Feb 26 2009
Two distinguished violinists will kick-off the audition process for the next concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in the coming weeks. Ellen DePasquale will serve as guest concertmaster in concerts this weekend. She was the associate concertmaster of The Cleveland Orchestra and now teaches in Philadelphia. Jeff Thayer, concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony and a native of Williamsport, sits in with the PSO for concerts next weekend. Current PSO concertmaster Andres Cardenes recently announced he will leave the post at the end of next season.
This is going to be fascinating to see how the PSO reacts on a week-to-week basis with new faces in the top spot. Thankfully, Cardenes and others have done bowings for most of the major works. But it will be a fluid time, to say the least. Stay tuned!
Feb 23 2009
Look, I am as happy as anyone when classical music gets in the news or makes headway in a new medium, but the coverage of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra is veering out of control. Yes, an orchestra has come together based on video auditions submitted from around the world. That is new and neat. Yes, it is great to see how much reaction there was in terms of auditions. Classical music is again shown to be more pervasive than we are always told. But the orchestra hasn't done anything yet! Let's get some substance first. Even considering the novel aspect, the big names of MTT and Tan Dun, the potential based on technological and the international scope, it is still folly to over-hype it before it even gets started! It could be a great thing, but as of now we should let it show something.
That being said, let me mention that we had a local musician who made the finals: David McMasters, a Duquesne University flute major from
Monroeville. But he was not picked for the orchstra:
YouTube Symphony Orchestra picked
NEW YORK (AP) — The auditions are over. The first YouTube Symphony Orchestra — selected by viewers of the Web site — will consist of more than 90 musicians from some 30 countries.
More than 3,000 videos were submitted by amateur and professional musicians from 70-plus countries. Musicians from professional orchestras including the London and San Francisco symphonies and the Berlin, Hong Kong and New York philharmonic orchestras picked 200 finalists. The winners were then selected by voters on YouTube.
“We are excited about the talent, variety and adventurousness of the musicians who are coming together from around the world to form the YouTube Symphony Orchestra,” conductor Michael Tilson Thomas said Monday. “I am looking forward to our exploration of the incredible range of classical music’s 1,200-year-old tradition which we will present in a unique way to our audience.”
The orchestra will have 26 different instruments. The selected musicians, ranging from ages 17 to 55, will participate in three days of master classes and rehearsals next month, culminating in an April 15 concert at Carnegie Hall conducted by Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony’s music director.
They will perform composer Tan Dun’s “Internet Symphony No. 1, Eroica,” a piece specially arranged for the occasion. A mashup will be posted on YouTube.com on April 16.
Among those selected: Calvin Lee, a 37-year-old surgeon in Modesto, Calif.
“The strings on my violin were 15 years old when I first learned of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra and that’s when I realized it was time to get my violin out of the closet,” Lee said. “Since then I’ve been practicing, playing and thoroughly enjoying meeting other passionate musicians from across the globe through the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.”
Besides California, the U.S. winners are from Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington state.
The international winners are from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, Columbia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine.
Feb 19 2009
I wanted to post this earlier, but accidently published the raw press release. I finally got time to go back to it, with an extra tag:
January 17 pianist and Allderdice grad Christopher O'Riley helped the Spokane Symphony in one of those last-minute substitutions for which classical music is infamous. The originally scheduled pianist, Gabriela Montero got the call to Washington to "perform" (as we now know) at the Presidential Inauguration. That was all fine and good, and the orchestra hired pianist Orli Shaham to replace her. But, as luck would have it, Shaham got the flu and had to cancel a few days prior to the concert.
That's where O'Riley came in.
He had about a week's notice, more than some artists get in these situations, but -- really -- not much time to learn Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 even if you have performed it before. The Spokesman-Review in Seattle wrote positively about his performance, including:
Some of O'Riley's most
impressive moments came in the solo cadenza to the first movement, with
its harmonic adventurousness. Also striking were the tender dialoge
passages between soloist and orchestra near the close of the Adagio.
O'Riley and the orchestra seemed to have great fun with gypsy-tinged
high spirits of the finale. So did their audience.
Impressive stuff.
The extra bit I was referring to about O'Riley's bigger gig these days than soloing: his hosting of the National Public Radio and PBS program "From the Top." WGBH Boston
Video just announced it will release the second season of "From the Top" on DVD March 17.
Feb 11 2009
The Pittsburgh Symphony will join more than 160 orchestras across America in a food drive to correspond with the release of the upcoming film "The Soloist." The League of American Orchestras and Feeding America are collaborating on Orchestras Feeding America in March. The PSO's joint venture with the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank will take place at Heinz Hall on March 27 and 29, with details to follow on what you can bring.
"The Soloist" stars Jamie Foxx as the real-life story of Nathanial Ayers, a Juilliard-trained string player whose mental illness landed him among the homeless in Los Angeles until journalist Steve Lopez (played by Robert Downey Jr) strikes up a friendship with him. It is directed by Joe Wright, will be released April 24 by Paramount Pictures. It could be another hokey music-as-redemption movie, but I am hoping it does a good job of humanizing the homeless, getting to the core of why some people end up on the street and how we can understand and help them.
Feb 09 2009
I love my night editing crew. They have saved me from numerous errors over the years and often let me push deadline when I am stuck. But they clearly still had football on the mind (it was less than a week after the Superbowl, after all) when they wrote the headline for my review of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concert last Friday: Cardenes drops ball with Lalo; PSO great with Beethoven's 8th.
I had actually worked very hard to find the right tone in my review to get across both the shock of Cardenes stopping midway through the last movement of Lalo's "Symphonie Espagnole" and the fact that that really wasn't the end of the world.
On the one hand, I have gone to countless concerts over my life and never seen a concert stopped except for when a string broke, so it was a highly unusual happening that deserved major attention. But on the other hand, when you are someone like Cardenes, and you perform soooo many concerts over your career, something bad is bound to happen eventually. So I tried to walk the line between those two extremes and not kick Cardenes while he was down. The headline kind of wrecked that, but it is our editors' job to grab attention with a headline, and that certainly did! (It is hard to sum up a bunch of words in only a few, esp. with limitations on space and content).
Just for the record. I had to go to another concert Saturday (well, I really was looking forward to it, and my review of the excellent Biava Quartet and area native Mary Persin is here). But the word is that Cardenes had no trouble with the Lalo on Saturday and Sunday, so it really was a case of just one bad night. Here's to getting things back to normal!
Feb 08 2009
You might be tempted to call the Biava Quartet a young ensemble, what with the members all still in their 20s.
But the quartet that includes Greensburg native Mary Persin on viola formed in 1998, and the four have had nearly as much time together as quartets with much older members.
Indeed, the Biava Quartet's Pittsburgh debut, presented by the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society, revealed a veteran sound - ensemble you expect from a group who has extensive experience together - combined with youthful energy. But Saturday night at the New Hazlett Theater, it was not youth or experience that defined the group, but great playing.
The concert opened with a reading of Shostakovich's Eighth Quartet that left my jaw on the floor. So many groups exaggerate the harrowing features of this work that allegedly chronicles at the oppression and fear of life in Stalin's Russia. But Biava played it in such a musical way, letting the score do that work for them. No drawn out dissonances or manipulated phrasing here, but a flowing performance that used a steady tempo and connected the themes with a catlike agility. The ensemble was helped by the fact that the group stands for performances. With the exception of the cellist Jason Calloway, who was on a short platform and often looked down at his music, eyes were locked on each other throughout. But this did not preclude strong individual playing. This is not a group striving for equality in tone, but of quality of play. Persin plays the viola with the aggressiveness of a violin, while Calloway has a very round tone. Violinists Austin Hartman and Hyunsu Ko standout from each other, but it is a strength because one hears the separate lines clearly, even as they brilliantly coalesce.
David Stock jokingly commented in a pre-concert Q&A that he had been "sandbagged" by the quartet for placing the premiere of his new quartet directly after the eminent Shostakovich opus. But actually, the proximity did Stock's work - also an Eighth- good by establishing a agitated mood quite similar to its own.
Opening with nervous tremolos skittering across the strings and crunchy chords halting the music's forward progress, the music fit the title, "Restless," but also hinted a something more troubling beneath the surface. The second movement calmed things with imitation of a lyrical eight-note melody that Stock harmonized still with a tinge of sorrow. The emotion here was striking, with Stock asking for quiet intensity, compressing energy in a potential state that exploded in a fugue in the finale.
Stock's fugue subject took none other an abbreviated form of Beethoven's famous "Grosse Fugue." It was to me, too close of a borrowing, but it was intriguing to see the different directions that Stock took and his ability to make a lighter and positive ending with this heavy subject.
The Biava Quartet concluded with a stunning performance of another emotionally charged work, Mendelssohn's Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80. Those who missed this stellar group have hope: it returns May 30, with a different program.
Feb 04 2009
Lukas Foss, who died yesterday, has a Pittsburgh connection I was not aware of. It turns out that the gifted thinker and experimental composer debuted with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as a conductor as a 17-year old! Born August of 1922 that means this would have been in the late 1930s. I got the info from an obit in the Guardian.
I don't have time to write more about this now, but I wanted to pass this on. Feel free to fill us in more in the comments.
UPDATE:
The Carnegie Mellon University's intrepid recording engineer Riccardo Schulz did my homework for me, offering these additional Pittsburgh connections of Foss:
I remember Lukas Foss appearing as soloist with the PSO many years ago (Syria Mosque days), with Steinberg conducting if I remember correctly, and a Bach Concerto, again, if I remember that correctly--on piano, of course.
Also, he taught composition at Carnegie Mellon as Visiting Professor around 1989, 1990 or 1991
The Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble performed a piece by Foss that needed tape playback as loud as the ensemble itself was playing. This was LOUD!
Later, I sat with him in the tiny studio off of Alumni Concert Hall to do some edits. He was very very nice and very kind...I was nothing but nervous, until he put me at ease...
Also, when I was reading the letters of Paul Hindemith, he wrote that most of his students at Yale were a bunch of dummies, with the exception of Lukas Foss. I also found a record of his fee for an early PSO appearance--it turned out to be be lowest fee they paid anyone that year! $600 if I remember correctly!"
riccardo
Feb 04 2009
Former classical music critic Robert Croan is keeping an eye and ear on the Met simulcast operas:
By Robert Croan
Post-Gazette Senior Editor
The Metropolitan Opera originally intended its revival of Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice" for the much-admired mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died tragically, of cancer, in July 2006. When the new production opened 10 months later, the title role was taken by the brilliant countertenor David Daniels. This year Orfeo is a vehicle for another great mezzo, Stephanie Blythe, whose performance Saturday afternoon was part of the Met's valuable high-definition live telecasts, seen locally at Cinemark in Pittsburgh Mills (Fraser) and Showcase Cinemas West (Robinson).
If the gender bending sounds confusing, that's not the half of it. Gluck wrote the role for an alto castrato, who sang the first performances in Vienna, in 1762. When, a few decades later, castrato singers were no longer prevalent, he rewrote the part for a tenor. Several later composers (notably Berlioz) dabbled with the work, resulting in too many variants, voice categories and genders to enumerate here. The musical edition conducted by James Levine at the Met is said to be Gluck's original. Countertenors and mezzo-sopranos, it should be noted, have approximately the same range as the alto castratos of old.
In Greek mythology, the eponymous Orpheus was the greatest singer in the world. When his beloved Euridice died on their wedding day, he charmed the gods of the underworld to allow him to cross the River Styx and bring her back to earth - with the stipulation that he must not look at her until the journey is over. (There lies the rub.)
It's a seminal opera, the oldest in what was standard repertory before the recent baroque revival. Gluck's unadorned melodies and clear declamation were intended as a reform of the ornate virtuosity of 18th-century opera seria..
Choreographer Mark Morris has staged the work with Orpheus as a contemporary rock singer, carrying a guitar instead of a lyre. The superb Met chorus is costumed (by Isaac Mizrahi) as famous persons: Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth I and Abraham Lincoln to name a few. Purists may argue with the concept, but it works superbly on stage.
Moreover, this was a musical performance for the ages. Blythe, whose voice is a force of nature, rejected her usual overt expressivity for classic restraint , vocalizing with purity of tone and line that let the music speak for itself. This was manifest in the opera's "hit tune," which translates as "What shall I do without Euridice" -- arguably the most perfect melody ever written. The version used here is less showy than the more familiar arrangement, and Blythe matched it with unaffected simplicity and conviction.
She was partnered by the ravishingly beautiful, full-voiced Euridice of Danielle DeNisse; and the perky, boyish Cupid of Heidi Grant Murphy. Underpinning all this was the miraculous Met orchestra, which played with crisp precision and singing fluidity under Levine's expert baton.
The telecast of Orfeo ed Euridice will be encored in the above theaters at 7 p.m. Today (Feb. 4). Upcoming HD live Met performances are scheduled for Feb. 7 (Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor"), March 7 (Puccini's "Madama Butterfly"), March 21 (Bellini's"(La Sonnambula") and May 9 (Rossini's "La Cenerentola").
Feb 04 2009
Snorgtees, always great for a laugh, has the ultimate classical music T-shirt available. Gotta love it. I hope it leads to many more just like it:
Feb 03 2009
It would be great if I were announcing an arts bail-out, but this is better than nothing. The Kennedy Center (D.C.) just announced that it will provide free consulting to struggling American arts organizations.
Basically, an arts group can get advice from the staff of the Kennedy Center for anything from simple questions to in-depth consultations (even in-person) from the Kennedy Center's development, fundraising, marketing, finance, information technology and education departments.
All groups have to do is visit the appropriately named www.artsincrisis.org.
"These are times of economic crisis and as the nation's center for the performing arts, we wish to help," said Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser. "If any arts organization in the United States believes we can assist, the senior staff of the Kennedy Center and I offer our collective skills. We are at your service."
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