Numbers game

Posted on July 12, 2012 by barczablog

Is opera a numbers game?  It depends who you ask.

Statistics can describe aspects of any art form.  For example:

  • Guernica is 3.49 meters by 7.76 meters (more than 11 feet by over 25 feet)
  • Syberberg’s film Our Hitler is over 7 hours long.
  • Georgia O’Keefe lived close to 100 years

I picked examples of numbers that probably have been noticed before.  The arts are sometimes uncomfortable about being measured.  Some movements such as the Symbolists objected to science & positivism, fearing numbers and reductive thinking.

Opera is both an art form and a big business.  The interface between creativity and the search for profit is sometimes a very troubled place, where ideals collide with harsh realities.  For this reason artists hire specialists to promote their careers.  Or perhaps it’s the other way around, as astute entrepreneurs spot the artists who can make them a buck, and then put them onstage.

I think the creation of opera may or may not benefit from the study of numbers; but the business of promoting and producing opera can’t ignore the evidence found in numbers.

With that in mind, I’m sharing the url for Operabase:   http://www.operabase.com.  They are an organization who have gathered fascinating statistics about opera production in several countries over the past decade and a half: http://www.operabase.com/top.cgi?lang=en

Some countries clearly produce more opera than others.  If you drill down (click on highlighted topics) you can, for example, see which cities produce the most operas.  Toronto for instance is tied with Chicago (the second most prolific city in the USA) at 87 operas, based on the 2009-10 season.

I find these stats fascinating.  For instance (quoting from operabase):

Of the top 100 most operatic cities [and one can click on this to see the list that showed Toronto & Chicago],

  • no fewer than 47(!) are in Germany
  • 7 in Austria
  • 5 each in Switzerland and in Poland
  • 4 in Italy
  • 3 in the US, in the Czech Republic and in Russia
  • 2 in France, in Spain, in the UK and in Australia

While I am a bit sad to see that Canada only has the one entry, it dawns on me that at least based on numbers, Toronto is arguably the next most important opera city in North America after New York. Of course Chicagoans might want to dispute that.  But that’s one of the enjoyable side-effects of statistics, that they provoke discussion & argument.

Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi

And then there are the stats about composers & popular operas.  Mozart’s The Magic Flute is #1, followed by Verdi’s La Traviata.  I feel some of the same pleasure reading these lists of composers & operas, as I do poring over box scores & batting averages on the sports pages.  While one can’t capture the magic of baseball in those numbers, there’s much to be learned, even as each set of statistics raises a host of additional questions.

Popularity can’t be ignored in opera, given the expense of the form.  When operas continue to draw audiences year after year, one has to consider the possibility that there’s a correlation between that popularity and something meaningful about the works themselves.  Scholars share the symbolists’ fear of reductivism addressed above.  Numbers seem too easy, and don’t reflect the subtlety of the works being studied.

Must it always be subtle, intangible, and irreducible?  I don’t know.  I would never mistake a box score for a ballgame.  I simply find it a great way to read about the games I’ve missed and to ponder the ones I’ve seen.

A plot synopsis would never be mistaken for an opera, although curiously, operatic scores are sometimes treated as though they’re sacred even though they’re just part of the recipe (but instead of “just add water” the missing ingredient is the performer).

Go read the operabase stats.  Drill down.  You won’t have all the answers, just a series of new questions.

And hopefully, fun.

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Ten greatest

Posted on July 9, 2012 by barczablog

Limelight magazine supposedly polled “modern day masters” of the piano, to identify the ten greatest pianists of all time.

Here’s their list of ten:

1. Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

2. Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989)

3. Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997)

4. Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)

5. Emil Gilels (1916-1985)

6. Alfred Cortot (1877-1962)

7. Glenn Gould (1932-1982)

8. Alfred Brendel (b1931)

9. Wilhelm Kempff (1895 – 1991)

10. Artur Schnabel (1882-1951)

There are at least a few names conspicuous for their absence.  I won’t argue with those “modern day masters”, whoever they might be.  Let me simply suggest a few more names.  Here are ten names to consider.  Whether any of them are pianists worthy to displace any of the ten from this other list, I leave to you.

  1. ChopinFrederic Chopin: Maybe he’s not the greatest in history, but it seems reasonable to assume that he was a good pianist, when he was able to play most if not all of his own compositions: which aren’t exactly chopped liver.
  2. Robert Schumann: again we’re speaking of a pianist who wrote challenging music.  I won’t put Clara Schumann on this list, even though it may be that she was a better pianist than Robert.   There are other great composers who were reputed to be fine pianists, such as  Felix Mendelssohn and Georges Bizet who likely could make this list.  But nevermind them, as the evidence is sketchy.
  3. But chief among all these composers must surely be Franz Liszt, the prototype of the virtuoso.   We can only speculate on his abilities from what he gave us in his transcriptions.  But that’s already solid evidence of great technique, possibly the greatest pianist of all time, and strangely absent from the Limelight list.
  4. By the same logic as #3, we’d have to also admit Ferrucio Busoni may have been an even more impressive pianist than Liszt, again considering the evidence of his transcriptions.
  5. While he may not have been a successful concert pianist, Claude Debussy was one of a kind, a performer who played not only his own music but reductions of Wagner operas (where Debussy would also sing the vocal lines).
  6. And while we’re talking about composers who were outside the usual concert realm, what about George Gershwin?
  7. And here’s another pianist without a career as a concert pianist, namely Leonard Bernstein.  Why be a pianist when you’re one of the greatest composers.
  8. As we list pianist-composers (having mentioned Liszt, but also with Rachmaninoff at the top of Limelight’s list) we might have to include Sergei Prokofiev. 
  9. Dimitri Shostakovich? Another great composer who was a fabulous piano player
  10. And there’s also Bela Bartok

And i left Gottschalk and Grainger off the list, even though i hear Gottschalk played like a god, and Grainger?  i love his music.

Having looked at great composers of the last century, I will add a few great pianists from the last hundred years who somehow failed to get enough votes from the “Modern Masters”.

  • Daniel Barenboim
  • Solomon
  • Walter Gieseking
  • Leon Fleischer
  • Maurizio Pollini
  • Alexis Weissenberg
  • Lazar Berman
  • Martha Argerich

At what age does a piano player reach their peak?   Whatever one understands by words such as “greatest pianist”, one has to admit that most abilities fade in time.  Chess masters peak somewhere around 35 years of age.  Given the physical component of pianism, it’s hard to believe that a great pianist plays better in their 60s than they played in their youth.  While it’s certainly true that reputation gets you the opportunity to be heard, is the piano playing as good when one is aging? I’d have to think not, speaking as someone whose eyes can’t sight-read as well now as they once did, who doesn’t have the same stamina to sit at a piano that i once had.

I put that out there, completely fascinated by two young pianists.  While reputation takes time to acquire, I am inclined to believe that maybe these two young pianists deserve to be considered among the greatest pianists currently playing on this planet, if not among the greatest ever.  Each of them has taken an unorthodox approach to building fame.

The two?  Valentina Lisitsa and Stewart Goodyear.  Both are young.

  • Valentina Lisitsa has become known through performances on youtube.  Look at this one for example, and notice her fluid technique.  She has been gaining fame through youtube rather than the usual pathways for classical musicians.   Her technique is so relaxed, she doesn’t seem to be working at all….wow(!)
  • Stewart Goodyear?  I’ve been writing about him so much lately that I worry i am sounding like the proverbial broken record.  He has the passion of Artur Schnabel, but without any of the wrong notes.

And of course there are other pianists coming up.  In a NY Times article i cited a few weeks ago, Anthony Tommasini remarked that virtuosi are becoming a dime a dozen. Skillsets improve with each generation, so that perhaps brilliance is becoming so common that we don’t appreciate it anymore.  Perhaps we’re blasé about talent.

What lies ahead?

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Goon

Posted on July 8, 2012 by barczablog

If you were to ask a Canadian to name the best hockey film, they’d have a fairly short list to work with.  Where baseball has generated a fairly long list of films, some sentimental, some colourful, portraying various aspects of that sport, hockey hasn’t been fully captured on film.

The best hockey films?

  • Slap Shot, possibly Paul Newman’s best film, even if the way hockey gets represented isn’t terribly accurate.  Yes I love the Hanson brothers, yes I delight in the profanity that’s woven throughout, but that’s not really what hockey looks like, fun as the film is.
  • The Mighty Ducks franchise made lots of money for Disney.  And if you believe that’s what hockey is, perhaps I should introduce you to their talking animals, Mickey & Goofy, who can teach you a great deal about zoology.
  • Face-Off uses hockey as a backdrop, a romance rather than a hockey movie.
  • Miracle On Ice is a TV movie telling the story of the American victory in the 1960 Olympics.  I had to look it up (wikipedia), which tells you how memorable it was.

But now there’s a new champ in town.  Move over Slap Shot.  I saw Goon today, never doubting for a moment I’d love this movie.  Like Slap Shot there’s so much profanity in this film that it almost needs a special category all its own.  When I said there’s a new champ in town I meant to allude to its subject because Goon is really a movie about one aspect of hockey, namely the fighter: the goon.

Written by Jay Baruchel & Evan Goldberg (adapted from the book Goon: The True Story of an Unlikely Journey into Minor League Hockey by Adam Frattasio & Doug Smith), directed by Michael Dowse (who also directed Fubar II) it’s a film as blunt as its title, yet full of surprises.

Goon uses music of surprising sophistication.  While most of the score is rock music, at times we’re treated to different passages from Puccini’s opera Turandot, and not just the famous tune that ends with a hero defiantly shouting “vincero” (or “I shall win”).  

The title character is one of the sweetest characters you’ll ever meet, even though he has the ability to knock you silly: when he isn’t doing the honourable thing.

Goon tells a series of interconnected stories against a backdrop of a very cynical industry, namely hockey.  Our goon is Doug Glatt, portrayed by Seann William Scott, a man with no illusions about his abilities (he can barely skate), particularly in comparison to his brother (a doctor).   Doug, who is an up and coming young fighter at the beginning of his career, is juxtaposed against a veteran at the end of his career, namely Ross Rhea, in a wonderful portrayal from Liev Schreiber, including something like a Newfoundland accent.

This is not a film for children, unless you’re okay with exposing them to sex, drugs and more blood than a butcher shop on a busy day.  It’s grotesque, which is precisely why it’s so gloriously good.

All hail the new champ!

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Goodyear—Beethoven I

Posted on July 7, 2012 by barczablog

To begin the voyage through Stewart Goodyear’s set on Marquis of the complete Piano Sonatas of Beethoven, I took two CDs, and listened to each one multiple times.  While I seem to be jumping in at either end (CD #1 and CD #9) they represent a kind of logical place to start:

  • CD #9 includes the epic Hammerklavier sonata, Op 106 (sonata #29), that gave me my first introduction to Goodyear on youtube.
  • CD #1 contains the three sonatas Op 2, or in other words Beethoven’s first three
  • In each case there’s an opportunity to compare, both to the internet recordings and to live performances I heard in the “Beethoven Marathon”.

CD coverPerformance can be understood as a kind of research.  When you do something on a stage, on your toes, with your fingers at a keyboard, you are making propositions, and testing hypotheses.  While the hypothetical element isn’t a scientific theory, one puts a particular reading—such as an interpretation of a piano sonata—to a test every time one sits down to play.  One is especially aware of the hypothetical aspect when one encounters a performer going in a new direction with a well-known piece.  The ears and eyes of an audience who think they know a particular composition may resist and may simply not understand.

Listening to Goodyear I feel certain that his mind embraces Beethoven with a calm clarity that lays the music bare before him, taking in not only the shapes of musical phrases, but an understanding of how to sound notes.  He is different from what I have encountered before.   Playing passages quickly may at first seem to be a virtuosic device, when one has always heard a piece slower.  But I have discovered that by playing passages quickly one may discern the sense of the whole.  This was my surprised discovery listening to the final movement of sonata #29.

I grew up listening to Schnabel. Then came Ashkenazy’s performance on Decca.  I found Schnabel at times percussive, prone to occasional wrong notes, yet coming from a place that seemed inspired and driven by vision: which justifies the wrong notes and the occasional harsh attack.  That sense of an inspire romantic is a 20th century tradition, whereby we smile and indulge wrong notes.   Ashkenazy seemed so much warmer & more precise, but not as fast & furious as Schnabel.  The newer recording of Ashkenazy (in the 1970s?) far surpasses the mono sound for Schnabel

Goodyear gives us the speed & ferocity of Schnabel, with note-perfect precision, and still better sonics.  It should be more newsworthy.  Why don’t people talk about this? But I guess Beethoven isn’t on MTV and Goodyear doesn’t have a reality TV show.

Coupled with sonata #29 is one of my favourites, namely #28.  The Marathon had me looking for compositional parallels, thinking about how Beethoven takes up recurring ideas in subsequent compositions.  When one listens to #s 28 & 29 together over and over as I have, one starts to see patterns.  The choices of keys –so unorthodox for both sonatas—are particularly intriguing when one looks at the two works as part of one larger compositional journey, as one sees in the Marathon.  Consider:

  • One sonata is in A, one is in B-flat.
  • The 2nd movement of #28 in A is in F: normally a key one would encounter in a sonata in B-flat.
  • The third movement of #29 is in F-sharp minor, the relative minor to A.
  • The introduction of the last movement of #29, beginning on F as one might expect segues boldly into loud crashing chords in A that strongly resemble the end of sonata #28.
  • And everywhere, phrases that answer one another.  While it isn’t all contra-puntal, the writing is very dense.

Need I add that Goodyear plays both 28 & 29 with great clarity, at times with a muscular attack reminding me of Schnabel, but crisp and clean.

And then there are the first sonatas on CD #1.  But Goodyear brings the same muscular clarity to bear on the early works.

The drama of the F minor sonata Op 2 #1 is infused with Sturm und Drang, a melodrama of great contrasts, very disciplined in its attire.  There’s sentiment without sentimentality. Sonata #2 in A opens and closes with fast moving passages leaping up and down the keyboard, with understated drama in the inner movements.

And then comes Op 2 #3 in C, one of the highlights of the live performances of the Marathon.  I remembered my sense that Goodyear could see deeply into the heart of the music, in the balance (or is it an emotional symmetry?) one feels in his reading.  All four movements are marvellous, but the inner two are particularly fine.  The slow movement is one of those delicate explorations of passion that we see in the early sonatas.  The scherzo reminds me of the vaudeville show I saw yesterday, the voices dancing up and down the keys resembling –or inciting—a strong sense of hilarity, as if one were listening to laughter.  And the closing movement is a liberating exercise in speed and delicacy.

I won’t stop listening to those two CDs (particularly when some passages continue to echo inside my head: a good thing).  Now it’s time to hear more of the set.

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Wakowski Bros

Posted on July 6, 2012 by barczablog

It’s July in Toronto, which means it’s time for the Fringe Festival, the grand-daddy of them all.

Whether we’re talking about Summmerworks, Rhubarb, The Fringe, or one of the others (forgotten by my heat-addled brain) the premise is largely the same (with a few variations that matter more to participants than to the audience in my opinion).  Sharing is the key, as several productions share the venues & the revenues generated by such a festival. They’re constrained by the rules to employ limited lighting & design, moving in and out quickly so that several shows can share the space each day.

The dream is alive.  Producers & performers alike come to The Fringe in hopes that their short play might use this wonderful showcase as a springboard to various scenarios of bigger and better.   How else to explain the incongruities one sometimes encounters, of tiny companies, the usual short plays (as stipulated by The Fringe’s rules), and amazing talent?  The reason The Fringe is a can’t-miss proposition for an audience is the opportunity to see these shows in tiny venues, so close to the performers that you can hear them think.

Every year there are a few shows that get extra attention for reasons I don’t pretend to know.   It’s word of mouth, whatever that really means.  That’s how I heard about The Wakowski Bros: A Canadian Vaudeville, which was my first show of the 2012 Fringe.  I was intrigued.  Vaudeville? It’s a subject that fascinates me (Canadian or otherwise) and the venue is ridiculously convenient for me.

I was also drawn to Wakowski Bros because it’s directed by Alex Fallis, a Toronto theatre artist I’ve known for a very long time.

Wesley Colford

…the man who wrote book, music & lyrics for The Wakowski Bros: A Canadian Vaudeville

The funny thing about Wakowski Bros is how it’s simultaneously several things all at the same time, conflating its subject and style into one elegant package.  It uses a vaudevillian delivery to explore something of the history of the form, even as it also tells a story about brothers (an irresistible topic for anyone like me who has a brother).  The writing is a dazzling bit of meta-theatre,  situating us in a performance that explores performance.  We’re watching a vaudeville show about vaudeville, complete with bad jokes, sentimental songs, physical gags and a paper thin artifice.  Although the tunes are original, written & composed by Wesley J Colford (who wrote book, music & lyrics), they have the disarming ability to make you think you’re hearing an old tune from bygone years.

Lorretta Bailey

Lorretta Bailey stole the show (as she said she would)

Sometimes Fringe shows become big hits, and are given extended runs, often in extended versions.  It may be that Colford’s play can work in a longer version, but I am especially impressed at how powerfully it works in the short time-slot of a Fringe show.  The ending surprised me –something like a discordant cadence—until I recognize that the last moments are likely Colford’s (or Fallis’s) way of showing us which of this play’s several threads is truly paramount (between comedy & music for their own sake, the history of vaudeville and the story of the brothers).  Derek Scott and Duff MacDonald are wonderful brothers, although the show is stolen by Loretta Bailey as Caitlyn Rose McLean.

The Wakowski Bros continues at the St Vladimir’s Theatre (thankfully  an air-conditioned venue), 620 Spadina Ave until July 15th.

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Two Iconoclasts

Posted on July 4, 2012 by barczablog

Canada became a country July 1st 1867: one hundred forty-five years ago.  July 1st is a day to count one’s blessings, to celebrate a compassionate and gentle country, a haven for so many wonderful people, among them great artists.

I’m thinking of such things as I ponder two extraordinary Canadians: one from the last century, the other from our own.

I grew up hearing about the brilliance of Glenn Gould.  In fact I found that while some of his performances were excellent, others were quirky and even disturbing.  What I admired was his refusal to sound like anyone else, to behave like anyone else, or to really care very much about everyone else.  He is truly an iconoclast, unfettered by the usual procedures or conventions of his instrument.  And as a result he went far outside the usual limits & boundaries of the piano, becoming a kind of larger-than-life spokesperson for music and for the arts in Canada.  Because he’s so well known –and well documented—I leave it to you to confirm this for yourself rather than waste space on someone so firmly established in the Canadian musical imagination.

The other Canadian is Stewart Goodyear.  To be honest I’ve been obsessing about him.  He’s been coming into conversations that have little to do with Beethoven or pianism, because again, Goodyear is not following the usual rulebook.

Last month I heard a portion of Goodyear’s Beethoven Marathon, a performance of all 32 sonatas in a day, an undertaking denigrated as an attempt to attract attention.  While the concerts did deserve attention –especially considering the pianist’s remarkable approach—they fit nicely into the tradition of piano virtuosity.   But the Marathon was a happening, going far beyond what I’d expected.  Accompanying the performances were a series of poetic commentaries every bit as unique & witty as the writing we came to expect from Gould.  You can see Goodyear’s liner notes here.

I believe Goodyear deserves the kind of worldwide attention that Gould received half a century before, as much of an original thinker, as daring in his interpretations, and yes, at least as fine a pianist. Gould attracted the spotlight with his daring reading of Bach’s Goldberg Variations more than half a century ago, in 1955.  I don’t know whether Goodyear can have the same impact when part of Gould’s impact was upon a public who by and large didn’t know those variations that put Gould on the map, and came to be smitten with the composition as much as with the playing.  At least some of Beethoven’s sonatas are among the best known compositions for the piano.

complete setYet from what I’ve heard so far, the young pianist is every bit as original as the one who came before.

I’ve obtained Goodyear’s new release of all 32 piano sonatas on the Marquis label, available online as well as in record stores.  I will be writing about them in more detail in coming weeks.  Based on what I heard in the live concert, where the young pianist had every note in his head, and a clear interpretive vision unlike anyone out there, and what I’ve heard of the CDs, Goodyear could change the way we hear Beethoven.

I’ll have a lot more to say in coming days.

GOuld

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Verdi and Wagner

Posted on July 2, 2012 by barczablog
Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi

Is it early to be talking about the 2013 bicentennial of Giuseppe Verdi & Richard Wagner? Not when papers to be presented at conferences next year are already being proposed.

Both composers were born in 1813.

Let’s get to the most provocative –and superficial—question right away.   Between Richard Wagner & Giuseppe Verdi, who is more important?

Each composer was involved with politics.  Verdi? his influence is remembered mostly with nostalgia, part of the mythology of Italian unification.

Wagner’s politics were riskier, considering his lengthy period of exile.

If it’s simply a popularity contest –answering the question of which composer is performed more often—I think it’s a slam-dunk for Italian Giuseppe Verdi.  According to the most recent list of operas ranked by popularity Verdi was among the most popular, whereas Wagner was not.  An older version from about a decade ago cited four operas in the top 20 from each of Verdi (La Traviata, Il Trovatore—to be presented by the Canadian Opera Company next season—Rigoletto and Aida), Puccini (La boheme, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, and Turandot) and Mozart (The Magic Flute, Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi Fan Tutte).

Why would popularity matter?  In the cinematic world critics have heaped contempt upon films whose only claim to importance is their box office success.  Avatar was ignored at Oscar time.  Why would popularity matter?  Perhaps because it’s an objective yardstick in a realm otherwise dominated by subjective speculation.  Critics have largely persuaded us that commercial success is a kind of liability, perhaps because that would mean the task of identifying quality does not require a PhD or esoteric knowledge.  If popularity matters, then critics would have a difficult time justifying their roles as arbiters of taste.

Perhaps that’s one reason why most academics would be more likely to observe the bicentennial of Wagner rather than Verdi.  Why?  I suppose I could take a poll (ha: speaking of popularity).

Wagner’s impact isn’t limited to opera.  But even if we were only speaking of opera, I wonder if it would change your perspective if we consider that the two most popular composers of the first half of the 20th century were profoundly influenced by Wagner.

The first is likely someone you’d anticipate, namely Richard Strauss.  The Wagnerian influence is most obvious in early operas such as Elektra and Salome (to be presented next season by the Canadian Opera Company), each ending with something resembling a Liebestod.

The second?  Giacomo Puccini.  While Boheme employs recurring tunes that don’t really change much throughout the opera, Butterfly, Tosca and Turandot are more Wagnerian.

And that’s just the beginning:

Wagner

Richard Wagner

  • If you’re a drama scholar you’re reading Wagner’s theories, particularly if you care about opera.
  • If you’re a film music scholar Wagner is one of the important influences, while Verdi is almost irrelevant.
  • The Symbolist movement in poetry & theatre saw Wagner—alongside Poe & Baudelaire—as key influences.
  • I was watching the daughter of a friend playing a computer game today, noticing that the dramaturgy of the game was completely Wagnerian.  The music aimed for a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, or unified effect (the music being almost as eloquent to tell you when to be afraid or to breathe a sigh of relief as the visuals).
  • at one time i heard that Richard Wagner was the third most cited topic of anyone in history, after Napoleon & Jesus Christ.  True or false? i don’t know, but this kind of reputation makes Wagner important as a cultural phenomenon

So I will be interested to watch developments in the coming year.  I will post from time to time about one or the other, or sometimes both, and invite others to comment, whether in agreement or not, about how Wagner & Verdi matter.

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Summer

Posted on June 30, 2012 by barczablog

When did music begin to imitate its subject, begin to be ambitious about signifying?  Is Mozart’s gentle rococo tuba mirum (so understated compared to Verdi’s dies irae or Mahler’s resurrection in his 2nd Symphony) an attempt to show us what it would sound like on that day, or rather a humbler idea of what the music accompanying the singer should do?  When Handel’s trumpet sounds, and the bass tells us the trumpet shall sound, are we to think that the D major trumpet in some sense imitates what one would hear on that day?  After hearing Hollywood movie music portend both God and Godzilla, my ear is jaded, struggling to get back to a purer sort of hearing beyond mere imitation.

At one time music had not yet become the Wagnerian monstrosity to which we’re now accustomed.

Music was not explaining. Music simply played.

Musicians weren’t expected to underscore the scene to explain the story.(affecting music for the heroine, scary music for the monster).  Music simply played.

Music wasn’t burdened with meanings, telling us who was the good or bad guys.  In Shakespeare for example, whether you’re a Stuart or a Plantagenet, you get a small fanfare to announce your entry (look for words such as “tucket”: a kind of ta ta ta ta to denote a major personage).  Hm, so in the sense that music meant personage, its ability to signify goes back quite a way.

It may be simplistic to want to think of music having only recently acquired its baggage: its ability to signify beyond the moment.  Maybe music always did this to some extent.  Even so, listening to something like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons I can’t help thinking that the process of signification is so much more innocent.  Vivaldi did not worry when presenting the composition to the first audience about the possibility of anyone disrupting that first performance with a phonecall or a text message.

It’s summertime and for some of us the living is easy.

Four SeasonsDriving through the modern countryside seems the perfect counterpart to listening to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons on the car’s sound system.

It’s so hot outside that it’s scary, global warming being the unspoken horror.

Tafelmusik’s innocent sound takes us back to a time when the seasons were natural and disciplined, surely less concerned with a perfect imitation of the weather in the music, than simply an occasion to raise our spirits.

As we zip along with the air conditioning blasting away any sensation of the inferno outside, Tafelmusik bring us a soundtrack of balance and harmony as green as an unspoiled forest filled with birds and animals, not yet poisoned or slaughtered.

Jeanne Lamon with her colleagues

Tafelmusik Music Director Jeanne Lamon (Photographer: Sian Richards)

The performances are a corrective on other versions I’ve heard.  Jeanne Lamon’s solo violin has such calm tranquil beauty, without the neurotic tendency to rush, to over-emphasize phrases, as I’ve heard in so many versions.   Is this the sound of nature? Perhaps that’s one way to understand it.  But more fundamentally, Lamon and the ensemble she leads are playful, relaxed, and above all organic.  As we drove along I could almost believe that the risks to the natural world were all in my head.  Vivaldi in Tafelmusik’s recording puts me at ease with nature.

Of course the world will go on, with or without homo sapiens.

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PREMIERES

Posted on June 28, 2012 by barczablog

CDWhatever you think of the music on PREMIERES – violinist Conrad Chow’s CD of original musical compositions for violin with different groupings of accompanying instruments— the concept seems to be original.

My eyebrows went up when I heard that a young violinist was recording a series of new compositions.  Honestly, I don’t know if this is really an original idea or simply something new to me; but it seems like a very fresh idea, to team up an unknown player with unknown music.

One of the saddest realities is the fate of the so-called “new music” commissioned for concerts.  Few compositions survive their first presentation.  That’s makes the title of Chow’s CD portentous if not ironic, when you consider how few compositions survive the premiere, to be revived, let alone entering the performing repertoire for that instrument.

Having a soloist commission composers is an ideal gig, because the goal is symbiotic, a win-win relationship.  Soloists need the music going forward, and so inevitably will give the composition subsequent performances, thereby avoiding that dreaded fate of the premiere/farewell performance.

I don’t know whether Conrad Chow simply sought out a series of composers, or whether there was something more complex.  (recording label facilitating the matchup? composers sharing the gig?)

I’ve been listening to PREMIERES for days now, the CD that’s in my car, in my laptop at home, or in my office downtown.   It’s a kind of acid test, pressing a recording into this kind of extreme service, one that exposes the good and the bad.   Having been through it completely at least seven times, plus a few extra visits to specific tracks, I’m very pleased with Chow’s project, with the compositions, and the resulting CD.

Different pieces have grabbed me at different times over the past few days.  Each one has to be considered a success, given that I surrendered to each one, and have decided I adore some.

foursome

(left to right) Conrad Chow with composers Kevin Lau, Ron Royer and Bruce Broughton.

Bruce Broughton’s contribution was for me the most significant, representing the pieces that are holding on to me with a series of friendly ear-worms that refuse to let go.

Broughton opens the CD with Triptych, a piece that puzzled me for the longest time: until I noticed the subtitle “Three Incongruities for Violin and Chamber Orchestra”.  Earlier this week, my back was up in response to the way these three pieces bump into one another like flavours that shouldn’t be on the same plate: that is, if one expects them to be unified.  Once I noticed the sub-title (forgive me, I was listening to the music in my car over and over, not in a concert hall), the composition clicked into place for me.

The first movement sounded like a modernist take-off of the prelude from Bach’s Partita in E.

Take-off? Parody? I want to include all possibilities, such as tribute, playful imitation, stretching the boundaries a bit even while reinforcing the trope.  I want to invoke a sense of fun even as the piece reminds us of something antique.  We are again in the presence of many of the same disciplinary concerns as one finds in Bach’s writing, both for the composer (who at times feels as though he is paraphrasing or commenting, while at other times, inventing out of nothing) and then for Chow as the fiddler.  Broughton mentions Prokofiev in the program notes, which isn’t surprising considering the neo-classical touches (e.g. using woodwinds in a concertante manner), the transparent textures & the unapologetic pacing.  The second movement soars with the violin, including sections where Chow seems especially comfortable with the agile turns of melody.

By the third part of the triptych we’re in an entirely different place, a folky fiddle sound that took me by surprise.  Yet –after being a bit perturbed initially –I see now that they work off of each other beautifully, like the apple following the cheese.

Broughton’s other contribution is a series of short pieces called Gold Rush Songs, that I’ve been humming –badly—all week.  The glimpses of Broughton’s playfulness in the Triptych are consummated in these happy pieces, containing snatches of tunes that tempt you to sing along even as they refuse to do the obvious thing (and making them deceptively hard to emulate).

Speaking of happy, I find myself more and more impressed by the work of the most junior contributor, namely Kevin Lau’s Joy. I found myself perhaps a bit like that insomniac Princess of that fairy tale with the pea causing her to toss and turn in her bed.  Joy opens with several strong gestures from the orchestra, phrases reminding me of some compositions I’ve heard before –that I love—before moving through a series of moods.  After listening a few times, I’ve grown more and more impressed that Lau took the stage boldly, a self-assured voice with something to say.  Joy is a troubling piece precisely because it questions happiness and joy, teasing us with lovely moments that refuse to promise us an easy happily-ever-after.  Lau is to be commended for bravely undertaking the old romantic project of exploring philosophical truths in his creation.  I love his ambition, and even more, I believe he did a fair job in his exploration of the idea.

Ronald Royer contributed two wonderful pieces, each in two movements.  His Rhapsody begins with an eclectic sound reminding me at times of jazzy bits of Ravel, at other times of Hindemith.  His In Memoriam, JS Bach is another neo-classical piece (recalling that the first piece on the CD from Broughton also incorporates older music in a new frame-work), although far more adventurous than Broughton’s piece.  Where Broughton’s writing reminded me of a commission where the soloist might have said “please don’t let it be too dissonant”, Royer manages to wander away from the old, without the need to be dissonant or overly complex.  His writing has wonderful clarity, several gestures coming directly from the violinist that connect it solidly to the tradition of a performer demonstrating their virtuosity.

Conrad Chow with his 1933 Gaetano Pollastri violin

Indeed, the entire album is a stunning showcase for Conrad Chow, who bursts onto the scene –or at least into the soundtrack in my car—authoritatively and decisively.  Chow shows us a broad array of styles (ably accompanied by Sinfonia Toronto), so many ways of playing and being musical in diverse styles, that the recording will surely raise his profile.

DEBUT ALBUM RELEASE PARTY

“PREMIERES”

Conrad Chow, violin & Angela Park, piano

Thursday, June 28, 2012 at 7:30PM

Gallery 345: 345 Sorauren Avenue, Toronto

Tickets: $30 regular; $25 Students/Seniors/Arts Workers

Reservations can be made by calling 416 822.9781 or via email info@gallery345.com

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Jean Cox

Posted on June 27, 2012 by barczablog

I’ve been thinking about Jean Cox.

Jean Cox, heldentenor (click picture for details of Cox’s extensive work at the Bayreuth Festival)

Cox was a great American heldentenor, who died on Sunday.  By coincidence it’s the same day that Franz Crass passed, and not many weeks after the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

I am pondering the workings of the culture machine, a bit mystified that whereas DFD is universally known and loved, and FC also well-known, Cox never made the same deep impression, at least in North America (but then again Cox is likely remembered far more in Europe than in America)

Of course nobody –certainly not me–can know objective truth. Maybe the way these male artists are remembered is the proper reflection of their ability.

Maybe.  Yet I suspect that in fact other factors are involved.

Timing seems to be a big factor in fame.  Singers have a window of opportunity to make an impression.  For some that window is very brief indeed.  If you listen to this sampling of tenors –all singing the same brief passage in the last act of Götterdämmerung –you get a sense of the brevity of careers.  New cohorts of singers replace the older ones, and the changing recording technology may distort the singers’ actual voices. 

If you come along at the right time for a key project you will be remembered.

  • Wolfgang Windgassen came along at the right time to be the Siegfried on that first seminal Ring cycle conducted by Georg Solti.  
  • Manfred Jung was the Siegfried on Chereau’s Ring conducted by Pierre Boulez
  • Helge Brilioth and Jess Thomas share the Siegfried duties on the von Karajan Ring

That’s where timing comes in.

I saw Jean Cox sing the Siegfried from Götterdämmerung at least a couple of times in 1973 (with the Canadian Opera Company, in the unfriendly confines of the O’Keefe Centre).  His portrayal was riveting, a confident physical presence at ease moving, acting and singing.  His voice combined power, lovely tone & nuanced expression in this difficult role.

I also heard him on CBC radio broadcasts from Bayreuth conducted by Horst Stein (another talent who somehow fell through the cracks).  To my ear Cox sounded much better than Windgassen or Jung.  While I adore the quirky interpretations of the von Karajan Ring (Brilioth for example), Cox never had a recording whereby he could stake his claim as one of the great heldentenors of the century.

Recently I saw a discussion online about tenors where some put forward the notion that  Jay Hunter Morris –admittedly a reasonable performer in the Met’s Ring—was one of the great tenors of the century.  Why?  Again, it’s a matter of timing, being in the right place at the right time.

Here’s a little sample of Cox’s death scene from Götterdämmerung, beginning at 3:20 in a clip that also includes the unique voice of Franz Mazura. 

I am grateful to have seen Cox.

Posted in Essays | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments