All roads lead to the G-Spot

Every year, when the prospectus for the upcoming season of The Philadelphia Orchestra arrives in the mail, I leaf through it, looking for a program or a particular piece to get excited about. It rarely happens anymore. The big orchestras, especially on the East Coast, have become increasingly reactionary over the past few decades. I'd even go out on a limb and say Yannick Nezet-Seguin's repertoire is more limited than Eugene Ormandy's.

To maintain my interest in live music, I rely on chamber groups and ensembles like Orchestra 2001, which, under the leadership of the young and amiable Jayce Ogren, presented a pair of programs last week that I swear were put together specifically with me in mind. On April 22 and 28, the group celebrated the 25th anniversary of the release of Frank Zappa's Yellow Shark album, the last disk the composer issued in his lifetime.

The April 22 program, titled "Zappa's Radical Classical Roots," was held at World Cafe Live and focused on Zappa's musical heroes, with works by Edgard Varese (of course), Pierre Boulez, Stravinsky, and Anton Webern, as well as three brief selections from "The Yellow Shark."  The April 28 concert, at the Fillmore Philly, presented the (almost) complete Yellow Shark. (Three pieces from the album, improvisations worked out by Zappa and the Ensemble Modern, have not been approved  for performance by the Zappa Family Trust.) The second event was also preceded by a rare treat: a reading of Varese's Ionization for percussion, which I'd never heard live.

Both performances were uniformly outstanding. The musicians of Orchestra 2001 rose to every challenge the 20th-century avant-garde could throw at them. Of the two, however, I would say the first was the more deeply satisfying. The music Zappa wrote for classical musicians, or for the Synclavier, as attractive as they can be, often lack the cogency of "L'histoire du soldat" or "Density 21.5." Pieces like Times Beach II and III feel like fragments of larger works. They don't so much begin and end as they seem to materialize out of  nowhere, linger in our plane of reality for a few minutes, and then vanish. The most successful of the lot were, for me, "None of the Above" for  string quintet, in which the bravura lines for the first violin create an arresting point of focus, and "Ruth Is Sleeping" for two pianos, largely because Stephanie Ho seemed to be having such a ball.

But then there was "G-Spot Tornado," the wild (and aptly titled) Synclavier piece, arranged for small orchestra by Ali Askin, that brought the second evening to a sensational close. Ormandy used to say the most sure-fire concert finale is Brahms' Second Symphony, whose last movement is guaranteed to send the audience home with a jolt. "G-Spot Tornado" is in the same class. There is just no resisting it. Before the last crash of the gong had died down, the Fillmore crowd was on its feet, calling for an encore, which, sadly, it didn't get. The piece has stuck in my head ever since.

All hail Ogren and Orchestra 2001 for a pair of memorable performances. Thanks, too, to Joe Klein, professor of music at the University of North Texas, who spoke at both programs. Klein teaches a course on Zappa and was billed in the programs as a "Zappa expert," a title he said he didn't fully deserve. His classes are full of Zappa experts, he said, and the audiences in attendance at last week's programs probably also had their share. He was right. The pre- and post-concert chatter each eveninng was impressively well-informed. The second night's crowd seemed particularly devoted, with some audience members traveling from as far as North Carolina and New York State for the privilege of hearing The Yellow Shark live.

I think I've heard more live Zappa in the 25 years since his death than I did when he was alive. With the dedication of groups like Orchestra 2001 and Andre Cholmondeley's Project/Object, his legacy seems secure for the foreseeable future.

More live music

Between one thing and another, I have fallen far behind on my blogging, but I didn’t want too much time to go by without mentioning a pair of memorable concerts I attended in the weeks before the Carter tribute at Carnegie Hall. The concerts took place on consecutive Sundays. On November 3, I drove out to Swarthmore (may the builders of I-95 roast in eternal perdition) to hear Orchestra 2001 and the Daedalus Quartet perform music by Walton, Joan Tower, and Schoenberg. The quartet played Joan Tower’s String Quartet No. 5, titled White Water, and, with baritone Randall Scarlata and pianist Charles Abramovic, Arnold Schoenberg’s 1942 “Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte.” The afternoon began and ended with orchestra itself, dressed in red and black, playing William Walton’s early, sprawling “Façade,” split into two big sections, with Scarlata and the sublime Suzanne DuPlantis as narrators. Performances were uniformly excellent. The Tower was easy to follow, with broad lines and open textures, but it seemed to me more well-crafted than inspired, somewhat like the music of Walter Piston.

The greatest piece on the program was the Schoenberg, but for its sheer playfulness, the Walton made the strongest impression. It’s an eclectic piece, a sort of mixture of Pierrot Lunaire and A Soldier’s Tale, with a bit of Three-Penny Opera thrown in. Like The Rite of Spring ten years earlier, it caused a scandal at its premiere. Before the performance, James Freeman, 2001’s conductor, said the poet Edith Sitwell, who provided texts, had to sneak out of the theater, because, it was warned, she might come to some harm. Freeman said he had always envied Walton and Stravinsky for the violence and passion of those first responses, and he encouraged us to boo, if we felt like it. A few of us did, just to be polite, but we were all in much too good a mood to make a serious show of it. The performance was great fun. I told both James and Suzanne I wished the group would record it.

A week later, I had a lovely afternoon in the genial company of Mozart and Beethoven, courtesy of the Independence Sinfonia, which is fast becoming the best of Philadelphia’s small suburban orchestras. The concert was held at Or Hadash synagogue in Whitemarsh, in a boxy, wood-paneled sanctuary that conductor Jerome Rosen said was built as a music hall. The orchestra has about forty musicians, more enough to create a thrilling, knockout sound in such intimate surroundings. There was a tangibility to the music, a sense of envelopment you don’t get in the big halls,. Even with the biggest and best orchestras.

Charles Salinger was the Apollonian soloist in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A. Rosen told me afterward he was especially proud of the job the musicians did in this piece, but after the concert, my head remained full of Beethoven, if only because his music is less subtle. The concert began with the Overture to “the “Creatures of Prometheus” and ended with the Fourth Symphony. The group was tight and fluent in both. Special mention should be made of bassoonist Judy Frank, who nailed the little cadenza in the last movement of the symphony. (The conductor gave her a congratulatory OK sign from the podium.) The passage is as challenging as a fifty-two yard field goal, Rosen said. Even the most experienced player can muff it, but when it works, it’s a beautiful thing to behold.

There. I am now caught up. It is cold tonight. Time to curl up under the covers with tea and Updike’s Couples.

Orchestra 2001 performs (and doesn't) John Cage

Yesterday I attended the third of Orchestra 2001's three "happenings" celebrating John cage's centenary (which fell on April 5). It was held at Swarthmore College, SW of Philadelphia. I rushed in late, missing the first piece on the program (Inlets for conch shells), after spending an hour driving on Route 1 and another half hour wandering around campus looking for the hall. Needless to say, I was in an angry, rotten mood when I sat down, and it is a testament to both the composer and the performers that I was so happy, elated, and hungry when I left.

The program included selections from the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (including Sonata XII, my favorite), performed variously by James Freeman, Mark Loria (who played No. XII) and Andrew Hauze. Those in the audience who were unfamiliar with Cage were surprised and impressed by just how beautiful the music was. This was the first time I had heard a prepared piano live, and I must say the sound is much more striking and resonant than it is on recordings. It was a treat, as was the opportunity to inspect the instrument up close during intermission.

Soprano Delea Shand, who came in from New York to sub for the ailing Ann Crumb, sang (and otherwise vocalized) the brief, funny “Aria.” She was a real trouper who gave the piece everything she had, and Freeman and company had the inspiration to project the graphic score on a screen during the performance, which let us see exactly how Shand handled Cage’s open-ended recipe.

I also liked the Imaginary Landscape No. 4, for 12 radios and 24 players, which is like walking down a long, empty corridor and hearing sounds spilling out of the open doors as you pass. Believe it or not, this was the second time I’d ever heard it, and I don’t own a recording. The piece has to be experienced live. Otherwise you don’t get the little frissons that come from hearing your own, local radio stations. During yesterday’s realization, for example, I heard the name Jimmy Rollins, and also the voice of Merrill Reese calling the Eagles game.

The afternoon ended with a (non)performance of Freeman’s own large-scale arrangement of 4ʹ33ʺ, which included audience (non)participation. I enjoyed it, but as I told James afterward, his tempi were a little brisk for my taste. I feel piece should have a stately, Brucknerian grandeur.

One word of criticism: Somebody switched on the speaker system just as Mark sat down to play the Sonatas. It was unnecessary, and the incessant background buzz throughout the performance was distraction to say the least, annoying to say the most.

One other word of criticism: Cage was an amateur mycologist, and in a tribute to his obsession, mushroom pizza was served at the post-concert reception. Unfortunately, only six pies were ordered, and, at eight slices a pie, that comes to only 48 slices for a crowd that numbered over 100. It was gone by the time I got out there. Oh, well. On the way home I stopped at a Mexican takeout in Bala Cynwyd and had a veggie burrito. Before intermission, this clip was shown on a screen above the stage.



Now, I ask you, what TV show today, on a commercial network, would dare have an artist like Cage as a guest?