Month: August 2010

CDs, Contemporary Classical, Events, Experimental Music, File Under?, New Amsterdam, New York

Ted Hearne’s Katrina Ballads

It’s hard to believe that it has been five years since Hurricane Katrina. The CD release of Ted Hearne’s Katrina Ballads on New Amsterdam Records is a grim reminder that New Orleans still remains a devastated city, one that has yet to recover from the storm, doubtless at least in part due to all manner of official incompetence and governmental neglect. Source recordings that chronicle the previous administration’s bungled handling of the disaster serve as a jumping off point for Hearne’s scathingly satirical, yet often affecting, song cycle.

The record’s out on 8/31, but there’s a release party at Le Poisson Rouge to welcome the album on 8/24 at 7:30 PM. In the meantime, we’ve got a teaser video:


Ted Hearne – Barbara Bush 9.5.05 from Satan's Pearl Horses on Vimeo.

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Here’s CBS News’ take on the city’s condition when President Obama visited last year. I’ve also linked some more recent articles from Slate in the comments section below. While Chris Becker’s comments suggest that improvements have been made, it seems like there’s still a lot to do for New Orleans to fully recover. If Hearne’s song cycle can serve as one of many reminders for us to stay the course and continue to rebuild the city, I’m all for it.

CDs, Composers, File Under?, Video, Violin, Women composers

Laurie Anderson talks about “Homeland”

Composer, violinist, and performance/video artist Laurie Anderson has never been one to rest on her laurels. But Homeland, her latest project for Nonesuch takes her farther afield than she’s previously been.

Rather than staying at home to record, Anderson developed the album’s songs over a two year period of touring. And, for the first time, she’s involved her partner Lou Reed in a collaborative recording process (he receives a co-producer credit). The results sound recognizable as songs by Laurie Anderson; but the sonic formula has been tweaked – indeed, refreshed – by the risks taken and departures made during the recording process.

A recurring character is Fenway Bergamot, Anderson’s “male alter-ego,” who graces the album cover and performs on the recording.

Below are a couple of “making of” videos Nonesuch has posted to YouTube.

Contemporary Classical

The First of My Slice of the Proms

The slice of the Proms which I’m getting this summer seems less of full of twentieth and twenty-first century music than usual. Works of Gunther Schuller, Simon Holt, Harrison Birtwistle, Stockhausen, Colin Matthews, Luke Bedford, Brett Dean, Oliver Knussen, (late) Stravinsky, George Benjamin, Stephen Montague, Takamitsu, and Julian Anderson were done before I got here and music by Judith Weir, Bayan Northcott, Brian Ferneyhough, Jonathan Harvey, James MacMillan, Tansy Davies, and Jonathan Dove will be on after I leave. But there’s still plenty happening while I’m around.

On Friday night, August 13, the BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda, on a program with otherwise pretty standard pieces (Verdi Forza de Destino overture, Bruch Concerto, Schumann Fourth Symphony), performed Partita by Dallapiccola. Written in 1930 to 1933, before Dallapiccola started writing 12-tone music, it is larger, both in terms of it’s length (twenty seven minutes) and it’s orchestration (triple winds, alto and tenor saxophone, lots of brass, two harps, piano, organ, lots of percussion, and strings) than one usually thinks about Dallapiccola’s works being. There are four movements, the last being a setting with soprano of a Latin poem, ‘The Lullaby of the Blessed Virgin Mary.’ Although the music certainly gets big and loud at places, particularly in the third movement, much of it has the delicacy, mellifluousness, and transparency
that characterize his better known pieces. In fact, it’s elegant and sonorously seductive music, especially the last movement, in which Sarah Tynan was the rapt soloist.

Two days earlier the concert by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard began each half with choral pieces by Ligeti, sung by the Danish National Concert Choir and the Danish National Vocal Ensemble. The first featured Night and Morning, early pieces setting epigrammatic poems by the Hungarian poet Sándor Weöres describing, in fact, night and morning. These pieces were among the last that Ligeti wrote before he left Hungary for the west in 1956, which means that stylistically they would have been at least marginally acceptable under the constraints of the communist government of the time. The liveliness and skillfulness of the choral writing demonstrated how completely Ligeti had mastered traditional compositional techniques. Lux Aeterna, possibly Ligeti’s most famous work, which was written in 1966 and balanced those pieces on the second half of the concert, demonstrated the lengths to which his imagination and mastery were able to take those same techniques when he got the chance.

The concert concluded with Music of the Spheres by Rued Langgaard, which can possibly best be described as being the damdest piece. Langgaard is, apparently, one of the most important Danish composers of the first part of the twentieth century. Written in 1918, when Langgaard was 25 years old, it consists of about 35 minutes of texture of various density, register, and orchestration without any traditional elements such as harmony, melody, or bass, in one continuous span comprising many shorter sections. It is, in the words of Malcolm MacDonald in the program note “an apocalyptic religious meditation which simultaneously evokes the vastness of space, the wonder of nature and the destructive power of the sun and all its kindred stars,” scored for a soprano soloist (who is hardly noticed in all the traffic), a larger double chorus, and a large orchestra including a ‘glissando piano’, organ, and much percussion. Music of the Spheres could be considered either as being extraordinarily prescient and visionary in predicting certain musical styles of the future (both Ligeti micropolyphony and certain kinds of minimalsim) or as being extraordinarily incompetent, and is probably some combination of both. Still is had some kind of compelling continuity and certain moments were very striking, most memorably so a stretch for a solo wind and four sets of timpiani, which were eventually going full blast and the two times when an second smaller orchestra, hidden in the gallery of the Albert Hall, started playing very different music (or at least very different notes) (that kind of thing works really well in the Albert Hall). It sure was peculiar, and I’m not sure how “good” I think it is, but I didn’t mind hearing it as it was going on, and I wouldn’t be terribly unhappy at the prospect hearing it again sometime in the future if it were to ever cross my path again, although I don’t think I’d ever seek it (or any of Langgaard’s other music, of which, apparently, there are great quantities). The performers played with absolutely blinding conviction and dedication. It was clear that one was never going to hear a stronger or more eloquent advocacy of the piece.

On the first half of Tuesday evening’s concert by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchestra Berlin and Ingo Metmacher Nachstück from Der ferne Klang (1903-1910) by Franz Shrecker and the Violin Concerto of 1937 by Korngold (with Leonidas Kavkos as the soloist) were shown to be pieces of enormous refinement, skill, and beauty, made with great mastery; then on the second half the Mahler Seventh Symphony, that wonderful and thrilling piece of chamber music for 150 players, showed itself to be the primary image and the real thing, an exhilarating and overwhelming masterpiece.

All of these performances are available for listening at the BBC iPlayer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007v097/episodes/player) for seven days after the performance. (Since they get rebroadcast, and those are also available for seven days, they’re actually available for a rather longer time.)

Contemporary Classical

Chamber Musician Today is Open (More or Less) for Your Browsing Pleasure


Fanfare, please.  From the creators of Sequenza21 comes a new web community–Chamber Musician Today.  Something like that anyway.  Go over and register and you’ll find there are lots of neat things you can do there.  You can blog directly on the site whenever you feel like it, you can post concerts and announcements to the Calendar page, you can review a CD, comment, add a profile, even add your existing blog feed to the Autopost and the software will automatically pull in your last 10 posts and all new ones.  The ones that are on target (i.e., have something to do with chamber music) will mysteriously appear at Chamber Musician Today, as well as your own blog, multiplying your readership into the dozens.

The site is pretty easy to use.  Once you register and log in, the green dashboard on the right contains all the links you’ll need.   Remember that whatever user name you choose is what will appear on your posts and comments.

Some of you may recall that I previewed the site several weeks ago under the name Chamber Music Now but our friends at chambermusicnow.org were concerned that it might encroach on them a bit so–because I am an incredibly nice human being–I decided to go with Chamber Musician Today instead although it’s really not as good and cost me another $350 for a new software license but who’s counting?

Consider this a beta opening (which is what web people say when they aren’t sure if all the buttons work right yet).   If you see something that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, please let me know.

Composers

Be Here Now – Kinan Azmeh and Dinuk Wijeratne Down San Francisco Way

“For me it’s very hard to see people who adore Mozart and then don’t appreciate what Keith Jarrett does. You know what I mean? For me music is really just music, and what separates? When you talk about Gershwin and Rhapsody in Blue where do you put that? Is it jazz or is it classical? But it really doesn’t matter this Third Stream or First Stream concept. Who cares if it’s Third Stream or First Stream? It really doesn’t matter as long as you go and enjoy the experience. “

Syrian clarinetist and New York-based composer Kinan Azmeh clearly has a mind of his own. And he’s off and running when we meet for mint tea at San Francisco’s Cafe Zitouna–we’re Nagib’s first guests–on a bright Sunday morning in July. He’s here for a concert of his latest album–his fifth–Complex Stories, Simple Sounds , with his Sri Lankan pianist friend Dinuk Wijeratne, who’s missed his flight from Nova Scotia, scant hours away from their date at The Legion of Honor’s Florence Gould Theatre. But Azmeh, who speaks rapidly in his distinctive mellifluous voice, is ready for anything, suggesting with a warm laugh, that he has enough pieces should he have to go it alone. But then he’s used to playing in different contexts and configurations. He’s in the Syrian jazz group Hewar (Dialogue); a chamber group in his hometown, Damascus; the Gilgamesh Project with Kevork Mourad’s done on the spot paintings; the NYC-based City Band, which is giving an NYC concert 1 September 1, and Neolexica, which he co-founded with Wijeratne when they were students at Juilliard. He has also played with many orchestras, including Daniel Barenboim’s Arab-Israeli West -Eastern Divan Orchestra, debuted a clarinet concerto written for him by his friend Zaid Jabri, with the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra, at the opening of the Damascus Opera House. Azmeh also writes film scores, like his incredibly moving one for Rigodon, and he plays the clarinet solos in his Boston-based friend Kareem Roustom’s score for Israeli Julia Bacha’s new set in the West Bank doc Budrus.

But is Azmeh’s openness to these varied musical experiences a generational thing? “You know I think what it is is–I’m talking about myself- is growing up in different places. But geography moves around you because San Francisco and New York are very open to lots of different cultures anyway, and I don’t think that one can be fascinated by one kind of music without appreciating other stuff. ”

And then we get into the subject of improvisation, which Azmeh’s very vocal about, though he approaches it somewhat circuitously. (more…)

Boston, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals

One Sunday at Tanglewood

After all this music, maybe a hike?

Three Concerts in One Day! Twelve pieces, including two one-act operas: 6 1/2 hours of music.

Here’s what we heard:

10 AM

Fantasia for String Trio …Irving Fine

Ten Miniatures for Solo Piano … Helen Grime

Circles … Luciano Berio

Piece pour piano et quatuor de cordes … Oliver Messiaen

Since Brass, nor Stone … Alexander Goehr

Design School … Michael Gandolfi

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2:30 PM (BSO in the Shed)

An American in Paris … George Gershwin

Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee … Gunther Schuller

Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs … Leonard Bernstein

Piano Concerto in F … George Gershwin

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8 PM Two one-act operas

Full Moon in March … John Harbison

Where the Wild Things Are … Oliver Knussen

Christian’s Top Three

Knussen – a momentous experience to hear this live!

Fine – Beautiful performance. Makes me want to know his work better.

Schuller – His best piece: hands down.

Kay’s Top Three

Knussen – I loved how he evoked the different locations & moods — and the barbershop quartet near the end!

Gershwin – An American in Paris – It transports me to Paris every time I hear it. It was stunning to hear it played so beautifully by the BSO (in terrific seats!)

Messiaen – Unexpected sound qualities from the instruments – hearing a piano quintet played in such an exciting, colorful, and fresh way.

We both also enjoyed Helen Grime’s music a great deal. She’s a special talent – keep an eye out for her!

Tomorrow – Elliott Carter premiere!

Boston, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, File Under?

Knussen Marches to his own Drum at Tanglewood


Knussen conducts Maderna. Photo credit: Hilary Scott

The 2010 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood has moved away from its recent model of having a solo curator conceive the festival. Instead, the curatorial duties are shared by three of its longtime faculty members: Gunther Schuller, Oliver Knussen, and John Harbison. The focus this year is on Tanglewood’s past and present faculty composers. Far from feeling like ‘old home week,’ the programming has demonstrated a wide range of stylistic diversity among those who’ve taught at Tanglewood. In addition, one can observe how each successive generation of Tanglewood students has benefited from their instruction here and, in several cases, returned to mentor the Festival’s next generation of up and coming composition fellows.

Thursday August 12’s concert felt the curatorial presence of Gunther Schuller looming large, although the composer himself wasn’t present (apparently, he has a conflicting commitment at the Edinburgh Festival). One could hear why he might be attracted to George Perle’s Concertino for piano, winds, and timpani (1979). Though Perle isn’t generally known for jazziness in his music, the Concertino mixes some lushly voiced verticals – recalling Gershwin or, indeed Schuller in Third Stream mode – amidst the otherwise prevailingly neoclassical ambience. William McNally played the solo piano part with dextrous execution. Both he and the ensemble, led by Cristian Macelaru, provided a well prepared account of the Concertino, sensitively shading its complex harmonic palette.

Theodore Antoniou’s Concertino for Contrabass and Orchestra (2000) was a virtuoso showcase for soloist Edwin Barker. Rhythmically propulsive and harmonically eclectic, it demonstrated a host of playing techniques for the instrument. Barker rose to every challenge, suggesting that the bass fiddle is not just some lumbering beast to be kept confined to anchoring the orchestra’s low end. Rather, in Barker’s hands, it proved nimble, wide-ranging, and capable of thrilling effects: one especially noticed the brilliant glissandi harmonics.

Schuller’s Tre Invenzioni (1972) an angular piece for five spatially dispersed chamber groups, was conducted by Oliver Knussen, who artfully shaped its often punctilious, angular surface. One didn’t envy the students for having to tackle some of the exposed and punishing altissimo lines Schuller put in their paths. But it was an impressive rendering of this unforgiving and formidable piece.

Written in 1922, it’s somewhat curious to find Paul Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 2, an incisive but conservatively neoclassical work, on a festival devoted to contemporary music. But Hindemith did indeed serve on Tanglewood’s compositional faculty back in 1940-41. That connection alone might not suffice for some, who might wonder why they couldn’t program one of his more daring works. But the piece was well worth hearing if only to enjoy pianist Nolan Pearson, who played with dazzling virtuosity and impressive, almost Mozartean, elegance, as well as the fine support he received from an ensemble conducted by the youthful up and comer Alexander Prior.

The highlight of the evening was a thrilling performance of Bruno Maderna’s Il Giardino religioso (1972), led by Oliver Knussen. Dedicated to longtime Tanglewood patron Paul Fromm (the title’s religioso is a pun on the meaning of Fromm: “devout”), this chamber orchestra piece contains quasi-aleatoric complexity and bold theatricality.

Things began with a bit of a snag. In the midst of the work’s hushed introduction for antiphonally seated solo strings, an audience member took a cell phone call, interrupting the proceedings. Sans histrionics, Knussen stopped the performance, tramped offstage, and returned after a moment. “Let’s try again,” he said.

One was certainly glad that he did, as the delicate balance of the resumed opening brought the now raptly attentive audience into a fascinating labyrinth of sounds. Knussen got to do double duty as a performer, first playing chimes, then drums, and finally celesta. The piece builds to a ferocious climax which is punctuated by two large cymbals being flung to the ground. In a gradual denouement, it returns to gently haunting antiphony. Incantatory music, magically rendered. Makes me want to hear much more Maderna!

The festival continues through Monday, August 16th. Stay tuned for more dispaches from Lenox.

Composers, Contemporary Classical, Hilary Hahn, Interviews

When Hilary met Mark

Hilary Hahn, the only combination stellar violinist/S21 roving reporter on the block, checks in with an up-close sit-down with composer Mark Adamo, on what being a composer means to him, latest projects, etc:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLnHTz-henc[/youtube]

Follow the rest here, just scroll down the list on the right.

Hilary will be back in September chatting up Nico Muhly, so stay tuned!

Chamber Music, Concert review, Contemporary Classical, Criticism, Post Modern, Review, Twentieth Century Composer

Bright Sheng and Anthony Newman premieres at La Jolla Summerfest

Older readers may recall with fondness Edgar Bergen, a very popular American entertainer who poured his comic routines through ventriloquist dummies named Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Edgar so loved the performing arts, that he created an annual celebration to showcase classical music, dance, opera, and theater, which continues and thrives to this very day: the Bergen Festival.

Okay, that’s not really what the Bergen Festival is, but after hearing a modern composer with a strong Chinese musical identity—Bright Sheng—prop up Scandinavian folk tunes on his knee, and manipulate them to entertain the public, the spirit of Charlie McCarthy—a bourgeois puppet in top hat and tails, monocle in place, spouting low vaudeville patois—was in the air…

More about the American premiere of Bright Sheng’s Northern Lights and the world premiere of Anthony Newman’s Sonata Populare here.

I am very interested in reading your views on stylistic appropriation. I recently encountered a thoughtful forum thread examining how reworking musical motifs can spark heated debates — see details near the end of that discussion — and it made me wonder: does it only creep out older dudes like me, or is it an affront to all contemporary composers? Why or why not?

Contemporary Classical

New Rouse string quartet at Summerfest; plus Lyon and Lang from the vaults

BOO! Don't be scared, it's just Christopher Rouse.

I’m looking forward to the West Coast premiere of Christopher Rouse’s String Quartet no. 3 by the amazing Calder Quartet. The enthusiastic gentlemen in the Calder Quartet have worked closely with Rouse, having recorded his first 2 quartets and his chamber ensemble work, Compline on this terrific CD.

I know there’s been Rouse-bashing by some visitors here in the past, but I admire some of his music, especially when he’s writing in his Sturm und Drang mode (as he did in the 1st Quartet and the middle movement of the 2nd). The 3rd Quartet promises to be his ultimate ultraviolent work. Here’s a quote from his program notes on the new work:

My overall description of the piece would be something akin to a schizophrenic having a grand mal seizure. This, at least, was the image to which I continually referred as I composed the music. The twenty-minute score is dedicated to the Calder Quartet and, after a slow introduction, follows a standard fast-slow-fast ordering of sections played without pause. The music is staggeringly difficult to play, and I believe this to be my most challenging and uncompromising work to date.

Those of you familiar with the fast movement from Rouse’s 2nd String Quartet have some idea of what he’s talking about when he describes “challenging and uncompromising” music.

Here’s a dirty laundry review of a Summerfest concert from the last time they programmed Rouse in San Diego, along with links to the very performance by red fish blue fish which I reviewed.

Also: More Eric Lyon! That’s what my blog visitors seem to want. So here’s a review of his work Typhoid, the black sheep at a modernist music festival back in 1993 (and the only piece with which I had a clear audio memory today from that festival 17 years ago).  And from a SONOR concert in the early ’90s, a review of Eric Lyon’s Splatter and David Lang’s Dance/Drop.