Read All About it: The Honeck Era

Our growing online division here at the Post-Gazette -- destined to be the main business down the road -- did a wonderful job building an index page that shows just how much coverage we have had of Manfred Honeck's tenure with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. I always feel I can do more as a critic, but it makes me proud to know we have blanketed this important era for the PSO so far.

Actually, many of my reviews are not in there, so it's not even everything we have done on Honeck and the PSO, but it is still rather comprehensive.

You can access the index at this address, but I also just list what is there now below (it will be continually updated, so the link will have the most current info).

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra: The Honeck Era

Western Music in China

The final piece of my coverage of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's tour to China ran Sunday -- a much more general look at just why Western classical music has become so popular in China. Obviously, I don't answer the question; I am trying to bring up some possibilities and also simply to dialogue about what is a truly fascinating subject for all of us who love classical music. Thanks to the Carnegie Mellon School of Music for letting me accompany some of its faculty members (also PSOers) on some masterclasses in Shanghai (Bill Caballero, Mike Rusinek and Nancy Caballero, specifically).

In the center of photo are Bill Caballero and Xiao-Ming Han (in the blue shirt) and the students of the horn masterclass at Shanghai Conservatory that I wrote about.

If you want you can review the rest of my coverage of the PSO Asia 2009 tour here. For me it was a chance of a lifetime and a wonderful learning experience that has shrunk the world of music for me.

Green Opera

The Pittsburgh Opera just announced its plans on "greening" its new home in the Strip District so that it be considered for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Operations and Maintenance Certification. The Opera already recycled the building itself, once the George Westinghouse Air Brake Factory. They moved into it in April of 2008.

I can't say this really excites me as an opera fan, but it is good to know the Pittsburgh Opera is taking green building and sustainability so seriously. They will likely be a leader in the opera industry for this simply because most opera company buildings and halls were built earlier.

Your take: Do singers=musicians?

As a classical music critic, I don't write much that seeks to get readership from controversy, but I am going to in this case because I think this is a worthy issue. In my review of the last Pittsburgh Symphony concert of the season, an article in which for the record I praised the Mendelssohn Choir, I wrote the following line:

This is one of the most fascinating symphonies to watch as much as to hear, with musicians constantly moving on and offstage. It ends with more than 110 musicians and 150 singers taking every bit of the stage.

My good friend and occasional Post-Gazette constributor Eric Haines, who is a tenor and a former Mendelssohn Choir member, appreciated my comments, but shot me this e-mail:

Hi, Andy -

I enjoyed reading your Mahler review, as I enjoy reading all your stuff. Except for one tiny (MAJOR) little thing: you said "110 musicians and 150 singers." Singing is music. So, singers make music. Therefore, singers ARE musicians. When you say 'musicians AND singers,' you exile us from the realm of art.

I love Eric's passion and I completely see where he is coming from having been a singer myself (and even briefly and on an amateur level a choral conductor). Actually, this is something I am well aware of, and used to be my thinking. There are plenty of times I have admonished someone over it. But lately, I have had a different take, which I expressed in my reply:

Thanks, but I cannot agree with you, good friend! I view that singers need to take back the name/term and show that it is synonymous with musician, not still needing the word! I could have said orchestra musicians I suppose to make you happy, but singers need to get over this one and be more confident with what they do. I think singers should have pride in being singers and not let others denigrate them to the point that they also need to be given that word "musician" to be included as one. Singers have been trying to get that PC connection for years and it has failed. The better tactic is to say: singer=musician. To add "musician" is redundant.

To further my point, you don't have to clarify musician when you say oboist or pianist. And, while the issue is clearly that singers have not been considered musically talented while oboists and pianists have faced nothing like that, is the path to get that recognition to give in to the prejudice or to assert that you don't need to clarify with the word singer, either?

Eric saw my point, but still stands by his, but we both decided it would be great to through this out to the public to see your thoughts on this. Please reply -- though you first have to register  (it is painless and costs nothing!) by clicking on the left, under "Author."

PSO to the rescue

A few weeks ago Carson Middle School in the North Allegheny School District canceled its spring orchestra concert because of an outbreak of swine flu there. Many of the kids were crushed because they worked all spring on the program and couldn't perform it. That was, until the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra stepped in to help.

Asked by a PSOer whose child is in the middle school, the PSO offered the students a great opportunity to perform in the Heinz Hall lobby. Anne Funk, the orchestra director, jumped at the idea. Though the entire orchestra couldn't fit, the Carson Chamber Orchestra (the honors string orchestra taken from the orchestra) will play in the Grand Lobby at 7:15 p.m. Friday, June 19, before the Pops concert.

"We are pleased to have the Carson Middle School Chamber Orchestra give a pre-concert performance," said PSO spokesman Jim Barthen. "We are always happy to assist students by allowing them to perform at Heinz Hall and get the experience of playing in front of our patrons."

This is a great example of what the PSO can do and does for the community beyond playing great concerts. Its upcoming Community Partners concert  that dispurses ticket money to local non-profits, is another great example. It is something I wrote about when we named the orchestra musicians the No. 1 in our Top 50 arts power groups a few years ago.

BTW, some of these students might someday be on stages like the main Heinz Hall auditorium's, based on what they are doing there. Funk received a 2009 Citation of Excellence from the Pennsylvania Music Educator's Association and the North Allegheny school district was just designated as one of 2009's best communities for music education by the NAMM Foundation

.

Google and Stravinsky

As if Google could get any closer to my heart, today it altered its logo (as it does from time to time) to honor composer Igor Stravinsky on his birthday. In case you didn't get to see it, here is the image, with its reference to "The Firebird" and more. Gotta love it.

Mahler family affair

Chad Winkler, young trumpet player with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, told me this week that he his brother Jordan and his dad John will be playing trumpet onstage for the concerts.  "If this kind of scenario has happened before -- where three members of the same immediate family play in the same section on the same piece in the same concert, with a major symphony orchestra -- I'd be 'very' surprised," he writes. "It's pretty cool for all of us to be able to do it."

I agree. And it should make for some extra connections in the brass. Good luck to all of them

I include some of Chad's bio from the PSO Web site, for more on him an his family.

Chad Winkler joined the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as fourth/utility trumpet in November 2008. Prior to this appointment, Chad played this same position for two seasons as an acting member of the PSO trumpet section.

Originally from Morgantown, WV, Chad earned his Bachelor of Music degree from West Virginia University, where he studied with his father, Dr. John Winkler. Upon completion, Chad earned his Master of Music degree from Duquesne University, where he studied with PSO Principal Trumpet, George Vosburgh.

Chad comes from a musical family. His father, as previously mentioned, is a trumpeter, and his mother is a pianist. In addition, his siblings have active musical careers. Chad began studying the trumpet at the age of 12. He spent a summer studying at the Interlochen Arts Camp in 1996, where he was a winner of the concerto competition. Chad performed with Interlochen’s World Youth Symphony Orchestra at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, GA. Chad also attended the Brevard Music Center from 1998-2000, where he was twice the winner of the concerto competition. Chad also won the National Trumpet Competition in 1995, 1998 and 2000.

Major league angst

Friday night is shaping up to be a painful one for music lovers who are also hockey fans. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is performing Mahler's amazing Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection" at Heinz Hall and the Pittsburgh Penguins are playing the Detroit Red Wings in the seventh game of the Stanly Cup Final (that's determined Sidney Crosby on the right)

Yikes! Both are pretty rare events, especially when you consider that this is probably the last time you will get to hear music director Manfred Honeck's interpretation of Mahler's Second (and it will not be programmed again for many years, I think). We can at least hope to see the young Pens in the finals down the road. But why do they both have to be at 8 Friday night?!

But there is hope.

The Mahler will begin at 8:06 p.m. and run 85 minutes with no intermission. The Penguins-Wings game will start aroun 8:15 p.m. and run till around 10:30 p.m. That means PSO patrons will get out around 9:40 p.m., if you do the right thing and stay and applaud -- in plenty of time to catch the third period at a bar or even perhaps at your home. Don't forget to listen to it on 105.9 FM as you drive.

The best senario would be a Pens blowout so we can enjoy the third period without killing ourselves to drive home! But, guessing how this series has gone, it will be a tight one. Actually, that would be nice, too, because it would mean that the third period still has excitment for those of us who missed the first two.

Me? I will have to write the PSO review during that third period, so think of me when you are enjoying it.

Go Pens!

Ringheads in New York

Just had to pass on this perfect synopsis of Wagner's "Ring" -- showing again just how astute critic Justin Davidison is (from New York Magazine, his new home):

Here’s a timely operatic plot: When the mortgage on an oversize dream house proves unaffordable, the owner has no choice but to raise more cash by plundering little people, triggering a tsunami of greed that eventually results in global calamity. That synopsis, give or take a dozen subplots, helps explain why Richard Wagner’s fifteen-hour, four-part “Der Ring des Nibelungen” always feels current. Even with its cursed baubles, wrathful giants, and shape-shifting gods, Wagner’s “Ring” cycle remains a deeply modern work.

That was lol funny, but also quite cogent.

At the risk of looking really second rate next to that, I did want to re-post my experience with the same passionate "Ringheads" a few years ago at the Chicago Lyric Opera.

Now is the NIME

Bad headline, I know. Today, the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference begins at Carnegie Mellon University. It is hosted by the School of Music and co-sponsored by the School of Computer Science and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept.

This is an innovative group of researchers, musicians, instrument makers, theorists, scientists and more who work on creating new instruments and new ways to play old ones. Or in the case of this iPhone app, creating instruments out of things that weren't originally designed as such. Apparently, you blow into the phone microphone and the app picks it up and turns the phone into an electric ocarina!

Find out more at the conference's web site and here is a link to a nice video we shot at the conference. The CMU host is professor Roger Dannenberg, and he and the school's computer music department have done some amazing work with musical interfaces over the years themselves.

There are also concerts each night, listed on the conference Web site.