The pain I felt reading Kathleen Turner’s interview

Posted on August 12, 2018 by barczablog

There’s a great deal in Kathleen Turner’s fascinating recent interview with David Marchese.  So naturally if you’re a beautiful actress people will react, comment, and draw their own conclusions about what’s really important. I find it desperately sad when I see what the headlines are saying in response. Read it for yourself and perhaps you’ll think I’m a nutbar, when you see what I chose as the most significant aspect of the interview.

A couple of days ago I shared a link on Facebook concerning opinions about great Wagner performances on record and DVD; and to be on the polite side I said that Wagner’s a bit of an inkblot, in his ability to elicit reactions and interpretive responses that seem to run the gamut, everything under the sun.  He’s a mirror.  Maybe I’m seeing that here too, that Turner is a lightning rod who draws all sorts of responses.

The headline responses I saw on google just now surprised me:

  • that she had three men competing to get her into bed
  • that she was busy righting Elizabeth Taylor’s wrongs
  • that Donald Trump’s handshake is somehow important
  • that the actors she liked or disliked are somehow important: although I grant you, that’s certainly important to her, given that she had to work with Nicholas Cage, Jack Nicholson, Michael Douglas, et al.

But what did Turner mention in the interview four different times?  Rheumatoid arthritis (aka “RA”).  Perhaps the RA isn’t news to you, as I see –via Google again—that she has talked about it before several times.  I never noticed before today, when I also dug up another interview from years ago (which you can see at the end of this blog).

With arthritis, you’re caught in a kind of trap, that I can express from my own personal experience.  I did not have RA like Turner. I have Ankylosing Spondylitis (or “AS”) and the occasional symptoms of Osteoarthritis (“OA”) one sees at my age, roughly the same as Turner’s age. My AS hit in my 20s, knocking me for a loop because

  • I had pain
  • I didn’t know what was causing it
  • Doctors couldn’t figure it out either

I was freaked out, and only figured it out in my 30s, after being puzzled for more than a decade. I had suspicions earlier but also huge arguments with the doctors until the diagnosis at the age of 36.  Before the diagnosis I only wanted to be well, to be able to fit in and be healthy rather than to be disabled. At times I was limping, or in so much pain that I literally couldn’t walk.  Even after the diagnosis –when I now had an excuse and an explanation—I still wanted nothing more than that the disease would go away or be invisible, because I wanted to go back to being healthy or at least to fit in by being an imitation of a healthy person, to get my life plan back on track.  It became a performance, an act, dissembling at times, walking carefully to conceal the limp: doing my best to resemble a normal healthy person.  It’s a sort of reversed disability drag we do, where we attempt to be healthy while concealing our pains & our symptoms. Or sometimes we let it show when we want people to know we’re in pain. But like so many things we do, there’s a performative aspect to it.

Imagine the pressure to conceal your reality, when you’re judged on your beauty? At least nobody mistook me for a beauty queen.

Many of the experiences Turner shares resonate for me, decades later, because inside we’re all facing the same questions & challenges.  For example, in analyzing the impact of RA on her career she says

“The hardest part was that so much of my confidence was based on my physicality. If I didn’t have that, who was I?”

Her analysis is so simple, really, but fundamental.  The problem she doesn’t articulate (at least not in this interview) is that we’re living with these changes, with pain and the simplest daily challenges. She says it so eloquently when she says

“For me it’s can I hold a pen? Can I stand up? Can I climb those stairs?”

There is a horrific description of her working life, trying to cope with pain and the impact of medications that she had to take to get through the day, leading to some conflicts with colleagues.  And alcohol rears its head, first as a mis-perception people have, observing her, unaware of the real problem (RA and the meds for chronic pain), then as an alternative pain-relief strategy. Again, I know this first-hand.  In my 20s when I was living with pain and the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, I went through a period when I was an alcoholic. Beer was my solution (although technically, I suppose beer is a suspension, not a solution….: at least the nerds will get the joke).  And of course some people end up hooked on pain meds instead. Turner says she avoided OxyContin or Percocet, which she felt would have led to addiction. I can identify, as I took gentler meds –if you can call Naproxen “gentle”—for twenty years, until I finally heard it might be possible to control my AS symptoms with exercise & diet.   So far so good.

But even so, we are a funny society, expecting quiet stoicism of our citizens.  I don’t think we are yet open to helping one another with certain problems such as chronic pain.  Or maybe it’s a question of knowing the right language. I still haven’t found it and I don’t think Turner has either, because it appears that there’s more interest & attention for negative stories about drug abuse or feuds with other actors, than something as complex as arthritis & health.  Hopefully there will be real empathy in the future for others undergoing these complexities.  Auto-immune disorders are better understood now, meaning that the choices we’re offered are better too.

Now I need to go back, to re-visit all her films. I must try to see if I can detect any body language that might be pained, to see if her expressions or voice betray any of her visceral suffering.  She’s a whole new person in my eyes because I realize now, there was so much going on under the surface. I am no Hollywood beauty, but i do know a bit about living with pain.  It’s the reason I’m always eager to talk to people going through a health problem or a bad back, the reason I’ve worked extra hard at the University in my daytime occupation to try to make the workplace safe.  As a society we still have a long way to go before we really make it safe for people to work & live.  Someday I hope it won’t be necessary to have to explain the kinds of things Turner is talking about in this interview, that were swept under the rug or misinterpreted dismissively.   And I’ll be eager to look up other interviews she’s given, because I am still learning, still sensitizing myself after years of stoicism.  Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. It’s a pain management strategy.

While Turner won’t be playing the kinds of roles she played in her 30s, I sincerely hope that she’ll get film work again, so I can see her and hear that voice.  I’ve missed her.

Oh and I wish I’d seen this great interview Turner did with George Strombolopoulos sooner.

 

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Food, Health and Nutrition, Personal ruminations & essays, Popular music & culture, Psychology and perception | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

The Death of Stalin

Posted on August 11, 2018 by barczablog

It was promoted as a comedy.

That reminds me of a joke I heard years ago.

Stalin is addressing the Supreme Soviet, speaking and suddenly: a sneeze is heard.

Stalin stops speaking, and asks sternly “who snyeeezed?” (my friend who told the joke was trying to say the word with a Russian accent. Would Stalin have spoken with an accent? but never mind.)

Dead silence. Nobody dares answer!

Stalin gestures silently. Soldiers come, hustle everyone in the front row out of the theatre, and out they go at a dead run.

The door closes, and then Stalin resumes speaking, but partway through we hear from outside “rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat” of machine guns mowing them down.

Stalin stops speaking, and makes a stern face. “Alright. Who snyeeeeezed?!”

Dead silence. Nobody dares answer!

Stalin gestures silently. Soldiers come, hustle everyone in the second row out of the theatre, and out they go at a dead run.

The door closes, and then Stalin resumes speaking, but partway through we hear from outside “rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat” of machine guns, mowing them down.

Stalin stops speaking, and makes a stern face. “Okay?? So….Who SNYEEEEZED?!”

There’s dead silence…. But a hand is raised, shaking. And a thin voice is heard.

“It-it-it was I, C-c-comrade Stalin. I sneezed!”

To which Stalin responds. “Aha…! Gesundheit!”

I tell the joke because the whole movie reminds me of the same bizarre idea, that amid terror and death, humour is not just possible but necessary. Stalin was arguably the scariest tyrant of all. Hitler? no match for Stalin. Mao might have been responsible for comparable atrocities but I don’t think we know as much about him and his murderous ways.

When Stalin died, it may have been a cause for rejoicing in some quarters, but to many he was still a hero, the leader of the USSR during the great war with Germany. Even typing that much I am amazed that anyone could have admired him, a leader who was so paranoid, so intent on clinging to power that he arranged to have many of his best officers killed, purges and murders of thousands upon thousands, deportations to Siberia and a whole culture of distrust & murder. But of course history gives us a different perspective.

As I watched Armando Iannucci’s film The Death of Stalin (2017), I was astonished at the resonances with the current situation in the USA:

  • the hypocrisy of the leadership
  • the cognitive dissonance between assertions / propaganda and actual events
  • the fluidity of truth, to the point that it becomes hard or even impossible to discern what is true and what is not true in a web of competing lies

But I didn’t laugh very much, any more than I laugh watching CNN. Yet I felt a huge catharsis all the same.

The music for this film is one of its strengths. I googled to find out more, reading  commentary from director Iannucci and the composer Christopher Willis. I wondered at parts of the score that reminded me of Shostakovich: and discovered that Willis had been instructed by Ianucci to write faux Shostakovich for his film. How perfect, to employ sounds suggestive of the composer who was in a real sense the voice of his country, suppressed by Stalin.

The comedy is dark indeed, with a higher body count than anything from Tarentino. Two talents I’ve known from comedy have shed their skins in new roles, namely Steve Buscemi as Khruschev and Michael Palin as Molotov. Why am I surprised, after so many comedians reinvented themselves in drama?

I’m not sure why I felt such satisfaction.

  • Because it scratched my political itch? I’m eager to see Michael Moore’s latest for example, insatiable for political content, especially if it portends positive change rather than a further slide into chaos & despair. The death of someone like Stalin is a good thing even if there was lots of tyranny to follow.
  • Because of the deft rendering of the period, complete with a satirical edge?

Or maybe it’s simply because I could escape for awhile, forgetting our troubles while watching the troubles of other people.

I’ll watch it again this weekend.  I wonder if I’ll laugh this time?

Posted in Cinema, video & DVDs, Music and musicology, Politics, Popular music & culture, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Sabbatical

Posted on August 8, 2018 by barczablog

I’m taking a break from teaching for 2018-2019, while I focus on other projects. In past years I’ve taught introductory film music and opera courses at the School of Continuing Studies.  The blog will continue but for this year I’m on a sabbatical from teaching.

Posted in Personal ruminations & essays | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Escape from wartime reflections

Posted on August 1, 2018 by barczablog

Tonight’s installment of the Toronto Summer Music Festival might seem to have ignored their theme of “Reflections of Wartime”. The only real battle in Walter Hall was for our hearts, a friendly popularity contest between Angela Cheng and Alvin Chow.

angela_alvin

Alvin Chow & Angela Cheng (photo © Lisa Kohler)

Tonight was about pleasure & beauty. In a year when I’ve had the most visceral fear of war this century I make no apologies, have no guilt. North Korea? they are at it again they tell us. Toronto is having a skirmish with the new Premier and  are discovering how powerful he has become, by moving up the road from Queen st (aka City Hall) to Queens Pk.

Nevermind, because as Beethoven might have reminded his friends: “Nicht diese tone”.

No, instead let’s think of vested monkeys in processions, rowboats, dances, dances and yet more dances.

It’s the summertime after all.

While I haven’t been to that many concerts in the festival, when I looked through the schedule this was one that caught my eye early on, a crowd-pleasing program. Tomorrow night’s is back to serious fare, but I needed this kind of escape. The first half was a solo recital by Angela Cheng, while the second half was twice the action, as Cheng was joined by her partner in real life & at the keyboard, Alvin Chow. We heard some four-handed playing –where both sit at the same instrument—and music for two pianos.

We sidled up to the fun stuff, beginning in a first half that was much more a celebration of beauty. Cheng began with Beethoven’s penultimate sonata in a genial reading, sometimes humming along (and to her credit, more in tune than Glenn Gould ever was). At times her head was down in concentration, at other times, her head back in a kind of ecstatic space, the music more soulful at those lyrical moments.

After our one nod towards the German side of the equation, the remainder of the program was progressively more French as we went on. To close the first half we went half French / half Polish in the person of Frédéric Chopin. His G minor Ballade is so well-known you could see audience members adjusting their bodies in anticipation of their favourite passages, and Cheng didn’t disappoint.

Is it apt for the festival theme that they programmed a warhorse? Cheng gave it a suitably operatic reading, delicate in soft melodic passages, fiery and passionate when the piece explodes into frenetic action. The audience were eating out of her hand by this point.

After the interval it was all French & all fun.

I was quite taken with Cheng & Chow in their reading of Debussy’s Petite Suite. In this, one of the four-handed pieces, we saw a phenomenal chemistry between the players. We heard terrific detail, lots of precise attacks & jagged rhythms all played with balance and wit, yet retreating in the middle sections into softer tones of nostalgia & regret, rubati that never overstepped the boundaries of good taste.

It must be fun to be them at home, don’t you think?

The pleasure principle was again on display in a dazzling reading of Milhaud’s Scaramouche suite. Where the Debussy was refined, elegant & retrained, the dynamics were much more extreme this time, both in the aggressive dissonances and the sheer energy. Yet the middle movement was particularly delicate, verging on voluptuous, every moment a sensuous delight.

To close we heard a tour de force reading of La Valse, Ravel giving us his musical Rorschach test. (Psst… what do you think it means?) Watching this wonderful couple work their magic, I think that if there’s any war in Ravel’s music, it’s the normal warfare of a husband and wife, libido & life itself.

For an encore I was again envious, watching them play the Berceuse from Fauré’s Dolly suite, in a four handed reading that was almost indecently intimate, beautiful beyond words.

Oh well, I had to go home at the end of the concert, one of the nicest evenings I’ve spent in awhile.  Tomorrow is a serious program, then Thursday is a big band celebration at Koerner.

Something for everyone!

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Oxymoronic Gould Transcriptions

Posted on July 29, 2018 by barczablog

It seems like a lifetime ago, back when Glenn Gould was still alive. I’d first learned of him in my childhood as the one who showed us a new approach to Bach, a famous performer who had then abandoned live performance to communicate solely through virtual media such as the recording studio or the radio.

And when he then turned to Wagner I should not have been surprised when his interpretations were unique.

He’s gone of course.

More recently –this century, possibly even this decade—I discovered that Glenn Gould’s Wagner transcriptions that I’d heard so long ago as vinyl recordings, could be purchased as scores.

I first encountered them in the Edward Johnson Library, which seems only fair & just, given that the editor is Carl Morey, a former Dean of the Faculty of Music.

The second encounter was when (after taking one out of the library) I realized I needed to buy these scores. And so I made the purchase in the spring of 2017 buying all three from Schott Music. They’re beautiful clear impressions of the music, with notes from Professor Morey.

You may have noticed that this makes two things I’m talking about today, that were in yesterday’s post, namely 1-transcriptions and 2-Carl Morey.

Okay, the Schott scores are my departure point to talk about Gould himself. Two of the three are in a separate category that is the reason for that funny headline. I believe the peculiarities of these two are at the very least a window on the elusive –or is that “reclusive”(?)—Mr Gould. The scores are full of contradictions that reflect the pianist. The contradictions on the page reflect the contradictions on the stage, the reclusive virtuoso, the invisible celebrity. Which of course is the first obvious thing we know about Gould, the pianist who retreated from public view, who opted for a life as a kind of virtual star of the recording studio and CBC, rather than the usual exhibitionism encountered on the concert stage. I think it’s assumed that performers are extroverted, that they want to be seen and even to show off their skills.

But what if a performer were introverted? I leave that question aside, while we turn our attention to the three transcriptions, especially the two anomalous ones.

You’re probably wondering “how can a piano transcription be oxymoronic??” Although the scores speak for themselves perhaps Morey’s notes are the clearest indication:

Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhein Journey has the unusual feature (shared with and more extended in the Prelude to Die Meistersinger) of having been written for a kind of four-hand duo performance.

Now of course if you don’t have four hands..? then that means you can’t play the piece, at least in those passages requiring four hands. A piano transcription is a magical kind of thing, something like a Bell Rocket belt, stilts or seven-league boots.

A piano can’t play a piece meant for the full orchestra, can it? It can and it can’t, depending on what you understand inside your head. When you’ve heard a lovely orchestral piece and then play a piano reduction you may hear the wonders of that reduction through your fingers. It’s magic, a bit of a contradiction in play, as you’re using your two hands to replicate the work of many hands, sometimes the work of over 100 people.

It’s helpful that my brain is less literal-minded than some. For example I am partial to Terry Gilliam’s Adventures of Baron Munchausen, celebrating the magic of story-telling with a huge assist from Michael Kamen.

And so, when you play something that teases you and suddenly requires four hands: you run into a real obstacle, as though your rocket belt suddenly has no fuel. Either you fake the parts that are missing (from the other two hands:  which some of us will do of course), or you leave something out. But there’s no question that at this point, where four hands are required, the transcriptions cease to be real transcriptions. You don’t really fly.

Let’s pause for a moment to speak of the one transcription of the three that is fully playable. Gould transcribed the Siegfried Idyll as a stunning piece of music. In a few places it gets a little difficult, yes. You’ll notice that when he plays the piece himself, he goes a little slowly in places. I can’t tell if that’s because he’s a perfectionist in his aim to play the music without any blemish or flaw, or because he’s aligning himself with a tradition of slower interpretations. For some people, any performance of Wagner should be slow & stately, soulful and stirring. This appears to have more to do with a performance tradition of conductors of the 20th century than anything Wagner told us.


When you hear all those inner voices that he’s bringing out, you can’t help thinking of that earlier Gould, the one who played the Goldbergs, bringing out all the hidden treasures. Hearing this Wagner, one suddenly sees a link back to the counterpoint of JS Bach. In fact since spotting this connection –in Gould’s transcription and performance—I have a whole different understanding of Meistersinger and even Parsifal, works that also have lots of inner voices that can be brought out.

So what was going on in those two that become unplayable (unless you were born with 4 hands)..?

I think they’re simply creatures of the studio. Gould was able to overdub, and so created versions that he played with himself in private, and shared with us. In a sense this is the most honest thing one can imagine, that the magician has shown us how he did his tricks.

I sometimes find myself lost in the contradictions, whether playing or thinking about playing such pieces. Gould is this textual idealist creating something that is in a sense like hypertext, illuminating while obscuring, as unreachable as Gould himself.

gould_buddha

“5” is the Siegfried-Idyll, “6” the Meistersinger Prelude while the page is open to an unplayable passage in “7” during Siegfried’s Rhine Journey. Buddha had nothing to say.

 

Posted in Books & Literature, Music and musicology, Opera, Personal ruminations & essays, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Music minus one

Posted on July 28, 2018 by barczablog

I write a lot about transcriptions possibly because they’re so much fun. Sometimes I can manage to play them, sometimes they’re too difficult but still fascinating to explore.  One plays a piano piece while imagining an original from another context, perhaps a Walter Mitty exercise, but sometimes magic.

I remember a conversational exchange I had once with Professor Carl Morey many years ago.  I told him I was transcribing a piece of music by Janacek, reducing it to a version for keyboards.

He simply asked “why would you want to do that? The original is fine as it is”.

The question has haunted me. I think it could spawn a dissertation or two, a profound question. Some people might say “why do it” in the spirit of wishing that the original be left alone and seeing little or no value in the exercise of transcription.

Of course that gets really funny when the transcribing goes in the opposite direction. This week I believe there will be two performances of Debussy’s Petite Suite on the very same night, Tuesday July 31st.

  • One is an orchestral version and likely the one most people know: even though it’s actually a transcription.
  • One is piano four-hands: the original from which that well-known orchestral piece comes.

I’ll be going to the piano concert, as most times I prefer the original. Fascinated as I’ve been with the two great piano transcriptions of the Chaconne from Bach’s violin partita –one by Busoni, one by Brahms—I still understand the unadorned Bach as the ideal from which the others come, adaptations that paraphrase, and in so doing hint at that other word “parody”.  Adaptations sometimes honour an original, and sometimes may seem to clothe it in funny shoes & clown make-up.  While the Ravel transcription of Mussorgskii’s Pictures at an Exhibition is probably far more popular than the piano original, I find that in places it distorts rather than illuminates.

I was dumbstruck by Carl’s question, so many years ago, and answer it differently now than I would have then.

I find myself thinking about a related field, namely translation, both as illustration and perhaps to help me understand my feelings.  Suppose you’ve heard of a wonderful play in Germany but don’t speak German. What can you do to explore this text?  Oh sure, someone might give you a capsule plot summary. But that’s surely no substitute, any more than reading the Wikipedia entry really tells you what a piece of music or a play is really like.

I’m reminded in passing of a friendly argument I had while trying to get control of the TV once very long ago.   “Why” she asked “do you need to watch the baseball game, when you can read about it later in the newspaper, to find out who won?”

I didn’t immediately come up with the smart-ass response that I later gave.  “But you can read the synopsis in the TV guide and know how the movie comes out”.

In other words, we don’t watch a movie to see who wins at the end.  We’re there for the journey, to see how they get from beginning to end. Ditto for the baseball game, and also for the transcription.  If I can’t play it for myself as I see the music on a page, I don’t get the same sense of it as when I simply hear it performed.

Now of course that analogy I made with the translation –where you can’t encounter it without the help of a translator—applies also to a transcription, although not so much now in the era of A-V media and youtube.  But imagine you’re living in 1850.  You’re aware of Beethoven’s symphonies or Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.  But how precisely were you supposed to hear them in the era before the phonograph? Or if the work was a difficult rarity such as a Wagner opera, and not being programmed?

That’s where Franz Liszt came in.  He made piano transcriptions of those works, helping people discover them who otherwise would never have been able to hear them.

Now of course Liszt was one of the greatest pianists in history, using these compositions as vehicles, impressive display pieces if nothing else.  In passing he was also a champion of Berlioz, Beethoven, Wagner and so many others.

Scores have value even to those of us who can’t play them.

I’m working with a rather unique transcription of Liszt’s, his piano + viola version of Harold in Italy.  Concerti can be huge fun to play at the piano, because the orchestral reduction is usually an easy thing to play.  Beethoven’s concerti for instance are available in two piano versions, where the soloist version is of course meant for a virtuoso, while the orchestral part is much easier.  The normal pattern in a concerto is that the reduced version of the orchestral part is much simpler than the soloist’s part.

But Liszt’s Harold in Italy is different.  The piano part is phenomenally challenging, almost unplayable in places.

So while in the past I have usually teamed up with a soloist while sight-reading the orchestral part, this is a different scenario entirely.  I have to practice: because it’s so difficult.  And only then would I approach a viola player.  I was thinking that for now it’s music minus one, but indeed, even if I never look for a viola player it’s wonderful stuff.  The two inner movements are much easier than the outer ones, which have all the virtuoso challenges one expects from a Liszt piano score.

You see in the picture that the score hints at the original, in telling us the orchestral instruments that would be playing in the usual version at this moment in the score.

HAROLD_score

Might one play this, seeking to imitate the original, at least aware of that overpowering orchestra surrounding the viola soloist?

But any transcription is an invitation to the imagination, inviting you to see & hear beyond what’s on the page.  We’re in the realm of virtual reality, as the score points back to that other world.

Posted in Music and musicology, Personal ruminations & essays | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

L’Histoire du Toronto Summer Music

Posted on July 20, 2018 by barczablog

It was all there tonight, on the stage of Koerner Hall.

Sometimes concerts are microcosms that allow you to see and grasp everything in one lucid moment. It’s the second year of Jonathan Crow’s tenure as Artistic Director of the Toronto Summer Music Festival, and already I’m seeing some wonderful indications, portents of what’s in store.

The progam was yin and yang, really, two contrasting items. We began with a lovely bit of music that functioned like the straight man, contrasting to what was to follow. Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring was warm, alternatively playful and sentimental. I suppose at one time this score was a cool surface, but in context with what was to follow, this was the softer gentler part of the evening.  While the second half would involve staging, the first half was a concert of music only.

We were listening not just to Crow & colleagues from the Toronto Symphony Chamber Soloists –especially Miles Jaques clarinet & Kelly Zimba flute—but Summer Fellows from the Festival sharing the stage: Katya Poplyansky, Jennifer Murphy & Samuel Park, violins; Cassia Drake & Damon Taheri, violas; Francesca McNeeley & Rebecca Shasberger, cellos, and Ana Manastireanu, piano.

How many hats does Crow already have? He’s the TSO’s concertmaster, the artistic director of the TSM Festival, but tonight we watched him also mentoring a group of wonderful young players.

And after intermission, things went in a totally different direction, as Crow turned to his colleague Alaina Viau for a production of L’Histoire du Soldat by Igor Stravinsky. Viau works on the production side of the TSO when she’s not also creating works as artistic director of Loose Tea Music Theatre.

from_FACEBOOK

(l-r) Derek Boyes as the narrator, Suzanne Roberts Smith, the Soldier, and Jennifer Nichols, the Princess.

I don’t know whose idea it was to program these works, as part of a festival whose theme is “Reflections of Wartime”. The title of Stravinsky’s work links it to war, although there’s not much actual soldiering or war in the piece. But it’s exactly the centennial of the work from that amazing decade when Stravinsky burst upon the world stage particularly with the Ballets Russes & the ballets premiered with Diaghilev. L’Histoire contains lots of moments that almost echo passages you’ve heard in Le Sacre du Printemps. But this is a work whose edginess pushes wonderfully against the safer sounds we heard in the first half (which is why I suggested Copland played straight man to Stravinsky). And it’s a delightful work of theatre, possibly anticipating the kind of things you could see in a cabaret  in Germany years later.

And so, after the intermission we watched six players sharing the stage with Derek Boyes our devilish narrator, Suzanne Roberts Smith, as the actor portraying the Soldier, and Jennifer Nichols, who joined in partway through as dancer & choreographer, portraying the Princess. It’s a version of the Faust story, the hero mostly at the mercy of this devil, naïve & innocent & largely helpless, but heroic nonetheless. Smith filled the stage with her persona, especially eloquent near the end. The unexpected gender of soldier is a welcome choice from Viau, one that made the work feel very new to me. As for Nichols, I think it’s astonishing to watch this eclectic work, listening to narration as though in a storybook or melodrama, and suddenly watch the romantic dancing between Smith & Nichols. The fact that one is a beautiful & accomplished dancer, while the other is not? A very theatrical element, actually. Instead of watching virtuoso dance, we were watching an encounter between two people. Boyes, Smith & Nichols were ably supported by Crow –especially in his wonderful solos playing the violin on behalf of Smith—and the TSO Chamber Soloists: Jaques, Zimba, Gordon Wolfe trombone, Jeffrey Beecher bass, Andrew McCandless trumpet, Michael Sweeney bassoon, Charles Settle percussion.

Part of the magic is in the knowledge that each of these programs is a one-shot deal. No further performances, alas! But that does make the ones we see that much more special.

TSM Festival continues until August 4th .

Posted in Dance, theatre & musicals, Music and musicology, Opera | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Unforced Tears of Exile

Posted on July 17, 2018 by barczablog

Toronto Summer Music Festival’s theme for 2018 is “Reflections of Wartime”, in the centennial of the last year of World War I.  Tonight was my first concert, a presentation titled “Tears of Exile”, a program by Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal (SMAM), led by their artistic director Andrew McAnerney. While SMAM sometimes perform with period instrument ensembles tonight’s works were all unaccompanied. We heard 12 singers easily fill the Walter Hall space.

SMAM-portraits-35

SMAM Artistic Director Andrew McAnerney

Here’s the programme note that you might expect to explain the rationale for what we heard:

In the 7th century BC Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon, conquered Jerusalem. The destruction of the Temple of Solomon, the ruin of the Kingdom of Judah, and the captivity of the Jews in Babylon were described in the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah. The text, which considers this defeat to be a punishment from God, inspired several great composers of the Renaissance. This program features three magnificent and moving polyphonic Lamentations from the 16th century –by the Briton Thomas Tallis, Spaniard Cristóbal de Morales, and Flemish-German Roland de Lassus–, each adapting the magic of counterpoint in the spirit of his respective nation.

Okay, that’s a start, but doesn’t fully explain, particularly in context with the Festival’s theme. Perhaps the best idea would be to tell you what we actually heard in addition to those Renaissance works, a series of works that will be hard to surpass as Reflections of Wartime.

In the first half of the concert we heard Lamentations by Tallis, de Lassus and then a 20th century setting by Ralph Vaughan Wiliams  composed in the first decade after WW I even though employing the text in Latin. After intermission we heard the very same text as the Vaughan Williams but as though we were flashing back to the Renaissance for a setting by Lassus, followed by de Morales. And then we were treated to another 20th century setting: or at least I think it’s a setting. This last one by Rudolf Mauersberger, “Wie liegt die Stadt” was in German without a Biblical textual reference, yet was very much of a piece with the other texts, and sounded like it could be a lamentation from the Book of Jeremiah, if we ignore the missing letters from the Hebrew alphabet: a characteristic found in the Lamentations, and emulated by all the other composers, Vaughan Williams included.

That final work may have referenced Jerusalem –like all the others—but had additional resonance for the composer, who had seen the destruction of Dresden. So in other words for this concert it was as though we were standing outside time, looking at the exile of the Israelites, but with the benefit of those 20th century perspectives. All save the final German text closed with the line in Latin “Jerusalem convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum”, translated as “Jerusalem, turn back to the Lord your God.” Every one of the texts takes up that idea from Jeremiah, that God was punishing sinful humans, remembering, mourning, lamenting. With all the 20th century wartime images we’ve seen, bombs dropping, buildings shattered, one feels the ancient texts & scores with a great immediacy.

It was wonderful to be able to compare the different settings, to hear different approaches to text & to voice, sometimes contrapuntal in a smooth flowing texture, at other times voices emerging out of the background. And when we came to the German text its intelligibility is entirely different from the Latin ones, because the music isn’t a dense counterpoint but more direct statements, its events not something we read in the Bible but have seen in films & photographs.

SMAM have a wonderful versatility. When they’re singing the Renaissance texts you figure that early repertoire and a historically informed style is their strong-point. And then they start singing Vaughan Williams, making more sense of him than any of the local choirs I’ve heard recently, precisely because they are understated, with clear elegant phrasing. The Mauersberger too was excellently executed, the voices unforced and exactly as strong as they needed to be.

Toronto Summer Music Festival continues until August 4th.

Posted in Music and musicology, Reviews, Spirituality & Religion | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Demoralization as a tactic

Posted on July 14, 2018 by barczablog

Don’t lose heart.

But do you ever wonder whether someone might be deliberately trying to wear you down, demoralize you, persuade you to give up?

I know that as a persistent CBC listener & CNN watcher, as a voracious consumer of news about political subjects, that sometimes I feel frustrated even angry. And after days and weeks of frustration, one becomes fatigued, worn down. The logical outcome of this might be to turn cynical or simply to become heart-broken by all the negativity.

Years ago I wrote about the phenomenon of the negative ad, in particular the attack ad.

To summarize what I said (which isn’t necessarily all that original), attack ads have at least two outcomes:
1. Most obviously they encourage us to dislike someone or something. For example when we see three people talking about Justin Trudeau, describing him as “not ready” concluding “nice hair though” we may succumb to the peer pressure, and conclude that Trudeau’s not a great choice for PM.

2. Less directly, they call an entire category into question. If you see too many ads insulting different brands of motorbike, you may decide to purchase a car instead. Ads attacking politicians? At a gut level you may decide all politicians are crooks or liars or worse. You stop trusting any politician, you stop listening, you will stop participating, and maybe even stop voting.

The ads attacking Trudeau likely backfired, as Trudeau’s competence became the issue in the election. And what do you know! when Trudeau held his own in the first debates suddenly the ad’s conclusion was called into question so that a voter might think hmm maybe saying he was “not ready” was inaccurate, setting up a whole series of questions about Harper (who in case you can’t recall, did not have such nice hair either).

I bring this up because it hit me like a bolt out of the blue, that we’re being bombarded by something similar in 2018.

DAN_RATHER

Dan Rather, from his Facebook page

Dan Rather was the one who inspired me to see the connection. I say “don’t lose heart” because I think we’re being manipulated, encouraged to despair about the situation both in the USA & Canada.

HERE is what Dan Rather said that I saw quoted on Facebook today.

From the farce of yesterday’s hearing on Capitol Hill (“oversight” by mendacity) to the spectacle in Great Britain (a President’s destabilizing, unstable, and racist interview) to the trailing exhaust of American leadership left in Brussels (with a friend like the U.S. who needs… Russia?) to what awaits in Helsinki (a bromance with a wily KGB agent), what we are witnessing is far beyond the realm of this reporter to put into full context.

I doubt Dante could imagine the circles in which we find ourselves. P.T. Barnum couldn’t figure out a way to sell it. And Rod Serling would shake his head in disbelief. All metaphors are rendered largely impotent – be they circus, swamp, or dumpster fire – because they seem to understate the sheer dangerous absurdity of it all. There can be no individual accounting of all damage.

I surmise this is what in some ways passes for the strategy of the President and his accomplices. See how many reactionary judges they can install, how many loopholes for the rich and connected they can construct, how many protections to health, water and air they can shred before the inevitable backlash.

I list all of this not to sow the seeds of hopelessness. Quite the contrary. That is what the forces of authoritarianism wish – that they can launch a reclamation of the Gilded Age on the backs of a demoralized majority. But I have seen these types of actors before. I have seen these odds. They cannot understand that the forces of goodness can channel a fury of righteousness and action. The time for slumber is over. No one can ever argue that elections do not have consequences. Even with the hurdles they are erecting to democracy no President and no political party, no matter how cynical they may be, is bigger than the country at large.

Excuse me but let’s take his words literally for a moment, as we zero in on one key sentence.

That is what the forces of authoritarianism wish – that they can launch a reclamation of the Gilded Age on the backs of a demoralized majority.

How might we be demoralized? Let me count the ways.

1-The references to fake news, but also the use of FOX as a kind of propaganda machine. The discourse is twisted as a result, unless of course you’re an ardent supporter.

2-The references to The Law, and the ongoing critique of the FBI and Mueller as “a witch hunt” all lead to a debasement of the law and due process.

3-I won’t speak much about what’s happening at the southern border, only to say that this likely was meant to dishearten liberals, but has –like the “nice hair” ad—blown up in the GOP’s face. The amount of outrage is so enormous that I’m thinking that November will see a reversal of the two parties’ fortunes, notwithstanding the efforts to steal elections that we’re already seen.

4- oh yeah, and then there’s that business of stealing elections. The Democrats refusal to fight in 2000 was profoundly upsetting. If there is no due process, if the elections are rigged? Democracy itself is a farce.

So as Dan Rather said, look at these not as sad or depressing events, but as deliberate attempts to break your heart, to persuade you that Horatio Alger was wrong (to cite one American myth). Alger told Americans that anyone can succeed if they work hard. But not if the game is rigged, and the rich get to keep their spoils behind a wall while everyone else toils and struggles without ever making any progress.

Collegiality—whether it’s in the Senate or during debates or just when you chat while buying your coffee—is an expression of faith, a trust in the people around us: of all races & faiths. If you can open your heart and trust that the truth shall set you free and will prevail? You have something very powerful.

And if they take that away from you, it doesn’t matter how much money or property you have. It’s a kind of faith not unlike religion, because it’s not a matter of what you see. It’s about what you feel.

Don’t lose heart.

Posted in Personal ruminations & essays, Politics, Popular music & culture | Tagged | 3 Comments

Parsifal Bayerische Staatsoper 2018

Posted on July 10, 2018 by barczablog

As a Canadian I regularly see pleasant but undistinguished productions that are enjoyable for some aspects, while leaving me unsatisfied overall. The performance of Parsifal that I watched tonight live-streamed from the Bavarian State Opera, sung and played with such brilliance, at times left me puzzled, but waiting for the scenes that always move me. Maybe I expected too much, especially with an opera that is among my favourites, and usually an event. While I may want a religious experience, I suppose I should learn to be content with something that is merely good in places, while letting down in others. Of course I invested the hours in watching and listening, and indeed was moved to tears in places.  I’d be hard-pressed to describe the interpretation of the opera, the objectives of the production beyond a bare description.  Even so it’s an opera that never leaves me cold especially when we get to the last act.

The production employs visual art as a kind of subtext, not unlike what we’ve seen in co-productions at the Met and ENO using the direction of Phelim McDermott and the art of Julian Crouch. This time it’s director Pierre Audi and designer Georg Baselitz. The best scenes were the ones where –after much visual sturm und drang in the first two acts—we were permitted to encounter the main trio of actors in the last act, without all the artifice, indeed without much art. This might have been the most beautiful Good Friday Scene I ever saw & heard: because it was unadorned, just the music and the performers on a mostly bare stage. So I suppose it’s meaningful when we finally get to see the characters without all the extra layers. Those layers helped set up this beautiful scene.

The overlay works best in Act II, a Brechtian game we play, where the women are wearing some sort of bodysuit resembling a naked body, with a looser outfit over that. And so we get glimpses of fake boobs and ass, that really enhances the scene when the young Parsifal encounters a stage full of half-naked flower maidens, all trying to seduce him with their bodies and mouth and cute singing. If they had actually been naked I doubt it could have worked nearly so well. But because it was in this funny alienated discursive space as Berthold Brecht sought, where we are thinking and feeling but not fully swallowed up in the illusion, we are as a result laughing at Parsifal’s bemusement even as we see that the boobs are all fake, and often saggy and silly looking.

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Parsifal (Jonas Kaufmann) among the Blumenmaedchen (photo: Ruth Walz)

The real star for me was Music director Kirill Petrenko, leading a very tender & sensitive reading. The video director regularly brought us back to the pit to watch Petrenko & the Bayerisches Staatsorchester at work. I was struck by how wonderful the production values were, the excellent sound & intimate camera work. Petrenko’s reading was a wonderful mix, at times majestic and respectful, as at the opening of the First or Third Acts, at times quick and light of foot, as in the Good Friday music.

The singing was as good as any you could find in the world today. Jonas Kaufmann sings but also acts a Parsifal who is youthful for the first 2 acts, and seems quite old to begin the last act: but inspired for the last scene. René Pape offers a different Gurnemanz than the one we see on the Met Opera video of the Girard production, much more outgoing and direct in his displays of emotion; where the Girard production calls for a more reticent display, in this one Audi gets Pape to respond, to smile, to rage, to cry, in other words to react to the drama and lead us in his displays of emotion. It’s an old trick –watching someone onstage thrilled or upset, showing us how to feel—and you bet I fell for it every time.

Kundry is sung by the variable Nina Stemme, perhaps the single most visually flamboyant element of a production that is predominantly black & white plus splashes of blood. Stemme looks different in each scene, and gives us a performance to match. She is perhaps most exciting in the last act when –as you may recall—she only has one line: but is otherwise fabulous to watch. Several times her reactions totally set me off. Her singing is of the powerful type, rather than subtle. I suppose Pape & Kaufmann are subtle in comparison

And then there’s the Amfortas of Christian Gerhaher whose acting sometimes is blatant to the point of caricature, limping & mugging yet singing with a broad range of sounds. Sometimes he’s as sweet as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, at other times crooning or moaning or growling. But the characterization hangs together, impossible to take your eyes off him, stumbling around with a blood belly.  And in his brief appearance as Klingsor, Wolfgang Koch is magnificent, with a sound reminiscent of Gustav Neidlinger, a remarkably sympathetic portrayal of a role often turned into a monster or a travesty.

Someday there may be a DVD available of this performance. I’ll get it if I can.

Posted in Art, Architecture & Design, Opera, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments