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Cultural Diary: April 27-May 6 – Ups and Downs…

Posted on: May 7th, 2014 by Art Leonard No Comments

On April 27, I attended a performance by the extraordinary new music band, Alarm Will Sound, directed by Alan Pierson at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall as part of the series “collected stories” curated by composer David Lang. Lang’s series extended over a week of concerts, with this one come towards the end. The idea of this program was to bring together some diverse examples of music intended to illustrate a story of some sort, in some cases impressionistically and in one very directly in the form of a mini-opera. I start from the premise that the program was assembled by Mr. Lang, not by the members of Alarm Will Sound, a discerning group who put together their thematic concerts with great care and select music that they really believe in. I’m not sure how much they believed in some of the music they performed in this concert, although as always they played with a high degree of involvement and polish. But I was not as convinced as I usually am at an Alarm Will Sound concert at the value of everything I heard. Surely, Donnacha Dennehy’s moving “Gra agus Bas,” which I’ve heard before, is a powerful channeling of Irish folk tropes projected through the unusual vocalism of Iarla O Lionaird, a man of such indeterminate vocal range that he is identified in the program as “Voice” rather than assigned a “normal” range such as alto, tenor, baritone or bass. But I found Kate Moore’s “The Art of Levitation” to be an undistinguished mélange of shifting chords that failed to engage my attention. Kaki King’s “Other Education,” a three-movement work for electric guitar and chamber ensemble, seemed at times to be channeling the mid-20th century Americana stylings of Aaron Copland and Virgil Thompson, pretty but not entirely convincing as an extended piece. That said, King herself proved very assured virtuoso in her guitar solos. Finally, the second half was devoted to Richard Ayres’ nonsense opera, “No . 42 In the Alps”, with a particular story being projected above the performers through silent-film-style titles, and Jennifer Zetlan providing an exuberant rendition of a far-ranging vocal part, imitating animal sounds at times, wandering far beyond her designated range of “soprano.” They should make a DVD of this program, since the Ayres piece is enhanced by the visual elements and might seem threadbare without them.

The following night I had accepted the invitation of a friend to attend a recital by pianist Alden Gatt presented by an organization called Project142 at Unity Church, 213 58th Street in Manhattan. I had never heard of Gatt prior to my friend’s invitation, but there turns out to be plenty of information on his website. He played a very ambitious program: Prokofiev’s “The Young Juliet” from his suite of ten pieces from the ballet Romeo & Juliet arranged by the composer for piano solo; Robert Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13; five of the 24 Preludes, Op. 34, by Dmitri Shostakovich, and Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit, generally considered to be one of the toughest tests for a virtuoso pianist in live recital. As an encore, he played Earl Wild’s Etude based on Gershwin’s song Embraceable You. I was impressed by Gatt’s technical polish and musical insight, particularly in the second half of the program (Shostakovich & Ravel). His Schumann was a bit precarious in a few spots, especially in the finale, where his finger memory seemed to falter slightly a few times, although he quickly recovered without losing any equanimity. A little woodshedding in order for the Schumann… The Ravel was mightily impressive, by contrast, comparing favorably in my recollection with other performances I’ve heard as well as some excellent recordings, including those of Martha Argerich and Vladimir Ashkenazy, generally considered the gold standard in this work. I hope Gatt has a chance to record these. I picked up his debut recital CD during the intermission and was impressed again when listening at home. I think his interpretive abilities have deepened since he made that recording a few years ago. In particularly, I suspect he would play the Bach Italian Concerto with more nuance and subtlety today, to judge by his work on April 28. I hope I encounter his playing again soon. Project142 is a concert series that began as occasional soirees in the apartment of a retired minister. Attendance expanded through word of mouth and now they are held in various larger venues. Unity Church is actually a relatively small hall, seating comfortably about 40 people in a good acoustical space for a piano recital. The concerts are not scheduled out very far in advance, and they cover an eclectic range of music. Those interested in exploring can check the website, www.Project142.org, to see what is coming up. Ticket prices are moderate and sometimes free, since the performers are provided the venue once approved by the host and are responsible for generating their own audience, as there is no budget for advertising. If the general standard of performance is reflected by Mr. Gatt, then this is a series worth following.

On May 5 I attended the NYC premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall, the opening night of this year’s (final) installment of Carnegie’s “Spring for Music” series, which has brought a diverse group of orchestras from the U.S. and Canada to Carnegie Hall to play programs notable for their unusual repertory choices. It is scandalous that Carnegie couldn’t find sponsorship to continue this series beyond this year. The combination of low ticket prices ($25 for any seat) and unusual programming has drawn a younger audience than usually patronizes classical concerts in this city, and the success of this series in drawing an audience goes to prove that high ticket prices are part of the reason why classical concert audiences at are major halls have such a very high average age. At any rate, this opening concert, presenting Alan Gilbert conducting the Westminster Symphonic Choir, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, baritone soloist Jacques Imbrailo, and the New York Philharmonic, was a major event indeed, the stage full to overflowing and the youth choir parked up in the first tier boxes. With the composer in attendance for what was only the second presentation of a piece first performed in 2007, one had a sense of being present at an important occasion, for Christopher Rouse has emerged as an important composer through numerous important commissions and premieres, not least with the NYP during his period as composer-in-residence. This ambitious piece weaves together poems in English and Italian, hymns in English and German, and the Latin requiem mass (as modified by Hector Berlioz for his own Requiem, one of the inspirations for this piece), and a large orchestra, including an extended percussion section that, in typical Rousian manner, is given its head to make lots of glorious noise. I found the piece a bit uneven and sometimes overextended, but the glorious final minutes made up for any faults. Mr. Imbrailo was terrific in his solos, although I would hope the composer would consider some selective rescoring to address balance problems, especially in the first half of No. 15 in the score, where the soloist was virtually buried under heavy orchestration. In fact, I think it would be worth Mr. Rouse’s time to review Carnegie’s house recording of this performance and think carefully about ways to improve this score, not just in orchestration but also in reducing some of the repetitive parts. What is already a very effective piece could be made more effective, and I bet about 10 minutes could be trimmed from the 90 minute score with profit. Indeed, if I were him I would also eliminate the intermission break. A piece like this — such as the Britten War Requiem or the Berlioz Requiem — works better without an intermission. It may be difficult to do that at 90 minutes, but it is more plausible to do it at 80.

On the other hand, a work that is shorter than an hour can be a real challenge to sit through, as I found to be the case with Thomas Lawrence Toscano’s “The Interview” co-presented by OperaOGGINY and St. Bart’s Episcopal Peace Fellowship at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan. This is a “cause” piece, in which an Army Public Affairs Officer sits down with two women who have lost children during the struggles of the Middle East to try to “understand their intentions” in forming an organization of Jewish and Muslim mothers to agitate for peace. The intensely dramatic events described in the program as prologue give way to an entirely static conception, an opera consisting of three people sitting at a table talking and singing. The music struck me as competent without being anything special, and did not particularly enhance the text when it was sung. Perhaps an orchestral accompaniment, by introducing some sound color, would make it more interesting, as I found a sameness of rhythm and tempo led to boredom. The three singers, Perri Sussman, Lyssandra Stephenson and Ben Spierman, seemed very devoted to the project but were not able to enliven the material much under the composer’s leadership abetted by pianist Alessandro Simone. During a Q&A with the audience afterwards, the composer revealed that this was just the first of a series of 5 one-act operas, each devoted to some particular cause. Cause-based art has a noble tradition, but it is important that the cause not outweigh the artistry with which it is presented. Nobody can contest the horror of children slain in the context of the continuing struggle between Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem, the cause here is admirable, but I don’t think the music and the verses (some of which struck me as awesomely simplistic) really advance it.

Art Leonard’s Cultural Diary – March 22 through April 16, 2014

Posted on: April 17th, 2014 by Art Leonard No Comments

I’ve had a busy few weeks, both in terms of attending things and in terms of work having to get done, as a result of which there is a big pile-up of programs for me to write about, so herewith a diary of brief comments about the events I’ve attended from March 22 through April 16. I have omitted comment about the Jeremy Denk piano recital at Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, which I wrote about separately right after the event.

On March 22, I attended a concert by Jeffrey Kahane (pianist and conductor) and the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall. Mr. Kahane, music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, has been a frequent guest at the Philharmonic in recent years, and I have always enjoyed his concerts. For this program, he selected George Gershwin’s Concerto in F, Maurice Ravels Concerto in G, and Kurt Weill’s Symphony No. 2. Both concerti had been recently performed by the Philharmonic with other pianists and conductors, but Kahane brought the distinction of conducting from the keyboard. Leonard Bernstein used to do this with the Ravel concerto (I have a DVD of his performance with a French orchestra that is fascinating to watch), to great effect, and Kahane was right up there with him. This is an orchestra that can pretty well conduct itself in familiar repertory, but the musicians seemed very sensitive to Kahane’s direction. His technical proficiency was more than adequate to the occasion, and his sheer enthusiasm for the music was well communicated to the NYP members, who seemed very involved and excited. The Weill symphony was a novelty, as it had not been played by the NYP since its local premiere under Bruno Walter’s direction in 1934. Was the exhumation worthwhile? I thought so. It’s not a perfect piece, but it is interesting to hear the seeds of Weill’s later development as a successful composer of Broadway musicals. Certainly, the piece is worth hearing more than once every 80 years! It’s neglect may be due to symphonic snobbery more than to its actual merits. The orchestra played beautifully, certainly outclassing the recordings I’ve heard.

The next day, I attended a matinee performance of Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera, in the English-language adaptation by Marc Blitzstein, presented by Atlantic Theater Company. Pure coincidence that I would hear Kurt Weill’s music twice in a weekend! This production was directed and choreographed by Martha Clarke. F. Murray Abraham led the cast as Mr. Peachum, Michael Park sparkled as MacHeath (Mack the Knife), Laura Osnes was Polly and Mary Beth Peil (a favorite from the TV series “The Good Wife” – Peter’s mother!) played Mrs. Peachum. I can’t say it was the most invigorating production I’ve seen of this — the Broadway revival with Sting stands out in my memory, and as a child I was brought to see the original production at the then-Theatre-de-Lys on Christopher Street of which I remember no details, only a general sense of fierce brilliance). The performance I saw was a preview. It has since opened to less than rapturous reviews. I still think it is worth seeing any revival of this work by a professional company, because the piece has so much wonderful music.

On March 27, I attended the American Symphony Orchestra’s revival of Max Bruch’s oratorio, Moses, at Carnegie Hall. Sidney Outlaw sang the role of Moses, with Kirk Dougherty as his brother Aaron, Tamara Wilson as the “Angel of the Lord,” with Leon Botstein conducting the orchestra and the Collegiate Chorale (prepared by James Bagwell). This piece was premiered in Germany in 1895 and in the U.S. in 1896 (Baltimore), but after a brief vogue disappeared from view until some recent revivals. It is very long and not particularly memorable, but as usual Botstein and his performing forces provided something worth hearing. Bruch’s music is richly romantic in harmony and orchestration, but his melodic gift is not particularly distinguished. The tunes don’t stay in your head — unlike the Violin Concerto No. 1, which is his main contribution to the standard orchestral repertory and which I think gets more play than it deserves in light of the many other violin concertos that are, in the end, more interesting. It would be interesting to hear what the richer string section of the NY Philharmonic could do with this piece, as the ASO strings tend to sound a bit undernourished in the big moments. I also thought the choir was actually larger than it needed to be for an orchestra of this size. (The ASO is a bit larger than a chamber orchestra in terms of its string body, but substantially smaller than a major symphony orchestra.) They did well with what they had. I’m glad I heard it. I won’t be going out of my way to hear it again.

It was back to the NY Philharmonic for me on Friday, March 28. I had purchased a single ticket for this concert, eagerly anticipating hearing Gustavo Dudamel conducting Bruckner’s 9th. Unfortunately, Mr. Dudamel took ill with flu and cancelled his NYP engagement, but they were lucky enough to land Manfred Honeck, musical director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, as a replacement for the weekend. Honeck had appeared as a guest with the Philharmonic at least once before (his appearance was not billed as a debut) but I couldn’t recall having seen him conduct before. I was very impressed. The Bruckner was superbly done, the orchestra at the peak of its virtuosity, and the third movement Adagio, which concludes this unfinished symphony, was actually devastating in its impact. The program began with Claude Vivier’s Orion, a 1979 symphonic poem that reportedly did much to put its composer on the map when it was first performed by Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony in 1980. Unfortunately, Vivier, a gay man, was murdered by a “trick” in Paris in 1983, so his composing career did not get much beyond this piece. The piece itself defies description in words – a mélange of orchestral effects that is intense and colorful but that does not yield up much understanding on a first hearing.

The next evening, March 29, I was back at Carnegie Hall for the last concert of this season’s series by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. The orchestra put together a “theme” concert of music inspired by Hungary – most particularly, the Hungarian folk music exponents in the first half — Kodaly and Bartok — and a 19th century Jewish violinist-composer writing in what purported to be the Hungarian style – Joseph Joachim. The Kodaly Hungarian Rondo is a charming trifle, the Bartok Divertimento and substantial dramatic statement that belies its name, and Orpheus rendered them well, although I really missed the effect of massed strings in the Bartok that I recall from a thrilling reading years ago by Kurt Masur with the NY Philharmonic. The Joachim Concerto is a bloated, romantic piece with lots of striking moments but not enough originality to make one regret its failure to become a standard repertory piece. Christian Tetzlaff labored hard to bring it off, and it was certainly an honorable effort. I’m glad they thought to revive it, since it is all too easy to offer up yet another run through the Brahms concerto, which is a great work that is perhaps played too frequently for its own good these days. Vive Joachim! Now let’s honorably retire the piece for a while.

On April 5 I attended City Center Encores! performance of Frank Loesser’s musical, “The Most Happy Fella.” I have a great sentimental affection for this piece, as it was the first musical for which I was hired to perform in a full pit orchestra when I was a high school student in Oneonta, New York, in the late 1960s. And that was quite an initiation into playing in a pit, considering that this piece has more music — at times is almost through-composed — than the typical musical show. The Encores! production was predictably brilliant, with Shuler Hensley shining as Tony, Laura Benanti eager and brilliant as “Rosabella,” and Cheyene Jackson studly (but at times seeming a bit unengaged) as Joe. I did have my occasional complaint with this series about the over-amplification of the orchestra. While it is true that placing the orchestra backstage behind the action would justify some amplification, I think they really overdo it, especially for the brass and percussion, to the point of verging on painfulness during the overture. That aside, the musical performance led by Rob Berman was excellently done, and the cast and crew did a great job on the choreography (by director Casey Nicholaw). In the early days of Encores!, one was accustomed to seeing semi-staged readings with performers carrying black loose-leaf books with the music and lyrics. They have now gotten to the point where cast-members seem to feel it a point-of-honor to have their parts memorized and jettison the books. (During the talk-back after the show, it was revealed that there was a difficult period when they had to carry the books due to Equity rules for this kind of production, but that a renegotiation with Equity made the books optional with the performers.) These now verge on fully-staged productions, and the results – in light of the short rehearsal periods – are extraordinary! Can’t recommend Encores! highly enough to those with nostalgia for the great days of Broadway. Last up for this season will be Irma La Douce before and during the second weekend in May. Be there or be square!

After attending Encores! I had a quick turnaround for a snack and then off to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Times Square for the last Early Music concert in Miller Theatre’s 25th Anniversary Season. Fittingly, the performers were The Tallis Scholars, the English group that has regularly figured on this series since its beginning. The group is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and put together a program surveying the realm of Renaissance Polyphony in which it specializes, as well as its more recent practice of commissioning living composers to write new polyphonic works for chamber choir. On this occasion, we had a world premiere, with commission by Miller Theatre, of Two Sonnets for Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz by Michael Nyman. I would like to hear these again! The first half of the program was devoted to continental polyphony (Desprez and de Rore), the second half to English polyphony (Sheppard and Tallis), and as usual, Peter Phillips and his singers were beyond reproach. Some have occasionally criticized Phillips and The Tallis Scholars for a sort of chilly precision to their work, but I don’t hear that, finding a warmth and spontaneity that makes their work very involving emotionally for the listener. This was an excellent performance of an excellent program.

The next day I heard a concert by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet at Town Hall, courtesy of Peoples’ Symphony Concerts. This was in two parts. The first half was devoted to transcriptions of classical music for guitar quartet. We had a suite of dances from Michael Praetorius’s Terpsichore, the grant compendium of royal court dance music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque, a suite from Stravinsky’s ballet Pulcinella, which drew its thematic material from Baroque sources, and finally Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. None of this music was imagined by its composers as a vehicle for a quartet for modern guitar virtuosi, and I found the sound becoming a bit tiresome. Early music groups usually put together colorful instrumentations for Praetorius, Stravinsky’s orchestration of his ballet makes full use of the coloristic resources of an early 20th century orchestra, and Liszt’s rhapsody exists in numerous colorful orchestral arrangements of the piano original. While the LAGQ is of course virtuosic in its approach to these pieces, I would have preferred the originals. The second half, by contrast, struck me as ideal in every way – a series of shorter works all conceived with the guitar in mind, some actually written for this ensemble, and presenting all the variety of sound that seemed lacking in the first half. I’m happy to have heard the group. I recommend that they focus on modern works written or arranged for them, and forget the Baroque arrangements.

“If/Then” is a new Broadway musical by Tom Kitt (music) and Brian Yorkey (book & lyrics) that I visited on April 9. I had heard complaints that the plot was confusing. Yes, it was. The idea is to depict the alternative realities that could stem from an inflection point in the life of a person, when a seemingly trivial decision to do one thing rather than another is, in retrospect, momentous. The piece seems to have been conceived as a vehicle for Idina Menzel (and the main reason we were there was that my theater-going companion was eager to take in her performance), and I thought she was fine in a very challenging role, although I thought she was painfully over-amplified at times, resulting in a rather shrill sound on her high notes. I did find the plotting confusing and difficult to follow at times. I understand that en route to Broadway a decision was made to have Menzel’s character called Liz in one reality and Beth in the other, to wear glasses in one and not the other, but I failed to pick up on this and was continually confused as the switch between realities took place without transitions, leaving me to think “huh?” all too often during the first act. Things became a bit more understandable in the second act, although again there were moments when things just seemed out of joint. But perhaps that’s the point of the show — how far apart our alternative futures might be, all stemming from a trivial decision early on to do one thing and not another.

On April 13 I attended the American Symphony Orchestra’s final Classics Declassified program for the season, at Symphony Space. The subject was Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, an early favorite of mine. I played double-bass in performances of this symphony by the Oneonta Symphony Orchestra when I was in high school and the Cornell University Orchestra when I was in college, so I know the piece from the inside out through extended rehearsals. That said, I found Leon Bostein’s lecture to be disorganized, boring, and seemingly pointless at times. Sometimes he comes up with brilliant insights, but sometimes the lecture is just a dud, and this seemed to be such an occasion. Surprisingly, the performance of the symphony was anything but — it was warmly done by an orchestra that seemed fully engaged. The rather smaller string section than one would get from a major orchestra was only occasionally a deficiency, as much of this symphony has a pastoral character that can work with a compact string body. The woodwind soloists, who get a real workout in this piece, were stellar, and the trombones, whose special tonal qualities in playing choral-like passages are an important feature of the piece, were also superb. I think Botstein needs an editor to work with him on the lectures. . .

Finally, last night, April 16, I saw a performance of Terrence McNally’s new play, “Mothers and Sons,” at the Golden Theatre. This is an ensemble piece for four actors. Tyne Daly plays Katharine Gerard, an upstate NY native who married a Texas businessman, lived in Dallas, raised a son who grew up to be gay and ran off to New York City for a career in the theater and died from AIDS in the early 1990s. In an earlier play, “Andre’s Mother,” dating from decades ago, McNally created this character and showed her alienation from the world of her son and her inability to be emotionally present for his memorial service. Frederick Weller plays Cal Porter, Andre’s surviving partner. This play takes place twenty years later, and Cal is now happily married to Will Ogden, an aspiring novelist, played by Bobby Steggert. They have a son, six-year-old Bud, played by Grayson Taylor, conceived through donor insemination and gestational surrogacy. In other words, a very “modern” NYC gay family, and perhaps the first time such a family has been portrayed on Broadway. For some reason, not really explained, Katharine “drops in” on the Porter-Ogden household on Central Park West. There doesn’t seem to be much of a plot, really, just a picture of colliding worlds as the still disapproving and disgruntled mother interacts with her late son’s lover and his “new” family. There are many affecting moments. Anyone who lived through the early years of AIDS in New York will have memories recalled, aided by a pre- or post-show visit to the lower lobby where panels from the AIDS Quilt are mounted. Presenting this history is important, but I found the show itself, while frequently absorbing, to be rather uneven, and I’m wondering whether McNally might treat this production as a first take on a work in progress and figure out revisions before it gets mounted again. The material is definitely worth exploring, and perhaps the experience of seeing it play out will inspire him to make changes that will strengthen it dramatically. Certainly this cast does a great job with it, although I found Weller’s performance a bit odd — what kind of accent was he trying to present? — and the role of the child is rather challenging for a young actor to present naturalistically, although Master Taylor acquitted himself honorably. I’m a Steggert fan and was happy to get a slice of his work here — I wished the part were a bit longer. And Tyne Daly, who was McNally’s “muse” for this piece, was perfectly cast, effectively projecting the brittle quality of a woman who is totally a fish out of water in this environment, unsure why she is there and how to act and react to what she is experiencing. Certainly this is a show that the LGBT community should be supporting. The audience was rather small, even for what is a relatively small Broadway “straight-theater” house, and I hope word of mouth may pick it up a bit. A play doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth seeing, and I find that anything Terrence McNally does is worth seeing, so I hope people will go.

My cultural calendar coming up: tomorrow night a premiere of new songs by Glen Roven at Spectrum, “All the Way” on Broadway, Music from Marlboro and Alarm Will Sound during the last weekend in April, Irma La Douce with Encores’ in May. . .

March Musical Diary, Part II – Ending Spring Break with a Bang!!

Posted on: March 18th, 2014 by Art Leonard No Comments

New York Law School’s Spring Break period this year was March 8-16. I ended it with a real bang, attending concerts on five consecutive days (overlapping the beginning of classes): Thursday, March 13 – Vienna Philharmonic led by Andris Nelsons at Carnegie Hall; Friday, March 21 – Les Delices, Five Boroughs Music Festival, at the King Manor Museum in Jamaica, Queens; Saturday, March 14; Saturday, March 15 – New York Philharmonic led by Alan Gilbert at Lincoln Center; Sunday, March 16 – Dover String Quartet and Leon Fleisher presented by Peoples’ Symphony Concerts at Town Hall, Manhattan (matinee); Sunday, March 16 – Vienna Philharmonic led by Zubin Mehta at Carnegie Hall; Monday, March 17 – Charpentier operas – La Descente d’Orphee aus Enfers and La Couronne de Fleurs, presented by Boston Early Music Festival at the Morgan Library Auditorium. Whew!

Coming up for air after all that:

My impressions of the Vienna Philharmonic based on these two concerts were a bit mixed. On the one hand, they are clearly a major orchestra that plays with intense concentration and dedication, and brings a special tradition to music having Viennese connections. They had a different sound under the two different conductors, which means that they are a responsive orchestra that is not limited in its ability to adapt to the requirements of the music and the conductor. That said, I was not overwhelmed by the Haydn/Brahms program with Nelsons, although there were many good parts. In the Haydn symphony, I felt they handled the “joke” in the finale (the false ending) very well, but the symphony as a whole seemed to me more proficient than inspired. The Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn were excellent. The 3rd Symphony is notoriously the most difficult of the four to bring off in concert, and one always wonders why a conductor would end a concert program with this piece, given its quiet conclusion. I prefer a faster pace than they took in the first movement, and fewer tempo adjustments. After that first movement, I thought things went very well. I do have some problems adjusting to the Vienna orchestra’s sound in these pieces, especially the sound cultivated by their principal oboe players, which is more reedy and piercing than the sound cultivated by American oboe players. I was more favorably impressed by the sound of the orchestra under Mehta at the second concert I attended, a three and a half hour marathon comprising mainly short pieces intended to show off the orchestra’s style in lighter music for the most part. (The only departures from that were the Webern 6 Pieces and the Mozart Ave Verum Corpus, and perhaps the Korngold Violin Concerto, although this piece would not be out of place on a pops program.) Mehta is terrific in this repertory, and the orchestra’s enthusiasm for the waltzes and gallops of 19th century Viennese composers was well communicated. A foreshadowing of this was the encores on Thursday night, a Strauss waltz, and there was more Strauss on Sunday. Gil Shaham was the excellent soloist in the Korngold Concerto, and Diana Damrau, in town for appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, joined in the spirit of the night, participating in a vocal encores as well as doing some guest conducting in the last encore, in addition to singing her programmed arias. New York Vocal Artists also contributed with appropriate style.

Coming between my two Vienna PO nights was the New York Philharmonic, continuing their Nielsen project (one concert a year over several years which results in concert recordings of all the symphonies and concerti released on the Da Capo label) with the 1st and 4th Symphonies and the Helios Overture. They had originally announced the Clarinet Concerto for this concert as well, but saner heads prevailed. That would have been too long. As it is, this was a substantial program. I thought the Overture and the 4th Symphony were superbly rendered, the 1st Symphony perhaps a shade less good, although this may be due as much to the music — a more tentative foray into symphonic form — as the orchestra’s lack of familiarity with it. The program said these were first NYP performances for the overture and 1st Symphony, which is actually amazing considering when they were written. The performance of the 4th really gripped me from the start and held me throughout. And it struck me that the NYP and the VPO are very different orchestras. NYP plays with a degree of technical finesse and brilliance that the VPO does not seem to aspire to, being more concerned with expressivity and warmth. Each is valid in its own way, although I have come to rely on the precision and technical brilliance of the NYP and maybe that’s one reason I was less impressed with the VPO’s Brahms 3rd.

A side benefit of Five Boroughs Music Festival is discovering interesting concert venues in the outer boroughs. The King Manor Museum is an early 19th century house set in a small park in Jamaica that was constructed to be the home of Rufus King, a New York anti-slavery politician who served in the US Senate and fought against the Missouri Compromise. His son, who also occupied this house, served as Governor of New York. The front parlor was an ideal setting for French Baroque chamber music, splendidly rendered, although at such close quarters the music sometimes seemed a bit larger than life.

Sunday afternoon’s Peoples’ Symphony Concert provided a contrast of age and experience and youthful exuberance. The Dover Quartet, looking to be a collection of 20-something virtuosi, sailed through Schubert’s Rosamunde Quartet with ease. Leon Fleisher gave a rather severe rendition of Johannes Brahms’ piano transcription of the Chaconne from Bach’s Violin Partita No. 2, arranged for left hand alone. In the second half, the two came together for Korngold’s Suite for Piano and String Trio, Op. 23. Although Fleisher resumed performing two-handed music in public several years ago, having apparently conquered the physical problems that had deprived him of the use of his right hand, in this program he stuck to left-handed music. I was particularly impressed with the synergy exhibited in the Korngold piece. Fleisher clearly has great admiration and affection for the Dover players, and they for him, and it showed in this tight collaboration.

Finally, a last minute addition to my schedule: When I learned that Jesse Blumberg, a favorite baritone, was performing with Boston Early Music Festival in two Charpentier operas, I had to go! And I’m glad I did. An excellent early music instrumental ensemble anchored by star theorbo player Paul O’Dette and concertmaster Robert Mealy provided a sumptuous framework for excellent singers, most notably Aaron Sheehan as Orpheus. Jesse was a strong Pluto, king of the underworld, although I almost didn’t recognize him under the wig and beardless! There were excellent costumes by Anna Watkins, thrilling choreography by Melinda Sullivan. Would that Charpentier’s music were a bit more memorable — others have done rather better dramatically with the Orpheus tale — but it was always at least serviceable, and the choruses something more than that. The Morgan Library’s auditorium presents a rather small stage for such a production, but the acoustics and sightlines are excellent. BEMF is presenting some other things there that are worth searching out.

Culture Beat – Prototype Opera Festival; Met Fledermaus; NY Philharmonic; Lincoln Center Theater “Domesticated”

Posted on: January 19th, 2014 by Art Leonard No Comments

I have been so busy with LGBT legal developments over the past month that I have neglected to blog about my various cultural expeditions, so I’m going to play catch-up here with a few brief comments about the events I’ve attended since mid-December.

On December 17, I saw Lincoln Center Theater’s production of “Domesticated,” a play by Bruce Norris which seems to have been inspired, at least in part, by the hit network TV show, The Good Wife. A public officeholder confesses publicly to patronizing a prostitute and is forced by circumstances to resign his position, resulting in all kinds of stresses on his marriage. This issue has received enough treatment now to raise the question whether another play has anything to contribute. What struck me about this one was that the playwright seemed to have sympathy mainly for the politician, unless the dialogue he wrote for him in the second act is intended to caricature his views, because, having been relatively mute through Act I, the politician spews forth a stream of invective in Act II, the main burden of which is that things seem to be rigged against men in public life who can’t win if they stray even once from the straight and narrow. Anyway…. I thought the show as a whole was rather depressing, although certainly the cast gave it their all.

Next up was the New York Philharmonic’s last performance of a run of five of Handel’s Messiah, which I attended on December 21 with one of my students who won a raffle conducted by the LGBT student group to raise money for a gay charity. The Philharmonic, exhibiting a singular lack of imagination, has fallen into doing Messiah every year for the week before Christmas. As if we don’t have enough Messiahs of every variety in New York City during December. . . At least with the NYP one can be sure that there will be a well-drilled, well-schooled choir in attendance, first rate soloists, and an interesting guest conductor. This year they invited Andrew Manze for his NY Philharmonic debut. Manze, who first came to public attention as an early music specialist, has been doing more conducting of mainstream orchestras, serving since September 2006 as principal conductor of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden, and preparing to take up a similar post with the North German Radio Philharmonic in Hamburg, Germany beginning next season after his Swedish gig ends. Manze brings insights from the early music movement, which is useful in Messiah, so this account was fleet and ship-shape. Matthew Muckey, a fine young member of the Philharmonic’s trumpet section, was outstanding in “The Trumpet Shall Sound.” The soloists -Joelle Harvey, Tamara Mumford, Allan Clayton, and Matthew Rose, were all superb, but I was especially taken with Rose, whose marvelous recording of Schubert’s Winterreise I had recently heard. His bass voice was startlingly big compared to the other soloists. I noted that Manze, unlike some other early music practitioners, does not go for excessive speed, and at times indulged much more “romantic” sorts of interpretive moves than I would have expected, especially in the instrumental overture and the Pastoral Symphony. It was altogether a satisfying Messiah, if in some ways a redundant one. The Philharmonic could do us all a favor by injecting some more variety into holiday season concert-going by finding other suitable music for that third week in December. They are releasing next year’s schedule soon. Will it include yet another run of Messiah?

My next outing, with my usual concert/theater companion (who had been away on a business trip for much of December), was the Prototype Festival’s NY premiere presentation of the one-act opera, “Paul’s Case,” with music by Gregory Spears and libretto by Mr. Spears and Kathryn Walat, heard on January 9. Robert Wood conducted the American Modern Ensemble instrumentalists and a fine cast headed by Jonathan Blalock in the title role. The opera is based on a Willa Cather short story about a Pittsburgh teenage boy in the early 20th century who suffers the torment of being “different” from his contemporaries – concerned for poetry and music and art and a bit of a dandified dresser, he suffers ridicule and dismissal for not being a “real boy.” Thus oppressed, he steals enough money from his employer (he is working in a boring retail clerk job) to fund a trip to New York City, where he falls in with a Yale student down from New Haven for a slumming weekend, but he eventual perishes in the snow as he runs out of cash and has to leave the sumptuous hotel where he had stayed. Today, he would undoubtedly fall into bed with the Yalie, “come out,” and become a gay liberationist. But this is all subtext in the Cather story, and the composer/librettist appropriately leave it as subtext to be true to the period. Blalock impressed me a few years ago when he sang an important role in the Ft. Worth premiere of my friend Jorge Martin’s opera “Before Night Fall” (get the recording!!) and he was most impressive in this intimate “black box” opera production. The music was rather minimalist and at time monotonous – I found myself nodding off a bit toward the end of the Pittsburgh segment — but it really came alive when the action shifted to New York. The same performers who provided the supporting roles in Pittsburgh changed their costumes to become the New York performers, and Michael Slattery particularly impressed as the Yale freshman down for his wild New York City weekend. The inventive production was directed by Kevin Newbury, who used a few key props to establish the scenes.

On January 10 it was back to the Philharmonic for a bit of a hodge-podge program led by Alan Gilbert in anticipation of the Philharmonic’s upcoming tour. There would seem to be little thematic sense in bringing together Beethoven’s Fidelio Overture and First Symphony, Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Except, of course, for the fact that the NYP plays all these pieces well, and perhaps the contrast between the Symphony and the Gershwin provided a refreshing second half to the program. Shostakovich’s concerto, which received its American premiere from this orchestra in the 1950s with the dedicatee, David Oistrakh, and then-music director Dmitri Mitropoulos, who left a CBS recording done a few days after the concerts that has never really been surpassed, has now become a frequently-played showpiece for young violinists. Lisa Batiashvili, one of the legion of extraordinarily gifted young violinists now gracing concert platforms worldwide, brought plenty of passion and high technique to her playing. I thought that perhaps in the context of this program the orchestra did not spend lots of time rehearsing the Beethoven symphony, which came off as untidy in spots, especially in the first violins. They last played the symphony in 2012, so perhaps they didn’t pay so much attention to it in rehearsal. The Shostakovich concerto was last done by this orchestra in 2012 as well, and the Gershwin they played this past summer during their Vail, Colorado, residency. In other words, this program harked back to the “lazy programming” characteristic of the Maazel administration, when it was rare, apart from the very occasional premiere, to hear anything at the Philharmonic that had not been played within the previous five years. (The Fidelio Overture managed to evade this, having last been played by this orchestra a decade ago.) Each of these pieces is worth playing, of course, and a joy to hear, and otherwise this year the Philharmonic’s schedule has a fair degree of variety in it, so I won’t complain to hard. But when you put this together with the Messiah from December. . .

The next afternoon, I was at the Metropolitan Opera with my usual opera-going companion to attend a matinee performance of Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus,” performed to a new English libretto by Douglas Carter Beane. The Met rationalizes performing this piece in translation because it is really an operetta with lots of dialogue, but sometimes the English sounds a bit odd sung to Viennese strains. The production is lavish and seems to work well enough. In an age of countertenors, Orlovsky is no longer a “pants” role for a woman, so we had Anthony Roth Costanzo, one of my favorite young singers, as the Prince, although I agree with the Times critic that he seemed a bit stretched by the vocal range of this part. His acting and dancing was spot-on, however. The entire show seemed very well cast, with Christopher Maltman a superb Eisenstein, and Danny Burstein doing a well-crafted comic turn in the non-singing role of Frosch, the jailer. Adam Fischer’s conducting was not quite as frothy as one usually encounters in this piece. The sets were worthy of applause.

On January 18, I attended my second Prototype Festival production, “Thumbprint,” a world premiere of a one-act opera by Kamala Sankaram (music) and Susan Yankowitz (libretto), directed by Rachel Dickstein, with Steven Osgood conducting. Although I was laboring under a bad cold, which distracted me at times with the business of breathing and stifling coughs, I was quickly drawn in by the intense drama of a young woman, Mukhtar, in a Pakistani village, who gets pulled into a situation where she is subjected to an “honor rape” by men from another village who accused her young brother of looking the wrong way at one of their women. Mukhtar, at first devastated and resigned to being damaged goods and perhaps fading away locked up in her room, is encouraged by her parents to fight back, and finds the courage to go to the police and testify against her assailants. She is lucky to appear before an honest judge who believes her story and convicted the leader of her assailants. Composer Camala Sankaram was glorious singing her own music as Mukhtar, and Theodora Hanslowe was superb as the mother. (I have a soft spot for Hanslowe, since her father was one of my favorite professors when I was an undergraduate at Cornell in the 1970s.) The remaining cast, playing a variety of roles, was also superb: Steve Gokol as the father and the judge, Many Narayan and Kannan Vasudevan as, among other things, the assailants, and Leela Subramaniam as the younger sister among other parts. The production was in a rather larger space than “Paul’s Case,” which had been presented at HERE. This production was at Baruch College, and used projections and props to create the Pakistani setting most evocatively. The music was a piquant mix of eastern and western motifs, using some ethnic instruments as well as western ones to produce the requisite exotic sounds. I hope this will receive lots of productions. It should be within the range of university music departments, and deserves wide exposure.

I also saw several movies over the course of the holiday season — The Book Thief, the Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle, 12 Years a Slave, Saving Mr. Banks — but have let time go by without comment and won’t bother to comment here, other than to say that every film I saw had some redeeming features and that 12 Years a Slave struck me as a particularly important production. I haven’t seen all the films nominated for Best Picture by the Motion Picture Academy this year, but if I were voting I would vote for 12 Years a Slave.

Zinman/Goode/New York Philharmonic on December 5, 2013

Posted on: December 6th, 2013 by Art Leonard No Comments

Last night I attended the New York Philharmonic’s first presentation of a program that will be repeated on December 6 and 7, led by guest conductor David Zinman with Richard Goode as piano soloist.  The program included “Three Studies from Couperin” by Thomas Ades in a first performance by the orchestra, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18, K. 456, and Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony, Op. 56.

I was surprised that I was not as enthusiastic after the concert as I anticipated being before the concert.    But I wasn’t, and it is hard to put my finger on why, exactly.

The opening work by Thomas Ades, leading light of the middle generation of current British composers, was a set of three short tone poems inspired by keyboard works by Francois Couperin (1668-1733).  These are not more-or-less straightforward transcriptions in the style of Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances.  The program book referred to Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, which took works by Pergolesi and his contemporaries, put them in modern orchestral dress with some jazzing up of the rhythm and harmony, and made a ballet from them, but I don’t think the comparison is exact.  Maybe this is more like Stravinsky’s The Fairy’s Kiss, taking Tchaikovsky piano pieces as source materials.  But actually what comes more readily to mind is Luciano Berio’s “Rendering,” a moody tone poem based on the sketches Schubert left for a projected but never completed symphony.  In any event, this was unfamiliar ground for the orchestra and I thought the performance had a feeling of very-well-done sight-reading.  Perhaps this was compounded by this being the first performance, and by Saturday night they may have “played it in” a big more.  But I wasn’t swept away.

Richard Goode!  I’m a big fan.  I just about always enjoy his playing.  But I wasn’t swept away by his K. 456.  Part of the problem may be mine.  I just find this one of Mozart’s piano concerti to be less inspired than its companions.  (#17 is one of the best, bar none.)  The central variation movement is based on a theme that has little melodic allure, and the variations don’t strike me as Mozart’s most inventive.  The first and last movements also, while well made, of course, in the Mozart manner, are short of memorable tunes.  Zinman set a spritely pace, and Goode surely observed Mozart’s injunction that the music should “flow like oil,” but I found the performance immaculate but uneventful.

Things took a better turn for me after intermission with Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony.  Finally we had the full orchestra on stage, making a nice big romantic sound.  The NYP strings are playing so well this season!  The depth and color is superb, and Zinman, who prefers a brisk pace, connects well with them.  I was most impressed with the finale, which can be a repetitious bore in the wrong hands, but was totally involving last night, especially the super-charged coda.  This symphony is also notable for the numerous solo bits for clarinet, and the NYP’s new principal clarinetist, Stephen Williamson, showed his mettle.  The NYP had difficulty filling what had for more than half a century been the Stanley Drucker seat — an attempt to lure away the Philadelphia’s principal amidst that orchestra’s financial crisis came to nothing — but now the NYP is the incidental beneficiary of the tragedy in Minneapolis, as Williamson decamped from the now nearly-defunct Minnesota Orchestra.  He’s certainly an excellent player, but I think his playing still falls short of the color and fluency Drucker brought to the role.  I hope Williamson will assert himself more.  It looked like Zinman was trying to get him to play out more on some of the solos. . .

Finally, I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, and I have to acknowledge that the first piece on the program was written in 2006, but I found this a rather routine program which seems to have fallen into the tired old formula: start with a short modern work, then do a central repertory concerto, and conclude after intermission with a core repertory symphony.  Now, I’m happy to say that the concerto and symphony were pieces that hadn’t been played recently by the orchestra – the Mozart last in 2005, the Mendelssohn in 2004 – so this concert did not fall into my “lazy programming” critique of playing the same few works over and over that afflicted the NYP during the Maazel regime – but still I would hope for more ingenuity in putting programs together going forward.  Ades has written more challenging stuff, and this program would have benefit from a more daring choice of concerto, at the least.

From Machaut to Sondheim – A NYC Weekend Cultural Diary

Posted on: November 18th, 2013 by Art Leonard No Comments

This was a very busy weekend on my concert schedule — actually, an extended weekend since it began on Thursday night — so I have much to report.  On Thursday night I was at the New York Philharmonic from a program that included the NYC premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Oboe Concerto, played by the NY Philharmonic’s excellent principal oboe player, Liang Wang.   On Friday night I attended “Armida: A Baroque Opera Celebration” presented by New Opera NYC, one of the numerous small opera companies that have sprouted up in recent seasons, performed at a venue previously unknown to me, a dance studio on West 60th Street way west towards the Hudson River.  On Saturday afternoon, I headed over to City Center for an Encores! presentation of titles “A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair,” made up of music from Stephen Sondheim’s shows.  That evening, at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, I head a program of Renaissance music titled “A Love Affair,” performed by England’s Orlando Consort.  Finally, on Sunday afternoon, I found myself in Carnegie Hall for “Elliott Carter: An American Original,” presented by Leon Bostein and the American Symphony Orchestra.   So, literally from the 14th century of Machaut to the 21st century of Sondheim I covered a lot of bases this weekend.

The New York Philharmonic is playing at such a sustained level of excellence these days that it is hard to find any fault with anything they are doing.  Thursday night’s concert, conducted by Alan Gilbert, just returned from several weeks of guest-conducting in Europe, maintained that high standard.  Gilbert has championed the music of Christopher Rouse, programming, playing and recording it in Stockholm during his previous music directorship, and bringing it to New York, where the Rouse is now composer-in-residence at the Philharmonic.  (The premiere of his “Prospero’s Rooms” was one of the highlights of last season.)  Although the Oboe Concerto is almost a decade old, this was its first Philharmonic performance, as a previously scheduled debut was postponed for various reasons.  This concerto is unusual among Rouse’s compositions in being relatively “laid back.”  The composer has in many of his compositions imported influences from American pop and rock music, but this piece struck me as more indebted to the American classicists of the mid-20th century than to the pop artists of more recent years.  Perhaps this has something to do with the nature of the oboe itself, as most effectively a lyrical instrument that beautifully sustains long unfolding musical lines that can cut through a full orchestra, at least in the hands of a master virtuoso such as Wang.  I’m hoping that the partnership of Gilbert and Rouse results in some recordings, including this concerto.  They have produced a recording of music by the prior composer-in-residence, Magnus Lindberg, so we have a precedent, and the Philharmonic does have a recording contract with the Danish DaCapo label, so I’m hopeful!  * * *  The remainder of the program was made up of two tone poems by Richard Strauss, Don Juan to open the program, and Also Sprach Zarathustra to close it.  This virtuoso orchestra tossed off both pieces with aplomb, and brass especially covering themselves with glory.  One might complain that at times the music was unrelievedly loud — partly an artifact of the very lively acoustic in Avery Fisher Hall — and that the Philharmonic’s lack of an installed pipe organ, and thus necessary resort to an electric organ, slightly undercuts the effect of Zarathustra.  Not much one can do about those things, although perhaps Gilbert can work on getting a wider dynamic range at the lower end.  I  was hearing the first performance of this program, and Gilbert had only been back rehearsing the orchestra as of Tuesday, so it is possible that things got progressively more nuanced over the course of performances, and tomorrow night’s final run will probably be even more spectacular, if that is possible, with the entire program really “played in.”

New Opera NYC is the brainchild of producer Igor Konyukhov and music director Raphael Fusco.  Apparently lacking the resources to put on a full-scale Handel opera with sets and cast appropriate to such an endeavor, they made up their own Handel opera, for which Konyukhov wrote an original libretto (in Italian), extracting an overture from Faramondo, arias from Rinaldo, Agrippina, Giulio Cesare, Delirio Amoroso, Orlando, Tamerlano, Imeneo, and Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (plus some inserts areas from works by Vivaldi and Broschi).  Maestro Fusco also composed some recitatives to tie the piece together.  Konuyukhov’s story, set in an unspecified time and place, was set in a landfill/dump where members of the upper-crust go to harass the beggars and rag-pick from the junk.  At least, that was Act I.  Much of Act II took place as a Dream set in the residence of one of the upper-crust, who is pursuing one of the women from the landfill!  Figure it out.  I really couldn’t make much of it, and the person operating the projected titles seem stymied at times, finally apparently giving up during the 2nd act, leaving the same titles up without regard to what was being sung.  A kink to be worked out.  That said, the music was nicely performed, with a small orchestra of period string quintet, Oboe, guitar and harpsichord (played by Maestro Fusco).  Minimalist sets (counting heavily on rear projects that did not always make sense) but suitable costumes and some crazy wigs!!  The singers were all at least adequate, perhaps Amelia Watkins (Armida) and Dmitry Gishpling-Chernov (Almiro) more so.  One of the things they lacked as a good counter-tenor, thus necessarily omitting some of Handel’s finest works from inclusion.  I think that would have helped the show.   Certainly this company deserves encouragement.  Check out their website:  www.NONYC.org.

The Sondheim show at City Center was conceived, according to the program book, as a result of Sondheim editor Peter Gethers coming to see Wynton Marsalis’s Cotton Club Parade and asking Encores! Artistic Director Jack Viertel whether Marsalis had ever played any of Sondheim’s music.  It turned out that Marsalis, as a youngster, had been in the pit orchestra for the original Broadway production of Sweeney Todd, and was receptive to trying something new.  They put together a song and dance show in the now well-established tradition of Sondheim anthology productions, taking songs from wherever they could be found – musicals, film scores — and enlisting Marsalis and the various arrangers who work with him to recast them in a form suitable for Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, which has the standard configuration of trumpets, trombones, double reads, double bass, piano and percussion.  Sondheim essentially without strings.  Forget all those delicate Jonathan Tunick orchestrations that are as much a part of Sondheim’s sound as his melodic lines and harmonies.  And it does make a difference, because Sondheim is not just a composer, he’s a lyricist as well — indeed, that was his starting point as a creative artist — and the words are as important, if not more so, to a Sondheim song as the music.  There were plenty of problems with this show, but the biggest, in my view, was to sabotage the lyrics all too often with the loud jazz band and the underamplified singers, who got buried at times.   Three of the singers were proven Broadway stars: Jeremy Jordan, Norm Lewis, and Bernadette Peters, but unaccountably the producers enlisted somebody without Broadway credentials, Cyrille Aimee, to be their second female lead.  Aimee is a jazz singer, and proved less of a presence than the others.  Bernadette Peters is always doing a star turn, and had quite a few here, although she was more restrained than one remembers from Broadway.  Lewis and Jordan were also more restrained than one remembers from their theater gigs.  Only once or twice did Jordan really cut loose.  Perhaps this was partly a problem of inadequate time to put the thing together, as they sounded tentative at times.  Four fine dancers — Meg Gillentine, Tyler Hanes, Grasan Kingsberry and Elizabeth Parkinson — were assigned roles as “shadows” in dance for the singers.  Any Sondheim anthology will have its pleasures, because his songs are wonderful, although not always suitable to excerpt or dragoon into service, since they tend to be very tied to the situations they illustrate in the original shows for which they were composed.  I can’t say that this was a failure; it seemed to engage the audience, but in the end I agree with my concert-going companion that this wasn’t a “wow.”

The Miller Theatre Early Music services presentation of the Orlando Consort came closer to being a “wow” in my estimation.  This group recently recorded songs from Guillaume de Machaut’s masterwork, “Le Voir Dit,” a compilation of poetry, letters and music intended to illuminate a lengthy “affair” (not known whether it was physically consummated) between the elderly Machaut and a young woman, and the first half of this concert was made up of eight songs that appear on the recording.  For the second half, the Orlando Consort gave us a “tasting menu” from the leading compositional lights of the 15th and 16th centuries: Dunstaple, Dufay, Ockeghem, Compere, Brumel, desPrez, Clemens non Papa and Gombert.  The first half was all in the royal, flowery French of the 14th century royal courts; the second in the church Latin of the great cathedrals and royal chapels from mid-15th to early-16h century Europe.  The contrast worked well, although I retain my reservations about the performance of secular Renaissance music in a space like St. Mary the Virgin, a resonant church space that clouds harmonies and makes most of the sung text unintelligible.  (They hand out translations, then dim the lights to make them hard to read….  Go figure!)  Most of the sacred music works better in this space, although even here the music that was primarily intended for chapel use can be a bit encumbered by the reverberation in a large church space.  The Orlando is a fine group, with a membership that has evolved over time.  The young alto (countertenor), Matthew Venner, made a strong impression as he seemed to casually float his high notes above the polyphony of the group.  The other three members of the Orlando Consort – tenors Mark Dobell and Angus Smith, and baritone Donald Greig, who wrote the excellent notes – are all performers of the highest order.  (Greig’s name is familiar from several groups, including the Tallis Scholars.)  This was an excellent program in terms of variety, but the second half lacked any really big, weighty piece as an anchor.

Finally, the American Symphony’s Carter program on Sunday.  I must admit right up front that I find much of Carter’s music quite difficult to cope with as a listener, especially – but not exclusively – when I am hearing something for the first time.  Surprisingly, however, two of my first-time experiences proved the easiest to digest, loving early compositions for high voice and orchestra.  Mary MacKenzie sang “Warble for Lilac-Time” and Teresa Buchholz “Voyage”, the former on Whitman verses, the later on Hart Crane.  Both were composed during 1943 and I suspect have not been performed much since.  They are in the composer’s early, tonal style, which owes more to Copland than to the thornier models of Schoenberg, Sessions, etc., that characterize the composer’s middle period.   I thought MacKenzie a bit more successful than Buchholz in projecting Carter’s lyrical lines through the sometimes thick orchestrations.  The Pocahontas suite, drawn from a ballet that received a theatrical presentation on Broadway during the 1930s, was also easy listening (and I have a recording of it, so was not venturing completely unprepared.)  But Sound Fields, a string orchestra piece that seemed to last much longer than its actual duration because nothing much was happening to engage the listener’s mind, struck me as forgettable.  The Clarinet Concerto brought forth Metropolitan Opera Orchestra principal clarinet Anthony McGill, and it is always a pleasure seeing and hearing him perform, even with thorny material like this that is not written to be particularly ingratiating.  The score requires the soloist to walk about the orchestra, playing each of the many movements from a different location.  I could not discern any particular spacial effect that was enhanced by this movement, which just seemed a bit silly to me.  The piece had some fine moments, but was not particularly easy to follow as a musical argument.  The grand finale was the Concerto for Orchestra that Carter wrote for Bernstein and the NY Philharmonic.  They gave it an uncomprehending premiere performance — Carter was not really Bernstein’s cup of tea.  I’ve heard several performances over the years, but this is a nut I’ve yet to crack.  My mind loses focus a few minutes in and I sort of zone out because I find it hard to find music, rather than organized noise, in this piece.  Perhaps, some day, I’ll experience a breakthrough.   The orchestra seemed well-prepared for this concert, and Leon Botstein (the conductor),  certainly showed a flair in the earlier music as well as the Clarinet Concerto.   Will Carter’s music enter the repertory and be played regularly by orchestra’s a generation from now?  Prediction is difficult, but I am dubious.  Unless there is a wide-scale revival of his earlier, more listener-friendly music, this does not strike me as the kind of stuff that conductors will voluntarily perform (pace James Levine, who’s a glutton for punishment where Carter is concerned) or that listeners will go out of their way to hear.  Attendance was pretty dreadful at Carnegie Hall yesterday, but Carter’s reputation for being difficult precedes him.

NY Philharmonic: Salonen Violin Concerto with Leila Josefowicz

Posted on: November 1st, 2013 by Art Leonard No Comments

Tonight I attended the New York Philharmonic and heard the second of five scheduled performances of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto (2008-09) with soloist Leila Josefowicz.  I can only say “Wow”!  This is one terrific concerto, and I’m delighted to have heard it performed by the violinist for whom it was written with the composer – also one of the world’s leading conductors – on the podium.  In four inventive movements, this piece is full of innovative rhythms and harmonies, masterful orchestration, and enough invention to sustain rapt interest through more than half an hour.  Time to get the recording, stick it on my iPod, and become intimately familiar with this piece.

Salonen has his own individual compositional voice, but his wide-ranging experiences as a conductor certainly contribute to this intriguing work.  Prokofiev’s Violin Concerti are an influence here, certainly, as well as Bartok’s, but neither of those composers would have written this, because it is in the late 20th century to early 21st century tonal style of a piece that downplays traditional melody and instead emphasizes texture and dramatic contrasts.  In this sense, it crosses paths with the “spectral” school of composition, exemplified by the NYP’s recent composer in residence, Magnus Lindberg, a friend and colleague of Salonen, but Salonen’s music is more interesting to me than Lindberg’s, because, I think, he has a richer imagination.  I want to hear this again.

Leila Josefowicz was extraordinary and absolutely fearless in a piece that tests stamina and resiliency as well as technique.  When I mention the Prokofiev concerti as an influence here, I specifically point to the first two movements of the 1st Concerto and the finale of the second, where Prokofiev sometimes used the violin as close to a percussion instrument, and used rapid, repeated figurations at times to embellish the part.  Josefowicz was on top of every challenge, and clearly has this piece under her skin, playing it impeccably from memory (which is not usual when soloists play relatively new, complex modern works).

Anybody reading this shortly after posting should be aware that the performance will be repeated tomorrow (Nov. 1) at 11 am, Saturday (Nov 2) at 8 pm, and Tuesday (Nov. 5) at 7:30 pm.

This is not to slight the rest of the program, as Salonen and the orchestra gave us masterful renditions of Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite to open the concert and Sibelius’ 5th Symphony to close it.  The Ravel was an appropriate lead-in for the violin concerto, and I heard that Ravel the orchestrator certainly had an influence on Salonen as well.  What impressed me about the Sibelius was actually a bit negative – I found myself reflecting that Sibelius’ music is much less eventful than Salonen’s.  The 5th Symphony is actually my least favorite of the seven Sibelius symphonies, as it is the most repetitious and long-winded, the most obvious in its broad effects to the extent of banality. . .  There are of course many fine things in it, but sometimes I think the composer could have used a good editor on this one.  Astonishingly, of course, he did subject the piece to two thorough revisions before publishing the final version.  I’ve heard Osmo Vanska’s recording of the original version, which was even longer and less structurally sound.  But give me the 4th or 6th any day in preference to the 5th and I’ll be well satisfied.  That said, as I mentioned at the start of this paragraph, the performance was excellent, with the principal horn Philip Myers, as the particular hero this evening.

And this was also a demonstration of the incredible depth in the Philharmonic.  Several principal players were not participating this week – the oboe, the flute, the new principal clarinet, trumpet – and others played only in the Sibelius – Mr. Myers, bassoon principal Judith LeClair.  But there was no falling off in excellence in the incredibly exposed instrumental writing of the Ravel – the assistant principals all came through brilliantly, and in Mr. Salonen’s concerto as well.  This orchestra is playing splendidly in its current incarnation, and the more-than-usual number of empty seats in the hall – probably attributable to the combination of Halloween parties tonight and the presence on the program of a contemporary piece, which tends to scare away older subscribers – was no comment on the excellence of the program.

NY Philharmonic Surrounds Penderecki with the Sounds of Ravel

Posted on: October 25th, 2013 by Art Leonard No Comments

This week’s subscription concert from the New York Philharmonic, which I attended Thursday night for the first performance of the cycle, surrounds the Concerto Grosso by Krzysztof Penderecki (a work for three cello soloists and orchestra) with music by Maurice Ravel.  Both Ravel pieces, originally conceived for the piano, were subsequently orchestrated to sumptuous effect, and provided an opportunity to revel in the sheer virtuosity of the New York Philharmonic, which is conducted this week by an expert in this repertory, Charles Dutoit, artistic director and principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (London).

There are some simplifications and omissions from the paragraph above.  For one thing, the entire second half of the program was taken up by Pictures at an Exhibition, a piece first conceptualized and sketched out for the piano by Modest Mussorgsky, a 19th century Russian composer, whose original draft was worked over editorially by Rimsky-Korsakov and published posthumously, then orchestrated by Ravel upon a commission from Serge Koussevitzky for his famous “Concerts Koussevitzky” which he presented in Paris during the interregnum between his Russian career and his brilliant music directorship of the Boston Symphony.  Ravel did more than merely orchestrate; he absorbed the essence of the published piano score and transformed it into such a convincing and brilliant orchestral suite that for a generation it was known to concertgoers mainly in that form, not to achieve more general recognition as a piano piece into Vladimir Horowitz exhumed it, tinkered with it, and played and recorded it.  Then it was taken up by Sviatoslav Richter in the 1950s, and today one is more likely to hear it in a piano recital than a symphony concert, as it seems to be in the active repertory of many contemporary pianists.   The opening work on the concert, Ravel’s Rapsodie Espagnol, was first composed as a work for piano 4-hands, then orchestrated, and again, Ravel’s incredible skill as an orchestral composer raises incredulity that this colorful piece could have first been conceived for the keyboard.  So, the symmetry of the program is not complete – although Penderecki is, in an important sense, surrounded by Ravel, Ravel’s role in the two pieces differs, but nobody hearing both pieces would fail to hear the same orchestral magician at work, for “Pictures” sounds like Ravel, even though its textures differ in some important respects from the textures of the Rapsodie.

Needless to say when the NY Philharmonic in its current estate is concerned, both Ravel pieces were played with great brilliance, the orchestra responsive to every nuance sought by Dutoit, whose mastery in this repertory is unsurpassed.

But the other omission from my firs paragraph is to explain the phrase “expert in this repertory,” for Dutoit must also be acknowledged for having conducted the world premiere of Penderecki’s Concerto Grosso in 2001 in Tokyo, leading the orchestra that had commissioned the work, and he is, according to an article previewing the concert by The New York Times, an ardent exponent of the piece.  His solo trio for the occasion consisted of NYP principal cellist Carter Brey, Alisa Weilerstein, and Daniel Muller-Schott.  Muller-Schott was making his Philharmonic subscription concert debut.  Weilerstein has become a familiar figure on the NY concert scene.  (Her brother, one of the NYP assistant conductors this season, made his subscription concert debut just two weeks ago.)  I thought it was unfortunate that Muller-Schott didn’t get his first shot at an NYP subscription audience in a solo piece.  He has emerged as a major figure in Europe, and perhaps deserved a more extensive showcase here.  But this trio meshed well together.  I have to confess that the piece itself did not hold my attention well, as I found myself “zoning out” a bit over the course of the uninterrupted 35 minute span, but the last several minutes I found spellbinding and incredibly beautiful.  I rushed home to listen to the Naxos recording and confirmed for myself that the piece is worth hearing again.  The composer, celebrating his 80th birthday this year, was on hand for the New York Philharmonic premiere of his piece, and seemed very pleased with the enthusiastic reception from the audience as he took his bows.   As the piece was finished in 2000, one hesitates to call it a 21st century piece, especially as Penderecki has long since evolved from the more radical sound of his early works and now writes works in an almost neo-romantic vein.  In that sense, the entire program was a 20th century program of Ravel and Penderecki – were it not for the tricky fact that the Mussorgsky piano original dates from 1874!

At any event, I was particularly impressed with the orchestra’s sheer virtuosity, especially after having heard a concert at Carnegie Hall two nights before by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s that struck me as surprisingly sloppy by comparison.  In writing about that concert, I observed that the conductor had taken tempi that placed too many obstacles in the way of his musicians, but I’m sure the NYP could surmount those obstacles with ease, as the excellence of the playing I heard last night would prove.  It is an unfair comparison, of course, as the NYP draws upon the cream of world musical virtuosi to fill vacancies in its ranks, with resources that St. Luke’s could not begin to imagine.  But every dollar of the difference can be heard emanating from that stage.

 

NY Philharmonic Debuts: Arabella Steinbacher & Joshua Weilerstein

Posted on: October 16th, 2013 by Art Leonard No Comments

The NY Philharmonic’s most recent subscription program presented debuts for the soloist and the conductor.  Violinist Arabella Steinbacher, already an established recording artist in Europe, performed the Violin Concerto in E Minor by Felix Mendelssohn, and Joshua Weilerstein, an assistant conductor of the orchestra, made his subscription concert debut.  (Presumably he has already led the orchestra several times in non-subscription events, such as the Young Peoples’ Concerts.)  I attended the last performance of this program, on Tuesday night, October 15, and found both debuts to be auspicious.

Steinbacher impressed particularly by her big, solid tone, excellent intonation, and gift for projecting the lyrical line.  That gift was challenged by the approach she and Weilerstein took, especially in the first movement, where I thought some of the tempo shifts were rather extreme and the forward momentum that makes this movement so inspiring came very close many times to being broken.  One really can’t tell whether this was attributable to the soloist’s wishes, the conductor’s desired approach, or a joint decision.  With an established soloist and a young debut conductor, one would expect that the soloist would set the pace.  But this situation of joint debuts brings to mind a famous anecdote from the orchestra’s distant history – when Vladimir Horowitz was making his solo debut with the orchestra in the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto on the same day that Thomas Beecham was making his debut as guest conductor.  The story is that Horowitz kept champing at the bit as Beecham adopted tempi much slower than his soloist desired.  As the end of the Concerto was in sight, Horowitz threw caution to the winds and took off at his desired tempo to the end, finishing the concerto while the orchestra continued to play.  I don’t know if this is truth or urban legend, but I’ve seen the story in many different sources.  In any event, nothing so untoward happened last night.  But my opinion of Weilerstein was somewhat adversely affected by my discomfort at the extreme tempo adjustments in the concerto.

After the intermission, however, my opinion changed drastically as I thoroughly enjoyed the performance of Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8.  This is a big romantic symphony and Weilerstein played it as such.  Here the tempo adjustments made perfect sense, and he did a great job of sustaining the singing lines in all four movements.  I was especially impressed by the third movement, where he had the orchestra swinging to the implicit waltz rhythms with real grace.  I think that in ten or fifteen years, if he is in a position to do this symphony again with such an excellent orchestra, he will do many things differently. This performance was full of youthful exuberance, but also youthful exaggeration in terms of tempi and dynamics.  I think with more experience he would moderate some of that, and achieve better balances between wind soloists and the strings, and between the brass and everybody else at the big moments.  This is a very powerful orchestra, playing in an unforgiving acoustical space that can magnify balance problems.  Holding back the brass until the final peroration would be helpful in making the last movement not seem like a series of false climaxes.  But, on balance, I thought it was a successful performance, it captured the spirit of the piece, and the orchestra played very well under the leadership of its assistance conductor.

The concert opened with Osvaldo Golijov’s expansion for full string orchestra of a piece he originally conceived for a string chamber ensemble, “Last Round,” intended as a tribute to the masters of the Argentine tango.  I think I would have preferred to hear the original version for nine solo strings, because the use of a full string orchestra introduces some monotony of texture in a piece that struck me as a bit formless, a bit meandering.  Perhaps a more experienced conductor would have made a difference here, although certainly it was a creditable performance.

On balance it was a good concert and a good debut for violinist and conductor.  I hope that we will hear more from both of them in future NYP seasons, and I conclude that if by chance there is an emergency need to replace a scheduled conductor, the NYP management can be sanguine about asking Mr. Weilerstein to step in rather than recruit an outsider (as they have done more often over the years).

The New Season Begins – Opera, Symphony, Film, Theater

Posted on: October 5th, 2013 by Art Leonard No Comments

My new culture season is duly launched.  As of last night, I’ve taken in: “Anna  Nicole,”  apparently the last production of New York City Opera, presented in collaboration with the Brooklyn Academy of Music on September 21; the new film “Don Jon” by Joseph Gordon-Levitt at the AMC Theater on Broadway at 84th Street on September 29; a memorial celebration for my friend, the late Ari Joshua Sherman, at the DiMenna Center for the Arts that same evening, September 29; my first New York Philharmonic subscription concert at Lincoln Center on September 28; the new Broadway revival of “The Glass Menagerie” at the Booth Theatre on October 1; and the American Symphony Orchestra’s “New York Avant-Garde” concert at Carnegie Hall last night, October 3.

Herewith a brief summary of these experiences as the season really gets under way.

New York City Opera has been an important part of my cultural life ever since I arrived in the city in the fall of 1977.  I have particularly appreciated their staging of new works and works that are not central to the repertory, since the mainstream stuff is available in generally superior performances from the Metropolitan Opera.  It isn’t so much that City Opera was less expensive to attend, but that it was usually more interesting to attend, even when they were putting on standard works such as “La Boheme” or “Carmen,” since they usually found an interesting “twist” that made them seem like new works as well.

But a series of management mistakes, and the heavy fundraising competition of the Met, together with the impact of the Great Recession on charitable donations, has put the City Opera into a financially untenable position.  If there had to be a last production, I’m glad it was a new opera, a premiere for New York, and something that lived up to most of the advance hype.  Although I found Mark-Anthony Turnage’s score to be serviceable rather than memorable, the libretto by Richard Thomas would have made an excellent play with incidental music on its own, and the production directed by Richard Jones with the music conducted by Steven Sloane was consistently entertaining and attention-grabbing.  From one perspective, this might seem a trivial piece of musical theater fluff about a gold-digger who was famous for marrying an elderly billionaire and then battling his family in court for her intestate inheritance as a surviving spouse, but it had an awful lot to say as wry satire about our celebrity-obsessed society and the dangers that these “no-talent” celebrities run into as they encounter the hangers-on, exploiters, and – in this case—hostile “in laws.”   Too bad there is unlikely to be a film from this production, but I think there may be one from the original English production at Covent Garden.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s “Don Jon” is reportedly his first attempt at scripting and directing a major motion picture – starring himself – and I think Gordon-Levitt pulls off the Woody Allen act with aplomb.  He impersonates a “dumb jock” Jersey boy obsessed with his body, his car, his pad, his boys (friends) and his girls (sex objects).  He haunts the suburban nightclubs looking for chicks to score, and because he’s a self-confident, sexy hunk, he can have almost anybody he wants.  But the sex is not satisfying – there’s really no emotional connection – and he’s convinced that masturbating to pornography is more satisfying.  As a result, even though he’s having sex several nights a week with real women, he’s getting off to porn several times a day.  Something has to give.  And there’s the story, when he happens upon somebody to whom he’s attracted who doesn’t want to jump into bed without some personal acquaintance.   Of course, this isn’t a perfect film.  No film is.  But it is dramatically credible, well written, acted, and directed, and I found it compelling – at least to the extent that my mind never wandered, as it tends to do if a film bogs down in slow, talky, lassitude.  This one never does.

The New York Philharmonic initiated its subscription season with a program that could easily be criticized as semi-pops concert fare: Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso, Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.  Light, not challenging, virtuosic, catchy tunes and rhythms, etc.  But, as expected from this orchestra conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert, everything was so well-played, and the program was actually so canny in terms of constructing a concert program that “works,” that it was a pleasure to attend.  I might have wanted the Ravel to be slightly faster in pacing, but the moderate tempo made it easier to appreciate the subtlety of orchestration, and then to remark to myself about how whoever was responsible for the orchestration of the Bernstein piece really knew their Ravel!!  This is a bit of a question, actually: Bernstein followed Broadway tradition of having the usual experts translate his piano score into an orchestration for a standard B’way pit orchestra, and various other hands were involved in extracting the dances, knitting them together into a continuous piece, and expanding the orchestration for a symphony orchestra.  Of course, the musical ideas are Bernstein’s, but it’s unclear to what extent the orchestration is.  He didn’t even conduct the world premiere, although he subsequently recorded the piece with the NYP, and surely he approved the final orchestration and probably tweaked it. . .  As for the Tchaikovsky, Yefim Bronfman, who is the orchestra’s “artist in residence” this year, was reportedly playing it for the first time in public!  Hard to believe, not just because it was such a well-conceived and executed performance, but because he was born and educated in Russia and is famous for his Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich concerto performances. Every young pianistic firebrand is expected to have this concerto in his or her active repertory.  But for whatever reason, he hadn’t gotten around to Tchaikovsky until the NYP asked him to do it to start off this season.  Magnificent!  He and Gilbert should get right into the recording booth together.

Ari Joshua Sherman, know to his friends as Josh, passed away last spring in Vermont.  He had not let many know that he was seriously ill, and the NY friends were used to long periods between sightings after he and Jorge had shifted their principal residence from W. 108 Street to Addison, VT.  Jorge arranged two events for friends to remember Josh, one in Vermont and the other at the DiMenna Center (housed in the basement level of the Baryshnikov Center on W. 37 St.).  The event was a worthy tribute and remembrance, including performances of music that had been important to Josh, who was an enthusiastic chamber musician (violin) and music lover, interspersed with readings from the memoirs he had worked on over many years.  So sad that a long-time friend is gone, but consoling that he had such an interesting and productive life.

Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” put him on the Broadway theater map, but I find it a lesser work than some of his subsequent plays.  This performance is really mainly about Cherry Jones, one of our greatest living actors, whose portrayal of Amanda Wingfield in this production is a completely convincing one.  Talk immediately began about Tony nominations as soon as previews began, and this is now expected, regardless what happens the rest of the season.  Zachary Quinto as her son Tom is not so totally successful.  I thought it took him some time to warm up at the performance I attended, not really coming alive fully until well into the first act, but burning on all cylinders in the second.  Celia Keenan-Bolger was extraordinary as Laura, the shy daughter, and I thought her performance was right up there with Cherry Jones in terms of accomplishment and vivid characterization.  I enjoyed Brian J. Smith as “Jim, the gentleman caller,” who appears only in the second act, but then for an extended scene with Laura that provides great comic relief and emotion combined.  Smith was just right in this part.   In short, this was a performance that worked very well, performed on a set that worked very well, with fine incidental music by Nico Muhly, in a wonderful conception of the script directed by John Tiffany.  The show, whatever its flaws, was certainly worth reviving in a production of this quality as a showcase for these fine actors.

Finally, the American Symphony.  At first it appeared this concert might be lost to the Carnegie Hall stagehands’ labor dispute, which had cause cancellation of the opening night gala the prior evening.  But the union had made its point and was content to hold back for a while and allow the season to begin with the ASO while continuing to negotiate, and I just heard that a bargain was struck on Friday.

Leon Botstein’s program, “New York Avant-Garde”, took as its point of departure the famed “Armory Show of 1913” that formally introduced New York to the new “modernism” in visual art.  Botstein suggests that this program had echoes in music that first began to be expressed in New York concert halls after World War I, in a burst of musical modernism that extended to the end of the 1920s.  This showcase for the avant-garde presented music by George Antheil (A Jazz Symphony 1925), Charles Griffes (Poem for Flute and Orchestra (1918), Aaron Copland (Organ Symphony 1924), Carl Ruggles (Men and Mountains 1924), and Edgard Varese (Ameriques 1918-21).  The particular Carnegie connection was that the first and last of these pieces were first performed at Carnegie Hall during the 1920s, the Varese in a performance conducted by Leopold Stokowski, who would later in his career found and conduct the ASO.

I thought the concert was very successful, especially given the uncertainties of the day that had resulted in some juggling of last-minute rehearsal time.  The ASO secured the services of three excellent soloists.   Pianist Blair McMillen was a joy to hear and to watch as he threw himself body and soul into the Antheil Jazz Symphony, which is not quite a piano concerto but at times seems to think it is one, with extended piano cadenzas that McMillen tossed off insouciantly.  Randolph Bowman, principal flutist for the Cincinnati Symphony and the ASO’s summer seasons at Bard College, was excellent in the sumptuous Griffes piece.  Stephen Tharp pulled out all the stops (couldn’t resist that) in the Copland, whose organ part was originally conceived for Nadia Boulanger’s American tour and appearances with the Boston Symphony and New York Symphony.  This first half of the concert was just one thrill after another.

I was a bit less thrilled by the second half.  I’ve never quite “gotten” Ruggles.  Although at times I find his orchestration to be interesting, I don’t get a feeling of organic flow to his compositions, which to me are an essential part of music.  It feels too static, too granitic, although on this occasion I had a more favorable reaction to the middle movement – Lilacs – which actually seemed to flow in the hands of the ASO string players, who made a warm sound amidst the pounding brass of the outer movements. 

The first time I heard Ameriques at Carnegie Hall, Christoph von Dohnanyi was conducting the Cleveland Orchestra.  On that occasion, it struck me forcibly how strongly influenced Varese was influenced by Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, which was first performed shortly before World War I broke out.  I was less struck by the resemblance at the ASO concert, perhaps because Botstein’s interpretation was less overtly aggressive than Dohnanyi’s. 

Overall, however, I thought this was a useful concert for bringing to light music that doesn’t get played very much, and the orchestra did a marvelous job of pulling it together and making it work.