Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year

It's the middle of May, already. Why do I still need a jacket to go outside? Okay, I feel better. Lawrence Dillon is in Boston (where it is probably unseasonably cold, too) for a premiere...Elodie Lauten ponders the question of why composers compose...Elsewhere, Bob Shingleton writes about the world premiere of James Wood's opera Hildegard at the venerable Norwich Cathedral. Norwich is a lovely little town in Norfolk and is famed for those goofy little dogs that bear the Norwich and Norfolk labels and, of course, Ralph Vaughn Williams...Somebody please suggest a new topic for the Composers Forum.

posted by Jerry Bowles 5/14/2005

Friday, May 13, 2005

Along an Overgrown Path With Rudoph Komorous

Earlier in the week I received in the mail two new CDs from the Canadian pianist Eve Egoyan, who specializes in the performance of new works. I popped the first one into my disk drive and I haven�t been able to listen to anything else since.

The recording is a single, hour-long solo piano piece called Wu by Rudolf Komorous, who describes himself as �an old composer, born and educated in Prague.� Komorous moved to Canada in 1969 and was appointed Director of the School of Music at the University of Victoria and later Director of the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. He is now retired and lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Wu is a Zen concept that means the �not� expected and the experience of listening to Komorous� mesmerizing meditation is rather like sitting in a quiet park on a spring day watching a cherry tree and waiting for a blossom to fall...or not fall. This is the sort of thing we Americans do far too little of; we have little tolerance for silence or unpredictability.

But, there is element at work here that goes well beyond style. If you listen carefully, you realize that the notes are not random at all; they are stories, fragments of memory, drawn from some other place and some other time, told in no particular order or, in some cases, in whatever order the performer chooses. Here are Komorous� instructions:

Notes for the performance:

Wu is a piece in one movement. However, it comprises 31 segments which are divided by rests (from one to four beats). The rests should be performed exactly in the tempo of the segment they end.

The segments are to be played in the following order:

� number 1

� numbers 2 � 10 (in any order of the performer�s choice)

� number 11

� numbers 12 � 20 (in any order of the performer�s choice)

� number 21

� numbers 22 � 30 (in any order of the performer�s choice)

� number 31

The tempo throughout is slow, yet it varies from segment to segment. The tempi are given by the duration times (including the ending rests) which are given at the end of each segment. The indicated durations should be considered average times. In the performance they may vary according to the player�s temperament and feeling of the music. It is fully acceptable if segments of the durations from 15 seconds to 1 minute 15 seconds are performed up to 6 seconds shorter or longer, those of longer durations up to 12 seconds either way. The tempo is expected to fluctuate slightly within the segment.

Dynamics of this calm piece are left to the performer�s imagination. Pedalling should be used to enhance the quality of sound, NOT to let consecutive notes sound together.

The music is often written on one staff only. The player can use either hand, or both, as convenient.

Duration: about one hour

Imagine a 70-something composer sitting in a porch swing, daydreaming of his childhood, drawing out of himself�in a kind of free associative manner�the pre-urban, rustic sounds and folksongs and lullabies that comforted him as a child. Having reached the age where such memories are frequent and bittersweet, I recognize all too clearly Kemorous� longing to walk, once more, along a certain overgrown path. Wu is the spirtual heir to Janacek�s great paen to memory and aging and a masterpiece in its own right.

Eve Egoyan will launch the CD and give the world premiere (live) performance of Wu tonight at Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. Tomorrow night, she performs a varied program at the Guelph Spring Festival .Egoyan will also give recitals for Music Umbrella on May 21 at Eastminster United Church and at the Distillery Jazz Festival on May 29.

posted by Jerry Bowles 5/13/2005

Friday the 13th

Time Warner Center, New York

posted by Jerry Bowles 5/13/2005

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Bucking the Concerto With Matt Haimovitz

Matt Haimovitz has been making waves lately by taking his cello into establishments better known for their beer and buffalo wings than the quality of their acoustics and the deep pockets of their patrons. Okay, so it�s a not-so-subtle attempt to shed classical music of the �elitism� image we�ve been talking about around here for the past several days. But it seems to be working.

Through some adventuresome programming and some downright clever marketing and promotion, Haimovitz has done a lot of good for himself and for living (and a few dead) American composers. His Anthem album has appeared on numerous top 10 lists, including the Best Classical Album of 2003 on Amazon.com. Before Anthem, he made a splash with his performances of Bach�s 6 Suites for Cello Solo in intimate clubs and coffeehouses across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

On Sunday May 29, the latest Haimovitz project--Buck the Concerto--comes to the Knitting Factory for an evening of big band music by David Sanford, featuring a world premiere performance of Scherzo Grosso, a new concerto for cello and big band commissioned by Haimovitz with funds from the Koussevitzky Foundation. A new version of Sanford�s Seventh Avenue Kaddish � for cello and percussion � will also be premiered, along with several recent works for big band alone, all performed by the Pittsburgh Collective. The entire evening will be recorded, and the resulting album will mark the launch of a new Oxingale label for live recordings: Oxingale Exposed.

�Buck the Concerto is a series of new commissions by both young and established composers, pitting the cello against unusual ensembles such as big band, a capella choir, or gamelan groups, with the idea of bringing the discoveries made in these pieces back to the orchestra,� Haimovitz says.

According to the press release, the �Buck the Concerto� commissions will have two lives: in the piece�s original unexpected pairing, and then in a more traditional arrangement for cello and symphony orchestra. Both versions of the pieces will be recorded and released on Oxingale Records. After Sanford�s Scherzo Grosso, Luna Pearl Woolf�s Dr. Watson and the Dark Lady of DNA, a concerto for cello and choir on an original libretto by Philadelphia poet Eleanor Wilner, will be next in the series, coming in the spring of 2006.

posted by Jerry Bowles 5/12/2005

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Birthday Dream Concert

In a comment below, Lawrence asks what pieces I would like to hear played at a dream concert. My first choice would be a 10-15 minute piece by each of the S21 bloggers, performed on a warm evening under the stars in North Carolina, a small bandshell, southern fried chicken, lots of Puligny Montrachet and an audience made up of our regular readers.

Otherwise, these would be my budget, midpriced, and Expensive alternatives. What all these pieces have in common is they blew me away the first time I heard them and have done so every time since.

Budget

The People United will Never be Defeated! - Frederic Rzewski

Midpriced

March Swale � Beth Anderson
Yiddishbbuk � Osvaldo Golijov
Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet � Gavin Bryars
Ocho por Radio � Silvetra Revueltas
Quartet No. 8 - Shostakovich (This is my preferred memorial piece, too.)

Expensive

Violin Concerto No. 2 � Bartok
Symphony No. 6 - Mahler

posted by Jerry Bowles 5/11/2005

Penn Sounds: Can Banging

Bang on a Can All-Stars came to Philadelphia to close this season of the Fresh Ink series, with guest vocalist and violinist Iva Bittova, to present music showing the artistic side of popular genres and the free flow of ideas.

The Philadelphia premiere of Lick by Philadelphia's Julia Wolfe is an example of unraveling ideas -- letting the music go where it wants based on the sounds she grew up with, of Motown, funk and rock. It is marked by strongly-attacked chords and lots of white space, before a set of noisy rock riffs take over -- and overwhelms. Not much to engage the ear; in fact, it sounded a lot like banging on a lot of cans.

Evan Ziporyn, BOAC's clarinetist, is fascinated by Balinese gamelan music and in this piece, Dalem & Sangat (from Shadowbang), illustrates a story from Hindu mythology, a puppet opera in four movements. This is highly textured with clarinet runs weaving strands of guitar, bass, cello and piano together, and the unifying motif shifts between clarinet and guitar in the first movement. The second, Ocean, is quiet and spare, melancholy single repeated notes of a becalmed sea. Meditasi is even more hypnotic, with a lower register and the addition of temple bell sounds and increasing volume. Head is a full out rock riff with drums and a catchy jagged
rhythm.

When it comes to math, we know there are mathematical relationships between notes, but music constructed of mathematical harmonics -- and the cracks between sounds, explores with those relationships. In Glen Branca's Compositional Recreations One, half the instruments play in one key and tempo and the other half in another key and tempo at the same time, requiring the players to wear headphones. And I wished for earplugs, as the bi-tones swept forth (...desperately trying to unclench my teeth and think of other things) for far too long.

Iva Bittova's Solo in Czech used the traditional folk vocal technique with a touch of percussion as she strolled the stage, for a mysterious and mesmerizing effect, and segued into a violin accompaniment with vocalise. Elida is a set of songs with piano and increasingly more instrumentation and varying moods that are most engaging, enhanced by her acting skills, and Bittova is a show unto herself -- whatever it was she was singing about. One piece for clarinet and strings sounded like klezmer-influenced Piazzola, lyrical, syncopated, unexpected and always surprising. Bittova's performance was the best part of the concert.

Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center
Philadelphia, PA
April 28, 2005 (Reposted from Penn Sounds 5/5/05)

posted by Deborah Kravetz 5/11/2005

Reeling in the Years

Lawrence Dillon reviews Kenneth Frazelle's Sonata-Fantasy for piano; Jeffrey Biegel visits Mecca--the Steinway factory--and entertains the troops; and I'm trying to pretend I didn't turn 62 today. Frankly, I don't look it.

posted by Jerry Bowles 5/11/2005

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Elitism 101

Is classical music elitist? Of course it is but just for fun we're pretending that maybe it's not. Check out the Composers Forum...Tom Myron's been having some amazing dreams about famous composers...It appears that your big-time music critics are sensitive to words like "pulling punches" so let me state for the record that I think Mark Stryker and Bernard Holland are terrific guys who call them as they see them. They just happen to be nicer human beings than me.

posted by Jerry Bowles 5/10/2005

Last Night in LA--Percussion!

We�ve had a nice little mini-festival of percussion at Disney Hall. The L.A. Philharmonic gave us Tan Dun�s paper percussion last week, then Evelyn Glennie this week, and last night it was Glennie and Steven Schick supported by his UCSD percussion group �red fish blue fish� in an ear-opening evening of music for solo and small group percussions. The concert, offered by the Phil�s Green Umbrella series for new music, focused on the music, the pitch not just the rhythm, of percussion.

New Yorkers will probably recognize Schick most for the ten years he spent with the �Bang on a Can All-Stars�; last night�s concert gave some of that �downtown� music, but it also presented some �uptown� and international music. In a pre-concert talk, Schick commented that he had turned 50 last year and was forced to realize that he was older than the oldest work in his repertoire; both Schick and Glennie commented on how good it was to be able to contact the composers of works they were learning, often by email, to discuss compositional intent or to work out interpretations. Five of the six composers of the evening are still alive; even better, they�re still composing.

The concert opened with Glennie and Schick playing Steve Reich�s �Nagoya Marimbas� (1994). The work blends some of Reich�s earlier interests in phasing and patterns with his later melodic developments. The work requires two virtuoso performers, which we certainly heard. After this great start, Evelyn Glennie joined Schick�s �red fish blue fish� percussion ensemble for Bob Becker�s �Mudra� (1990) which uses motives and styles from classical Indian music as performed with and shaped by contemporary tuned and untuned percussion. The work isn�t a re-creation of Indian music; rather it�s a borrowing of ideas. In particular, in this work Becker made extensive use of a five-pitch scale, amplifying the pitch-line with harmony, often from overtones in the reverberation of the sound.

Glennie then gave two solo performances using works she uses in her solo concerts by composers she champions. The first was �Fluctus� (1988) for solo marimba by Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic. Zivkovic�s web site is worth the visit for the percussion fanfare which opens the site. An extract of the work is here. This work by a Serb living in Germany was followed by a work by an Icelandic composer, Askell Masson. Glennie discovered Masson when she was in Reykjavik for a concert and was utilizing some downtime to review music manuscripts at the library; she discovered a concerto for snare drum and decided that this was a composer she wanted to know. �Prim� (1984) was written to amplify some of the ideas from that snare drum concerto; its title stems from the work�s use of the prime numbers through 43 to determine the number of beats in a rhythmic pattern.

In her pre-concert comments, Glennie stated that the absence of other instruments should allow us to hear the pitches coming from the extended snare drum hits, and this was certainly the case in the Disney Hall acoustics. An excerpt of the work, played by Glennie is here; unfortunately the sound clip doesn�t include the virtuoso close of the work. Schick closed the first half of the concert with a solo performance of �Rebonds� (1988) by Iannis Xenakis. The work is written for a set of skin drums supplemented by five wood blocks which provided pitched interludes. This was spectacular drumming.

After the intermission Schick and his red fish blue fish players performed �The So-Called Laws of Nature� (2002) by David Lang, a work for four percussionists. The work is in three parts, with each part using a different set of improvised percussion instruments (starting with wooden blocks and ending with flower pots and rice bowls). I found the performance too long for the work�s musical ideas. Perhaps my difficulty was with the performance, however. The first two parts/movements seemed to be performed at a constant forte, with an occasional fortissimo accent, and this consistent volume seemed to merely emphasize the repetitive nature of the patterns. But perhaps I still don�t understand Lang�s language. Tonight is Shostakovich and three string quartets.

posted by Jerry Zinser 5/10/2005

the requested counter-review

I had one or two quibbles with Jerry Bowles's review of the recent Naxos disc containing Peter Maxwell Davies's 3rd and 4th Naxos Quartets. Since Jerry asked for it, here goes: One of them is just about a crack which seemed just gratuitous--"a near-great composer making a valiant late grab for the gold ring of music immortality." I have to say that, for me, Max is more than near great and he's come as close to that gold ring as just about anybody going these days--although, of course, none of us really has any way of knowing, so maybe better not even to try.

However the statement that the 3rd quartet indulged in music numerology is not exactly correct (it applies much more to Bach). Starting in the late 1950's, Max began to develop a more or less serial technique which was derived not so much from Schoenberg as from late medieval and early renaissance isorhythmic practices. The pieces in which this sort of writing was most highly developed are Worldes Blisse, Revelation and Fall, and, most especially, the Hymn to St. Magnus (which was also the first major piece after he moved to Orkney.) In about 1975, starting with Ave Maris Stella, Davies began to use Magic Squares in his compositional processes.

Exactly how he did this is a little too complicated to go into here, but suffice it to say that Magic Squares basically gave him bigger and better isorhythms; he has used them consistently since then. Early on he used the squares given in a book by John Mitchell called The View Over Atlantis; these were "classic" squares which did had associations with the Ptolemaic planets in various kinds of numerology and necromancy, but his use of them is not occult of numerological, but rather tend to be iconographic (the way painters during the renaissance, for instance, might use keys to represent St. Peter or a lion to represent St. Jerome). (As one example--a piece called A Mirror of Whitening Light uses an eight square--the square of Mercury. The title of the piece is the alchemical name for Mercury. He was using the name as a metaphor for Hoy Sound in Orkney, which he saw from his house at the time.)

More recently Davies has been using different kinds of squares and often times uses them for their abstract structural qualities. Most of his pieces use two squares, which produce materials which are then used a little like opposing keys. In the 3rd quartet one of the squares is a very complex square which has a 3 square nested in a 5 square which is in turn nested in a 7 square. The other square, technically not actually a "magic" square, is a 9 order one.

During the composition of the 3rd quartet, Davies was increasingly preoccupied with concerns about the moves toward the Iraq war, and those concerns did manifest themselves in the composition of the quartet in various ways.

Davies's program notes often raise as many questions as they answer, since they are often both allusive and a little evasive in their references to Magic Squares and the like, and the note on the record is not an exception, but it is, nonetheless, an accurate, albeit very little explained, statement about what goes on in the piece technically and how it got there. My feeling is, though, that, however difficult it may be, one shouldn't judge a piece by its program notes (or simply on the basis of its techniques.)

Jerry has ever right, of course, to find the 3rd quartet gray and wet, and I can't prove that it's not, but I can say that it doesn't seem to be to me. I very much like the first movement, which starts out rather like a sonata form movement, builds to a very harsh and grotesque march, leaving in its wake a "recapitulation" of the most basic materials of the piece devoid of any of their structural affect. The second movement is a sort of Elizabethan fantasy which once again dissolves into very high scurrying music (which turns out to be a quotation of a movement of the first quartet). The third is a series of Inventions of increasing (and increasingly impressive)contrapuntal fireworks, ending with a cloying sort of Victorian hymn-tune harmonization of the plainsong material that the whole quartet is based on. The last movement, called Fugue, but intended as the alternate and original meaning of "Fuga"--flight. It ends with a slow quiet mensuration canon reminescent of the end of the first movement, overlaid with extremely violent and loud jabs.

The third quartet is a kind of piece not much in favor with many of the correspondents of Sequenza21. I suppose it might be considered "uptown" and "academic," and people who don't care for that kind of music probably won't care much for this either. I can't offer any defenses or deflections of that kind of criticism, but I can say that I like the sound of it a lot, though. As it happens I know the third quartet quite well, having just written an article about it for Tempo. I've just begun to make any acquaintance with the 4th quartet, though. I do agree with Jerry's opinion of the performances by the Maggini Quartet, which, like those on the earlier disc containing the first Naxos Quartets, are majesterial.

posted by Rodney Lister 5/10/2005

Monday, May 09, 2005

Last Night in LA--Sonic Spectacular

The Philharmonic concert was a bit of a stylistic catch-all, but the music all gloried in sound and effect. The first half of the concert seemed very young: music by young composers, with a young conductor. What the concert may have lacked in musical depth, it had in color. And in flash. It was all very enjoyable, and it was another good example of programming to build an audience.

Holding everything together as well as leading the sonic workout was a bright, young (30!) American conductor, Michael Christie. Salonen was one of the jurists when he was given a special prize for outstanding potential at the 1995 Sibelius Conductor�s Competition; this program was his first set of performances as a full-fledged conductor, well past the stages of assistant and associate. He becomes the music director of the Phoenix Symphony in September, and he is beginning to climb internationally. Watch for him.

The concert opened with Aaron Copland�s �Symphony for Organ and Orchestra� and closed with Ottorino Respighi�s �Pines of Rome�, both written in 1924. Christie led the Phil in taking full advantage of the acoustics of Disney Hall as well as of the great new organ. Written when Copland was 23, the organ symphony does not have the yet-to-be-developed Copland sound and style, and may sound a little like Stravinsky�s �Petrouchka� at times or like Ravel at others, but it�s still a pretty good piece. (Copland thought so, as well, since he re-orchestrated it and issued it as his First Symphony so that it could be played in halls without organs.) Since the sound of the orchestra is so clear in WDCH, an organist doesn�t need to hold back in fear of drowning out the other musicians, and the resulting sounds can be great. �Feel the vibrations� could be a good slogan for the Phil�s publicists to describe the real physical sensations of being in the audience when the organist and orchestra play fortissimo.

It somewhat dates me, but I can still remember hearing a recording of �Pines� early in the days of Hi-Fi Stereo. (It was an RCA 45 rpm recording of the Chicago, conducted by Reiner. I later bought the record myself.) A classmate�s parents had driven down his movable (not really portable) speakers and components and some of his music collection. Until then I had only heard Respighi�s music on AM radio, and had been to few concerts, but hearing �Pines of Rome� with a good sound system was an exciting thing. I hadn�t heard music sound like that. Hearing �Pines� yesterday, in Disney, with a real pipe organ rather than an electric substitute, was almost a recreation of that experience. The music sounded fresh.

The middle of the program was dominated by the popular, talented percussionist Evelyn Glennie. The major work was a concerto for percussion by the unfairly talented young (23) violinist and composer Marijn Simons. �Concerto Fabuleux� was written in 2002, when Simons was 20, and was already his Opus 21.

The concerto has three movements, each named for a fabled animal (dragon, werewolf, unicorn), and each movement focuses on a particular subset of percussion. This allowed Glennie to move to three locations around the stage. The Disney Hall electricians supported Glennie�s showmanship with more lighting adjustments and use of colored filters than I have seen in a Phil concert. The concerto may not present a distinctive musical voice, and Simons has written more major works since composing it, but it�s a good showpiece and a pleasure to hear (and watch). Glennie gave a programmed encore to open the second half of the concert: a Vivaldi concerto for piccolo recorder, transcribed for the vibraphone, accompanied by the Philharmonic strings and harpsichord. Suspend your disbelief and doubts; this was serious music, well performed, and Glennie�s musicianship was excellent.

posted by Jerry Zinser 5/09/2005

Pulling Punches on Margaret Garner

The reviews of Michigan Opera's expensive and highly touted production of Richard Danielpour and Toni Morrison's new opera Margaret Garner are trickling in and it is clear that critics are doing some extraordinary contortions to avoid damning such a conspicuously worthy undertaking. New operas are rare, this is Michigan Opera's first premiere, it's Danielpour first opera, and it's about white America's most persistent lingering guilt--slavery. Both Mark Stryker in the Detroit Free Press and Bernard Holland in the New York Times bend over backwards in their respective reviews to be kind but reading between the lines the verdict seems to be: it's too long, the score is derivative, and the libretto is didactic. In other words, it's exactly what you would expect from the combination of ingredients that went into it.

Here at the ranch, Lawrence Dillon has a wholeheartedly positive view of Kirke Mechem�s Tartuffe, which was performed over the weekend at the Fletcher Opera Center...and I just posted a few new CD reviews. Rodney Lister takes issue with my take on Peter Maxswell Davies's Naxos Quartets 3 and 4. Maybe we can encourage Rodney to write a little counter review over here on the front page.

posted by Jerry Bowles 5/09/2005

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Mama Mia

Anne Midgette has a profile in today's New York Times of James Tenney, whom she describes rather aptly as the "Zelig" of American contemporary music for his uncanny ability to be involved in many of the most important musical events of the past 40 years without attracting much attention to himself. As we noted here in our little profile last week, pianist Jenny Lin organized two concerts of Tenney's music in New York this week; the first is tonight at 8 p.m. at the Project Room, 619 East Sixth Street, East Village. The second is Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, 120 Park Avenue, at 42nd Street.

I asked Jenny why she decided to put together the Tenney programs and here's what she said:

"I believe James Tenney to be one of the most significant composers of our time. Just look at his music, his writings, and his history. And look at his influences, his teachers, and his peers - Varese, Cage, Ruggles, Brakhage, Reich... the list goes on. I first came across Tenney when researching for my Ruth Crawford Seeger CD (his Diaphonic Toccata for Violin and Piano is dedicated to Crawford Seeger). Then I discovered his connection to New York and was shocked that there has not been any substantial presentation of his work in the city in the last 10 years. I knew I had to do something. I knew it was very important to bring his music back to New York. I began to reach out to people for help. There was a lot of enthusiasm and support but little action. So I took on the project on my own for a while. When the curator for Whitney's Performance on 42nd Series agreed to host a concert, people started to approach me instead. So now, after one year, things finally materialized - just in time for Tenney's 70th year."

posted by Jerry Bowles 5/08/2005