Is this the face of classical music?
May 30th, 2008
Archive
Archive for May, 2008
School’s out for summer
May 28th, 2008
I find May to be the strangest time of year for me professionally, as it hangs in this netherworld between the concert-season/school-year and the summer-festival season. In fact, one often experiences the cognitive dissonance of doing a summer festival in early May, then returning home to do a subscription concert afterwards. It can be a bit like having to go back to school after a few days of vacation.
This May’s residency at the Ischia Festival was certainly summer work, but I spent the same week last year doing Mahler 1 in Pendleton, very much part of the regular season. The issue is further complicated here in Britain, where many orchestras tend to schedule a spring concert at the end of June, but I just have to think of those as summer concerts, regardless of the fact that they’re part of a subscription series.
The end of one season always seems to call for a moment of reflection and a thorough cleaning off of the desk. I keep all of my active scores on one shelf of my desk, so now is the time to swap out my Winter/Spring scores with the summer ones. As far as reflection… Hmmm. It seemed more of a year to survive than to enjoy in some ways- lots of challenging programs under difficult circumstances. I was particularly happy with the musical progress we made in Pendleton this year, from a deeply moving Mahler 4, to a rather smoking Beethoven 8, to a transcendent Elgar Vn Concerto culminating in a cosmic Death and Transfiguration. Even as we still have much work to do, I felt the Elgar and Strauss were both performances that could only happen when there was a long collaboration between a conductor and orchestra.
I know exactly where I am going to put the laser musically next year (but I’m not telling!) to address what I feel is the glaring bit of unfinished business. Sadly, though, this was the year that, as I predicted, the true cost of the fire showed itself as the cumulative strain on our resources and time took its toll on our ability to do business, and we lost a few valuable board members to burn out (no pun intended). The summer break comes at a good time, and our new ED has all the tools to right the ship (and is, in fact, on her vacation righting ships in the Pacific with a sailing crew as I write this).
In other venues, highlights included the CMEW concert in March (particularly Akrata by Xenakis, who seems to have officially arrived as a “great composer” this year)- what a delight to work with such committed and virtuosic musicians, Haydn 101 with the SMP (I told them afterwards they should change their name to the Surrey Haydn and Mozart Players), a hot (both musically and on stage) Pictures at an Exhibition with the WSO, and wonderful collaborations with Suzanne on the Mendelssohn Vn Con in November with the HSO and Parry Karp on Saint-Saens and Strauss.
Of course, every year has its disappointments, and not every collaboration is a success. As the years go by, you learn that each concert is a precious culmination of hundreds of hours of work. When all the efforts of committees, managements, volunteers and performers are wasted, it is a serious matter. Such experiences are rare, but I did have one experience this year where I felt a principal player so badly let the side down as the really torpedo the entire concert. I hope she understands the damage she did to a wonderful but vulnerable organization with her behavior. I also had the unfortunate experience of having a young soloist or two show up not ready for the gig. Just as a great soloist can lift an orchestra to a new level, an unprepared one can leave everyone feeling deflated and defeated. I work a lot with young soloists who are coming up through dedicated foundations and schemes, and I’ve really tightened the rules for them next year, as much for their benefit as to protect the orchestras. As long is someone is “young” or “up and coming,” I think they’re going to have to be prepared for a bit of coaching when called for and an extra rehearsal with the band, even if they do come from a famous school/teacher/trust.
In fact, I told one famous school this year that wanted us to use a student as a soloist when we perform there that the student would have to audition for me, and they got quite huffy “we believe the _________ School has an established reputation in this regard,” was their rather indignant response. Well, their last student did let the side down, and auditioning builds character, so they’ll just have to play the game…. If they are teaching their students to puff their chests out to act as if they are to-the-manor-born, they are not helping them get work or make music.
On the other hand, one young soloist who I coached a lot was Barbara Misiewicz, who played Schelmo with me in Februray. I can’t recall a young soloist so able to apply every comment and suggestion so quickly and willingly. I was slightly dreading doing a piece I love so much with someone learning it for the first time, but it ended up being a good example of how working with a gifted young player can work.
However, the moment for reflection is already past. Since returning from Ischia I’ve mostly been busy doing some long-delayed home improvement work and catching up on RCICW admin. Already, it is time to not only put the new scores on the shelf, but to start reading them. First up is the Soprano Saxophone Concerto of Jennifer Higdon, a new piece for me to be played with the Texas Festival Orchestra in about a month. I’ve been wanting to do one of her pieces for a long time.
KZ concert report
May 24th, 2008
We don’t do reviews here at Vftp (part of my “glass houses” policy), but I thought the odd concert report might allowable.
Most musicians and music lovers have their own version of “the list.” That is the list of performers you want to catch before they or you die. I’ve done okay on some counts, managing to catch many of my favorite jazz masters just in time, and am still bummed that I never heard Lenny or Karajan live, even though they lived into my early twenties. The list is smaller than ever, partly because I’ve been busy working my way through it and partly because too many of today’s performers aren’t list-worthy (sorry guys). When I die, I hope I will have achieved list-worthiness in the eyes of some perceptive young listeners….
Anyway, one musician who is still alive and who has been on that list ever since I heard his recording of the Brahms 1st Piano Concerto with Lenny as a young man is Krystian Zimerman. Last night at the Bridgewater finally had the chance to hear him in person.
And glad I am to have done so. It was a fantastic program- Bach C minor Partita, the last Beethoven Sonata (op 111), four late Brahms pieces and the Variations on a Polish Theme op 10 of Szymanowski. Zimerman has already attracted the notice of the press for changing piano keyboards/actions between the Bach and the Beethoven. I hadn’t been warned, and it made quite a surprise, but the difference was instantly noticeable. It was as good as changing pianos, and brought out a whole new range of colors.
And this brings me to my point- I came away from the evening feeling like this was really the first time I’ve heard KZ play, which of course it was. Yes, the Bridgewater Hall is an acoustically perfect space for solo piano music, but I really felt like I was hearing a degree of warmth, pliability and expressive range that the recordings don’t begin to do justice to.
I’ll leave a review to the reviewers, but I did think the Bach was spectacular- overflowing with detail, direction, intensity and rhythmic energy, and the Beethoven was quite a radical vision of the piece- completely unsentimental until the final pages, when he finally added a dimension of nuance, color and flexibility he’s seemed to keep in reserve up to that point (apparently, this was his first live performance of op 111 !). The Szmanowsky seems to be a young genius’s catalogue of everything that is possible on the piano, played with a degree of bravura in rather stark contrast to Zimmerman’s more austere approach to Bach and Beethoven. Anyway, if you can get tickets to London or Basingstoke, buy them, even if the sound won’t be as good as in Manchester.
My friends at the Bridgewater kindly smuggled (escorted is a more distinguish word, but less fun) me backstage for a brief chat and a look at the inner workings of a KZ world tour. KZ travels in a non-descript looking white van which he himself drives (along with his piano technician) and his highly customized Steinway. Aside from touring with multiple keyboards each fine-tune for the specific demands of certain repertoire, the piano has also been given titanium legs, which he tells me makes a huge difference to the sound.
Now, I can imagine a skeptic questioning whether KZ can really tell the difference between titanium and wood legs, or between all those carefully calibrated keyboards (I get the same reactions when I explain the magic of my million dollar end pin). Well, of course, we had a chance to sample the difference in the keyboards from the audience, but Zimmerman has gone much further.
On his laptop is a program he’s written (he’s an expert computer programmer) that performs a detailed spectrum analysis of the exact pitch and overtone content of each string on the piano, so that he can see exactly how each adjustment affects the sound. More importantly, he can use this software to map how he wants the piano to sound, so that his technician can prepare the piano exactly as he wants it for the repertoire in question.
In fact, it is possible using the software to map ideal tonal setups on the piano for each piece on a program- you can see just how bright or dark this or that range of the piano needs to be for best results in Brahms or Szymanowski, then try to find the best balance of the needs of the two pieces. When those needs are too different, as in the Bach or Beethoven, you simply replace one action with another, each perfectly calibrated (or as nearly perfectly calibrated as possible, the process is never-ending). (House piano technicians are not allowed to touch KZ’s piano and rightly so, at best it would be like having a McLaren technician tweak your Formula One Ferrari, but more likely it would be like having your local mechanic, good as he is, tweak a Formula One Ferrari…)
Most interactions between music and technology end up with the music being maimed- deranged engineers think they can improve the lousy acoustics of an auditorium by micing the lousy sound of that auditorium and piping it through speakers over the audience’s head, or greedy producers think they can ditch all those pesky musicians and use a magical computer simulation for their Broadway show. Here is an example of cutting edge technology being used in service of live, unaltered, un-edited, un-maimed acoustic music.
I found it really inspiring- the guy has nothing left to prove to audiences or the establishment, and here he is, lugging his own piano all over Europe, spending thousands of hours doing research and developing technology, just to get that little bit closer to the ideal sound. The dreary economic realities of classical music have got us all so used to constant compromise that it is almost novel to see someone at work who seems to be purging his professional life of compromise. How many times have I been working on an adjustment of a cello when the luthier sort of announces- “well that’s as good as that instrument can sound.” No, that’s only as good as you can get it to sound…. We should never give up, even if we don’t want our kit to become a distraction.
Of course, these days there seems to be such an aversion to this purely idealistic approach to making music that people expect someone who is “uncompromising” to be difficult. In this case, on the basis of our brief chat, I can report that nothing could be further from the truth- KZ was gracious, low key, completely without ego or artifice. His only concern after the concert was to get some time on the piano on the morning to make some fresh adjustments. He was really generous with his time, meeting some well-wishers and young piano students and cheerfully signing some autographs.
So, all my American friends- be sure to catch him on future US tours. Oh wait… What’s this? He’s announced he’s not doing anymore American tours because of the US policies on torture? Sorry guys, I suppose there is a musician of principle out there after all.
Think about it- we can get quite pious faulting those who continued to perform in Germany too long after 1933, or who were working in South Africa at the height of Apartheid, but what about America today? Of course Hitler was worse, of course Apartheid was worse- our transgressions are just an unprovoked war and a bit of torture and rendition on the side. A little torture is nothing to cancel a concert over, is it?
Here’s are some KZ thoughts from Jessica Duchen, and a preview from the Independent by Michael Church. Jessica’s early blog post on KZ is here, which includes link to her KZ feature in Pianist in which he discusses his reasons for his difficult decision to stop performing in America in spite of his affection for US audiences.
Go on!
May 23rd, 2008
I’ve recently been following a somewhat heated discussion of the attacca- the musical practice of joining two movements of a multi-movement work without pause. Surprisingly, many musicians cannot seem to agree on the definition of an attacca.
In fact, the true measure of attacca vs non is what I call the “mop test.” If a conductor takes time to put the baton out, whip out the hankies and mop up the accumulated sweat and mucous, then it is not an attacca. If a conductor still has sweat on his face from the Adagietto at the end of the Finale, that was attacca, no matter how long the silence was between the movements. Corollaries to the mop test include the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ test. I saw Nadja Solerno Sonnenberg play the Mendelssohn vn concerto a few years back. A strap fell off her dress in the first movement, but since all the movements were attacca, it was not until the encore that she was able to repair the wardrobe malfunction. On the other hand, when the Minnesota Orch played M5 at the Proms two years ago, Vanska’s entire tux vest/suspenders apparatus came apart at the end of the Scherzo (with 6,600 people on hand and the BBC broadcasting live to the nation on TV). Since the Scherzo and Adagietto are not attacca, he was able to have an embarrassed looking principal 2nd re-attach the clips of his suspenders before starting the Adagietto (and to mop up, but he did that himself). Had the wardrobe malfunction occurred in the Adagietto, he would have had to keep his pants up with mental powers through the Finale, because those movements are attacca.
In chamber music, an attacca is when the violist does not re-tune between movements. I’ve personally never experienced such a moment in a concert.
There is also the clarinet rule. Clarinettists do not really believe in attaccas, partly because mischievous composers have always demanded clarinet changes between attacca movements. It’s hard to feel to sorry for clarinettists, as trumpet players seem to be able to play the whole repertoire on a C or Bb trumpet. All clarinettists see it as their professional responsibility to try to do away with attaccas whenever possible, and to warn conductors of injury and possible musical calamity whan attaccas taken that aren’t in the score. Any time I announce an attacca, chances are it will be a clarinettist raising his hand to warn me of the potentially dire consequences of this act of madness.
However, the most important thing about attacca’s is to TELL THE ORCHESTRA- “I am not going to take 10 minutes to mop up and tuck my shirt in after the slow movement, but will instead be proceeding attacca to the Finale.” I was once playing cello in a marvellous American orchestra to remain nameless when the maestro, in a sudden moment of inspiration, finished the slow movement of Schumann 2 and launched attacca! into the finale. Caught completely unprepared, only about 15 string players were able to get their bows on the string for a feeble first bar of the finale, but worse, the poor clarinettist, who had spent his entire career warning conductors of the perils of clarinet changes in every work of the symphonic literature, was so shocked that he dropped his clarinet (which he wasn’t, in fact, changing), which proceeded to bounce down the stage on each level of risers, completely drowning out the meagre string section for the first couple of bars.
c. 2008 Kenneth Woods
A view from the podium, Favorite posts, Nuts and bolts, Performing Life
Fire at the Berlin Philharmonie
May 20th, 2008
Knowing all too well the toll that fire and fire fighting can take on instruments, music and archives, I fear not only for what the orchestra has lost, but what the world may have lost.
UPDATE- Somewhat more encouraging news from the Guardian.
Classical goes naked
May 20th, 2008
Well- the classical world has finally caught on to the sheer power of naked.
Hot on the heels of my naked recital post and related commentary, tonight on Channel 4’s “How To Look Good Naked,” the conductor and musicians of Stratford’s Orchestra of the Swan put themselves forward for the Gok treatment. Will they take the intimacy of chamber orchestra performance to a new level? OotS music director David Curtis is going to be a guest conductor with the Surrey Mozart Players in December- will he try to bring the power of naked to the SMP? You can watch the episode here, but you will have to pay…. (look for the season finale featuring the breast cancer survivor)
One of my colleagues in the OES recently suggested we tap into the power of naked, but selectively. She so wants us to get the biggest possible audience for our Mahler cycle that she recommended that we unleash naked “you know, just those in the band who should be naked” to get the community “excited.”
Of course, there are risks to unleashing the power of naked in the concert hall. At least two well-known conductors I can think of (including one former NY Phil MD) are renowned for suffering a condition known as “second baton,” an affliction that manifests itself when a conductor gets a little “too excited.” The combination of second baton and the power of naked may be a bit much. I don’t suffer second baton (at least, er, not so far), but I’m still not ready to get naked for any orchestra, but maybe I’m not “one of those in the band who should be naked.” Then again, David and co. had a professional naked consultant to prepare them for their nake shoot.
On a serious note, Orchestra of the Swan was one of several orchestras (alonside the London Mozart Players and City of London Sinfonia) whose Arts Council funding was set to be cut to finance the corporate orgy of corruption and self-indulgence that is the Olympics. Next time you hear about ministers who lied about projected costs of the swimming palace, er … pool, remember that hundreds of musicians were thrown out of work, and are going to lose houses and cars and take kids out of summer camp and school, so that broadcasters, Nike and Coke can feed at the trough of worldwide TV coverage for 15 days and a bunch of overpriced stadiums will put some politically connected contractors’ kids through private college, then get used a few times a year at most once the feeding frenzy has passed.
Sorry, do I sound bitter? Maybe, but I challenge any fat cat getting rich off the Olympics to fight naked for their subsidy with a naked, out of work, freelance violist.
Quote of the day
May 19th, 2008
“Otto Klemperer, Sir Adrian Boult, Carlo Maria Giulini and Walter Legge made up the panel which awarded James Loughran the first prize of the televised final of the Philharmonia Conducting Competition in 1961. They seem as gods on Olympus in comparison to the preening nonentities who nowadays people TV adjudication panels.”
Re-blogged from a review of Loughran’s new recording of Bruckner 7 by Richard Osborne in the June 2008 Gramophone magazine.
An icy Russian wind blows accoss the sunny Ischian hillside
May 19th, 2008
I am now home from a memorable week at the Ischia Chamber Music Festival. What a joy it was to set aside the baton and pretty much any and all responsibility for decision making and organization and just be a cellist for a week!
Our final concert on Thursday consisted of two works- the String Trio of Alfred Schnittke, and the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.
Aldo was wise to pair the two pieces in spite of the fact that it made for a very emotionally demanding and draining concert- as he explained in his welcoming remarks to the audience, one doesn’t have to strain find certain common threads between the two pieces. Both are late works, and both seem to reflect each composer’s thoughts on mortality. Both are ultimately inward looking pieces, but somehow very intense and direct.
The Schnittke was written to celebrate the 100th birthday of Alban Berg, and shows Schnittke, the Russian heir to Shostakovich, at his most Germanic, with a care for counterpoint and integration of modern techniques and antique idioms (think of the Bach chorale in the Berg Violin Concerto) that does seem to echo Berg. The main thematic ideas of the piece are all inter-related (all are based on dotted rhythms and very simple harmonic patters)- they seem to be echoes of a Sarabande, perhaps a Minuet and a March.
In Baroque and Classical music the character of a theme tends to tell you the character of the movement. Not so in the Schnittke, where these simple materials are transformed from something quite innocent into something rather monstrous before being reassembled to something like their original form… only with scars.
There had been a certain amount of concern about how the various workshop participants and the general public would respond to the piece, and I was not encouraged when one spouse of a participant compared listening to me practice it to torture. In the end, I’m sure there are still those for whom the piece goes to far (interestingly, our violinist, Byron, struggled to love the piece in spite of the fact he played it very beautifully and convincingly), but I was really excited to hear a lot of the comments about the piece that I did.
One violinist said it was “completely overwhelming and devastating- shattering,” another participant (a fine pianist) said “it seems to carry all the sadness of the world in it,” and a flutist said “this is music that speaks to our time, this is relevant.” I think a lot of listeners simply couldn’t believe that a trio of string players could produce such a huge range of dynamics and colors- the string writing is worthy of Bartok and Shostakovich’s best quartets on a purely technical level.
However, I thought the most important thing was the fact that for many, many in the audience it had an emotional impact that was even greater than the Brahms, and that the piece communicated something new, something they’d never heard before. To me, this is what contemporary music should and can do better than old music (much as I love my Brahms and Beethoven)- it can speak to us about our time and our world, but it has to speak to us.
I get a little down when I see again and again the same old false paradox played out- we’re forced to take sides in a battle of fools between musics that refuse to communicate and musics which seek only to entertain. The “who cares if you listen” mentality of modernism (Boulez, by the way, does care if you listen) is juxtaposed against a “who cares if you have anything to say, as long as it is pretty” market-driven, classical-Gap mentality of some of today’s more popular composers. Communicating with the audience is IMPORTANT, and so is HAVING SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO SAY. Yes, of course there are many composers today with lots to say, but the classical press doesn’t seem as interested in what they have to say, but in how audience friendly, attractive and marketable their music is.
To me, the best of Schnittke’s music lives up to his ideal of music as a “moral endeavor.” Are today’s artists really doing enough to shine a spotlight on the troubles of our own times? Shostakovich’s wartime symphonies were tombstones and memorials- reminders of the human costs of political stupidity. Where in today’s music are those artists courageous enough to really bring us face to face with the human costs of today’s terrors? Today, it seems that the highest praise a composer can receive is to have written melodic, attractive, entertaining music. I have nothing against those qualities, but what is that music saying? Who is speaking for victims, who is sounding the alarms, who is bearing witness? Schnittke was- and that’s why so many people were saying “I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move.”
The Brahms also deserves mention, particularly for the heavenly clarinet playing of my colleague Giuseppe Caranante. What a joy it is to play with a wind player who listens so carefully to the strings, who tunes (!) and who makes such remarkable colors. It is a perfect piece, one of the reasons we play chamber music. As an encore, we played the recap of the 2nd movement again- a heartbreakingly serene and tender way to end a festival.
The Brahms certainly led to the QUOTE OF THE WEEK from a violinist I was coaching in a the Brahms A Major Piano Quartet just before the participant concert the next day.
“Last night you guys brought Brahms back to life……. And today, we’re gonna burry him back in the ground again!”
I miss the food, the incredible welcome from the resort staff (boy does the English speaking world have a lot to learn about friendly and meticulous service), the sunshine and the view from the side of the volcano already, and am looking forward to returning next year. I met some remarkable new friends among both the faculty and the participants.
On my way home, I picked up the Herald Tribune, the first English language news I had read in 10 days, and found this article on Ischia in the T Magazine. I link it here for information and to encourage those of you who toyed with applying this year to do so next year (we’ll have a bigger class next year as we’re moving to a bigger building within the resort). I mean, a week of chamber music in a beautiful thermal resort hotel on the coast of one of the most beautiful Italian islands, surrounded by great food and natural beauty. Why wouldn’t you come?
Chamber Music Thoughts in the Ischian sun
May 14th, 2008
I’m a bit sad that the ferociously intense schedule here at the Ischia Festival has made it impossible for me to write more often, as it has been a very interesting and memorable week.
First, for all my friends who had thought about coming here as participants, I can only say that you should definitely come next year if you can. Spectacular views, fantastic food, a friendly and laid-back atmosphere and luxurious facilities- what more could you ask for.
We had our first concert last night- piano trios by Malcom Arnold and Jukka Linkola and the great Mozart Piano Quartet in E-flat, a masterpiece I was playing for the first time (actually, all of the pieces were new to me). Neither the Arnold nor the Linkola are “great’ works, but they are good fun- attractive, exciting and effective. I actually think it was very good programming on Aldo’s part, because it made for a nice, short concert and really put the Mozart front and center, where it belongs.
I’ve coached a lot of repertoire with a lot of new friends- the Brahms C minor Piano Quartet, a Devienne Trio Sonata, the Brahms Clarinet Trio (with two different groups), the Prokofiev Overture on Hebrew Themes and the Shostakovich Piano Quintet, among others. I was actually a little concerned that there were too many groups playing too much repertoire for the number of participants, but, although we will definitely scale it back next year, it seems to have worked out fine. The participants are all so passionate about music that there seems to be no end to their hunger for playing and discovery.
Speaking of discovery- I think the most memorable moment of the week so far for me was coaching the Intermezzo from the Shostakovich Piano Quintet with a group of musicians who were getting to know the piece for the first time. I can still remember playing that movement with tears streaming down my face at the Clock Tower festival two years ago, so I wasn’t too surprised at the reaction of the players to playing it for the first time. One of the violinists later said that the piece “was like a revelation. I couldn’t breathe or really see for a couple of hours afterward….” That’s how music should affect people.
It’s also been fun to discover some new colleagues like Aldo, David and Peppe (our pianist/director, violist and clarinetist respectively). They’re all great musicians, as is my old friend Byron, who I’m thoroughly enjoying playing with again after a break of over a decade. We haven’t had a lot of time for chitchat, but somewhere in the “so what are you doing the rest of the summer” conversation, one of them told me of the most unusual recital I have heard about in a long time…. He’s doing a very heavy duo program (Messiaen, Mozart and Brahms) at a nudist colony in Idaho. Yes, the audience will be naked! Clothing is very much optional for performers as well. I’ve never turned down a recital gig I could do, but……
My state of mind
May 11th, 2008
Post of the day
May 9th, 2008
Jen, over at Adventures of an Idaho Violist, has my post of the day on the perils of “wearwotchulike” gigs.
Most gigs are great, because I can just slap on some black clothing, and be done with it, with little to no thought required. But something challenging like ‘whatever you want’ is more pressure filled, and relies on the assumption that I have a closet full of interesting clothing choices. In fact, I have a closet full of black clothing choices. Eventually I settled on black pants and a dressy blouse, but it took about 17 changes of clothing, and a call to a colleague who was playing the same gig.
I long ago gave up ever organizing wearwotchulike gigs, instead going for “smart casual.” The guidelines for a KW “smart casual” gig are simple- no prints, stripes or patterns, no jeans or sneakers and no garments with writing of any kind.
Of course, at every single such gig, I’ve had at least two players wearing sneakers, jeans and a striped t-shirt with the words “Nike Fans 4 Bush” accross the front. Perhaps I should call it “wearwotidonlike” instead….
Ischia day one
May 9th, 2008
Day one of my visit to the Ischia Chamber Music Festival is nearly over. I swear, I do not seek extra adventure and uncertainty simply to keep the blog more captivating for readers, but some days it does seem as though someone in the producers’ office of the series that is my life is contriving to keep it interesting.
Today’s plotline is only mildly suspenseful at least so far. I arrived last night after a very long journey. I gripe often in these pages about airlines poor treatment of instrumentalists, but EasyJet, to my compete surprise, were completely professional and polite in dealing with me and my cello yesterday. Unfortunately, we were delayed about 45 minutes on departure from Stanstead, which meant that once I arrived in Naples I had about 40 minutes to get through customs, pick up my bag, grab a cab, cross Naples, buy a ticket and board the last ferry to Ishcia.
My bag seemed take ages to arrive, and then my heart sank when I walked out of the airport and saw a huge line for taxis. Thankfully, the line moved quickly- I was probably 70th in line, but within 10 minutes I was in a cab, which left me with about 18 minutes to catch the ferry. “Molo Beverello!” I cried to the cabby. “Presto, Presto!” When I told him how much time we had, stepped on it, and we rocked through Naples and eye-watering speed to the port.
My host had told me to negotiate a cab fare of 16 euros, but I’d completely forgotten to do so in my panic, so it was 35, at which point I also realized I’d only taken out 45 euros at Stanstead because I was getting a cash per-diem here. With 2 minutes to spare I sprinted (there are few sights more undignified than that of a grown man “sprinting” with a cello and a suitcase) up to the ticket booth, only to see a hand-written sign “sorry, no credit cards today.”
With only 10 euros left, I assumed I was, as they say, screwed. I asked if there was a cash machine, and he just laughed at me. “How much one-way?” I asked in broken Italian.
”9,84.” My heart exploded in joy, I was going to make it to Ishcia with 14 cents in my pocket.
Today started quietly- I met some of my colleagues and had a very tasty lunch, but then there were worrying rumblings of ill-tidings. Byron, our first violinist, is trapped in Paris by a transit strike. I’ve been a union member most of my life, but sometimes you can’t help saying “fucking unions!” especially when Brahms and Schnittke are at stake. As the day went on the news became worse and worse- from a delay of a few hours, it could now be a day to four days.
We read the Brahms and Schnittke without him. The Brahms is so empty without the first violin, it wasn’t very satisfying, but the Schnittke rehearsal was actually quite useful.
I had suggested the Schnittke because I remembered enjoying playing the 2nd movement, but I hadn’t listened to it since that performance. As I’ve been studying and practicing the whole piece this week I’ve decided it is a great, great, great piece. It seems like Schnittke has fallen out of the repertoire in the last few years since his death. I remember hearing Gidon Kremer and the Kremeratic Baltica play the Concerto Grosso the night Schnittke died- at that moment it felt like the whole world knew the greatest composer in the world had died. As I was working on the score yesterday, it hit me that I haven’t heard a performance of any Schnittke in a couple of years.
The String Trio was written to celebrate the 100th birthday of Alban Berg. Schnittke’s penchant for integrating styles from different historical epochs is perfectly appropriate for a memorial to Berg, and this trio’s mixture of baroque dances with intense dissonance is both effective and an appropriate memorial to another great composer. I’d say it is a great score for young composers to study- his string writing, apart from one annoyingly impossible doublestop, is both idiomatic and distinctive, and he really achieves a parlando vocabulary of articulations.
I just hope we get to hear it with Byron soon!
By the way, the food is impossibly good.
UPCOMING CONCERTS- Ischia Chamber Music Festival
May 7th, 2008
Ischia Chamber Music Festival Concerts Program
Villa Arbusto, Lacco Ameno – May 11, 13, 16, 2008 – 9 pm
May 11, 2008 – 9 pm
M. Arnold – Piano Trio, op. 54
A. Schnittke – String Trio
Y. Linkola – Piano Trio
W.A. Mozart – Kegelstatt Trio
Byron Wallis, violin
David Yang, viola
Kenneth Woods, cello
Giuseppe Carannante, clarinet
Aldo de Vero, piano
May 13, 2008 – 9 pm
W.A. Mozart – Piano Quartet in E flat K. 493
J. Brahms – Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115
Byron Wallis, violin
Robert Ellis, violin
David Yang, viola
Kenneth Woods, cello
Giuseppe Carannante, clarinet
Aldo de Vero, piano
May 16, 2008 – 9 pm
Ischia Chamber Music Workshop
Participant’s Final Concert
Program to be decided
Tomorrow morning I set off for the beautiful island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples for my first visit to the Ischia Chamber Music Festival. I’m thrilled at the two programs we’re playing- I’ve always loved the Brahms Quintet, but funnily enough, it is the only major Brahms chamber work with cello I’ve never performed.
I’m a bit nervous about the Schnittke- I played the 2nd movement at another chamber festival four years ago and was heartbroken when the artistic director cut the first movement to shorten the concert. In the end, the Schnittke got the strongest audience response of anything we played that year, so I really pushed to do it here at Ischia. I hope the audience there enjoys and responds to the whole thing.
I’m looking forward to playing with Byron Wallis again, who is a dear old friend and colleague. We played together in the Strelow Quartet in Madison, then in the Taliesin Trio, which was a National Endowment for the Arts Rural Residency Grant ensemble. Between those two groups and several summer festivals, we’ve covered a lot of repertoire together. Amazingly, it has been over 10 years since we played together! Yikes!
Having just ended the OES season, it is good to be playing some cello. One of my resolutions as I approach one of “those” birthdays this summer is to play a lot more cello, especially chamber music, and next year looks exciting from a cello perspective. I’m playing the Brahms Double for the first time since 2001 and doing some exciting chamber music concerts on the East Coast in the fall and another recital.
KW
Fleezanis Elgar Reviews-
May 7th, 2008
There was so much interest in earlier pieces about Jorja’s Elgar Violin Concerto with us in Pendleton and then the Minnesota Orchestra last week, that I thought I would post some reviews.
First, Larry Fuchsberg in the Star Tribue writes-
Though Fleezanis has only lately taken up the Elgar concerto, she seems to have this music in her DNA. From her first perfectly gauged entrance, she managed to sound strong and vulnerable, declarative and reserved all at once; she danced Elgar’s dance of self-revelation and self-concealment with uncanny sensitivity. Her tone was almost corporeal, especially in the violin’s lower register; her ravishing pianissimos drew the listener toward her instrument.
You can read the entire review here. You may also be interested to read Larry’s comment on my last Fleezanis blog post here, which has some very interesting background on early recordings of the Elgar. I’m always excited to find someone who knows Elgar and the performance and recording history of his music well, especially if they’re in America (shameless upcoming performance plug- I’m conducting Elgar’s Symphony no. 1 with the Gulf Coast Symphony next fall on the 100th anniversary of the premiere).
David Hawley in the Pioneer Press writes-
The performance by Fleezanis is transporting. She produces a wonderfully thick, sizzling sound, especially in the lower register, where the majority of the singing in this concerto takes place. And yet there is a pleasing restraint to her reading, which is welcome. You don’t need to milk the emotion in this concerto; it’s there in abundance.
The highlight is the famous third-movement accompanied cadenza — and here Fleezanis managed to command pin-drop attention in Thursday’s first performance. Her playing was bold — almost assaultive at times — robust and heartfelt.
Thoughts in the twilight of a season
May 6th, 2008
I returned from Pendleton last week as always experiencing a combination of euphoria, exhaustion, frustration, gratitude and buzzing from the experience. Every concert has its strengths and weaknesses- I thought this was one of our most coherent and focused performances, good in ways that reflect a long collaboration between conductor and orchestra.
Concert weekends with the OES have become awfully fun- it does feel like a festival these days. Musically, the schedule is intense to the point of being exhausting for everyone- even some of our most industrious revelers were so tired after the Friday rehearsal that they bailed on some of the merrymaking in exchange for sleep. I think this is a very good thing- if players are giving so much of themselves in a single rehearsal or run-through of a Strauss tone poem that they feel physically and emotionally drained, something grand is bound to be happening.
Part of the end of the season ritual is finalizing the planning for the coming season. We’ve had regime change in Pendleton. Michelle Kajikawa, who has been our executive director through two insanely eventful years, (including the birth of her first child, the fire in our offices, the drama surrounding the exploration of the Rivoli Theatre as a possible home, unprecedented media attention and two Mahler symphonies), is moving with her husband (and our principal bassoonist) to Bend, which I hear tell is a horrible place full of right-wing Californians. Michelle and Reid are dear friends and have been valuable colleagues- we’ll all miss them a lot.
Luckily, we have found a new executive director from within the organization, Christina van der Kamp, who has been running our youth programs with efficiency and passion for the last year or so. This concert was our first project together, and she did an amazing job of taking control of things mid-flight and guiding us to a successful conclusion of this year even while working with me in planning next year.
Planning is actually about my least favorite part of being a music director, because it is the moment you have to come to terms with the gaping difference between what an orchestra could be and what it will be, between what you can do and what you will do, between what you want to do and what there is the will to do. Don’t get me wrong- I know from experience that every concert any orchestra does is a miracle, and I think next year will be good fun, but only when you’ve gone through the budget and know dollar for dollar what you could have done with just another donation here or there can you really appreciate just how incredibly hard it is to build something of artistic merit in the absence of a sugar daddy. Eventually you try to find a compromise you can live with- you wish you could have one more rehearsal or a slightly more expensive soloist or three more string players for a program, but you say, okay, this is the best we can do right now, now I have to take it on my shoulders to make it as good as it possibly can be.
Ideally, I believe that the true measure of what an orchestra can be is the ability and commitment of its best and most committed members. An orchestra ought to be the orchestra that they deserve, and the conductor ought to be the conductor that they deserve. Such and orchestra led by such a conductor will never disappoint its public. By that measure, I know in my heart what I could and would do artistically to make the OES the best band it can be, but one never gets to have that discussion- instead, we use budgets to express our musical goals in measurable terms, a method that is sloppy and maddeningly unspecific. All too often, the budget measures our will to raise money and to invest resources, but it can’t measure our will to do what is right for the music- to make sacrifices and tough choices when needed.
The old cliché that the best way to avoid socially uncomfortable situations is to avoid conversations about religion and politics- I’ve certainly had awkward moments when I’ve discovered a dear friend has freakish notions about politics.
Another great way to create tension is to talk about money, including each other’s salaries. The OES budget process changes every year- this year, we had the best possible model, which is that Christina and I sat and hashed it out, looking together at the same numbers and presenting something to the board with a unified front. We’re still friends. Hopefully it is a document that measures in tangible ways our goals, objectives and needs for the year to come. It measures what we have to do to have the orchestra and the season that we realistically think we can have next year. What only I and Christina know is what we would have had to do to have the orchestra and the season we could have had.
How close could we have come to an orchestra worthy of its best and most commited musicians? Is there a sponsor out there I didn’t know about or a foundation we could have written to that could have made real those dreams? The only way to live with a compromise in the world of art is if you honestly believe you’ve done the best you can for the music with the resources available. Have we?
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