Kenneth Woods- A View From the Podium

From the Surrey Advertiser- 

Surrey Mozart Players Concert.

Electric Theatre 23rd June 

One of my earliest memories from the days when I first played in a Youth Orchestra is being involved in a performance of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture……my first Beethoven!  It was very thrilling and time has not dulled the impact of this wonderful music.

And so when I heard the Surrey Mozart Players in the Electric Theatre on June 23rd playing this very great music, memories flooded back.  It is such a fine piece and I never tire of it.  Their powerful attack on those sustained unison chords gave the concert a wonderfully vibrant launch. 

The lives of Beethoven and Robert Schumann just overlap, but their worlds were widely different.  The toughness and raw power of Beethoven are miles away from the refined romanticism of the ‘cello concerto by Schumann. 

Saturday’s soloist was the remarkable young cellist, Gemma Rosefield.  She has a beautiful sound and a fine technique- in short, well equipped to give life to this beautiful concerto.  The threatening skies that dominate Coriolan soon broke into the sunshine of the concerto’s opening bars……………….beguiling, warm, inviting.

Although the concerto falls into three sections, the serene calm that informs so much of this music gives little clue to the terrible mental problems that Schumann was facing.  The last section is more passionate by nature but Kenneth Woods, the orchestra and the soloist never allowed roughness to intrude…….the delicacy and warmth remained.

Then a remarkable finale to the evening: Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony op 73a….an arrangement of his 3rd String Quartet.  The Surrey Mozart Players produced a very moving performance of this very difficult work.  It is also very great music and the sheer quality of it was fully conveyed to us.  It has a huge range of moods from the perky to the much more threatening and darker coloured.  The cataclysmic nature of the third movement certainly produced an effect I think not experienced by the Electric Theatre ever before.

The last moments of the symphony are most affecting…………the little peasant song of the first movement recurs, slightly changed, perhaps even a little damaged, but the people it seems are resigned to smile through their tears.  This performance was a triumph. Citizens of Guildford, applaud this orchestra, it is a most treasured possession, with its inspiring Kenneth Woods, leading them on a daring and exciting journey.  We should be very proud to have such an ensemble in our midst.  

G F 

A view from the podium, Announcements and reviews

UPCOMING CONCERT

Hereford String Orchestra

Saturday, June 30, 2007 8:00PM

Leominster Priory, Leonminster

Saint-Saens: Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor — Nicholas Gethin, cello

Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 in E-Flat Major “Romantic” (ed. Haas – version of1881)

Nicholas Gethin Cello

Nick Gethin (shown) started life as a modern linguist, but wisely changed direction when he was nearly thrown out of Oxford for not working. Periods of study in London (with Florence Hooton) and Vienna (with Andre Navarra) culminated in offers of a principal job in Scotland, and a co-principal one at English National Opera. He opted for the warmer one in London. Later he joined the London Symphony Orchestra, which has been his “home” for the last twenty years. Nick has given solo recitals at the Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room, and at all the main recital venues in London, and has given performances of the Elgar, Dvorak, 2nd Shostakovich and Frank Bridge concertos, as well as the Rococo Variations and Don Quixote.

A view from the podium, Announcements and reviews

I spent most of my Monday afternoon adjudicating conducting exams at the Royal College of Music in London. 

Since I didn’t study in Britain, I was curious to see how their system resembled or differed from the one I trained in in the US. Also, given the fact that I’m new to the system, I wasn’t entirely sure just how I would end up grading the students. It’s not a challenge to have an opinion of someone else’s conducting, but to express it in a way that is helpful and that fits within the expected framework can be more daunting. 

I needn’t have worried. In more or less complete contrast to my experience as a student and teacher in American universities and music schools, the criteria for grading the students yesterday were incredibly specific. So specific that the three members of the committee were able to come to a unanimous consensus on both grades within minutes, as well as agree on a shared set of comments and feedback. I think it’s good that the student hears the committee speaking with one voice. At one of my schools we would get a separate grade from each member of the jury committee, each of whom were free to grade us according to their own set of expectations. I once did a cello jury were I got four A’s, a B- from someone I’d stupidly pissed off and a D+ from the one guy on the string faculty who played an instrument that didn’t use a bow. Did he want me to play the whole Bach pizzicato? Perhaps he didn’t like my nails…. It didn’t matter in the end, as the actual grade that went on my transcript was just determined by my teacher. What’s the point? 

Each student had thirty minutes to rehearse and then time for a run through. One conducted the first movement of the Suk string serenade and the other an extended excerpt from Sibelius 7. Funnily enough, the score I was given to the Sibelius belonged to the late “Doctor Malcom Sargent.” Apparently, the maestro paid six shillings and sixpence for it. Stuff like that only happens in London. 

Three hours later, after driving through the flooded plains of England from London across to Hereford, it was my turn to wave my arms. I was certainly conscious of wanting to walk as I’d talked earlier as we made our way through Bruckner 4. Conscious, that is, until we got going on the piece. Fantastic stuff. 

A view from the podium, Performing Life

1 AM. Bypassed immediate post-concert blog post in favor of a beer with the band. Back home at last, so just a few quick thoughts to end the day.

Shostakovich- I think the message got through. No coughing at the end, instead complete silence as the orchestra really found an amazing pianissimo, and the last chord was breathtakingly in tune. We had a long, long silence at the end before a very enthusiastic response. However, much earlier in the movement someone was unwrapping a candy so loudly and for so long that I nearly turned around.

Afterwards in the bar I was talking with a mixture of musicians and audience members. One woman, who said she was quite shaken by the piece, said “the why and what for are so much harder to think of today, when we’re back at war.”

The sad conclusion of the entire table was that we’ve learned nothing. Why and for what? Because and for nothing. More people need to hear this music.

I’m usually not in a social state of mind in rehearsals and need to head home afterwards, so with the SMP, the only chance we really get to visit and chat is after the concerts. In addition to being good musicians, they’re an interesting and brilliant bunch of people.

As soon as I said my goodbyes, I was plunged into an entirely different world. Guildford is a beautiful old market town, but on a Saturday night, like so many towns and cities across Britain, it’s a violent and crazy place. Just yards outside the concert hall were fist fights, road rage, and all matter of mayhem.

We’re hearing a lot from the government about how they’re going to “get tough” on this kind of behavior, but there were an army of cops on the street, and it was still chaos. At some point, adding hundreds of cops to a riot just means more insanity as they try their best to break things up and calm things down.

The real question is what happens to all these people between Monday morning and Friday evening. Where does all this rage come from? What’s happening to society? Guildford, like Cardiff and London and Manchester can give you the feeling of being on the brink of a complete abyss of violence and social breakdown.

Then again, perhaps it’s always been this way. Muriel, one of our cellists, said it well about the forgotten lessons of the war years. “Man is man. Humanity never changes.” Humanity may not, but humans can change. I’ve got to believe that. Why and for what? The meditation on the question is the only possible answer.

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

A view from the podium, Performing Life pianissimo, shostakovich

Intermission. Why am I doing this to myself? Interesting exercise in any case.

So hot. I know I sound like I’m just being precious, but it really is hell in there.

Nice crowd. Quite tepid applause after the Beethoven, but after a long silence, which means they got it. That overture is as close to nihilism as Beethoven gets. Orchestra played fantastically on that. Beethoven 5 next year should be first rate.  

Schumann- poor Gemma. She’s lucky the cello didn’t melt. Wonderful playing and lots of surprises, which I always take as a compliment. The duet between her and Andrew, our principal cello, in the second movement worked really well.

Now, just toweling off and drinking some H2O before the second half. I’ve kept my trap shut so far tonight, but will rap a bit about the Shosty before we play it, and I think I’ll read the Dubinsky quote I reposted here the other day. How will we know if they get it? It’s not music you feel like applauding, in fact, you almost shouldn’t applaud but simply let the music join the silence for as long as feels right.

Looking forward to a very cold beer.

A view from the podium, Performing Life

Seven PM. Best thing about the Electric Theatre is that they have a great little café and bar. I had a fantastic mezze plate- lots of lovely homemade hummous, sundried tomatos, asparagus, fresh mozzarella and the like. I normally don’t eat before concerts, but if one must, that’s the perfect food. Also, you can sit outside where it’s lovely and cool. Did I mention how unbelievably hot it is on stage?

Now remain only the last pre-concert rituals. Chatted with Gemma- she seems pleased. I get on with most soloists, but it’s always a good sign if we feel like we can just say hi and good luck, instead of lots of “good we just?” and “is it possible here to”’s. None of those today.

Never got my suit to the cleaners this week, so just ironed it to try and look a little less disheveled. Of course, I won’t be sheveled by the end of the Beethoven anyway.

Now, just a bit of peace and quiet. I don’t have a preconcert routine- I don’t want to ever be freaking out that I missed my routine, but time allowing, it’s nice to just do some deep breathing and sort of empty myself….

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

A view from the podium, Performing Life

Just offstage after the second half of SMP dress rehearsal. God its flippin’ hot. It’s so hot that I’m not the only one sweating. Everyone’s sweating. I find it kind of a relief, since I’m always hot. 

Schumann went well. What a piece- it’s the sort of music that makes me feel like I’m spending my life on a worthwhile endeavor. Gemma sounds great, and is very easy to work with. There really is a difference between British and American cello playing. Both make creative use of sounds that the other school would never allow. If you listen with open ears to someone from a different school, you can hear some new possibilities. People with small minds and smaller imaginations complain that Schumann was a poor orchestrator. Nonsense- the orchestration to this piece is gorgeous, and who gives players more room to make colours than Schumann? Color is the key with Schumann- you have the most amazing freedom to do interesting things with sound, whether you’re the soloist or the last chair second violinist, but if you’re not searching for sounds, nothing really happens. It’s like German Debussy. Is that an oxymoron?

Did I mention how hot it is on stage?

The first two movements of the Schumann the dead hall didn’t cause us too much trouble, but the last movement took a few adjustments. The main problem is short notes and silences- in such a dead space where the sound after you release has no shape, it’s hard to feel like there is an organic shape to the space between notes, so people tend to crash in a little early. The theme of the finale starts with two short notes in a not-too-fast tempo, and the second note always wants to come early in here, where it was fine in the rehearsal venue. That fixed, it grooves along wonderfully.

Good news- NO BOGUS CADENZA from Gemma! Did she read the blog??? More likely, she’s just a musician of taste…

Talk about dead silences. Coriolan Overture is not the piece to do in this space, but it is the most fantastic etude. I haven’t told the musicians, but part of the reason we’ve worked so hard on this is that we’re really rehearsing for Beethoven 5 next year. If you’re going to do the ultimate warhorse, it had better be mind-shatteringly good. Coriolan has the same challenges, only worse, distilled down to eight minutes. The play it fantastically, but again, it took a while to get used to playing short in this space.

Off to guzzle some water and get some food in me.

I always  mean to let everyone out early and have an easy day, but it takes all the time we have to sort out this space. Maybe we have to try to get more than one rehearsal in the hall so this one isn’t so grueling.

A view from the podium, Nuts and bolts, Performing Life

This hall has wireless, so this is my first-ever mid-dress rehearsal blog post, which I thought would be an interesting exercise…. 

We’ve just finished the Shostakovich. We rehearse in a very loud, reverberant room, and this is a very dead, but clear hall. For the first five minutes or so, it was a total shock. Even though we know this hall well and try to rehearse with this space in mind, it’s just a physically different sensation playing in this space. In each movement, there was a sense of edginess not only in the sound, but in the temp- here we have to lay back, play rounder and longer, and breathe slower. By the end, the hall didn’t seem like a factor anymore. It’s still a daunting piece, but I think it’s in quite good shape. 

These days, its common to treat a dead hall as a problem to be solved in the mastering suite. Of course, you can add the actual reverb of Carnegie Hall with the computer, and it helps, but what you can’t do is go back and give the players the sensation of playing, moving and breathing in a space that encourages their sound. In a dead hall, you’ll always struggle to maintain the same fluidity and flexibility in everyone’s physical relationship to the sound, and post-production can only cover, but not cure that. 

Gemma’s here, and I’m just off to talk to her. We did Lalo together about three or four years ago- it’ll be interesting to see if and how her playing has evolved. Of course, the Schumann and Lalo are such different pieces, you can’t really make a comparison! 

Slightly behind schedule as always. 

This is the hottest hall I’ve ever worked in. People thought their varnish was melting in the Shostakovich! Seriously. 

KW 

A view from the podium, Performing Life

I’m just flipping through scores before my SMP dress rehearsal this afternoon and realizing what an incredible challenge we have ahead of us tonight.

Shostakovich’s Third Quartet is in five movements, and five movement works almost always are built on some concept of formal symmetry. Usually, they describe some kind of an arch. 

In this case, the third movement is the center of dramatic action in the work. Shostakovich in his own descriptive notes called it “Forces of war unleashed,” and Dubinsky called it “the wild triumph of evil.” It’s a movement that is wild, violent, grotesque and unremitting. 

It is followed by one of Shostakovich’s saddest movements (think about that!), a short, intense requiem built on a solemn march theme, which is itself a reworking of the theme of the slow movement of the 8^th Symphony. Shostakovich called this movement “In memory of the dead.” The second movement shows signs of the violence of the third, alongside moments of almost naïve simplicity. Shostakovich called it “Rumblings of unrest and anticipation.” 

The outer pillars of the arch pose the biggest problems for the performers. The first movement hardly sounds like 20^th Century music at all, and is in a perfect, Haydn-esque sonata form, complete with an old-fashioned exposition repeat. At first glace, it doesn’t sound like music that belongs in a Shostakovich quartet, least of all one from the war years. Shostakovich’s title also helps clarify the mood of this movement- “Blithe ignorance of the future cataclysm.” Where as often in Shostakovich, this kind of simple music is played for bitter laughs, here it is to be played straight and totally sincerely. In this movement, ignorance truly is bliss. This is music of and for a man and a people who know too little. 

The finale, on the other hand, is music of and for a man and a people who know far, far too much. Dubinsky describes this movement as “a sorrowful and moving story about Shostakovich himself and his pain and anxiety about the future of humanity.” Shostakovich described the music in even starker and simpler terms, “The eternal question: Why? And for what?” 

Where the peak of the arch is all action and drama, the end of the quartet is pure contemplation- a ten minute meditation on a question. It’s a meandering, simple and sad movement that often seems to wander, lost in thought. It’s based on a long melody whose only memorable quality is that it contains a very clear quotation from Tristan und Isolde. Only gradually does the cumulative power of the movement begin to register, and the ending sounds as if the whole world has dissolved into individual atoms. The question is left deeply considered, but unanswered. 

I think it’s incredibly hard to pull off- we aren’t used to contemplation in music any more, and we ask music to give us answers, not questions. We like our music and our entertainment to be constantly stimulating. In fact, although I think the last movement is the greatest music in the quartet, it doesn’t work on its own. It needs what comes before it. Hopefully tonight, we can keep that arch whole, so that the wounds of the third and fourth movements are still unhealed when we reach the finale. Will the public get it? Will they appreciate it? Will we be drowned out by coughing? I’ll let you know. 

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods 

A view from the podium, Music and Media

Rostislav Dubinsky was the founding first violinist of the Borodin Quartet, who worked intimately with Shostakovich in preparing performances and recordings of all of his fifteen string quartets. I studied chamber music with him at Indiana University from 1986-8. The greatest concert I’ve ever been in was a performance of Shostakovich’s Blok Romances at IU with him, my teacher, Fritz Magg and Dubinsky’s wife Luba. His memoir, Stormy Applause, includes this telling story about the Third String Quartet of Shostakovich and his friend, the great violinist David Oistrakh in 1973, after the fourth of five heart attacks, the last of which killed him in October, 1974.

When we flew into Heathrow Airport, the first news we had was about Oistrakh: serious heart trouble had caused him to cancel all his concerts. We had a daytime concert in St. James’s Church, practically right after the plane landed, and after that, without stopping at our rooms, we went directly to see Oistrakh.

“David Dedorovich,” I said, “we’d like to play a little for you, if you’re not too tired.”

“Oh, I’d be very glad. But only if you’re not too tired yourselves.”

We got our instruments, set up our music stands, and sat. down.

In an artificial voice, as if addressing an audience from a stage, I said, “We shall play the third quartet of Shostakovich in F-major, Opus 73, in five movements, the fourth and fifth to be performed without intermission. The quartet was written in 1944.”

Oistrakh looked at us, smiling. We started to play…

The Third is Shostakovich’s best quartet, written in his wartime period. A lot of sorrow had accumulated for the Russian intelligentsia during these years of Soviet rule, from the 1917 Revolution until the beginning of the war in 1941. And it was only during the war that it found its emotional outlet. This was particularly true in music. Like Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, this quartet was officially touted as anti-Fascist. But it was in essence anti-Soviet, a disturbing musical tale about the destruction of Russian culture.

The first movement of the quartet is a perfect sonata allegro, the last bright day before an irredeemable misfortune.

The second: gathering clouds and the approach of disaster.

The third: the wild triumph of evil.

The fourth: a funeral march, a prayer for those who have perished.

The fifth: a sorrowful, moving story about Shostakovich himself and his pain and anxiety about the future of humanity.

We never played any concert as we did that evening for that one sick man. In the fourth movement Berlinsky, who was seated facing Oistrakh, started making sings to me. I glanced at Oistrakh. He was lying with his eyes closed, tears running down his cheeks. Tamara (his wife) brought him some medicine, but he gently pushed her hand aside. In the finale, where the last muted chord is like an unearthly choir against whose background the first violin rises higher and higher and disappears, we made a long diminuendo, and the silence that followed was just like a continuation of the music. We sat without moving.

“Thank you so much,” said Oistrakh, very softly. “It’s the music of a genius and you play it marvellously.”

He closed his eyes again. “Do you think I’ll ever be able to play the violin again?” His voice trembled slightly.

“Don’t be silly, “said Tamara quickly, and started crying again.

“Really, that’s silly,” we all began at once. “You were just working too hard and your heart told you it needs a rest. Don’t worry, everything will be fine.”

The Surrey Mozart Players, conducted by KW,  will play Shostakovich’s Third String Quartet in the version for chamber orchestra by former Borodin Quartet violist and conductor, Rudolf Barshai  on  Saturday, April 23^rd, 2007 at 7:30 PM in the Electric Theatre, Guildford. Barshai, with Shostakovich’s blessing and guidance, prepared chamber orchestra versions of the Third, Fourth, Eight and Tenth quartets.

A view from the podium

Okay, I’ve been tagged. Daniel Wolf at Renewable Music has tagged me as he was tagged by Matthew Guerrieri at Soho the Dog. It’s official- I’ve won the Thinking Blogger Award.

Here’s how it works

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

I’m guessing that it’s bad form to include bloggers who were previously in the chain, as that is slightly redundant and doesn’t necessarily help the cause of calling attention to worth blogs. Otherwise, both Daniel and Matthew would be on my list.

Also, I don’t want to fall into the trap of simply trying to pick my favourite blogs- we’re talking thought-provoking here.

One other concern, is that as I assembled this list, I kept noticing a distinct prejudice for blogs that are new to me. I think it’s hard to stay thought provoking when your reader has heard your point of view in countless postings.

Still, life is tough. Being able to make tought choices like this is why I make the big bucks.

Here are five blogs that are making me think this week.

1-       We Love Katherine Jenkins. Brilliant, close-to-the-bone satire. So close to the bone that the Guardian didn’t appear to realize the author of the blog was a “Mrs Senzatalento” and quoted from it as an actual KJ fan site. Were they in on the joke too? Here’s a link to the Guardian’s article defending the poor, misunderstood, naturally-blonde millionairess against the unfair barbs thrown at her by those mean old critics, who even rebut Mrs Senzatalento’s claim that KJ is singing Tosca at the Met on the grounds that her voice is too small for it. Never mind she’s a pseudo-mezzo, not a pseudo-soprano. Of course, if there’s money to be made on it, you can bet she’ll be there on the Met stage doing Visi d’Arte down a major third and cut. Also worth checking out is Miss Senzatalento’s real blog, Mad Musings of Me.

2-       David Byrne. I know I’m a child of the 80’s, but I can honestly say that Talking Heads were a band that I liked but wasn’t obsessed with, so I can fairly say that my fascination with DB’s blog is not merely nostalgia. Reading DB you get a great look into the world of a brilliant guy who has an endless curiosity about life, art and our cultural future. People often ask why most rock bands seem to peak early and never manage to do anything as compelling as their first few albums. I think it’s because by skipping out on some musical fundamentals, many pop artists never learn to learn. Byrne is clearly an exception- he makes me want to read and go to galleries and listen to new music. Check him out.

3-       CSO Bass Blog. The single biggest frustration for me as a blogger is that I have to remember I’m not just a working musician, but the public face of the orchestras I work with, and that I have a professional responsibility to make sure I don’t alienate possible subscribers or donors, or offend colleagues. As a result, I have to pretty much focus narrowly on the good things about life as a musician. Michael Hovnanian’s blog is refreshingly tell-it-like it is, with wonderfully honest and blunt assessments of concerts and conductors good and bad. Everything he says (at least what I’ve read) is fair and seems to come from his professionalism and love of what he does. I wish more musicians would tell it like it is- it’s a refreshing balance to most music criticism, which can be, when not at its most elevated, awfully subjective.

4-       Glenn Greenwald. (Registration or watching a commercial may be required) For the same reasons I don’t let myself talk about which soloists were good or bad, or which player in the woodwinds of that one orchestra plays sharp, I usually avoid politics on this blog. As the wise man said, don’t piss people off. My friends who read this, however, will know that I’m quite passionate about current affairs and social and economic trends, and that it’s actually a struggle and a sacrifice to stay on musical message here when I’m so troubled by what’s going on in the world. Nevertheless, I have talked here about how changes in media ownership laws and the blurring of lines between the economics and the editorial ethics of broadcasting and publishing have left everything of value in our society at risk. Greenwald, who writes for the online newspaper Salon, is the most astute, thorough, fair and on-topic critic and analyst of media coverage of public discourse. It should be required reading for everyone who wants to vote- there is so much blatant manipulation of public opinion by organizations who have not only blurred but obliterated the line between reporting news and repeating propaganda. Even if you come from a different political point of view, reading Greenwald is an invaluable refresher in the forgotten field of journalistic ethics and responsibility.

5-       On an Overgrown Path. Always interesting, always worth reading. I’d like to see him take readers even further inside the political machinations of the modern music business, a topic that working musicians like yours truly would never dare touch. Please Bob, give ‘em hell.

A view from the podium, Music and Media

So, later this week, I’m conducting, among other things, the Schumann Cello Concerto with the Surrey Mozart Players as part of our ongoing Schumann cycle.

I find cello works challenging to accompany in a very specific way, because I’ve played most of them myself and tend to naturally accompany the soundtrack that’s going on in my head rather than what the soloist is actually doing if I’m not on the ball. As a result, I find it’s helpful for me to listen to a few recordings just to help prepare me for interpretations of the piece that are very different to my own.

This morning, I sat down with a recording by Pierre Fournier, a cellist I love. This is actually on a DVD I got for Christmas and still hadn’t watched. It’s fantastic, and when was the last time you saw someone with grey hair soloing in a concert? I was loving it all, and relishing the different-ness of it, until I got to something I just can’t relish. Blog post ensues.

Just before the coda of the entire concerto, Schumann inserts a brief and dramatic recitative passage. It’s one of the most important moments in the piece. It’s also the scene of one of the most egregious “traditional” assaults on musical logic and integrity in the cello repertoire.

Schumann was a visionary in dealing with larger forms like the symphony and the concerto, always looking for new ways to make entire pieces stand as coherent wholes, whether through the motivic cross-references in the 2^nd and 3^rd symphonies or by condensing the traditional three movement concerto structure into a single, unbroken span as he does in the cello concerto.

The first two movements are deeply introspective and heartbreakingly lyrical. After the second movement, which is a tender romance, Schumann brings back the music of the first movement before launching into a stormy transitional episode. Here the lyricism of the first two movements erupts into something quite angry and dark, which then launches the music into the finale.

The last movement is much more virtuosic in character than the first two, and gives the soloist ample opportunity to leap from one end of the cello to the other. It’s punishingly difficult. However, even with all this virtuosity, there remains an undercurrent of melancholia, with numerous quotations from the first movement appearing furtively beneath the vaulting arpeggios in the cello.

In my opinion, many performers miss the point in this movement, playing the whole thing too lightly and too much as a showpiece. It’s showy enough, but it’s also part of the whole, a whole that is designed to be organically unified. It’s actually the hardest movement to bring off musically and keep a sense of direction and drama.

Finally, we come to the recit before the coda. Some commentators refer to it as an accompanied cadenza, but it really is a recitative, and only a brief one at that. I segues immediately into a pensive and introverted passage full of broken chords in the cello which, in their swings from one end of the cello register to another, capture something of the sense of loss and nostalgia that we felt in the first movement. Gradually, the intensity builds and finally Schumann launches us into an ecstatic and virtuosic final codetta which is the fastest music in the piece.

Here’s the rub: Maestro Fournier, who I admire as a cellist and musician, along with countless other cellists (including Casals, Starker and Piatigorsky), interpolates a long cadenza between the recit and the broken chord episode. It’s a “tradition” that has no basis in the text or musical logic, for which the only justification seems to be that cellists, whose technical facility perhaps outstrips their musical judgement, seem concerned that the whole concerto isn’t flashy enough to prove their virtuosity to the world.

Never mind that these cadenzas are always crap, or that the concerto is plenty virtuosic, this is a classic example of a place where there is simply no justification in the score for a performing choice, and of a place where Schumann’s original is in every way a musically superior concept. Here, after all, is piece where the composer’s primary idea seems to be to create a taught and unified structure, and yet, in this 22 minute work, some soloists seem feel justified in inserting three to five minutes of complete formulaic rubbish into the performance. Many of these cadenzas are longer than the whole second movement.

Really, just play the piece then do an encore. You can even play your cadenza as an encore!

Of course, I don’t know if Gemma plans on doing a cadenza or not, but that’s not to worry. If she does, I’ll be the good accompanist and be smiling down at her all the way. I’m just concerned Schumann won’t be smiling down at any of us….

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods  

A view from the podium, Nuts and bolts

Programming is a practice that falls somewhere in the cracks between high art, alchemy and sausage making.

There are two kinds of decisions orchestras make that greatly overshadow all other concerns.

1-       What are we going to play

2-       Who’s going to play it

Chances are, if an organization is struggling, they’re getting one of those wrong, if they’re surviving they’re getting much of it right.

However, programming can’t solve all problems.

Take the Lancashire Chamber Orchestra. We’d had a concert go badly over budget sometime ago when we had to replace a soloist at the last minute, and it had left us with what looked like a big hole in our finances.

As a result, we decided that our spring concert this year would be a marketing and budgetary dream-come-true. We were going to a venue where we’d been once before and had a very good, if not totally packed, crowd. We thought we’d try to sell out, but with a very cheap-to-produce concert. We knew we could save money by only taking a string orchestra, and picked a program that was sure to attract the punters- Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Beethoven’s “Serioso” Quartet op 95 as arranged by Mahler and the Four Seasons. Believe it or not, I’d managed to never conduct the Seasons or Eine Kleine before!

Early forecasts were promising- ticket sales were brisk.

However, on the day, a horrible storm hit Lancaster. In the end, we had a very disappointing take at the door, and a lot of empty seats in the house. I like all three of those pieces, but in putting the Mozart and Vivaldi on the same program, I felt like I’d sold my soul for nothing.

The most recent concert we did, however, was a different affair. We’d decided we wanted to do a piano work, and neither of our regular venues have an adequate piano, so we went looking for a new venue. In the end, we chose the auditorium at Altrincham Grammar School for Girls- a place the orchestra had not performed in for many, many years.

We settled on a program that was as uncompromising as the last one was pandering. A short American work, Copland’s Quiet City in rather anti-American times, then Shostakovich’s rather thorny early Concerto no. 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Strings, followed by a Haydn Symphony, in this case no. 92.

Believe me, nobody has ever suggested that Haydn sells a lot of tickets, which is a sad state of affairs.

Early signs were bad. Three other orchestras were playing in the area that night. The school didn’t do much publicity, which we had sort of been counting on, and many of our regular supporters were away and sent their regrets.

How surprising then, when we came out for the beginning of the concert to a full house!

Why? Who knows? Local trumpet soloist? Big local Haydn fan club? Lots of hard work by the orchestra? Flashy young pianist? The wine at intermission? Probably a bit of all those.

Anyway, we got away with a program that wouldn’t have gotten past a lot of committees, which is a great thing, because I love this program. In fact, I plan to do it again somewhere….

This is an issue. Generally, one does not repeat programs, although there are a few exceptions, notably the classic Bruckner 9 and Schubert 8 pairing that everyone does.

Aside from the fact that the three pieces are all great on their own, the program works well on other levels. From a planning point of view, it’s easy to rehearse, and if you’re going to bring in a trumpet soloist for the Shostakovich, it gives him or her a bit more to do.

One thing I told the audience was that it’s a program featuring works by three composers who all presented slightly misleading public faces to the world, or whose personalities, at least, have long been underestimated or misunderstood.  

Take Copland. Musically speaking, Copland’s music pretty much defines the sound of America, even Americana. It’s the soundtrack of life that stirs thoughts of patriotism in red-state USA. However, Copland was anything but a naïve, God-and-country type. He was gay, socialist-bordering-on-communist and a New Yorker- not the kind of person who would have been welcomed for himself in the rural America he so vividly depicted. However, Copland answered a calling in the Depression years, turning away from a more intense, progressive style towards a musical language that he hoped would give his fellow citizens hope in difficult times. He created a mythology of a loving and decent America, of a sane and hopeful America, that people turned to for solace throughout the dark years of the depression and World War II. Quiet City has the same musical vocabulary as Rodeo or Appalachian Spring, which tells us that, urban or rural, the sound of America is the sound of Aaron Copland.

Shostakovich, of course, remains controversial to this day because of certain “scholars” inability to understand his sophisticated and cautious world view. In his own lifetime, Western writers dismissed him as nothing more than a communist apparachik, but his friend, collaborators and family memories have all confirmed the world-view laid out in Testimony of a man who struggled to bear witness to the suffering of his fellow citizens.

Looking back, Shostakovich and Copland were strikingly similar figures. Both were clearly the dominant musical personality of their respective country- the one in their time that all their colleagues looked up to with a mixture of admiration, jealousy and awe. Both saw their work as  public service and saw their artistic life as a manifestation of moral imperative, and yet both were private men. Each of them carried a secret through life that could have brought untold public ridicule or personal disaster- Shostakovich’s dissidence and Copland’s sexuality and political views.

And then there is Haydn. If Shostakovich and Copland each possessed a talent and facility that were deeply intimidating to their peers, Haydn possessed a facility to intimidate Copland and Shostakovich. Like Shostakovich and Copland, Haydn also takes great pains to disguise some of his purposes.

Perhaps it was just his nature, his supreme confidence, that led Haydn to always go to great pains to make his music look simple, or perhaps it was because he had spent so much of his working life writing music for the entertainment of royal patrons who were probably not interested in being shaken to their core by musical experiences. Whatever the reason, the 92^nd Symphony, like many of his other works presents a simple and almost naïve face to the world, but in fact, it is a profoundly complex and multi-layered work.

Just take the finale. The theme couldn’t be any simpler, almost to the point of sounding slightly inane, and yet Haydn develops it in the most sophisticated and heady ways imaginable. I told the audience on Saturday that the Haydn was the most complicated music on the program, but I don’t think anyone believed me until it was over.

In the end, he made believers out of everyone I talked to. It’s a pity his music is so rarely played, and when played, is so often played badly. Haydn learned to disguise himself as the humble servant of aristocratic listeners, but it was he who made everything that followed, from Mozart through to Berg possible. No Haydn, no Shostakovich…..

I think players and audience went home happy on Saturday, and much as I am the world’s biggest Shostakovich fan, and wonderfully as John and Ivan played, I think Pops stole the day. Still, I know next time I suggest a Haydn symphony somewhere else, the first thing I’ll hear will be “But Ken…. Haydn doesn’t sell…. How about Eine Kleine?”

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

A view from the podium

UPCOMING CONCERT- 

June 23, 2007

7:30 PM

Surrey Mozart Players

Electric Theatre, Guildford

Beethoven- Coriolan Overture

Schumann- Cello Concerto in A minor

–Gemma Rosefield, cello

Shostakovich- Chamber Symphony op. 73 

From the SMP website-

Beethoven’s overture Coriolan of 1807 was written to precede a play by his friend H J von Collin, not the tragedy by Shakespeare.  The music depicts the proud Roman General Caius Marcius who performed valiantly against the Volscians, capturing the town of Corioli.  Following his later banishment by the Romans he sided with the Volscians and assumed the name of the town.

With increasing episodes of dementia and auditory hallucinations, Schumann did not easily tolerate high-frequency sound and found himself drawn to the lower pitched instruments.  The Cello Concerto of 1854 provided relief from his troubles, and was written in just six days, with orchestration completed in a further eight.

Shostakovich wrote his Third String Quartet in 1946, between two confrontations with Party officials.  It is, for the composer, relatively light-hearted, but with underlying tensions.  Because it shows such clear orchestral characteristics, Rudolf Barshai decided, with the composer’s approval, to arrange the composition for chamber orchestra by adding a few wind instruments.

Cellist Gemma Rosefield-

GEMMA ROSEFIELD, born in London in 1981, studied for a Masters Degree with Ralph Kirshbaum at the Royal Northern College of Music, supported by the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, having previously graduated with Distinction at the Royal Academy of Music. Major competition successes include First Prize in the European Music for Youth Competition in Oslo, Norway, the Royal Overseas League String Competition, the Making Music Young Concert Artists Award, the Kirckman Award, and the Prix Academie Maurice Ravel. She has taken part in Masterclasses with eminent musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma, Gary Hoffman, Johannes Goritzki, Frans Helmerson, Zara Nelsova and Bernard Greenhouse.

A committed chamber musician, Gemma has played in the USA, Russia, Japan, Europe and throughout the UK, including performances with Gyorgy Pauk,Menachem Pressler and Stephen Kovacevich. She has appeared at the major London venues, including the South Bank, the Barbican and at the Wigmore Hall, where at her debut recital in 2004, she was described by the Strad Magazine as “a mesmerising musical treasure”, and the London Evening Standard commented “Monday nights at the Wigmore Hall will never be the same again”. Her festival appearances this year include Corsham, Hampstead & Highgate, Kings Lynn, Presteigne and Edinburgh Fringe, Gstaad and the Lyon Musicades XV in France.

Praised by the London Evening Standard in 2005 as “a phenomenal talent”, Gemma’s plans include solo recitals throughout the UK, and performances of the Elgar, Schumann and both Haydn concertos. She has toured in Mexico, and Holland (in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam) in the New Masters International Recital Series.

A view from the podium, Announcements and reviews

So… how does one identify true musical genius in the 21^st Century? Is it a composer with a new harmonic vocabulary? A conductor with photographic memory? A violinist with perfect pitch? A pianist with ten brains for ten fingers?

I, for one, look to poetry.

Magnetic poetry. Dirty magnetic poetry…. Is there any other kind?

I don’t remember when I first noticed the pattern. Perhaps it was the reception at the “great composer’s” house, when I discovered something on his fridge that, in the space of a few lines, left me with a queasy feeling that stayed with me for weeks.

That, however, was nothing compared to the afternoon spent at the home of a leading conducting guru. His fridge was adorned with a selection of verse that could make the Pope himself question the existence of God. I actually had to look up literary references and consult a medical journal to fully appreciate what I had read.

Lest one think that filthy kitchen creations are the sole province of men, I call the reader’s attention to the famously babalicious young violinist I hung out with in Aspen who could convert anyone’s kitchen into a superfund site given ten minutes and a magnetic poetry kit.

We’ve just had a very accomplished fellow conductor staying with us the last few days. After seeing the magnetic poetry kit on our fridge, he began a sort of slow, deep laugh that told me that we were all facing a new kind of mortal threat.

Rather than simply launch into the compositional process, the maestro in question began by systematically undoing the long legacy of previous dirty poems that fridge has held. The legacy of the sonnet by the concertmaster of the major orchestra, my own work, that of my wonderfully yet depravedly creative soul-mate, and that of many other distinguished house guests was systematically obliterated as he organized all the words into nouns, verbs, adjectives and modifiers….

Over the next 72 hours, he worked meticulously, line by line, phrase by phrase, leaving us yesterday with work so vile that we have requested that the British government send a chemical weapons abatement team to remove the fridge from our house.

Greatest magnetic poet of all time- Mozart. Of course, he didn’t have a fridge to work with, but one need only read his wonderfully filthy letters to know that the greatest musical genius can only be fully appreciated with the help of modern home appliances…

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

A view from the podium