.  The orchestra managed to capture a sense of that contrast that is always present in Shostakovich, of joy and pathos, hope, yearning, beauty, horror, absurdity. The second movement captured that sense of brutality well, and the final movement was triumphant.  The audience was silent, rapt throughout the performance, and it errupted upon the finale.  The gentleman in front of me was bouncing up and down in joy through parts of the performance, a welcome change from the sometimes bored placidity of the New York audience.  A gentleman behind me said "yes" once, and "no, no, no" on at least two other occasions.  I might have agreed with him, but overall, I found the performance exciting and enjoyable.  The piccolo was fabulous. My only complaint might be that the work was somewhat muted in its impact and mainstreamed.  Yes the second movement was forceful.  Yes Shostakovich triumphed over Stalin in the music but the dynamic was slightly subdued,  the contrast between joy and pain, beauty and horror, not quite as heart-stopping and shocking as it should have been.  The first movement especially did not seem to have that nightmarish quality that you can't quite pinpoint that I find most compelling in some performances: an eerily haunting listlessness in the strings, that leaves one unnerved on the deepest level, the almost hroat-clenching pain of the sudden outbursts.   Still, these are very small complaints in a work that was extraordinarily difficult and very well and powerfully performed.

Saturday morning I was musing about the concert and where I might have heard Spencer Myer perform before. I suspected it was at Bard and I hoped that I had written something about the performance in my earlier blog.  Alas I was inconsistent in my blog posts, and there was nothing about Myer to be found, although I did enjoy reading my old posts.  Next I went through the old Bard Music Festival programs, where I tended to write notes about the performances, and I did indeed find a few notes about Myer, not valuable for anythng really, other than ascertaining that my memory was indeed correct.    I noted that I had thought he was enormously talented, and played with great precision, but that I felt at that time, and this was some years ago, that he was too driven by control.  In thinking about these earlier performances, and the Beethoven from Friday night, it occurred to me that although I did find the second movement compelling, the Piano Concerto as a whole was not quite my cup of tea. Myer's performance was incredible, his phrasing and coloring shapes a subtly thoughtful emotional landscape, but it lacked, to my ears at least, a certain dynamic contrast and mystery, perhaps even a bit of that sense of struggle, although controlled, of the fine line between joy and pathos that Beethoven seems so often to tread.  Yes, it is possible to over-Romanticize Beethoven, but Myer's approach was perhaps to intellectually ethereal.  Nonetheless, I think he is a pianist from whom I wish to hear more, and I am sure there are composers to whom I will find him brilliantly suited, although perhaps not Beethoven. 

I have watched and/or listened to La Boheme 4 times since Saturday's post and I must say I am in love with this opera, have been since the opening scene, and my fate was sealed with Act IV.  I think I could listen to it forever.  In fact, I feel like an entire new world has opened before me and I am amazed at how much I have been missing.

Of course, I always suspected I would like opera, and as I said it is not that I have never heard an opera or been to the opera, but perhaps that my exposure to the actual music has been more esoteric.  I wrote that I was more familiar with modern operas, but that was not completely correct.  I suppose the operas I saw were related to the composers we sought out: the operas of Glass and Adams fascinate, but we would also seek out  Bartok, Britten, Schnitke, Schoenberg, and Shostakovich. George loved Strauss and Musorgsky, certainly not modern, Strauss was a contemporary of Puccini after all,  and we would seize any opportunity to attend performances, but many of the classic names in opera, the operas my friends would swoon over, Puccini, Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, of these I am still mostly unfamiliar.  I love The Magic Flute, but then, how anyone could not love The Magic Flute.  

I also love Aida.  It was the first opera I ever saw on stage and I fell instantly and passionaely in love.  I don't remember how old I was, my girl scout troup went, so I think I was somewhere between 11 and 13.  After attending that performance, I began reading Kobbe's opera book cover to cover repeatedly until I knew the story of all the operas recorded therein by heart, just as I had devoured my mother's book on the stories of the great ballets.  And yet, I didn't see performances of any of them until after I was married, and then only rarely.  George had attended opera when he was younger, but said he was "opera'd out" from constant exposure during his first marriage and there was no reason to push.  There is, after all, more than enough music in the world to enjoy. Any way, it took us years to use up the case of Metropolitan Opera cocktail napkins inherited from that first marriage.   In fact, now that I think about it, we did not go to the Met until the last of those cocktail napkins was but a distant memory.

I too attended classical music performances in college and my early 20s, which was rather unusual among my peers at that time. But I was more comfortable going someplace like BAM than the Met, where of course one was much more likely to hear Einstein on the Beach and Akhaneten, than anything by Puccini.

As for La Boheme, I have seen 3 different productions, all from the Met; and I have listened to one of the two cds on hand.   Of the Met performances, I enjoyed them all:  The 2008 version had the grandest staging but I although the singing was lovely, I was far less impressed with Angela Georghiu and Ramon Vargas than I was with 1982 version with Teresa Stratas and Jose Carreras, where the acting and music were just beautiful, And yet I also loved the first version I saw, the 1977 production with Luciano Pavarotti and Renata Scotto.  Perhaps they were not as well cast in the rolls as Carreras and Stratas, but listening to the two of them sing was still sublime, even if less emotionally rich.  It is too bad there is not a CD of the production.  The DVD was fine, but there were some technical issues as it was the Met's first broadcast, but it is really the two lovers I want to hear again.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to choose one's favorite performers from each of the productions and combine them into one performance, but of course that couldn't happen. I suppose fantasy opera performances will never be as popular a sport as fantasy football.

My favorite version may be the last one,  on CD, with Pavarotti again, and Mirella Freni from 1972, with von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic.  It seems strange to me that I like two performances with Pavarotti; I was not particularly impressed with him before, but perhaps that is because my exposure had been in his later years, whereas here he is at his peak.  Admittedly he is a bit of a ham in the 1977 production, one is always aware he is Pavarotti playing Rudolfo, and in the CD one just hears the music, so the story unfolds in the mind as opposed to on the stage.   The only thing that mars this recording is the orchestra.  To me  von Karajan seems too Germanic in his approach, and the orchestra intrudes into the opera, occasionally battling with the singers.  Of course it is not surprising, still there are a few places I find it annoying.  It is of course perfectly possible that there is no perfect recording, and even more possible that were I to gather a bunch of opera lovers in the room and ask them for their favorite recording an argument would break out.  So I shall be content with multiple choices.  But I have to decide which ones to keep.   And I still have one to listen to, a recording from the 50's with Jussi Bjorling and Vicotira de los Angles.  George loved Jussi Bjorling so I am afraid that this one might make me cry all the more.  Therefore it must be a La Boheme of the monrning, of sunshine, not one to be heard late at night, or during a storm.

Perhaps this is exactly what I have needed, a new musical love that is all mine with no shared history behind it.  I can go to the opera, I can attend the Met Live broadcasts at the local theater.  Of course I will not stop going to the symphony; just because a love was shared is no reason to abandon it.  And yet it has been difficult this past year to filter the me from the us when listening to classical music, to accept my own taste as valid in and of itself. Allowing myself to rediscover popular music and jazz has been easier because they were never shared.  This rediscovery of Opera is something new, something for the woman I am now.  Perhaps it is the opening of a new, wider door, as I close another one behind me. I am ready.