Classical Music

Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

Serenading the Glorious Leader

The New York Philharmonic is thinking of visiting North Korea next year and that has caused a great deal of tut-tutting from the nuke ’em, don’t serenade ’em crowd.  The conservative position was captured rather nicely by Terry Teachout in a piece called Serenading a Tyrant  in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday:

“Why … is the New York Philharmonic giving serious consideration to playing in Pyongyang, the capital of what may be the world’s most viciously repressive dictatorship?” he wrote. “Attendance at the Philharmonic’s concerts will be carefully controlled. And of course any concert in Pyongyang can’t possibly reach the North Korean people, because only the elite, for the most part, are allowed into Pyongyang.”

Here’s my thought.  If a goodwill visit by an American orchestra opens the door for even a single sliver of sunlight to shine on one of the planet’s darkest lands, it will be worth it…even if it means letting the world’s most obnoxious dictator claim a propaganda victory.  Music has survived a lot worse.

What do you think?  Or, if you don’t want to think, go over to the New Yorker and read Alex’s brilliant piece on Philip Glass. (Somehow that didn’t come out right.)

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Opera, San Francisco

APPOMATTOX: The War Within

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Human behavior’s funny. The more we try to change the more we don’t seem able to. Are we cursed to repeat the same mistakes in our private lives — with lovers, friends — as well as in our public ones? Are we genetically condemned to disjunction, discord, and war, like Sisyphus trying to keep that enormous rock from crushing him each day? Philip Glass’ SF Opera commission, APPOMATTOX, which world premiered 5 October, and which I caught 16 October, seems to accept these things as givens. Its ostensible subject is Robert E. Lee’s surrender to U.S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on 9 April 1865, and its subsequent impact. But its central question seems to be how can we change history if we can’t even change ourselves?   

These are weighty questions, and Glass’ music addresses them with seriousness and point. The opening figure for double basses and wind mixtures is immediately affecting. Then Julia Dent Grant (soprano Rhoslyn Jones) emerges from a backlit alcove in Riccardo Hernandez’s umbrous metal set, her posture contained, “The spring campaign ___  In four short years I have grown to dread those words … ”  She joins four other women — Mary Custis Lee (soprano Elza van den Heever), her daughter Julia Agnes (soprano Ji Young Yang), Mary Todd Lincoln (soprano Heidi Melton), and her black seamstress Elizabeth Keckley (mezzo Kendall Gladen) — in an almost Baroque lament on the sorrows of war — ” never before has so much blood been drained … Let this be the last time.. ” The women who stand behind their men and keep it all together are, of course, the unsung heroines of any war, and Glass’ immediate focus on them, signals this piece’s unwavering depth.

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by Michael McDonagh
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Critics

The Norman Conquests

Norman Lebrecht is an entertaining writer who has never let the facts get in the way of a good story.  Come to think of it, he may have been the world’s first blogger–he adopted the sloppy research habit before blogs were even invented.  For years, he’s been planting verbal IEDs along the classical music highway, wiping out entire convoys of evildoers and occasionally fragging some innocent bystanders in the process.  So, it is with some smugness that one is able to report this morning, or the New York Times is able to report, that Stormin’ Norman has had a bit of a comeuppance.  The Brtisih publisher of his latest missle–Maestros, Masterpieces & Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record Industry–has agreed to recall and destroy the book and apologize to Naxos Records Founder Klaus Heymann. 

Heymann had filed suit against Lebrecht for “accusing him of serious business malpractices” and for at least 15 errors of fact.  Penguin agreed to settle rather than go to court. 

For a much more reliable portrait of Heymann and his role as an internet music pioneer, see Alex Ross in this week’s New Yorker.

by Jerry Bowles
Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

El paseo de Buster Keaton

Did you ever wonder why doctors think it’s a good idea for a bunch of sick people to wait together for their exams in a small, overheated, unventilated room?  Or why drugstores invariably put the cough medications in the aisle where people are waiting to pick up their prescriptions?  No?  Well, I do.  Think of these things, I mean.

But, I  digress and I’m late checking in today.   Here’s a new rule for those of you with frontpage posting ability.  If you don’t see something from me by noon Eastern, feel free to jump in there and mix and stir.  If you don’t have frontpage posting rights, let me know and I’ll sign you up.

Okay, here’s some exciting news.  Marvin Rosen is going to be airing another piece from last year’s Sequenza21 concert on his Classical Discoveries program.  On Wednesday, Marvin will be playing David Toub’s Objects in observance of WPRB’s first membership fund drive which is this entire week.  That, I guess, makes David the Andrea Bocelli of WPRB.

Marvin is scheduled to be airing Objects during the latter part of the 7:00 o’clock hour but the time may be slightly changed if the begging gets too exciting.

And if you happen to be near Indiana University on Thursday or Friday night this week don’t miss  the collegiate premiere performance in concert of the chamber opera Ainadamar or Fountain of Tears by Osvaldo Golijov.  Our amiga Carmen Helena Téllez, director of the IU Jacobs School’s Latin American Music Center (LAMC), and of the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, will conduct the production which will take place on Oct. 11 at 8 p.m. in Auer Hall, with a repeat performance on Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. The performances are free and open to the public. 

by Jerry Bowles
CDs, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

Woke Up. It Was a Chelsea Morning.

The Metropolis Ensemble is getting set to record the complete collection of chamber orchestra concerti of Avner Dorman with producer David Frost but you don’t have to wait to hear it; the best little orchestra in New York will be performing the same repertoire live and in color next Thursday night, October 11, at  the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center for the Arts (172 Norfolk St, between Houston and Delancey), commencing at 8 pm.  On tap are the American premieres of Dorman’s Concerto in A and Concerto Grosso, the New York premiere of Piccolo Concerto, and an encore performance of Mandolin Concerto. Soloists Mindy Kaufman of the New York Philharmonic, Avi Avital, and Eliran Avni will join the Metropolis Ensemble led by conductor Andrew Cyr.  If you haven’t heard the Metropolis in action you’ve missed something pretty special.  These cats seriously cook.  (Just showing my age for a moment.)

Meanwhile, Miller Theater opens its new Composer Portraits series tonight with a program devoted to the music of Esa-Pekka Salonen.  Performers include Darrett Adkins, cello; Tony Arnold, soprano; the wonderful Imani Winds; Blair McMillen, piano and artistic director and Jeffrey Milarsky, conductor.  Unlike dilettantes like, say Michael Tilson-Thomas, Salonen is a serious composer and I want very much to love Salonen’s music someday.  I’m not there yet which is probably my failing rather than his.

Speaking of liking something, Tina Turner’s cover of Edith and the Kingpin on Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters is nothing short of revelatory.

UPDATE:  This just in.  Frank J. Oteri writes:

Thanks to fellow Sequenza21 blogger Elodie Lauten, the 2005 Lithuanian premiere of my Fluxus-inspired performance oratorio MACHUNAS, created in collaboration with Lucio Pozzi, will be projected on a wide screen at the Hamilton Fish Branch of the New York Public Library, tomorrow – Saturday, October 6, 2007 – at 2 PM. Admission is FREE.
by Jerry Bowles