Thursday, December 27, 2012
Bull Run Festival of Lights (and simulated sense of snow)
On this blog I count “artistic displays” – even with
Christmas lights – as “shows”. Earlier
this evening, I drove through the Bull Run Festival of Lights, at Bull Run
Regional Park, in Centreville, VA, which was said to include “Santa’s Enchanted
Lights” at the Holiday Village.
You have to drive a dark, winding two-lane road for about
three miles to get to it, and it’s $15 per car on a weeknight. It pays to have
passengers. You drive at about 10 mph
through the exhibit. There was a music
section with “The Twelve Days of Christmas” with some notes right off Sibelius.
There was a simulated snow storm with lights. Or perhaps the descending lights
could be interpreted as the alien probes at the beginning of “Skyline”.
Near the end, there is a small carnival, for foot
exploration, on a cold, windy night. The
Christmas trees here change colors constantly.
The website is here.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
For Christmas Day, a lesson in a cappella
I’ve never been much of a fan of a cappella singing, even
when you go back to Palestrina. The
adult human voice doesn’t have the overtones of instruments – even given the
excitement that opera divas can generate.
Nevertheless, I went back to Trinity Presbyterian in
Arlington late Christmas morning to have a most informal service, after the
moving formal Christmas Eve service late Monday night. The twenty or so of us were rehearsed to go
over to the Virginia Hospital Center, floor to floor, with poinsettias, and
sing carols for patients and particularly staff. This was territory I had seen a lot of during
the last years of my own Mother’s life.
There are some medical information signs on the walls (about strokes and
arrhythmias.) We had the help of a “pro”
from a college (VA Tech) glee club. Though when I substitute taught, some high schools had madrigals
groups, that sung all a cappella. I
think Yorktown High School in Arlington had this. And the high school students who sung it were
very dedicated and good. For me, the musical area is a bit too narrow.
The Christmas Eve service performed some of the now familiar
music of Chilcott (Dec. 9) but added “Night of Silence” by Daniel Kantor. Carol
Feather Martin played as organ preludes the “Fantasy on ‘Divinum Mysterium’” by
Gerte Hancock and the more familiar “Variations on ‘Puer Nobis’” by Michael Burkhardt. The Hancock piece is quite jubilant and
triumphant (reminding me of Dupre), and would be a good thing to hear soon on
the new organ at the First Baptist Church of the City of Washington DC, whose
new organ is supposed to be ready in February, to the best of my
knowledge.
On Christmas days in the past, I've often played a 1969 recording with David Wilcox on EMI-Angel of Ralph Vaughn Williams's "Hodie" -- "This Day". It is loud and virile.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Local brass quintet celebrates DC Metro Red Line at Dupont Circle
Thursday night, after I ascended the “new” escalator on the
south end of the Dupont Circle Metro station in Washington DC, I encountered a
brass quintet playing what sounded like Gershwin, maybe from Porgy and Bess, a
slow passage. Looks like my camera didn't quite focus, sorry.
It is called “DC Brass” but I couldn’t find its site.
Yes, people play for tips.
Remember the film "Five Lines"?
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Pianist Jonathan Biss performs "moderately early" Beethoven
As I noted on a December 1, 2012 Kennedy Center concert
review, I met pianist Jonathan Biss after his performance of a Mozart
concerto. I bought his Onyx CD where he
performs four relatively early Beethoven piano sonatas.
The Amazon link is here. I'm old school, with vinvyl records and CD's; but today it's enough (totally legal, and cheaper) to buy the MP3 files and PDF notes, and let the Cloud back them up for you. This may not help musicians make a living on the royalties that they need and earn. Composers make their own MP3 files with iTunes.
Early Beethoven is distinguishable from Mozart and Haydn in
the way if build themes out of technical motives. The first work on the CD is the
Piano Sonata #5 in C Minor, which sounds a bit understated compared to the much
more famous Pathetique (#8). It has
three movements, and the final
Prestissimo ends quietly. (Beethoven had done that in #4 in E-flat,
where the final winds us down in grace.)
I was not very familiar with #11, in B-flat. In my William and Mary days in 1961, a
college chum had said that “B-flat major” was his least favorite key. He had also said that nobody should pay
Beethoven until he is 30 (Biss is 32). The
four movement work seems a bit impish and playful. But if the finale is meant to be a bit
relaxed (Allegretto), it at least ends on a fortissimo chord.
Piano Sonata #12 in A-flat, the “Funeral March”, is well
known, most of all for its march in the ultimate key of A-flat minor (seven
flats – why not G# Minor?) The theme certainly exemplifies simplicity, and
probably inspired a similar movement by Chopin a some years later. The first
movement is a Theme and Variations rather than a Sonata, but Mozart had done
this with his A Major sonata. The finale
is another relaxation, despite the “Allegro” marking, closing simply and
quietly, as if to invite a response.
The last Sonata on the CD is #26 in E-flat, the famous “Les
Adieux”, where Beethoven made an odd experiment with program music in an
abstract form. The harmonies in this
work have always seemed a little grating to me.
But the sequence, “Farewell, Absence, “Return” pretty much depicts a
psychological experience that I “lived through” in New York City in 1978. (By the time of Bucky Dent’s home run, the “return”
had happened, and Beethoven makes it joyful and conclusive.) Yet, the experience would lead to a windshift
in my own life, and a move to Dallas in 1979.
National Public Radio takes you into Jonathan’s Upper West
Side apartment (not the picture, but close enough).
Something about the name "Biss" strikes me. There is a Swedish music company with that name but only one "S". In German, the "s" would be doubled.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
White House Nation's Christmas Tree offers large, partitioned model railroad
I stumbled upon another model railroad Sunday night when I
walked over to the Ellipse to see the National Christmas Tree.
There was a model railroad in three parts: an external
circle, then a complicated structure closer to the tree with trestles and
bridges, and then three Midwestern villages, all similar, one with some
factories and a “Bates House”, and all with their own local railroads.
There was a male glee club that sang “barber shop quartet”
music, a cappella, from the 1940s (Bugler Boy, etc.)
There was an ample crowd of families early Sunday evening,
Dec. 16, maybe 300 people, in mild, drizzly and foggy weather. It’s too warm for mid-December.
To the south of the tree the White House has displayed a
large Hanukkah Menorah.
Here's another ambiguous sculpture nearby on 15th St. across from Treasury and PNC.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
A "Christmas" visit to a local model railroad, and a virtual trip to the Smokies
Today, I visited a free exhibit of the Northern Virginia
Model Railroaders, showing a model (HO) of
portions of the Western North Carolina Railroad as it might have looked in the
1950s. The exhibit is located in “downtown”
Vienna, VA on the Washington and Old Dominion Bike Trail.
The exhibit is unusual in that the model railroad runs on at
least three elevation levels, with a helix out-of-sight to elevate the
trains. Visitors can stand next only the
lowest level. On the lower left, there
is a model of a portion of the Piedmont town of Salisbury NC. The actual railroad ran to Asheville and then
south, along the Blue Ridge, to Murphy.
The layout also has a streetcar track running parallel to
some of the railroad. At a few points,
one can spot trains and tunnels at different levels within short proximity
(including a little bit of the “underground” helix), as if different layers of
reality could be experienced with very little movement in physical space.
The link for the club is here.
The exhibit is of interest to me because I didn’t “get in” a
trip to the Smokies this October, but expect to go next summer (including a
visit to Oak Ridge).
I think an exhibit that shows the same area in different
time eras in repeating panels (or perhaps radially with distance from the
center representing time, and radian
measure representing distance) could be interesting. Or, in fact, time could be correspond to
elevation.
Friday, December 14, 2012
High school near Alexandria, VA puts on edgy Christmas comedy program -- visiting it is a pilgrimage for me
Tonight, I attended the Holiday Extravaganza at the West
Potomac High School, in Fairfax County, VA, near Route 1 and relatively close (2
miles) to the Huntington and Franconia Metro stations in Alexandria. The drama
event was held in the wide Kogelman Theater, the smaller of the two auditoriums
in the Arts and Media Building, which is actually separated from the main
campus building.
The program, 135 minutes (long for high school) comprised
two one-act comic plays (a practice
sometimes seen with opera), and an intermediate skit.
The first play (“Act One”) was “The Trial of Santa”, by Don
Zolidi (about 25 min). In our litigious society, someone sues Santa Claus for invasion of
privacy and discrimination. Remember all
the old commands to “be good” or someone would tell Santa? (I even remember when my parents told me the “truth”
about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny – we were in the family car, having just
left the house). This was a comedy
where Santa isn’t allowed any lap dances.
The program, parents were warned, was PG-13.
The “intermezzo” was a skit based on Shakespeare’s “A
Midsummer Night’s Dream”, based on the idea of putting a love potion on someone’s
eyes to control who she will fall in love with.
It’s an idea for people who can’t face later jealousy.
There was a quick intermission, in situ (no refreshments),
and then came the main event, an hour-long “Act Two”, “Every Christmas Story
Ever Told (and then some!)”, by Michael Carleton, Jim FitzGerald, and John K.
Alvarez. The play consists of a long series of dialogues following the model of
Saturday Night Live (on Friday night), to make fun of almost everything. There was a lot of audience participation of
sorts, from actors planted in the audience who would join on the stage. The lights would dim and come back on. It was hard to discern any specific structure
to the play, but just about all of pop culture took a beating. A couple of the parts donned a wig, in
impersonation of Norman Bates. Did you
know that Justin Timberlake cross dresses?
Or much about the personal life of Marley? (Movie reviews May 1, 2012)/ Or was that the dog of Marley and Me (with
Owen Wilson hovering)? Rudolf may make a
good boyfriend before running the Alaskan Iditarod? Or that Rudolf got involve in a trademark and
copyright fight? I thought it was
interesting that each of two high school plays would mention, with comic
effect, our society’s obsession with lawsuits – over a number of issues. It seems as though the writers are fans of
Electronic Frontier Foundation and are familiar with the problems caused by copyright
and patent trolls. There were some early jokes about "fruitcake" (Christmas "comfort food") and "nuts" (or nutmeg). I was expected to hear
“don’t ask don’t tell” to get mentioned.
Not quite, but close. Yes, all PG-13.
I couldn’t quite match the characters to the program. Some
of the actors had trouble with the acoustics in the auditorium, but Eddie
Perez (one of the directors) was always exceptionally
clear and forceful.
The theater is ringed with posters of controversial plays
that students have produced there. These
include “Titanic”, “Les Miserables”, “Inherit the Wind” (with that old time
religion), “Class Acts”, “The Boy Friend”, and “The Caucasian Chalk Circle”. I could almost imagine “Do Ask Do Tell” if it
existed yet.
Outdoors, in the lobby, there are some exhibits of student
art work.
I do have a history with the school, as a substitute teacher
from 2004-2005. I’ll come back to that
in a moment, but I do want to mention that the school has an elaborate film
editing lab (the only other comparable lab I saw as a sub was at the Arlington
Career Center). An AP chemistry class in
June 2005 made a short comic sci-fi film about a new element called “Reltonium”
(named after a chemistry teacher). Imagine
the possibilities. It’s embedded in a
virus (maybe like crystalline astatine), so unstable that it can let the virus
house a microscopic mini black hole, so that when people are infected, they can
trade identities or bodies (actually happens in an episode of “Smallville”, but
there are interesting theoretical possibilities – but we don’t need a fourth “Invasion
of the Body Snatchers” film.
The school, in a very mixed area and not the most
prosperous, has always offered an atmosphere that is an interesting mixture of
conservatism (there is an ROTC Academy – which sent a team to another
Alexandria concert that I reviewed here Nov. 11. 2007) and progressivism,
leveraging technology and sometimes willing to challenge social norms and
proprieties. No other school at which I
subbed was quite as “enigmatic”. A few
of the AP and honors students were truly
outstanding. (Bryant Alternative, and
Mount Vernon are each a few miles down Route 1, not far away, but very
different in culture). Another oddity,
maybe a coincidence, is that that the varsity sports teams are called “Wolverines”,
the name of the team in the movie “Red Dawn”.
There was an unsettling incident there when I was substitute
teaching in 2005. I have explained the
matter in detail on my “BillBoushka” blog with the entry on July 27, 2007
(merely navigate there through Blogger Profile). It took a lot of coincidence, including
unusual items getting published a particular week in October 2005 in competing
newspapers, to trigger the incident. It
is apparent, however, that some staff and perhaps others must have been
distracted by some material I had published on the web (in fact, a particular
fictitious screenplay for a short film) and that could have been found by
search engines. This whole matter
occurred just before the major media was noticing that the Internet was
creating “online reputation” issues and creating conundrums for employers and
schools. Facebook, at that time, had
been invented but wasn’t fully public, and Myspace had been well known for less
than a year.
So going back was a bit of a pilgrimage. It is a 10-mile drive from north Arlington,
through difficult traffic, and changing patterns. The Route 1 area is extremely congested during
rush. Curiously, though, as I spotted
Quanderer Road and turned on the isolated, winding road, I felt that I was
almost back in Tolkien country.
Labels:
drama,
high school productions,
school issues,
WPHS
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
My own high school (W-L) gives winter orchestra concert
Washington-Lee High School in Arlington VA held its winter
concert for its orchestra class tonight, December 11.
The music department limits “orchestra” to strings (and
percussion), and puts all wind instruments in “band”.
The high school has a string orchestra, and a
smaller chamber orchestra that requires audition. To my ear, the pitch in the chamber ensemble sounded more completely in tune. The String orchestra had three double basses. What makes someone want to play it (an lug the instrument around)? I know of only one concerto for double bass, by Estonian composer Eduard Tubin.
David Lunt conducted both orchestras.
The String Orchestra started with the first movement of the
Brandenberg Concerto #3 in G, First Movement, by J.S. Bach. How do the concerti movements of Bach, generally monothematic,
relate tp the sonata form of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven?
There followed a hymn “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Gustav
Holst, and then a suite “A Pirate’s Legend” by Soon He Newbold.
The Chamber Orchestra started with the “Capriccio Espanol”
by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakoff. It is in
four quick sections, with a violin solo played precisely by concertmaster Nathan
Ullberg. I had an Angel recording of
this piece around 1961 with Galliera and the Borodin Symphony #1 on the
back. The Capriccio worked quite well in a string adaptions (by Sandra Dackow).
There followed a settling fo Ralph Vaughn Williams’s
familiar “Greensleeves” (with brief violin solo), a Toccata by Girolamo
Frescobaldi, and a pop song “Molly on the Shore” by Percy Grainger.
I graduated from W-L myself in 1961.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Timo Andres offers "Comfort Food"; can young composers write about less comforting programs?
Timothy Andres has recently (Nov. 2012) preformed his new short chamber work “Comfort Food”, for nonet (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, two
violins, viola, cello, bass), and women’s choir. In the performance, the Milwaukee Choral Artists
sing the vocal part.
The piece has a lot of blocks of sound and repetition, and
to my ear built themes in a manner than resembles Britten.
The best place for the link is his Nov. 27, 2012 blog
posting here.
Timo has also posted a complete performance of his “It Takes
a Long Time to Become a Good Composer” (see my Dec. 11, 2010 posting). He says it is somewhat revised. My ear is starting to learn some of the suite
now, and some of the melodic effects near the end are quite striking and
beautiful (the way early Schoenberg is beautiful). So are the repetitions, sometimes in blocks
of unusual time signatures like 5/4. I
peaked at the sample score pages on EAM
PSNY Project Schott (link ), and noticed that there are key signatures, which surprised me. The effect on my ear is properly atonal. By the way, Schott does sell scores (digital and
printed) online.
As the music played on my computer (sorry, not a Mac, but
Windows 7), I worked on some loose ends in my “Do Ask Do Tell” screenplay. The twinkling piano figures seem to fit the
mood of a scene I was editing, which was an initiation scene on a space station
run by extraterrestrial angels (the angels, as well as the abductees, have to avoid immolation themselves,
but that’s another matter). I felt like
I could switch over to the ground bass music from Hans Zimmer’s score to “Inception”. I don’t know if Joseph Gordon-Levitt (aka “Arthur”) could survive my ritual tests
as one of my “angels” as well as he bikes in “Premium Rush”. Film score composition, they say, is a “real
job”.
I’ll be curious to see “Trade Secrets” get posted; “Trade
Winds” is already available (reviewed here July 10, 2012).
He talked about Ravel (“Mother Goose”) and Richard Strauss (“Death
and Transfiguration”, Op. 24) recently on his blog.
I did the Ravel myself here on Dec. 1, but I was curious enough to drag
out a Vox CD of the Strauss , a 1986 original digital recording by the
Cincinnati Symphony with Michael Gielen. The program notes try to explain Strauss’s
abstract intentions in writing a romantic tone poem about body-to-spirit “transition” when he was only twenty-five. He must have been healthy enough, because he
wouldn’t get to compose his “Metamorphosen” for 23 solo strings (also on the
CD) until he was in his seventies. Anyway,
composers do write ruminations about the fragility of life and civilization. We’ve
seen that before. It’s noteworthy a
descending three-note motive in “Tod und Verkalrung” seems to appear also in
the first movement of the Mahler Ninth, toward the end. Modern music as we know it begins with that
latter work.
The LA Philharmonic explains the Struass piece here. Remember, Boito was young when he composed his "Mefistofele". But Boito was more a writer than composer.
The picture is a kind of “comfort food”. It’s an “autumn salad” (with beets and squash tips) served by the Angelika
Mosaic Film Center café in Merrifield, VA (while in one of their bags, before opening).
By the way, Timo once said that the gentle Symphoy #7 by Prokofiev is "comfort food" (you can skip the loud ending if you want). I much prefer the Sixth, with its crash and
burn experience at the end (review May 5, 2011). Who can pass up “another Op. 111”?
Update: Dec. 19
Check an article by Ted Gordon at PSNY, "Timo Andres's Earthly Feast", link here. "Comfort" may have taken on a new meaning recently. I understand that there is a String Quartet, and a Piano Quintet coming, if I have things right. I still have to go back and remember Ted Hearne's "Parlor Diplomacy" (Aug. 24, 2011), which is discomfort food for politicians who can't work together, especially in Congress now. If you want to make a political or social statement about something, compose an abstract piano or orchestra piece or suite about it, and get it performed.
Richard Dyer had written a prospective assessment of Timo's composing in the Boston Globe back in August, 2004, when Timo was 19 (link). He mentions other large works, like a one-movement Piano Concerto and a full Piano Sonata. Andres has preferred smaller forms , or suites of smaller pieces (like ("Shy and Mighty" or "..Good Composer") during recent years, but there are reports of a string Quartet and a new Piano Quintet (to be performed by pianist Jonathan Biss [Dec 1, Dec 20 2012 on this blog] and the Elias Quartet in California in the Spring of 2013). It will be interesting to me to see how he would handle a full large form (Symphony, opera, etc.) Andres particularly admires Robert Schumann's smaller pieces. But remember, Schumann also composed the monumental ("post Op. 111") Fantasy in C (really a huge 3-movement sonata).
Also, it looks like corporate media likes the name "comfort foods" now, maybe out of awareness pf Timo's piece. That may hold for "Southern Living". Just be careful to keep the foods low fat and low sugar.
Update: Jan. 7, 2013
Timo has posted his "Trade Secrets" on his website. The piece for cello, violin, flute and percussion explores a rising four-note melody in different key signatures, a little bit like a moving ground bass (as in a chaconne). The title of the piece has a definite meaning "in the law", especially in the employment world. Salman Khan (of the Khan Academy) would like the tutorial value of this little piece.
Update: Feb. 4, 2013
Timo's Jan. 29, 2013 blog posting gives a link to his performance of the Mazurka #2 by Thomas Ades.a "leggerio" piece (the Lizst "Dance of the Gnomes" comes to mind). I have yet to see a toy bicycle, cyclist (or piano and pianist) in a "parlor" model railroad layout. But there's always a first time.
Update: Feb. 16. 2013
Check Timo's event schedule for upcoming concerts, particularly at Walter Reade Theater (NYC) and Library of Congress (Washington DC). Timo will enjoy the Bike and Roll emporium at Union Station.
Update: March 9, 2014
WQXR (4/2012) talks about the "reverent but witty world" of Timo's work here.
Update: Dec. 19
Check an article by Ted Gordon at PSNY, "Timo Andres's Earthly Feast", link here. "Comfort" may have taken on a new meaning recently. I understand that there is a String Quartet, and a Piano Quintet coming, if I have things right. I still have to go back and remember Ted Hearne's "Parlor Diplomacy" (Aug. 24, 2011), which is discomfort food for politicians who can't work together, especially in Congress now. If you want to make a political or social statement about something, compose an abstract piano or orchestra piece or suite about it, and get it performed.
Richard Dyer had written a prospective assessment of Timo's composing in the Boston Globe back in August, 2004, when Timo was 19 (link). He mentions other large works, like a one-movement Piano Concerto and a full Piano Sonata. Andres has preferred smaller forms , or suites of smaller pieces (like ("Shy and Mighty" or "..Good Composer") during recent years, but there are reports of a string Quartet and a new Piano Quintet (to be performed by pianist Jonathan Biss [Dec 1, Dec 20 2012 on this blog] and the Elias Quartet in California in the Spring of 2013). It will be interesting to me to see how he would handle a full large form (Symphony, opera, etc.) Andres particularly admires Robert Schumann's smaller pieces. But remember, Schumann also composed the monumental ("post Op. 111") Fantasy in C (really a huge 3-movement sonata).
Also, it looks like corporate media likes the name "comfort foods" now, maybe out of awareness pf Timo's piece. That may hold for "Southern Living". Just be careful to keep the foods low fat and low sugar.
Update: Jan. 7, 2013
Timo has posted his "Trade Secrets" on his website. The piece for cello, violin, flute and percussion explores a rising four-note melody in different key signatures, a little bit like a moving ground bass (as in a chaconne). The title of the piece has a definite meaning "in the law", especially in the employment world. Salman Khan (of the Khan Academy) would like the tutorial value of this little piece.
Update: Feb. 4, 2013
Timo's Jan. 29, 2013 blog posting gives a link to his performance of the Mazurka #2 by Thomas Ades.a "leggerio" piece (the Lizst "Dance of the Gnomes" comes to mind). I have yet to see a toy bicycle, cyclist (or piano and pianist) in a "parlor" model railroad layout. But there's always a first time.
Update: Feb. 16. 2013
Check Timo's event schedule for upcoming concerts, particularly at Walter Reade Theater (NYC) and Library of Congress (Washington DC). Timo will enjoy the Bike and Roll emporium at Union Station.
Update: March 9, 2014
WQXR (4/2012) talks about the "reverent but witty world" of Timo's work here.
Sunday, December 09, 2012
Arlington church features British music (Chilcott) for Christmas concert
The Trinity Presbyterian Church of Arlington VA presented
its Christmas choral concert at the 11:15 AM traditional worship service.
The program was dedicated to British Christmas music.
The organ prelude was a setting of "Six Interludes on
Christmas Carols" by William.S. Lloyd Webber (site ).
The other solo organ music (all played by Carol Feather
Martin) was a “Carillon on ‘Quittez, Pasterus’” by Rosalie Bonighton, and a
rowdy setting of “Unto Us a Son Is Born” by Christopher Tambling, with lots of
four-note scale themes up and down. At this church, the audience sits for the
postlude and applauds.
But the highlight of the service was the 25-minute,
8-movement cantata “On Christmas Night” by Bob Chilcott. That’s not Christmas Eve! (In fact, the “Nutcracker”, played for
Christmas, is supposed to happen on New Years Eve.) The Chancel Choir (mixed ages), Children’s
Choir, and organ (Matthew Stensrud), flute, oboe, harp and percussion were
conducted by Carol Feather Martin. The
music rather resembles that of John Rutter, sounding a bit less modal or
idiosyncratic than the popular Britten piece “A Ceremony of Carols” which the
church has presented in other years.
The percussion included a triangle and glockenspiel, as well
as tongs. The student who played them
mentioned to me the summer camp at Tanglewood and that a student orchestra had
played the Mahler Symphony #6 last summer (the “hammer stroke” symphony with
the “Alma” theme, and the odd “tritone” relationship of the slow movement, a
concept that I discussed in the last posting). Mahler (in his middle and late symphones) used the glockenspiel a lot. See my posting here about Tanglewood Aug. 15, 2012.
I don’t usually get into politics on this blog except as it
is dealt with in music or drama. But there was an announcement before the
service on an information forum on the Palestinian refugee problem, on Dec. 23
at 10 AM.
For today’s sermon “A Refiner’s Fire”, the Congregation was
told to look online. It seems to be located on Googe+, but I presume it will be
made fully public soon.
Saturday, December 08, 2012
Tchaikovsky Symphony 3 dazzles at Kennedy Center "Polish" Program; also, Lutoslawski, Chopin
I remember a 1995 film “Heat” and a famous confrontation
between the mob characters played by Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Somewhere around
that scene, the music score played some of the violin concerto of Polish
composer Witold Lutoslawski.
This week’s concert at the National Symphony Orchestra in
Washington DC at the Kennedy Cemter features a “Polish” Program as its theme. I’ll get back
to that. The opening of the concert,
conduced by Austrian Hans Graf, as a short suite for strings, in four
movements, called “Musique funebre” ("Funeral Music") by Lutoslawski. It’s pretty far from the Strauss Metamorphosen,
and closer to Bartok (the “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta”). The style could be characterized as a hybrid
(bad word since Sandy) of Bartok and Schoenberg. The music has the arch structures common in
Bartok. The sense of atonality comes not
so much must from tone rows but also from the use of tritones (augmented fourth
intervals, like C to F#), which maintain a sense of ambiguity of tonality while
allowing more repetition of the same note.
The particular interval is mathematically one-half an octave (that is, a
frequency ratio of “square root of 2” over 1), which makes it effect
symmetrical. The notes mention the political problems that Lutoslawski faced in Communist Poland with some of his music being seen as too "cosmopolitan" and disrespectful to the proletariat.
That opening piece was followed by the somewhat stodgy Piano
Concerto #1 in E Minor, Op. 11, by Frederic Chopin. I actually had an expensive record of this
when I was a junior in High School, after I had gotten to know the more “thrilling”
romantic concerti of Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, and Liszt. The soloist was Beijing born Yuja Wang. Both Chopin concerti are criticized for being
too piano-centric, but I could challenge that idea. The first movement is curious in the way it
offers some long rather colorless orchestral tutti, at the beginning of the
development and as the coda as well as the opening ritornello.
The program explains that Chopin stayed focused on the tonal center of
E, not reaching the relative major of G for the second theme until the
recapitulation. What’s more notable to
my ear is that the piano part in the first movement doesn’t seem to end on the
tonic, but leaves the orchestra to return to E minor by itself. The second movement is a nocturne and more
tonally adventurous (even if it starts in the same E), but not up to the
writing of Chopin’s most original nocturnes (like the G Minor). In fact, I’ve read nice things about the
little known posthumous nocturnes, and would like to hear them. The finale has always sounded lively but
rather fluffy. The use of scales and
grand arpeggios near the end gets interesting, though, and sometimes has been a
source of inspiration for contemporary piano music.
I think that the second concerto (F Minor) is more
interesting to my ear. Chopin can seem
trivial and superficial, or he can be grand and profound, as in all the Sonatas
(which are masterpieces), the Ballades (who can beat the perverse violence that
closes the G Minor Ballade?), and at least the C# Minor Scherzo. The military polonaises don’t work so well for
me, but we’ll come back to that. I tend
to disagree that Chopin was only a miniaturist composer. His large piano solo works provide real
adventure; he just doesn’t need orchestra.
The piano performance by Yuja Wang seemed a bit light on the
loafers. Her dress was gorgeous, but, as
some male patrons noticed, “showy”. I
could ask, why not perform a Hummel concerto instead of Chopin – but then the
program isn’t all “Polish”.
Like Jonathan Biss last week, the pianist was offering CD’s for
sales, and this time the line was longer after the show to go to the Green Room
for autographs. She also got two
encores, but maybe female pianists have that advantage.
After the intermission, we heard the work I came for, the
Symphony #3 in D Major, Op. 29, by Tchaikovsky. This work is big, episodic (in
five movements, almost like a suite) and loud, and seems to demand ballet. (“The Nutcracker” was playing next
door.) Some of the passages make me
remember the young Clark Kent (Tom Welling on the CWTV series) showing off his “speed”
as if a dancer, and I think this music was used a few times in the background
score (I’ve seen at least one young man do this – maybe extraterrestrials walk
among us). The program notes compare the
work to Robert Schumann’s “Rhenish”, but
the style of the work (even if a bit Germanic at times) is quite
different. The first movement pays its
dues with a slow introduction in D Minor before bursting forth with its blazing
D Major scale theme in the Exposition.
The development offers fugal writing.
The second movement is an intermezzo in German style (anticipating
Mahler , maybe). The third movement is a wonderful, passionate slow movement
with plenty of ballet motion. The fourth
movement is an elfish scherzo (almost like Mendelssohn), and the finale makes a
grandiose experience with a true Polonaise. This works better for me than
Chopin’s own exercises in the form. The
development section, leveraging the rhythmic complexity of the triple-time
dance, becomes a complex fugue (we don’t have to wait for the Mahler Fifth),
and the recapitulation turns the Polonaise into a “Big Tune” before whirling us
away into a presto coda, with themes progressively compacting into simpler balletic repetitions, crashing down on final D’s with drum rolls. Imagine dirty dancing in a gay disco to this music, or, try "Dancing with the Stars", too. (I just wonder if the men really look like men on DWTS anymore.)
The “Applause” theme in my last sonata uses the “tritone”
modulation concept to produce tonal ambiguity and link tonal centers in an
unusual way. When I first envisioned it,
it seemed to have too much affinity to the Chopin A Major Polonaise, as the
first downward interval is the same. Mut
my theme starts changing time signatures (from 4/4 to 6/4) and key signatures
quickly, and has not relation to the polonaise rhythm, except maybe for one measure!
Here’s a YouTube version of the Finale of the Symphony #3
played by Edvard Tchivzhel and the USSR State Symphony, link.
Wikipedia attribution link for Krakow, Poland picture. I was there one night in May 1999 (I arrived
that morning on the train East from Berlin, visited Auschwitz that day/)
Labels:
Chopin,
concert music,
Lutoslawski,
Tchaikovsky
Friday, December 07, 2012
Artisphere hosts "W3FI" digital experiment (in Arlington VA)
Here’s a real-time experience where an audience’s tweets are
part of the show. It’s “W3FI: A Digital Experience Revealing the Connections
Between our Online and Offline Worlds”, best explained at this link. The experience was developed by Chris Coleman and Laleh Mehran. The artists have a separate Wordpress blog here.
I visited this exhibit last night at the Artisphere in the
Rosslyn business district of Arlington VA.
I don’t have Twitter or my Google account set up on my Mobile
smartphone, because I travel with a netbook laptop and iPad and don’t really
need to. (And, really, who wants to get
texts and tweets when on a disco dance floor anyway? They’re disruptive.)
You can see your face in the exhibit by tweeting “I” or “we”
with your location turned on. Don’t do this if you’re hyper about privacy.
This exhibit is focused on the DC area. It’s easy to imagine this in NYC or LA.
The event runs from Dec. 6, 2012 to Jan. 20, 2013. Refreshments were served last night with the event.
There is also an exhibit by Jonathan Monaghan, "Rainbow Narcosis", on the video wall above the staircase. Jonathan's link is here.
If you go to the Artisphere, pay close attention to the parking directions at night in the garage. You must get the ticket validated after all.
Thursday, December 06, 2012
"Six Characters in Search of an Author": can someone live forever as a playwright's (or screenwriter's) character?
Imagine that you and maybe other members of your family or social
cohort have experienced some kind of irreversible tragedy. You have become
nameless, even forgotten. You wander in
an underworld, maybe as troubadours. You find a theater company. You expect that you can be reborn as
characters in a play. Then you realize someone, an author, has to play god, and
give you karma, lifeforce, purpose. You
will live in a small world set up in the mind of another.
That’s the precept of “Six Characters in Search of an Author”,
an experimental play (90 min) by Luigi Pirandetto, translated into English by
Carl B. Muetter, directed by Tom Prewitt.
It plays in the Black Box Theater at the Artisphere in Arlington VA,
through December 9, 2012.
My own idea is that the characters could wind up living
inside a model railroad, or perhaps in a website or Second Life.
The stage was arena-style, with seats on two sides of a
square. The actors could be extremely
close to some of the audience, like one or two seats away. You could hear them
talking in low undertones. The
stagecraft was simple, with a lot of plywood works, some old furniture, some
garden stuff, and a violin.
There are fourteen players in the whole production, about
half in the supposed theater company,
and about half are homeless, looking to become their own characters in someone’s
play.
Could one attain immortality this way? Or is one the same person in someone else’s
model world than he was before? Can identities
merge and be experienced as one? These
are some of the questions the script poses.
Stephen Hawking could take a shot at them.
The link for the play, presented by WSC Avant Bard, is
here.
The cast includes Bruce Alan Raucscher, Jon Jon Johnson, Liz Dutton, Liz Dutton.
This play would lend itself to indie film. IMDB says it was a TV
movie in 1976. But it fits into an ambitious genre in the movies if it ever happens (like "Cloud Atlas", "Tree of Life", "Inception", Judas Kiss", etc.) Maybe Tom Tykwer or Christopher Nolan would like this.
The music at the end sounded a bit like Poulenc - a bit eclectic.
Saturday, December 01, 2012
Valcuha and Biss perform Szymanowski, Mozart, Ravel, Debussy for NSO; the Mozart concerto is indeed a "complete" curiosity
The National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in
Washington DC offered “youth” tonight – a young guest conduct and pianist. Yup,
bring on the kids. Well, not
exactly. It takes a lot to play with the
major orchestras these days. But it may not “take a long time” to become a
successful artist, for the talented and hard-working.
The conductor was Juraj Valcuha, 36, and it was his opening
selection that attracted me to the concert. That was the Concert Overture in E
Major, Op. 12 (1905) by Karol Szymanowski.
I reviewed that composer’s violent opera “King Roger” and his two
symphonies in September here. The
Overture, published at age 23, is a thick and exuberant Sonata-allegroi very
easy to follow in form, but with themes
that seem a bit contrived. The style
does resemble Richard Strauss, and the program notes compares it to that
composer’s “Don Juan”, but this piece is much more conventional in form. The
opening figure resembles a similar ditty
in the last movement of the late Sinfonietta in D Minor by Alexander Zemlinsky.
Unlike the Strauss piece, the ending is
“formally” loud and crashes to its logically triumphant conclusion, not
allowing the listener to react.
Sometimes I had the feeling that I was watching a treasure hunt sequence
in an Alfred Hitchcock film. Maybe the
music would work for Christopher Nolan (“Inception”) – although Nolan does well
with Hans Zimmer. Yet, for all the piece’s
conventionality and rhetoric, I liked it. Valchua did his level best to keep
the sound transparent (that means, like middle Mahler).
The next entry was the Piano Concerto #13 in C Major by
Mozart, played by pianist Jonathan Biss, 32. K387b (or K415). (I don’t have high German characters for a double “s” on my keyboard, nor do I have accents,
carets or cedillas.) There is a private
joke that the “initiated” will get: the artists did not choose to perform the “incomplete”
(depending on how you see things) Coronation Concerto for this particular concert. Actually, the #13 may sound a bit like a
preview of #21, but the opening movement has a lot of the martial element and
sleek tonal transitions that Beethoven would use himself in his own C Major
Piano Concerto (#1). The second movement
is a simple Andante in F. The Rondo is a
bit of a curious musical offering. It
opens with a rollicking 6/8 subject in C (easy to score in Sibelius, probably),
but the first episode (as Mozart anticipated TV sitcoms) is a curious Largo in
2/4 and C Minor – unusual in Mozart’s finales.
The piece slows down at the end for a simple quiet ending, again unusual
and a bit foppish, perhaps courtly. (The
notes say that only three of Mozart’s concerti do this -- it's rare with major piano concerti, although Furtwangler's massive piano concerto on Marco Polo ends quietly, too.) I guess if you’re not going to pick a “recomposed”
concerto (#26), pick an eccentric, understated one like this. I do remember reading #27 in high school, and
it always seemed subdued for late Mozart.
The second half of the program gave us a tour of
impressionism. (No more German post-romanticism.)
The five movement “Mother Goose Suite” (“Ma
Mere l’Oye”) by Maurice Ravel emphasizes slow tempi, and open sound, and a nice
climax at the end of the last piece.
This is a piece for families and children, and pets. I don’t think that Richard Parker (the tiger
from “Life of Pi”) gets noted in the piece, but if Ravel were alive today, he
would he impressed by the big cat’s desire to become a good person. (Hey. There’s a cute cat on SNL tonight as I
type this.)
The last composition is the warhorse, “La Mer”, by Claude
Debussy, the Rosicrucian. This
three-part tone poem always sounds lush and pseudo-romantic, much more so that
some of Debussy’s more disciplined works (like “Iberia”, which I had a Munch
recording of as a boy, or “Jeux”). It
can be loud when it needs to be. I’ve
always felt that Britten gives me a more
cogent idea of what the ocean is like (as in “Billy Budd”) than Debussy
does. The one major work of Debussy that
I would love to hear performed live is the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian – I was a
way when it was performed last year. I
have an old Bernstein record of it.
After the concert, Jonathan Biss signed CD’s in the Green
Room, near the entrance to the Kennedy Center.
His website is here. He focuses on Beethoven and Schumann, and I
see that he has performed the big Fantasy in C, which was Schumann’s idea of an
extra post-Op. 111 Beethoven Sonata (see Jan. 20, 2011 posting here – I just
love that March). I didn’t see the “Kreisleriana” mentioned there – part of any
pianist’s initiation. (It may have taken
Schumann a “long time” to compose it.)
Note the Beethoven Sonata #5 finale here, ends quietly, like
the aforementioned Mozart.
Labels:
Biss,
concert music,
impressionism,
Schumann,
Szymanowski,
young musicians
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