Mar 30 2009
I ran into Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Andres Cardenes at the Pittsburgh Opera over the weekend (doesn't that just sound like the way an arts scene should work!). He was there and not with the PSO in Morgantown because he is still recovering from shoulder surgery. I am sure to some who read that Cardenes will leave the orchestra after next season thought he was already gone. But he will be back in about a month, and he said the surgery was completely successful. Let's hope he heals perfectly and we have a great last season with him.
I asked, but of course, he didn't comment on the PSO canceling of its/his Chamber Orchestra series -- not that I expected he would -- but I could tell it was killing him. My question is why the PSO wouldn't just do the series at Heinz Hall. There they wouldn't have to pay for the hall. They lose the outreach aspect of going to the Oakland community (or Squirrel Hill before that), but at least we would have that different and smaller-sized repertoire and the musicians would get the opportunity to perform it.
Mar 30 2009
Okay, should be lots of differeing opinions from this weekend's big concerts: the Pittsburgh Opera's production of "La Boheme" and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's program of Webern, Korngold and Schubert. Please registrer and comment! None of this muttering under your breath (or even silent nods of approval).
Again, Kevin Glavin (left as Alcindoro with Jones as Musetta) was brilliant in "La Boheme."
My reviews:
'La Boheme' surpasses lead singers' voices
Pittsburgh Symphony review: Concert forces re-evaluation
Also, did you have a chance to read my piece on Chesky "The Agnostic," which the Bach Choir performs this week. In a world filled with faith-based works, it's not everyday you have a chance to hear a work that questions it all.
Mar 22 2009
Well, that headline is a bit of an exaggeration, but it caught your attention, no?
Did anyone else in the music scene notice this? I had only casually paid attention to the latest cheating scandal at Florida State University, but I did peak at an recent AP story on the ESPN Web site about it since it seems the University will indeed have to vacate some wins in various athletic programs, including its football team. But what I hadn't caught before was that it was a music history class that was the university's downfall!
The cheating occurred mainly through online testing for a single music history course in fall 2006 and the spring and summer semesters of 2007. It included staffers helping students on the test and in one case, asking one athlete to take it for another.
I am not too interested in gleaning anything global about this (you know, that it is ironic that in this "High School Musical" world, in which sports continue to be played against the arts (despite the clear fact that students love both), a music class did in the athletic department). In any case, it is certainly worth passing on, in case you missed it.
Mar 21 2009
It needs some polishing, but the contemporary music group Alarm Will Sound has a tremendously powerful and musically tantalizing show on its hands in "1969." Friday night, the group performed at the New Hazlett co-sponsored by Pitt's Music on the Edge and The Andy Warhol Museum.
I call it a show because I think "multimedia event" is too pretentious and "concert" sells it short. With photos and video on a screen, two actors portraying John Lennon and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and musicians, who all do double-duty playing and speaking (with the "libretto" primarily taken from exact quotations), "1969" is a show. It wonderfully contextualizes how some key musical luminaries -- Leonard Bernstein and Luciano Berio also are central -- responded and participated in the politically and culturally turbulent time.
Music exists of its own accord and can (and should) mean different things to different listeners. But when its original context is laid out compellingly, music often blooms in a remarkable way. That is what happened in "1969." The crack ensemble of mostly former Eastman School of Music grads played only excerpts of pieces, such as from Bernstein's "Mass," but the context lent them new poignancy. For instant, with excerpts positioned after images of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and after a vignette about a group of Catholic priests who burned draft cards and were bailed out by Bernstein, "Mass" had a poignancy I had never felt before. Even the abstract works of Stockhausen worked for me, really for the first time ever (I have tried, trust me, I have tried). I left the show wanting to listen to all this music in toto as soon as I could.
The actors were dead-on as Lennon (John Walker) and Stockhausen (Christopher Evan Welch), and the performances of the pieces were stunning, but at times Alarm Will Sound just tried to do too much. There were too many minor characters and too much text. It was more a piece for people who already know the avant-garde '60s scene than a more general audience I think the show could pull in. Inside jokes abounded.
But this was only the second time the group performed '1969,' and they could use the experience to streamline it (and polish some of the non-musical elements, such as mics not on at the right time and the botching of some dialogue).
But it was so enlightening (and fun) to hear how these names -- because that is what composers tend to become over time -- were actually were thinking and doing during this time. Especially since this was expressed not just in their words but in some fascinating music. And after playing some excerpts of The Beatle's "Revolution 9" during the show, the group ended the night with an amazing transcription of the famous experimental track from "the White Album." Yes, they performed tape loops and all, in a totally live performance conducted expertly by Alan Pierson. It was stunning, and I think Alarm Will Sound has a bona fide hit on its hands with just a little tweaking.
Mar 20 2009
This will appear in the print Post-Gazette Sat, but I got it early from our Mackenzie Carpenter and wanted to get it out for those thinking about coming tonight to Heinz Hall. Don't miss Carpenter's excellent advance interview with Peters, too.
By Mackenzie Carpenter
Silver, gold, and, yes, a gorgeous helping of brass.
We're not just talking about the bugle beads on Bernadette Peters' skin-tight, flesh colored gown but of the precious metals glinting off her voice last night during a spectacular 90-minute concert with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Pops at Heinz Hall. At 61, she is still in full command vocally, physically and emotionally, connecting with her rapt audience via song and patter in a program that ranged over the classic Broadway songbook, from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Rodgers and Hart to the composer she is most identified with, Stephen Sondheim.
Songs about love -- losing it, and finding strength from that loss -- bookended the evening, beginning with "No One is Alone" (from Sondheim's "Into the Woods") and ending with "Move On," her big number from "Sunday In the Park with George." Peters' rendition of "Some Enchanted Evening" -- that old standard from "South Pacific" usually some big male opera singer's star turn -- was a revelation, a woman's tender recall of the biggest moment of her life, "when you hear him laughing across a crowded room." As delivered by Peters, those old familiar lyrics seem new again..
Peggy Lee's "Fever," sung while lounging on top of a piano, was sexy but tongue-in-cheek. Other highlights, all of them from Sondheim -- "Johanna" "Not a Day Goes By," "Being Alive" --showcased Peters' ability to apply the most delicate phrasing to a song, and then, as it builds to a crescendo, belt it to the back row . A minor caveat: during a few of those big moments, her voice was occasionally drowned out by the orchestra's wall of sound, at least from where I was sitting (in the fifth row).
Her music director, Marvin Laird, was an able multi-tasker, providing liquid accompaniment on the piano while conducting the orchestra. Note to baby boomers: her drummer was -- I kid you not -- former "Mousketeer" Cubby O'Brien. He in no way resembles the little tyke he once was, but Peters looks ageless, all glowing ivory skin, burnished Pre-Raphaelite curls and that voice still mostly, as Sondheim once characterized it, "flawless."
Most of all, though, Peters seemed open, affectionate, comfortable in that gorgeous skin of hers, no more so, perhaps, when she finished the show with a lullaby she wrote herself, to her dog, which can be found on the CD accompanying her best-selling children's book, "Broadway Barks." Not only that, she returned to the stage after the show to take questions as part of the PSO Pops' Thursday night Q & A program, which was great fun. Peters lobbed queries on everything from her pets to old boyfriend Steve Martin to what she puts in her hair -- "old boyfriends," she joked.
Peters performs again tonight, tomorrow night and Sunday afternoon -- and she'll also be at the Waterfront's Barnes & Noble Bookstore, at 2 pm tomorrow, where she'll be reading from and signing copies of "Broadway Barks." All proceeds from the book to go an organization she co-founded with Mary Tyler Moore that places dogs in shelter for adoption.
Mar 18 2009
In a this past weekend, British conductor and early music expert Roger Norrington explains just how he saved Beethoven from 20th century conductors. The occasion was a 75 birthday concert at Royal Festival Hall and a documentary about him and his work in the early music movement, "In Search of Beethoven."
At one point, the controversial conductor who shocked the music world by applying Beethoven's metronome markings to his symphonies, reprises his earlier skepticism about 20th century conductors. He lambastes them for relying on tradition, not evidence and says he had a feeling of "rightness" when performing Beethoven his way (that is with original instruments and performance practice techniques of Beethoven’s time). He then questions the need for interpretation:
But how far is it necessary to "interpret" a piece, to personalise it, even to change it, for your own time? During the first half of the 20th century it seemed quite a normal thing to do. The era of fascism, communism and grand capitalism was also the era of larger halls, larger orchestras and star conductors. During the Nazi period, Beethoven's Eroica was made to assume the mantle of the heroic German nation, either conquering, or suffering heroic defeat at Stalingrad. The music became slower and slower and more Wagnerian. Wagner got slower, too. So did Brahms and Bruckner. Many conductors changed the notes in places to bring works "up to date". Mahler arranged Beethoven's ninth symphony in grandiose style (he also completely rewrote the four Schumann symphonies).
I am more in tune with an earlier conductor, George Henschel. Originally a very fine baritone and a friend of Brahms, he wrote in his autobiography that, at the time he was conducting (1880s-1900), "we didn't know about interpretation - we simply tried to play the music as well as possible". Evidence-based performance tends towards Henschel's approach. If you have the right instruments (or good modern players), the right size of orchestra, sitting on the stage in the way the composer intended, playing the music at his own speed, with the appropriate articulation and note length, and with the written or natural harmonic phrasing, you are going to get a very good and characterful performance without having a "great idea" about it.
Naturally, your own personality comes into play, but it should never come between the composer and the audience. You should be the advocate of the composer, not his master. You do not need to change notes or tempo - the composer is all. As Schoenberg remarked: if we don't understand why the slow movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony is given a metronome mark of 60 (when most conductors take it to about half that speed), then we don't know the music well enough yet.
What Norrington misses is that, ultimately, everything musical act involves interpretation. He can't escape from that no matter how hard he tries to lie among the "evidence."
There is no objective performance of art. Any claim to a scientific discovery of rightness is fraught with problems, from imperfect sources to how much our own society has changed since the time of the original performances. I understand that Norrington has been hardened by having to fight battle after battle to bring new (or old) ideas and approaches to classical music's "sacred music" like Beethoven, and that is why he is so defensive and combative. He should have not been bullyed in his early days by conductors, critics and historians who didn't like his ideas or change in general. What Norrington has done shedding new (again, old) light on Beethoven and other composers has been wonderful -- but it represents just another way of performing music and he has no right to claim, well, that his approach is "right" over anyone else’s.
The biggest knock against Norrington over the years is that his performances often lack musicality and overall artistic statement. If he would argue that these issues are not something a conductor should be adding (interpretation), I would counter that he is leaving out a key element of performing the Beethoven and musicians of his time expected: that the performer is an integral part of the process of making music. Singers of the time improvised and elaborated on arias, and Beethoven himself was known for his interpretations. But more than that, Romantic musicians strove to establish music as the highest art form. They would not have been satisfied with any performance that just uses “the right instruments, the right size of orchestra, sitting on the stage in the way the composer intended, playing the music at his own speed, with the appropriate articulation and note length, and with the written or natural harmonic phrasing.” No, they expected performers to be an important part of the process, not automatons passing on information from composer to listener.
So Norrington is just as ahistorical as any conductor. And that’s a good thing, because contemporary performances need to speak to contemporary audiences, not the dead. And even Norrington’s performance practice concepts are a contemporary movement that is popular because they fit our desire to reach the past -- not because he has gotten a time machine and discovered exactly how music sounded in Beethoven’s time.
In fact, Norrington's strict adherence to his theories is his downfall. Music doesn't work well with absolutes and a freer application of his research to his conducting, one that allowed for more musicianship and, yes, interpretation, might have served him better, although I certainly enjoy some of this “interpretations.” In the meantime, it is he who now needs to stop preaching from his own bully pulpit and let others do things their way.
Mar 16 2009
Pittsburgh has a surprisingly vibrant new music scene for a town with not a tone of 20 and 30 somethings. In my years here, I have tried to support it whenever I can, from railing at the PSO (which has improved, and its composer-of-the-year program has connected local audiences to some of the most important living composers) to writing about the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble (recent blog post on its financial troubles) and Pitt's Music on the Edge, from profiles of local composers to articles on local contemporary groups like IonSound and Alia Musica Pittsburgh (a new one on the block is the Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra).
But my role at the Post-Gazette as generalist (yes, most people would think that the classical music critic is a pretty specific post at a newspaper, but it is actually impossibly large of a beat, covering many genres and centuries), has kept me from covering contemporary music as well as I would like to. I will keep on chugging, including writing about a cool event on Pitt's Music on the Edge series and co-presented by The Andy Warhol Museum (though at the New Hazlette Theater): the new music group Alarm Will Sound, and reminding you of events. And, as always, giving you my honest opinion. Just because I support new music (or perhaps because I do) doesn't mean I won't heavily criticize it or performances of it. New music has to live up to standards just like the canon.
But this is all to say that Pitt composer Phil Thompson is doing a great job catching what I miss by following the scene closely in his niche blog, Pittsburgh New Music Net. I am officially adding it to my blog roll (which is in serious need of an update). Enjoy!
Oh, and some upcoming concerts:
• Alarm Will Sound performs ‘1969.’ 8 p.m. Friday @ the New Hazlett Theater, North Side. Tickets: $8-$15; www.proarts.org or 412-394-3353.
• The newly formed Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra lives up to its name with a concert including music by bands Sonic Youth and Sigur Ros and by composers Webern and Machaut, at 8:30 p.m. Sunday, March 22, at the Brew House in the South Side. Tickets are $5- $10 at the door; 412-608-6120.
• New music mavens Alia Musica Pittsburgh presents Philip Thompson’s “Trouble,” based on a Lenten Gradual, and works by Mark Fromm, Ivan Jimenez, Kerrith Livengood, Matthew Heap and Ayo Oluranti at 8 p.m. March 31 @ Synod Hall, Oakland. Tickets $10-$12 at the door.
Mar 16 2009
Robert Croan, former Post-Gazette classical music critic and an opera expert (he also taught voice at Duquesne University) was kind enough to write this review of a new recording (CD) of Bellini's "La Sonnambula" in time for the Met's controversial version with Dessay, Florez and
Michele Pertusi, that will be telecast live in HD at theaters in Pittsburgh
Mills and Robinson Township, March 21 at 1 p.m. Enjoy:
Bellini: “La Sonnambula,” with Cecilia Bartoli and Juan Diego Florez
Decca ***
“La Sonnambula” is a simple-minded story set to lovely music in the so-called “bel canto” style that prevailed in early 19th-century Italy, but its history on stage and on record is complicated. Singers in those days were allowed all kinds of liberties, and there was less distinction between soprano and mezzo-soprano, so that when the legendary Maria Malibran took on the title role of Amina, she raised no eyebrows by lowering the keys. Moreover, tenors used head voice or falsetto more freely than now.
More recently, Amina, once the province of twittering coloraturas, became a dramatic part when Maria Callas made it her own. The great Joan Sutherland combined the best of both worlds, and also opened cuts in the score that had become bad tradition. A new critical edition of Bellini’s works is used in a 2006 recording featuring soprano Natalie Dessay (Virgin Classics), as well as the present one (2007/08) showcasing mezzo Cecilia Bartoli, although these two recordings differ in choice of keys, modern vs period instruments and other details.
Curiously Bartoli, who might be expected to lower the music, sings her arias in the original keys, embellishing with ornaments that show off her lower range and impart a Rossinian touch. Tenor Juan Diego Florez, famous for his high Cs in Donizetti’s “Daughter of the Regiment,” opts for lower keys in Elvino’s solos and duets, while inserting unexpected high notes. The result is a fluttery sound with ultra-expressive phrasing in the case of Bartoli, intermittently thrilling delivery on the part of Florez, and a gorgeous rendition of Count Rodolfo’s music by basso Ildebrando D’Arcangelo.
The inane plot concerns a village girl who sleepwalks into the bedroom of a man who isn’t her fiancé, and Gilbert & Sullivan fans will notice that the first act finale contains a sextet that is recognizably parodied in “Trial by Jury.”
Mar 12 2009
While it's downright funny to hear WQED's Jim Cunningham say "hip hop" as he introduces this video, that's about the only non-intentionally funny thing about the new video that the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's has created to show-off its outstanding music collection. The tongue-in-cheek approach -- with its retro PSA feel and plenty of cameos by local Pittsburgh musicians -- does a great job of showing just how robust the music collection is at its main branch in Oakland. Enjoy, and get yourself down there!
The YouTube embed should be below, if not, click here for the video at YouTube
Mar 11 2009
A few days after we reported that the Pittsburgh Symphony will lay off several staff members, the Philly Orchestra has seen that and raised it:
Orchestra cuts jobs, pay
By Peter Dobrin
INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC
In
what is only the first step in averting a deficit this season, the
Philadelphia Orchestra Association today shed 20 percent of its
administrative staff and said other cost-cutting moves were on the way.
Twelve staffers were let go and six other positions will go
unfilled, leaving the orchestra with 72 administrators - its lowest
level since the mid-1990s.
"This is an exceedingly sad day for us," said Frank P. Slattery Jr., acting executive director and CEO.
In addition, remaining staffers earning more than $50,000 annually
will take a 10-percent pay cut for the portion of salary above $50,000,
and vice presidents will take additional compensation reductions.
Clearly, the big musical machines out there are feeling the economic hit and think it is better to head it off as much as possible. It's probably a wise practice, and now the PSO won't look so bad in the national eye. (It is interesting that both the PSO and the "Big Five" Philly Orchestra now have the same number of staffers). But, while I would be the first to say that most major orchestras need to reorganize and re-examine what they do, no one wants it to happen in this fashion. This is just tough for those who had to leave and who remain, and we can only hope the economy doesn't do permanant damage to orchestras. Can opening CBAs be far behind?
Hey, I have an idea. If America is going soft socialist, why not pull the arts in too? Things are certainly flawed in Europe, but its state-funded orchestras are doing better than here.
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