Jan 30 2009
I wasn't kidding about sports in this town.
Here is the Pittsburgh Symphony cheering the Pittsburgh Steelers on yesterday during a rehearsal at Heinz Hall.
Can you imagine the Vienna Philharmonic or New York Philharmonic doing this?
But this is part of what makes Pittsburgh special -- support across traditional lines (and it happens both ways, to a certain degree). You won't understand it unless you have been here.
Go Steelers!
Jan 29 2009
Our talented energy and tech reporter, Elwin Green, is also a classical music fan. He was already going to the PSO Tribute concert earlier this week and I asked him to type up a brief review. Nicely done, Elwin!:
Last night, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra presented its third annual "Tribute" concert honoring African-American culture. As I did last year, I went with my wife and our two godsons.
The first half of the program featured two pieces that were new to me: the "Danse Negre" from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's "African Suite," and James P. Johnson's "Yamekraw." They were both performed well enough to raise the question of why these pieces do not appear regularly in orchestral concerts. They are at least as charming and accessible as the overtures and other short pieces that typically precede a full-length symphony in performance.
"Yamekraw" was inspired by George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," and featured the Marcus Roberts Trio, who returned in the second half to perform "Rhapsody." Conductor Daniel Meyer told us to prepare to hear it "as you've never heard it before." That was an understatement. This performance replaced the written piano solos used in every other performance I'd ever heard with long improvisations in which Roberts, backed by his bassist and drummer, turned the themes upside down and inside out, attacking the piano, caressing it, shifting at a moment's notice from thundering chords to ivory-tickling of sheer gossamer. I won't even talk about what he did rhythmically. Let's just say that he put the jazz back into the "Rhapsody," and it was revelatory. I found myself thinking, "This is what it must have been like for the audience at the first performance," when George Gershwin improvised the piano solos, and neither the audience nor the Paul Whiteman orchestra knew what was going to come next. I don't know how that first audience responded; last night, one gent called out, "Play it!" I restrained myself until the end, when I immediately lept to my feet to yell, "Woohoo!"
The program ended with a fine reading of Stravinsky's "Firebird." But honestly, after that "Rhapsody," it was like a fine dessert coming too soon after a huge meal. I was satiated.
Jan 27 2009
A shout out to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's favorite Pittsburgh Steeler, Max Starks. Here is is laying a mean block for quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.
Why Starks? After all, more than a few Steelers have sat in Heinz Hall before, including current defensive standout Troy Polamalu, but Max Starks loves classical music so much he joined the PSO's board. He is active, too, when he can and has even appeared on stage to help promote the orchestra. Yes: mean on the field, class(ical)y off, that's Starks.
Here's hoping he and the rest of the offensive line are in harmony themselves as they pound the Arizona Cardinals and win a sixth Superbowl!
Jan 26 2009
The rumor was that someone at Carnegie Mellon University had done a Pittsburgh Steelers opera. Turns out, not quite, but a CMU associate professor of voice will do a prep rally of sorts when Douglas Ahlstedt gets his students together to sing new words to the the "Toreador" chorus of Bizet's "Carmen" in the CMU Fine Arts building at noon.
To those reading this post from outside Steelers country, you will just have to realize that things are different in Pittsburgh about football. There's no divide, posed or real, in this city between the jocks and artists. We are all (or nearly all) Steelers fans. It sounds wierd, but it's actually not.
Here's Ahlstedt's lyrics:
"Hail Big Ben, Heinz Ward, James Farrier, Troy Polamalu and Casey Hampton;
Cardinals will stumble, then they will fumble, facing the awesome power of our Terrible Towel!
Jeff Reed's kicks, Fast Willy's running tricks - the Steelers' perfect mix will lead to victory.
Offense or Defense, we make no pretense, Pittsburgh Steelers now will win their sixth Super Bowl!
We're off to Tampa with our song of old, Pittsburgh Steelers, the Black and Gold.
Hail to our coaches Tomlin and LeBeau, bringing tides of woe ---- to Arizona, we'll have a Steeler victory!"
Jan 26 2009
UPDATE:
Read our review of the real world premiere of Williams' work (that happened Friday at Heinz Hall, of all places):
It's hard to imagine that John Williams' inaugural piece is still in the news! But The New York Times reported today that cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the others faked their playing of the piece because it was too cold. The quartet recorded it earlier and then played along as it was blasted through the speakers.
It seems that what was picked up by the TV microphones (set close to the musicians) actually was their playing, although I am still not clear about that. But this does explain why it was hard to hear the piano -- Gabriella Montero wasn't playing with much force.
So, now surely some pundits will want the musicians to play it again, just like President Obama did with the oath. But let's be perfectly clear here, this meant and means nothing! It was a good idea to pre-record, considering the frigid conditions. No need to stress violinist Itzhak Perlman and Ma's expensive instruments, tightening them extra hard to keep them in tune (the piano would also had trouble staying in tune; only perhaps Anthony McGill's clarinet might have made it through the conditions, seeing as how marching bands perform all the time in freezing temps), or the musicians (staying in tune would have been the focus). Classical music may be old (although not this piece, obviously), but we have technology now, so it's OK to use it when it can be helpful in certain situations!
The best quote in the Times article comes from, who else, the incomparable Ma:
“What we were there for,” he said, “was to really serve the moment.”
That they did, even if I don't love the piece. Now, can we let this all go and get back to real classical music!?
Original post:
OK, I guess I will be seen as a jerk for saying this, but I just didn't like John Williams' inauguration piece, "Air and Simple Gifts," yesterday. It's great that a living American classical composer was chosen for such an important moment and it's wonderful that we could celebrate excellence in classical music through the quartet of great musicians, led by the incomparable American cellist Yo-Yo Ma (after Obama creates a Cultural Czar (!), let's just name Ma to it!). And, yes, the piece started off with some exquisite music in its introduction.
But I just felt that after that Williams wrote ostentatious variations to a theme that is meant to be, well, simple. I am sorry to say that, yes, Copland got it (in his music to the ballet "Appalachian Spring" of the '40s) and Williams did not. His became a shower of notes that lost the thrust of the message of the tune. I realize Williams is probably the most famous American "classical" composer and the safe choice due to his output, but I think others would have been better choices. No big deal, but I just had to get it off my chest. We'll have a second chance to hear it when the Pittsburgh Symphony performs the piece this weekend at Heinz Hall.
Jan 21 2009
The problem is based on the double whammy economic hit of losing endowment $ in the stock market tumble and the fact that the rotten economy has kept people from going out to concerts. I wonder, too, how much the Met’s general manager Peter Gelb's extraordinary commitment to creating HD opera broadcasts in movie theaters around the country has hurt the company since that surely took some money from the coffers to get started.
Hopefully these strong reactions will help to stem the tide and ensure that we have these great institutions for the future in the nation's cultural capital: "When you go to the hospital for an operation when you’re fit, you recover faster,” Gelb told the Times.
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is heading back to New York City’s Carnegie Hall next season for the first time in more than three years.
The concert on Feb. 9, 2010 will be the first appearance there for music director Manfred Honeck with the PSO, but both will be somewhat in the shadow of star violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who will solo in Brahms’ Violin Concerto. Also on the program is Mahler’s First Symphony, "Titan."
Carnegie Hall also announced it has cut next season’s schedule by 10 percent from this year(180 versus 200 concerts), citing the dire economic situation. It has trimmed its current budget by $4 million.
In presenting the PSO as a "Carnegie Hall Classic," the famed mid-town hall made clear the orchestra would not be one of the casualties of its cuts.
These are on the heels of the Metropolitan Opera's announcement last week that its staff and unions would be asked to take a 10 percent pay cut, that at least four expensive productions have been canceled, and -- yes -- that its principal singers have been asked to take a reduction in fees (all according to the New York Times).
Jan 21 2009
CMU composer Leonardo Balada has yet another big Spanish premiere.
This one takes place at the prestigious Teatro Real of Madrid, Feb. 13 to 23: his new opera "Faust-bal." Commissioned by the company and setting a libretto by surrealist Spanish-French author Fernando Arrabal, "Faust-bal" gives the classic Faust tale a gender bender.
"Faust is now Faust-bal, a beautiful woman of superior intellectual qualities and the only visible example of human goodness in a world dominated by violence," says a Teatro Real presser. "Margarita is now Margarito, ferocious commander of the armies who, supported by the choruses of warriors and ministers, is obsessed with possessing Faust-bal in an uncontrollable and aggressive way."
Mephistopheles is still up to his usual bad intentions. Also of note, Balada is not using "ethnic" music in this, which is usually the case in his music and certainly has characterized his recent operas "Christopher Columbus," "Death of Columbus," "Zapara" and "Hangman, Hangman!
Jesus Lopez Cobos will conduct the Teatro Real Chorus and Orchestra and the production is directed by Joan Font. Good luck to Balada!
Jan 19 2009
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra will play the first performance of composer John Williams’ "Air and Simple Gifts" following its premiere at tomorrow’s Presidential inauguration. Pianist Gabriela Montero, who performs it in Washington, D.C., with violinist Itzhak Perlman, cellist Yo Yo Ma and clarinetist Anthony McGill, will perform it this weekend (Jan. 23 and 25) at Heinz Hall with PSO concertmaster Andres Cardenes, Associate Principal Cello David Premo, and Principal Clarinet Michael Rusinek.
She also will solo in Gershwin’s "Rhapsody in Blue." The rest of the program is Barber’s Symphony No. 1 and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5, "Reformation."
Jan 15 2009
Believe it or not, I don't spend all of my time listening to music. Sometimes, I watch TV shows about it!
Have you seen the hilarious "Flight of the Conchords"? It is the best music spoof since "This is Spinal Tap."
The HBO show, which debuted in 2006, is an expansion of the New Zealand semi-fake comedy-and-guitar duo of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, which bills itself as "Formerly New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo." In the HBO show, they play fictionalized versions of the duo that has moved to New York City's Lower East Side to try to make it big. But the struggling artists are not the brightest bulbs on the tree and get into funny scrape after funny scrape.
Did I say it is very funny? The humor is deliciously dry and wonderfully self-deprecating (especially when talking about their native country. In the show, the New Zealand consulate is on the third floor of a shabby New York building, below an Asian massage parlor, and the band is always dealing with being from the "Lord of the Rings" country), yet the Kiwis are also lovable, especially Rhys Darby (who is now in the film, "Yes Man"), who I think actually steals the show from the boys most of the time as the tediously ineffectual manager Murray Hewitt. Kristen Schaal is pretty hilarious as Meg - the slightly psychotic only fan of the band.
But the best parts of the show are when the Conchords occasional break out into song. That's because they play with the two ways in which music can exist in film or TV. One is music that occurs within the world of the characters, such as a pianist in a bar (film theorists call this diagetic), and the other is music that only the viewer hears, such as background music or theme music (non-diagetic).
When the duo write a song to play at a gig, it is pretty awful. There's good reason their best gigs are at and an aquarium.
But when they break out of the context and sing to the viewer (non-diagetically), the songs are often brilliant musically and lyrically. They play off popular genres cleverly -- just the opposite of the pedestrian stuff the "real" wannabe poet-rockers could ever come up with. These songs take the form of music videos, but the precedent is more the time-stopping opera aria or Broadway musical song -- musical spaces for the character's inner feelings. One of the best from the first season comes when the two put on primitive cardboard boxes that Murray made for them to shoot a video for their song about robots taking over the future. It looks so pathetic, so amateurish, but then we all of a sudden get a version of what the space-cadet duo imagines the video will look like. The result is a polished and cool video of their song, "The Humans are Dead," that is completely hilarious and pretty catchy.
The first season of "Flight of the Conchords" has been released on DVD, and the 10-episode second season starts on HBO Jan. 18 at 10p/9c with the band still dealing with the defection and super-success of its short lived drummer, who writes the most crowd pleasing music possible. They fire Murray as their manager (prompting an operatic aria by Darby) and things get worse. Future episodes involve Jermaine becoming a gigolo to help pay the bills (the best line is when he calls a former girlfriend and says that since he is now a prostitute, could she pay him for the sex they had years ago) and Bret (aka Rhymenocerous) forming his own gang after dissing other rappers in a unbelievably lame rap ("Eminem is not very good," "Snoop Dog is not very good"), including great send-ups of tragic gangsta rap with "I've Got Hurt Feelings" and of "West Side Story." It's so funny and so well-done on so many levels, I hope you give it a try.
Jan 14 2009
OK, we know that news like this can get overblown when picked up by people not in the original situation, but I must pass on that, apparently, violinist Itzhak Perlman decided to chastise the audience at a recital in West Palm Beach because it didn't clap heartily enough for his performance of Messiaen's Theme and Variations.
“I’m telling you, it’s a terrific piece,” he said, as reported by the South Florida Classical Review. He then repeated the work:
"But first he had to gently upbraid the audience for its initial lukewarm response to the relatively brief work, which ends with a long diminuendo that expires at the bottom of the violin and piano registers. “Tell me something: Was it really that bad that half of you didn’t want to clap?” Perlman said, then advised them on good concert manners, which involves applause even after you hear something you don’t like." reports the Web site.
Ouch. This is in poor taste, no doubt done in part because he felt he was in the boondocks, which I can tell you is not true having covered a few concerts down there. Heck, I hear clapping at the "wrong" time in Carnegie Hall all the time. And in any case, etiquette issues like this are not rules, but preferences, and out-of-date ones, at that!
I am sure that Perlman in part meant to advocate the piece, but if people don't like Messiaen, they don't like it. If you pay for a concert, your clapping is one of the few things you can do to express your opinion, especially now that booing and whistling is really frowned upon these days. I mean, an audience member would get ripped for booing or even walking out of a performance, so let's not deny them the right to not clap loudly!!!
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