The Noontime Concerts™
series at Old St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco, which takes place
every Tuesday at 12:30 PM, is not free; but admission is by a $5
donation, which is still a rather good deal for the music you get.
Furthermore, since the Cathedral is in the heart of Chinatown (at the
corner of California and Grant), you can also enjoy some of the most
economical meals in the city! All of the concerts are on a "chamber"
scale, since the performing space on the altar is rather limited.
Today's performance by the Russian Chamber Orchestra pretty much pushed
the limit with an ensemble of four first violins, four seconds, two
violas, two cellos, and one double bass. (I have heard winds, brass,
and percussion at previous performances.)
The music director
is Alexander Vereshagin, who left a fully tenured professorship at the
St. Petersburg National Conservatory to come to the United States, where
he founded this ensemble in 1992. Cello soloist Lana Gruen studied at
the Moscow Conservatory, after which she had a rich career throughout
Europe and is now based in the Bay Area. Presumably, most of the
members of the Orchestra have emigrated from Russia.
Gruen was
featured in a performance of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Opus 33, the
"Variations on a Rococo Theme." The theme Tchaikovsky provided has a
coda, which tends to be relatively consistently reproduced at the end of
each variation, thus forming a unifying thread across the variations.
With the reduced resources of the Orchestra, that coda was performed by a
string quartet of the four section leaders, giving it a distinctive
transparency, which I had not heard in performances by a larger
ensemble. (I have not been able to check the score to see if
Tchaikovsky did not want the entire sections playing this coda.) The
Tchaikovsky was preceded by the first movement of the K. 414 A major
piano concerto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (whom we know was a favorite
of Tchaikovsky). Vereshagin performed the piano solo, conducting from
the keyboard. Again, transparency was the strong suit of the
performance, with the voices of the second violins and particularly the
violas (Mozart's instrument of choice, as I have previously observed) on equal terms with the first violins.
Having
heard the Russian Chamber Orchestra perform several times in the
Noontime Concerts™ series, I know that Vereshagin likes to offer an
encore and usually tries to lighten the mood with his selection. In
this case his encore was "Jocular Waltz," the fourth movement of Dmitri
Shostakovich's Dances of the Dolls suite, originally written for
piano in 1952. So much of Shostakovich's music sits on the razor's
edge between the adventurous and the banal, and this little waltz stands
as a perfect example. It begins with an absurdly naïve little theme
that begins to derail, first gradually and later with more consistency,
only to retreat back to naïveté at the end of the movement. Still, as
so often seems to be the case with Shostakovich, one has to wonder
whether or not there is a dark underbelly to the loopy humor that dominates his surface structure.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
May 4, 2009: Charles Mingus' raw nerves
Last night's SFJAZZ performance of Mingus Dynasty at the Palace of
Fine Arts Theatre was an anniversary celebration. Three major
recordings of Charles Mingus turned 50 in 2009: Blues & Roots on Atlantic and the first two of three Columbia Albums, Mingus Ah Um and Mingus Dynasty. For this occasion they were joined by John Handy, whose alto sax performances played a major role in the Columbia sessions.
To a great extent Columbia carried a cachet of respectability. The general public had greater trust in a label that offered the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra than in one that recorded only jazz. Miles Davis appreciated the value of that cachet and labored mightily to arrange his move from Prestige to Columbia. However, respectability comes with a price; and it did not take long for Mingus to confront that price. Tomorrow (May 5, 1959) is the anniversary of the first studio recording of "Fables of Faubus," named after one of the higher-profile segregationists in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. As summarized in Charles Mingus: More Than a Fake Book:
Mingus Dynasty was born on the occasion of a tribute concert given a few weeks after Mingus' death in 1979. The band consisted of those who had come to master the performance of Mingus' music by working with the master himself. Both Handy and Richmond were there, along with Jimmy Knepper, Ted Curson, Don Pullen, George Adams, and Charlie Haden. The band has changed hands many times over the following 30 years, and Handy's appearance was as much a celebration of the continuing life of Mingus Dynasty as it was of the 50-year-old records.
Most important, however, is that fidelity to Mingus himself is more critical than fidelity to any of the recordings. That meant that, for "Fables of Faubus," the words came to life as well as the music, in this case sung/declaimed by trombonist Ku-umba Frank Lacy. More than any other portion of last night's program, that performance elevated the occasion from gratuitous anniversary to a genuine honoring of Mingus' spirit, complete with all the raw nerves he was never afraid to touch.
Musicians like Handy learned that working with Mingus could involve coping with more freedom than one might have wanted. He told the audience that Mingus would withhold his charts of the underlying harmonic progressions. He was concerned that a priori documents of those progressions would interfere with the members of the band actually listening to each other, so he trained their ears by depriving them of the usual notations. Handy was still perfectly at home with that kind of freedom, as was Lacy. The younger members of the group may still be coming up to speed when it comes to matters such as placing the charts before the ears; but, with the benefit of veterans who can show them the way, they should eventually be the sort of performers Mingus wanted, after which they can serve as guides for the next generation of Mingus performers. Nothing would serve the memory of Mingus better than for Mingus Dynasty to evolve into such an ongoing legacy.
To a great extent Columbia carried a cachet of respectability. The general public had greater trust in a label that offered the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra than in one that recorded only jazz. Miles Davis appreciated the value of that cachet and labored mightily to arrange his move from Prestige to Columbia. However, respectability comes with a price; and it did not take long for Mingus to confront that price. Tomorrow (May 5, 1959) is the anniversary of the first studio recording of "Fables of Faubus," named after one of the higher-profile segregationists in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. As summarized in Charles Mingus: More Than a Fake Book:
Orval E. Faubus was a governor of Alabama who, in 1957, sent out the National Guard to prevent a few black children from entering Little Rock's Central High School.Mingus was so angry at Faubus that he wrote a text to go with his music, which he (sort of) sang with his drummer Dannie Richmond:
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em shoot us!
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em stab us!
Oh, Lord, don't let 'em tar and feather us!
Oh, Lord, no more swastikas!
Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!
Name me somebody who's ridiculous, Dannie.
Governor Faubus!
Why is he so sick and ridiculous?
He won't permit integrated schools.
Then he's a fool!
Boo! Nazi Fascist supremists!
Boo! Ku Klux Klan (with your evil plan)
Name me a handful that's ridiculous, Dannie Richmond.
—Faubus—Rockefeller—Eisenhower
Why are they so sick and ridiculous?
Two, four, six, eight: They brainwash and teach you hate
H-E-L-L-O—HelloThis was apparently too much for Columbia's "respectability;" and they refused to let Mingus and Richmond sing this text, which is probably why, when Mingus recorded the work again for Candid on October 20, 1960 and the text was included, he gave it the title "Original Faubus Fables" (my emphasis).
Mingus Dynasty was born on the occasion of a tribute concert given a few weeks after Mingus' death in 1979. The band consisted of those who had come to master the performance of Mingus' music by working with the master himself. Both Handy and Richmond were there, along with Jimmy Knepper, Ted Curson, Don Pullen, George Adams, and Charlie Haden. The band has changed hands many times over the following 30 years, and Handy's appearance was as much a celebration of the continuing life of Mingus Dynasty as it was of the 50-year-old records.
Most important, however, is that fidelity to Mingus himself is more critical than fidelity to any of the recordings. That meant that, for "Fables of Faubus," the words came to life as well as the music, in this case sung/declaimed by trombonist Ku-umba Frank Lacy. More than any other portion of last night's program, that performance elevated the occasion from gratuitous anniversary to a genuine honoring of Mingus' spirit, complete with all the raw nerves he was never afraid to touch.
Musicians like Handy learned that working with Mingus could involve coping with more freedom than one might have wanted. He told the audience that Mingus would withhold his charts of the underlying harmonic progressions. He was concerned that a priori documents of those progressions would interfere with the members of the band actually listening to each other, so he trained their ears by depriving them of the usual notations. Handy was still perfectly at home with that kind of freedom, as was Lacy. The younger members of the group may still be coming up to speed when it comes to matters such as placing the charts before the ears; but, with the benefit of veterans who can show them the way, they should eventually be the sort of performers Mingus wanted, after which they can serve as guides for the next generation of Mingus performers. Nothing would serve the memory of Mingus better than for Mingus Dynasty to evolve into such an ongoing legacy.
April 30, 2009: The exotic and the familiar
The end-of-term String and Piano Chamber Music series of concerts at
the San Francisco Conservatory of Music would be a "best buy"
opportunity for hearing chamber music in this city; but these concerts
are all the better for being free. This afternoon's 4 PM concert was a
perfect case in point. While the first work on the program had to be
dropped, the remaining two offered an excellent example of the perfect
combination of diversity and quality performance that the Conservatory
presents so reliably.
The first half of the program consisted of the cycle of Santa Fe Songs, which Ned Rorem composed in the summer of 1980 when he was composer-in-residence at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Originally composed for baritone, string trio, and piano, the work was performed this afternoon by a soprano. The songs are settings of poems by Witter Bynner, the earliest published in 1916 and two apparently published for the first time after his death in 1968. To call this set "A New Yorker in Santa Fe Two Times Over" might be a bit of a stretch; but, to a great extent, both poet and composer are celebrating the exoticism of Santa Fe from a somewhat more urbane point of view. Bynner was born in Brooklyn, but his travels took him to both Japan and China. The Jade Mountain is a collection from the Chinese poems of Kiang Kang-hu; and The Way of Life According to Laotzu is presumably a translation of the Tao Teh Ching. So by the time Bynner settled in Santa Fe (and fell in with the likes of D. H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen), he had seen quite a bit of the world. Nevertheless, Santa Fe was probably about as exotic to Bynner as it was to Lawrence.
Rorem, on the other hand, was born in Indiana; but his music education included Julliard. His world travels took him primarily to Morocco and Paris; but, by the time he received his invitation to Santa Fe, he was well settled into New York life. My guess is that this invitation provided him with his first exposure to Santa Fe.
Having spent a fair amount of time in Santa Fe in several different seasons, I could appreciate the ways in which both poet and composer succumbed to its exotic lure without necessarily "getting it." Similarly, I am not sure to what extent the Conservatory students really latched onto the spirit of the place that had inspired Bynner's texts and then hooked Rorem into setting them. On a more positive side, I do not think that the performance of these songs suffered from substituting a soprano for a baritone; but, having recently heard the impeccable diction of Stephanie Blythe, I found myself wondering if Rorem's approach to these texts tended to force the listener's eyes into a printed copy of the words.
The intermission was followed by a performance of Robert Schumann's Opus 47 piano quartet in E-flat major. This work appears frequently at Conservatory recitals, but Schumann put so much into it that it always deserves another listening. The pianist offered a very informative introduction, comparing it to the Opus 44 piano quintet, thus winning my approval, since I have considered that comparison myself! This was definitely chamber music as it should be heard, with all four voices rich and well-balanced, providing the perfect setting for all the intricacies that made Schumann's inventions so worthy (even if some would say notorious).
The first half of the program consisted of the cycle of Santa Fe Songs, which Ned Rorem composed in the summer of 1980 when he was composer-in-residence at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Originally composed for baritone, string trio, and piano, the work was performed this afternoon by a soprano. The songs are settings of poems by Witter Bynner, the earliest published in 1916 and two apparently published for the first time after his death in 1968. To call this set "A New Yorker in Santa Fe Two Times Over" might be a bit of a stretch; but, to a great extent, both poet and composer are celebrating the exoticism of Santa Fe from a somewhat more urbane point of view. Bynner was born in Brooklyn, but his travels took him to both Japan and China. The Jade Mountain is a collection from the Chinese poems of Kiang Kang-hu; and The Way of Life According to Laotzu is presumably a translation of the Tao Teh Ching. So by the time Bynner settled in Santa Fe (and fell in with the likes of D. H. Lawrence and Frieda von Richthofen), he had seen quite a bit of the world. Nevertheless, Santa Fe was probably about as exotic to Bynner as it was to Lawrence.
Rorem, on the other hand, was born in Indiana; but his music education included Julliard. His world travels took him primarily to Morocco and Paris; but, by the time he received his invitation to Santa Fe, he was well settled into New York life. My guess is that this invitation provided him with his first exposure to Santa Fe.
Having spent a fair amount of time in Santa Fe in several different seasons, I could appreciate the ways in which both poet and composer succumbed to its exotic lure without necessarily "getting it." Similarly, I am not sure to what extent the Conservatory students really latched onto the spirit of the place that had inspired Bynner's texts and then hooked Rorem into setting them. On a more positive side, I do not think that the performance of these songs suffered from substituting a soprano for a baritone; but, having recently heard the impeccable diction of Stephanie Blythe, I found myself wondering if Rorem's approach to these texts tended to force the listener's eyes into a printed copy of the words.
The intermission was followed by a performance of Robert Schumann's Opus 47 piano quartet in E-flat major. This work appears frequently at Conservatory recitals, but Schumann put so much into it that it always deserves another listening. The pianist offered a very informative introduction, comparing it to the Opus 44 piano quintet, thus winning my approval, since I have considered that comparison myself! This was definitely chamber music as it should be heard, with all four voices rich and well-balanced, providing the perfect setting for all the intricacies that made Schumann's inventions so worthy (even if some would say notorious).
April 30, 2009: The chamber orchestra within the San Francisco Symphony
Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik served as leader (the program did
not call him "conductor") and soloist with a reduced ensemble of
strings last night in Davies Symphony Hall in the first of this week's
set of San Francisco Symphony concerts. Before the intermission
Barantschik stood before the ensemble playing the primary solo violin
parts in the first four concertos (usually known as The Four Seasons) of
Antonio Vivaldi's Opus 8. After the intermission he led from the
concertmaster's chair for performances of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's K.
137 divertimento in B-flat major and Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Opus 48
serenade.
All twelve concertos of Vivaldi's Opus 8 are collected under the title Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione (the test of harmony and invention). Thus, one may view each concerto as an experiment in inventive technique that both honors and expands the basic harmonic grammar of the early eighteenth century. For each of the first four concertos, Vivaldi prepared a sonnet that describes very explicitly and programmatically what his inventions are meant to depict for each of the four seasons of the year. The old recording that Max Goberman made with his New York Sinfonietta included readings of these sonnets, establishing once and for all that Vivaldi was far better as a composer than as a poet.
I wrote that Barantschik played the "primary solo violin" in these concertos. As is the case with the Brandenburg Concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach, these compositions involve the interplay of multiple solo lines against the ensemble. Barantschik played in most of these solo combinations, which included a duet with cellist Peter Wyrick, a violin trio with Mark Volkert and Dan Carlson, and even passages where violist Katie Kadarauch took over the continuo line. However, while Bach explored instrumental diversity, Vivaldi stuck with using the basic string sounds to invoke images of shepherds, singing birds, and barking hunting dogs. Nevertheless, that underlying harmonic grammar provides a relatively consistent foundation, making half an evening of these four concertos a bit more of a stretch than a full evening of the six Brandenburgs.
It was a bit surprising to read that Mozart's K. 137 divertimento was receiving its first San Francisco Symphony performance last night. This is the middle composition of a set of three works composed in Salzburg in 1772, all of which have pretty much achieved "standard repertoire" status in the Mozart canon. As James Keller's program notes observed, when he composed this set Mozart was "fifteen going on sixteen" and "exactly a decade along in his composing career." Of the three this is the only one that begins with an Andante, giving it a slightly more introspective attitude than its companions, although the following two Allegro movements restore the high spirits one associates with his divertimento style. Barantschik nicely captured the contrast of moods in his approach to shaping the performance.
118 years later, in 1880, Tchaikovsky composed his serenade for the same kind of string ensemble. Barantschik decided wisely to add several performers to each section. This nicely served the opening bravura gesture, which returns in the fourth movement just before the final coda. If Tchaikovsky is not as inventive as Vivaldi or Mozart (as my orchestration professor put it, "Tchaikovsky cannot say anything without repeating himself"), this serenade offers an elaborate vocabulary of rhythms that carry the listener through a relatively unembellished sonata movement, a waltz, a soulful elegy, and a pastiche of Russian folk tunes. One can appreciate why George Balanchine selected this music for his first choreographic effort in the United States, since the spirit of dance lives and thrives in every note. Barantschik caught that spirit, channeling it to lead the entire ensemble gracefully, allowing the energy of the final movement to bring this refreshing evening to a stimulating conclusion.
All twelve concertos of Vivaldi's Opus 8 are collected under the title Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione (the test of harmony and invention). Thus, one may view each concerto as an experiment in inventive technique that both honors and expands the basic harmonic grammar of the early eighteenth century. For each of the first four concertos, Vivaldi prepared a sonnet that describes very explicitly and programmatically what his inventions are meant to depict for each of the four seasons of the year. The old recording that Max Goberman made with his New York Sinfonietta included readings of these sonnets, establishing once and for all that Vivaldi was far better as a composer than as a poet.
I wrote that Barantschik played the "primary solo violin" in these concertos. As is the case with the Brandenburg Concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach, these compositions involve the interplay of multiple solo lines against the ensemble. Barantschik played in most of these solo combinations, which included a duet with cellist Peter Wyrick, a violin trio with Mark Volkert and Dan Carlson, and even passages where violist Katie Kadarauch took over the continuo line. However, while Bach explored instrumental diversity, Vivaldi stuck with using the basic string sounds to invoke images of shepherds, singing birds, and barking hunting dogs. Nevertheless, that underlying harmonic grammar provides a relatively consistent foundation, making half an evening of these four concertos a bit more of a stretch than a full evening of the six Brandenburgs.
It was a bit surprising to read that Mozart's K. 137 divertimento was receiving its first San Francisco Symphony performance last night. This is the middle composition of a set of three works composed in Salzburg in 1772, all of which have pretty much achieved "standard repertoire" status in the Mozart canon. As James Keller's program notes observed, when he composed this set Mozart was "fifteen going on sixteen" and "exactly a decade along in his composing career." Of the three this is the only one that begins with an Andante, giving it a slightly more introspective attitude than its companions, although the following two Allegro movements restore the high spirits one associates with his divertimento style. Barantschik nicely captured the contrast of moods in his approach to shaping the performance.
118 years later, in 1880, Tchaikovsky composed his serenade for the same kind of string ensemble. Barantschik decided wisely to add several performers to each section. This nicely served the opening bravura gesture, which returns in the fourth movement just before the final coda. If Tchaikovsky is not as inventive as Vivaldi or Mozart (as my orchestration professor put it, "Tchaikovsky cannot say anything without repeating himself"), this serenade offers an elaborate vocabulary of rhythms that carry the listener through a relatively unembellished sonata movement, a waltz, a soulful elegy, and a pastiche of Russian folk tunes. One can appreciate why George Balanchine selected this music for his first choreographic effort in the United States, since the spirit of dance lives and thrives in every note. Barantschik caught that spirit, channeling it to lead the entire ensemble gracefully, allowing the energy of the final movement to bring this refreshing evening to a stimulating conclusion.
April 27, 2009: McCoy Tyner today
McCoy Tyner is probably still best known for his piano work in the
rhythm section of John Coltrane's "classic" quartet, one of the most
imaginative and provocative sources of jazz experimentation around the
middle of the twentieth century. Tyner's work was, indeed, far more
rhythmic than melodic, consisting of rich, full-handed chords that
defied most of the conventions of harmonic progression, usually played
off-beat in counterpoint to the intricate drum patterns of Elvin Jones.
The program book for the SFJAZZ Spring Season applied the adjective
"volcanic" to that quartet; and it is easy to associate Tyner's bursts
of chords with the spurts of lava erupting from an active volcano.
Since leaving Coltrane, Tyner has returned to melody to drive his subsequent explorations; and last night at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre he was joined by vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson in those explorations, backed up by Gerald Cannon on bass and Eric Kamau Gravatt on drums. With the exception of "How Deep is the Ocean," the melodies were Tyner's own. "Blues on the Corner" (which has a YouTube recording with Tyner's trio joined by saxophonist Joe Lovano, rather than Hutcherson) is a reflection on growing up in Philadelphia; but most of Tyner's melodies have a more exotic feel to them, evoking a wide variety of global influences. If Ahmad Jamal's performance at the beginning of this month had left me thinking about Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tyner seemed to invoke some of the spirits of early twentieth-century France, not only with regard to that Ravel-Gershwin connection that I find so significant but also in the way that composers like Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy were absorbing their own global influences, from which they would then weave their own characteristically unique melodies and harmonies.
Hutcherson, a few years younger than Tyner's 70, has had his own experiences with provocative experimentation. He was part of Eric Dolphy's 1964 Out to Lunch session for Blue Note, which also included Freddie Hubbard's trumpet and rhythm from Richard Davis on bass and Tony Williams on drums. In terms of the time-line of jazz history, this session took place a few months before the sessions for the Coltrane Quartet's Crescent album for Impulse! Records. However, in spite of his avant-garde track record, Hutcherson still seemed quite comfortable in Tyner's melodic element, weaving his own elaborations around the cores of each of Tyner's melodies.
For the most part this was a high-energy evening, driven by Gravatt's often explosive drumming (sometimes reminiscent of the ways in which Jones was always pushing his envelope) and Cannon's lively bass. Cannon took several solos of his own, which showed the extent to which he could convey both melody and harmony through the intricate fingering of his instrument (a sense of performance that he may well have picked up from the unaccompanied cello works of Johann Sebastian Bach). The whole evening was a vivid reminder that some of the most inventive minds of jazz history are still inventing, often with far more originality than their younger contemporaries.
Since leaving Coltrane, Tyner has returned to melody to drive his subsequent explorations; and last night at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre he was joined by vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson in those explorations, backed up by Gerald Cannon on bass and Eric Kamau Gravatt on drums. With the exception of "How Deep is the Ocean," the melodies were Tyner's own. "Blues on the Corner" (which has a YouTube recording with Tyner's trio joined by saxophonist Joe Lovano, rather than Hutcherson) is a reflection on growing up in Philadelphia; but most of Tyner's melodies have a more exotic feel to them, evoking a wide variety of global influences. If Ahmad Jamal's performance at the beginning of this month had left me thinking about Karlheinz Stockhausen, Tyner seemed to invoke some of the spirits of early twentieth-century France, not only with regard to that Ravel-Gershwin connection that I find so significant but also in the way that composers like Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy were absorbing their own global influences, from which they would then weave their own characteristically unique melodies and harmonies.
Hutcherson, a few years younger than Tyner's 70, has had his own experiences with provocative experimentation. He was part of Eric Dolphy's 1964 Out to Lunch session for Blue Note, which also included Freddie Hubbard's trumpet and rhythm from Richard Davis on bass and Tony Williams on drums. In terms of the time-line of jazz history, this session took place a few months before the sessions for the Coltrane Quartet's Crescent album for Impulse! Records. However, in spite of his avant-garde track record, Hutcherson still seemed quite comfortable in Tyner's melodic element, weaving his own elaborations around the cores of each of Tyner's melodies.
For the most part this was a high-energy evening, driven by Gravatt's often explosive drumming (sometimes reminiscent of the ways in which Jones was always pushing his envelope) and Cannon's lively bass. Cannon took several solos of his own, which showed the extent to which he could convey both melody and harmony through the intricate fingering of his instrument (a sense of performance that he may well have picked up from the unaccompanied cello works of Johann Sebastian Bach). The whole evening was a vivid reminder that some of the most inventive minds of jazz history are still inventing, often with far more originality than their younger contemporaries.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
April 26, 2009: Balancing act
A friend of mine with a fair amount of experience performing in
amateur ensembles once told me that anyone could be a conductor. There
were only a few important rules to follow. The first one was, "If you
can hear the brass, they are playing too loud."
The brass section had a strong presence at last night's performance by the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall. Conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier chose to begin with his own selection of incidental compositions that Georges Bizet had originally composed for a performance of Alphonse Daudet's play, L'Arlésienne (The Woman from Arles) in 1872. In a theater setting this music was performed by a chamber orchestra, but Bizet subsequently extracted four of the pieces for a suite played by full orchestra. A second suite was later collected by Ernest Guiraud shortly after Bizet's death. Tortelier's selection included movements from both of these suites, beginning with a "Pastorale," originally written to accompany the dialogue of two aged lovers meeting after fifty years of separation.
It is hard to imagine anyone trying to hold a conversation during the re-orchestrated version of this music. It opens with a broad blossoming of full-orchestra sound, a perfect "curtain-raiser" for a concert evening, rather than the stuff of intimate dialogue. This is precisely the sort of situation in which my friend's first rule applies: Once you have been bowled over by that first burst of sound, you quickly discover that it is hard to hear anything other than the brass section, even when you can see that everyone else is very busy with their parts! Fortunately, Tortelier recovered some sense of balance in the following "Carillone," with the horns playing the role of the church bells alternating between foreground and background. Following the "Menuet" and "Adagietto," the orchestra returned in full force for the "Farandole," based on folk melodies that Bizet appropriated. This is a wild festive dance in the context of which the protagonist of the play commits suicide (at least in the version I heard as a radio play in my student days); but the music is all celebration without any dark overtones. Tortelier conducted it as a real crowd-pleaser; and the crowd responded appropriately.
Francis Poulenc posed different problems of balance by orchestrating his 1938 organ concerto for nothing more than a full string section and timpani. I suppose his logic was that any sounds produced by the flow of air could be provided by the organ, and this turned out to be a good judgment call. The Davies pipe organ has a rich collection of sonorities, and organist Paul Jacobs brought most of them into play. He also had a sensitive command of his swell pedals, so in many ways he was more responsible for maintaining overall balance than Tortelier was. Most important is that, because of the way in which its pipes are arrayed, listening to the Davies organ is a very spatial experience, leading me to wonder whether or not Jacobs' selections of stops had as much to do with spatial effects as with always finding the right acoustic fit with the orchestra.
The remainder of the program (after the intermission) was devoted to the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. First Associate Concertmaster Nadya Tichman performed the violin solo in "The Lark Ascending." Vaughan Williams began this work in 1914 but set it aside during his military service in the First World War, completing it only in 1920. The title comes from a poem by George Meredith that begins with the couplet:
The full force of the orchestra returned at the end of the evening for Vaughan Williams' 1934 symphony in F minor, his fourth and the first without a programmatic title (having been preceded by "A Sea Symphony," "A London Symphony," and "A Pastoral Symphony"). This is dark music for dark times. (The musicologist Frank Howes went so far as to suggest that the chain of programmatic titles could have been continued with "A Fascist Symphony.") Aside from the second (Andante moderato) movement, each movement propels the listener through its relatively formal structures with an unrelenting drive; and even the second movement contends with dark clouds, coming primarily from the brass section. By this point in the concert, it was clear that Tortelier had full command of the balance of his resources (even if I was not that sure of his pacing of the second movement); and the destructive blow that concluded the symphony was emotionally shattering.
Reviewing my personal archives, I see that this is the first time I have written about performances of Vaughan Williams. There seemed to be far more interest in his work fifty years ago than there is today. I find this unfortunate, since there is so much diversity and insight in his composition. I hope that the impact of these two works from last night's program will lead to more opportunities for me to write about his music.
The brass section had a strong presence at last night's performance by the San Francisco Symphony in Davies Symphony Hall. Conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier chose to begin with his own selection of incidental compositions that Georges Bizet had originally composed for a performance of Alphonse Daudet's play, L'Arlésienne (The Woman from Arles) in 1872. In a theater setting this music was performed by a chamber orchestra, but Bizet subsequently extracted four of the pieces for a suite played by full orchestra. A second suite was later collected by Ernest Guiraud shortly after Bizet's death. Tortelier's selection included movements from both of these suites, beginning with a "Pastorale," originally written to accompany the dialogue of two aged lovers meeting after fifty years of separation.
It is hard to imagine anyone trying to hold a conversation during the re-orchestrated version of this music. It opens with a broad blossoming of full-orchestra sound, a perfect "curtain-raiser" for a concert evening, rather than the stuff of intimate dialogue. This is precisely the sort of situation in which my friend's first rule applies: Once you have been bowled over by that first burst of sound, you quickly discover that it is hard to hear anything other than the brass section, even when you can see that everyone else is very busy with their parts! Fortunately, Tortelier recovered some sense of balance in the following "Carillone," with the horns playing the role of the church bells alternating between foreground and background. Following the "Menuet" and "Adagietto," the orchestra returned in full force for the "Farandole," based on folk melodies that Bizet appropriated. This is a wild festive dance in the context of which the protagonist of the play commits suicide (at least in the version I heard as a radio play in my student days); but the music is all celebration without any dark overtones. Tortelier conducted it as a real crowd-pleaser; and the crowd responded appropriately.
Francis Poulenc posed different problems of balance by orchestrating his 1938 organ concerto for nothing more than a full string section and timpani. I suppose his logic was that any sounds produced by the flow of air could be provided by the organ, and this turned out to be a good judgment call. The Davies pipe organ has a rich collection of sonorities, and organist Paul Jacobs brought most of them into play. He also had a sensitive command of his swell pedals, so in many ways he was more responsible for maintaining overall balance than Tortelier was. Most important is that, because of the way in which its pipes are arrayed, listening to the Davies organ is a very spatial experience, leading me to wonder whether or not Jacobs' selections of stops had as much to do with spatial effects as with always finding the right acoustic fit with the orchestra.
The remainder of the program (after the intermission) was devoted to the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. First Associate Concertmaster Nadya Tichman performed the violin solo in "The Lark Ascending." Vaughan Williams began this work in 1914 but set it aside during his military service in the First World War, completing it only in 1920. The title comes from a poem by George Meredith that begins with the couplet:
He rises and begins to roundWe have a tendency to perceive intricate designs in both the songs and flight patters of birds, taking them as well-considered cognitive acts, rather than natural processes. Vaughan Williams clearly put a lot of cognition into the bird-song element of the violin solo, which plays out to such lengths that the soloist has only a few brief moments of rest. However, Tichman allowed these intricate melismata to unfold from a position of inner calm, as if to recover the "naturalness" of the "source material" that had inspired by Meredith and Vaughan Williams. The orchestral resources were very modest (two flutes, one oboe, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, triangle, and strings); and Tortelier kept all of these forces properly balanced against the solo "voice of the lark."
He drops the silver chain of sound
The full force of the orchestra returned at the end of the evening for Vaughan Williams' 1934 symphony in F minor, his fourth and the first without a programmatic title (having been preceded by "A Sea Symphony," "A London Symphony," and "A Pastoral Symphony"). This is dark music for dark times. (The musicologist Frank Howes went so far as to suggest that the chain of programmatic titles could have been continued with "A Fascist Symphony.") Aside from the second (Andante moderato) movement, each movement propels the listener through its relatively formal structures with an unrelenting drive; and even the second movement contends with dark clouds, coming primarily from the brass section. By this point in the concert, it was clear that Tortelier had full command of the balance of his resources (even if I was not that sure of his pacing of the second movement); and the destructive blow that concluded the symphony was emotionally shattering.
Reviewing my personal archives, I see that this is the first time I have written about performances of Vaughan Williams. There seemed to be far more interest in his work fifty years ago than there is today. I find this unfortunate, since there is so much diversity and insight in his composition. I hope that the impact of these two works from last night's program will lead to more opportunities for me to write about his music.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
April 24, 2005: American women's voices (and others)
Every now and then a concert is presented with a title that usually
(but not always) spares me the mental exercise of figuring out whether
or not the works being performed have any unifying theme.
Last night's performance by members of The Chamber Music Society of
Lincoln Center in Herbst Theatre (presented by San Francisco
Performances) was entitled American Voices and covered a span of
music history from 1795 to 2006. This would have been enough to make
for a unique evening, but even more interesting was that one of the
works was a setting of the 1850 journal of a pioneer woman and another
was the 1908 piano quintet of the first major American woman composer,
Amy Beach.
The pioneer woman was Margaret Frink, and passages from her daily journal constituted the libretto for Vignettes: Covered Wagon Woman by Alan Louis Smith on a commissioned for mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe and pianist Warren Jones by Music Accord, Inc., a national consortium of presenters of which San Francisco Performances is a member. Blythe and Jones were joined by two other Chamber Music Society members, violinist Ani Kavafian and cellist Pricilla Lee. The work was composed in 2006 and first performed at Lincoln Center on February 22, 2008. Presumably the current tour is providing an opportunity for the consortium members to present the work to their respective audiences. In addition Blythe and Smith gave some introductory remarks about an hour before the concert began.
Blythe decided that the text would not be provided to the audience during the performance. As she explained in her remarks, the prose text is particularly clear; and she was confident that her diction would deliver that prose with equal clarity. Ruth Felt, President of San Francisco Performances, repeated this explanation to the entire audience, announcing that texts would be available in the lobby after the intermission. Blythe was certainly right about her diction, and her subtle use of posture and gesture definitely enhanced the clarity of the text. She wanted all eyes on her, and those who obeyed were rewarded with the full impact of this composition.
For that matter I would have to say that the composition itself was rewarded by her commitment to its performance. There was a little too much sentimentality for my usual tastes; and the process of getting from Martinsville, Indiana to Sacramento, California tended to feel like the long journey it actually was. (I sometimes call this the "Lindbergh effect," particularly in the context of Billy Wilder's Spirit of St. Louis film, when it feels like Jimmy Stewart has been peering forever in search of his first glimpse of French soil.) True to the title of the composition, each movement was a relatively brief vignette; but I still found myself wondering, even with Blythe's sureness of pace, if we needed all thirteen of them.
I had no such wondering where Beach's Opus 67 piano quintet was concerned. As I had already indicated in my preview for this concert, I have heard this work three times within the past twelve months and blogged about each of those performances. Eric Bromberger's program notes provided a useful context for the newcomer:
More interesting was the way in which the members of The Chamber Music Society (pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, violinists Ani Kavafian and Lily Francis, violist Paul Neubauer, and cellist Pricilla Lee) situated this music in a light quite different from that of my previous listening experiences. All of those past experiences were at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (although the first involved William Wellborn and the Ives Quartet, rather than any students); and I was impressed with how Beach had conceived of a work for five "equals." This constituted a different kind of departure from Brahms than Bromberger's observation about chromaticism, since Brahms' piano virtuosity would often make his chamber music sound like a "concerto for piano and very small orchestra." That "Brahms effect" was more present in the Lincoln Center performance than in the past performances I had heard, possibly because the spirit of Brahms' virtuosity seemed to thrive in McDermott's approach to the piano part. This is not to say that the rest of the ensemble was reduced to insignificance. Each member of the quartet had a major say in the "journey" of this composition; and I particularly appreciated Neubauer reminding me of how much I enjoyed Beach's characteristic approach to the viola.
It is also important to note that those four string players worked very well together as a quartet. The Beach quintet was preceded by their performance of George Gershwin's 1920 "Lullaby," which was never published in his lifetime. This puts it eight years before his meeting with Maurice Ravel but about seventeen years after Ravel had composed his string quartet. So it would not surprise me if Gershwin had been exposed to Ravel's quartet before undertaking his own. The "Lullaby" is much shorter; but it definitely shares Ravel's keen ear for the rich palette of sonorities that violin, viola, and cello are capable of delivering. It is also a miniature study in syncopation with a slight hint of ragtime applied with a subtlety that Ravel never quite grasped in his own efforts to honor the innovations taking place in the United States. The performers were clearly comfortable with Gershwin's approach to both color and rhythm, providing a bit of calm before the more Brahms-like "storm" of Beach's quintet.
Bromberger also observed that it is a bit of a stretch to call John Antes, whose D minor trio for two violins and cello (Opus 3, Number 2) opened the program, an "American voice." He was born in Pennsylvania in 1740, the son of Moravian immigrants, crossed the Atlantic in 1764, and never returned. He did missionary work in Egypt (which Bromberger called "a disaster") and lived primarily in Germany until he became business manager of the Moravian community in Fulneck, England in 1783. The three Opus 3 trios were published in 1795. Antes was aware of Joseph Haydn's visits to London in the 1790s and may have corresponded with him. Haydn seems to have liked this particular form of string trio and composed about twenty works for it, but the last of them was completed in 1768. I am not (yet) familiar with these Haydn compositions; but I have become very aware of his sensitivity to the characteristic colors of instruments in the string family. Antes' trio is particularly interesting to the extent that it shares that sensitivity to color, not too surprising given that, as a teenager, he was responsible for making some of the earliest string instruments constructed in America. Francis, Kavafian, and Lee performed this work with the same loving attention they had given to Gershwin's sense of color, leaving the listener eager to hear more of this rarely-performed Moravian from Pennsylvania.
The pioneer woman was Margaret Frink, and passages from her daily journal constituted the libretto for Vignettes: Covered Wagon Woman by Alan Louis Smith on a commissioned for mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe and pianist Warren Jones by Music Accord, Inc., a national consortium of presenters of which San Francisco Performances is a member. Blythe and Jones were joined by two other Chamber Music Society members, violinist Ani Kavafian and cellist Pricilla Lee. The work was composed in 2006 and first performed at Lincoln Center on February 22, 2008. Presumably the current tour is providing an opportunity for the consortium members to present the work to their respective audiences. In addition Blythe and Smith gave some introductory remarks about an hour before the concert began.
Blythe decided that the text would not be provided to the audience during the performance. As she explained in her remarks, the prose text is particularly clear; and she was confident that her diction would deliver that prose with equal clarity. Ruth Felt, President of San Francisco Performances, repeated this explanation to the entire audience, announcing that texts would be available in the lobby after the intermission. Blythe was certainly right about her diction, and her subtle use of posture and gesture definitely enhanced the clarity of the text. She wanted all eyes on her, and those who obeyed were rewarded with the full impact of this composition.
For that matter I would have to say that the composition itself was rewarded by her commitment to its performance. There was a little too much sentimentality for my usual tastes; and the process of getting from Martinsville, Indiana to Sacramento, California tended to feel like the long journey it actually was. (I sometimes call this the "Lindbergh effect," particularly in the context of Billy Wilder's Spirit of St. Louis film, when it feels like Jimmy Stewart has been peering forever in search of his first glimpse of French soil.) True to the title of the composition, each movement was a relatively brief vignette; but I still found myself wondering, even with Blythe's sureness of pace, if we needed all thirteen of them.
I had no such wondering where Beach's Opus 67 piano quintet was concerned. As I had already indicated in my preview for this concert, I have heard this work three times within the past twelve months and blogged about each of those performances. Eric Bromberger's program notes provided a useful context for the newcomer:
Beach composed her Piano Quintet in 1907–08, and she was the pianist at its first performance on February 20, 1908 in Boston. The world of music was in ferment in 1908: in that year Mahler composed Das Lied von der Erde, Schoenberg his Second String Quartet, and Scriabin his Poem of Ecstasy. There is not the slightest trace of these new directions in Beach's Piano Quintet, which remains firmly rooted in the 19th-century musical traditions with which she had grown up. Brahms himself would have felt comfortable with the form and grand sonority of her Piano Quintet, though he might have been surprised by the chromaticism of her writing.Actually, while that chromaticism might have surprised Brahms, one of my earliest impressions was that it felt right at home with the chamber music of Gabriel Fauré; and, in one of my blog posts, I singled out Fauré's first (Opus 13) violin sonata and the first (Opus 15) piano quartet as sources for orienting the ear to Beach's own chromatic language.
More interesting was the way in which the members of The Chamber Music Society (pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, violinists Ani Kavafian and Lily Francis, violist Paul Neubauer, and cellist Pricilla Lee) situated this music in a light quite different from that of my previous listening experiences. All of those past experiences were at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (although the first involved William Wellborn and the Ives Quartet, rather than any students); and I was impressed with how Beach had conceived of a work for five "equals." This constituted a different kind of departure from Brahms than Bromberger's observation about chromaticism, since Brahms' piano virtuosity would often make his chamber music sound like a "concerto for piano and very small orchestra." That "Brahms effect" was more present in the Lincoln Center performance than in the past performances I had heard, possibly because the spirit of Brahms' virtuosity seemed to thrive in McDermott's approach to the piano part. This is not to say that the rest of the ensemble was reduced to insignificance. Each member of the quartet had a major say in the "journey" of this composition; and I particularly appreciated Neubauer reminding me of how much I enjoyed Beach's characteristic approach to the viola.
It is also important to note that those four string players worked very well together as a quartet. The Beach quintet was preceded by their performance of George Gershwin's 1920 "Lullaby," which was never published in his lifetime. This puts it eight years before his meeting with Maurice Ravel but about seventeen years after Ravel had composed his string quartet. So it would not surprise me if Gershwin had been exposed to Ravel's quartet before undertaking his own. The "Lullaby" is much shorter; but it definitely shares Ravel's keen ear for the rich palette of sonorities that violin, viola, and cello are capable of delivering. It is also a miniature study in syncopation with a slight hint of ragtime applied with a subtlety that Ravel never quite grasped in his own efforts to honor the innovations taking place in the United States. The performers were clearly comfortable with Gershwin's approach to both color and rhythm, providing a bit of calm before the more Brahms-like "storm" of Beach's quintet.
Bromberger also observed that it is a bit of a stretch to call John Antes, whose D minor trio for two violins and cello (Opus 3, Number 2) opened the program, an "American voice." He was born in Pennsylvania in 1740, the son of Moravian immigrants, crossed the Atlantic in 1764, and never returned. He did missionary work in Egypt (which Bromberger called "a disaster") and lived primarily in Germany until he became business manager of the Moravian community in Fulneck, England in 1783. The three Opus 3 trios were published in 1795. Antes was aware of Joseph Haydn's visits to London in the 1790s and may have corresponded with him. Haydn seems to have liked this particular form of string trio and composed about twenty works for it, but the last of them was completed in 1768. I am not (yet) familiar with these Haydn compositions; but I have become very aware of his sensitivity to the characteristic colors of instruments in the string family. Antes' trio is particularly interesting to the extent that it shares that sensitivity to color, not too surprising given that, as a teenager, he was responsible for making some of the earliest string instruments constructed in America. Francis, Kavafian, and Lee performed this work with the same loving attention they had given to Gershwin's sense of color, leaving the listener eager to hear more of this rarely-performed Moravian from Pennsylvania.
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