One dead spot

I don't want the enthusastic review I posed yesterday to create the impression I'm completely, imbecilically uncritical when it comes to Elliott Carter's music. There was one piece on Thurday's program that puzzled me: Retracing III, for trumpet. This little fantasy is a transcription of the opening solo from "A Symphony of Three Orchestras" of 1976, with a few pauses added to make it less taxing on the lungs and lips. The original music was written for Gerard Schwartz, who was principal trumpet player of the New York Philharmonic at the time, and on the recording of the Symphony (with Boulez conducting), Schwartz plays with a stunning definition: every note, every phrase is crystal clear. I don't know if the problem Thursday night was with the original piece, the transcription, or Peter Evans's preformance, but the piece seemed, well, blurred. In any event, I was excited before it started, but somewhat deflated when it was over. It was a rare letdown in an exciting evening. (When he was through, Evans sat down to join the ensemble for the Double Trio, and from what I could hear, he was flawless.)

By contrast, Peter Kolkay's performance of Retracing, for bassoon, was a delight. Something about the acoustics of the Kaufmann Hall enhanced the instrument's inherent warmth. And it's a funny, intimate little piece that doesn't try for soaring grandeur.

I can Carter's brief solos becoming favorites of music students everywhere.

Elliott Carter at the 92d Street Y

Elliott Carter with Carol Archer at the Dec. 8 concert. (Richard Termine for the New York Times.)

I met Elliott Carter for the first time thirty-five years ago after a concert of his music at a YMHA in Philadelphia. The musicians onstage included Fred Sherry and Rolfe Schulte.

My most recent meeting with Mr. Carter place Thursday evening after a concert of his music at a YMHA in New York. The musicians onstage included Fred Sherry and Rolfe Schulte.

I’m afraid I’ve fallen into a rut.

But I can’t say Mr. Carter has. Thursday evening’s concert at 92ndStreet Y, presented in celebration of the composer’s 103rd birthday on December 11, was far from a rehash of the his greatest hits. None of the 13 pieces on the bill existed back in 1976, and eight of them have appeared since 2008, when Mr. Carter turned 100. Two world premieres were listed in the printed program, and two more were announced from the stage: “Mnemosyne” for solo violin (named for the mother of the Muses) and “Rigmarole,” a witty little argument for the unlikely combination of cello and bass clarinet, were both completed just last month.

The oldest work on Thursday’s program was the beautiful harp solo “Bariolage,” from 1992, a favorite of mine, played with ravishing intensity by the young Bridget Kibbey.

OK, so he’s told. So what? Longevity is a statistical glitch, a spot on the actuarial bell curve. Mr. Carter’s age and productivity wouldn’t be so remarkable if his recent music wasn’t so good. Now, the sense of celebration and the warm acoustics of the Kaufmann Concert Hall are probably influencing my reaction, but some of the short works at played Thursday’s concert — none was longer than 12 minutes — felt like major statements. “Mnemosyne” sounded to me like a hyperdistillation of the Bach Chaconne, and all during the last piece — “A Sunbeam’s Architecture,” for tenor and chamber orchestra, on poems by E.E. Cummings — I kept thinking of Mahler.

After the performance, audience members and musicians crowded into the little art gallery beside the hall. Mr. Carter sat in a wheelchair, and while a young man in a suit and tie tried to arrange the players around him for a picture, I bent over him and an took his hand.

“I just wanted to say congratulations, and thank you so much,” I said.

“Well, thank you!” he replied with that big smile of his and empahasis on the "you."

And that was all.

Anthony Tomassini has a nice review in today’s New York Times. He calls Mnemosyne “sometimes agitated, sometimes mercurial,” which is odd, because I remember it as meditative. The difference in impression just shows you how we’re all just coming to terms with Mr. Carter’s music.

A shout out and thank you to Karen Yager, who sat next to me in the hall. I had never met her, but she was a knowledgeable and warm-hearted concert companion.

And, in the New York Is Not for Sissies Department: Due to construction, the E train, which I had planned to ride back to Penn Station, was not running after the performance. I didn’t know that until I tried to transfer from the 6 train at 51st Street, and no one I asked had any idea of an alternative route. After peering at the map (which had been scraped white just over the 51st Street interchange), I took the 6 back to 59th Street, transferred to the N, which took me to Times Square, where I caught the 3 back to Penn. My Jersey Transit train was scheduled to leave at 11:06. I got to the station at 11:01. My legs and back were stiff all day Friday from running up and down the steps in Gotham’s underground caverns.

Finally, to the woman I met on the E train platform: if you see this, email me.

"Sleigh Ride" watch - I

As I've said in the past, it isn't Christmastime until I've heard Leroy Anderson's "Sleigh Ride," preferably over the loudspeakers at a mall.This year, I am happy to report that I found it even before the season officially began, on the night before Thanksgiving. While driving home from work the night before Thanksgiving, I came across it on an oldies station that switches to Xmas music every year. It put me in a good mood after a long, grueling and pointless day, and it probably saved from Black Friday shoppers from being pepper-sprayed.

I've since heard it a second time, on the same station, with lyrics, sung in the familiar rock version by a girl group I can't name. You know the one, with the girls singing "ding-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-dong-ding" in the background. Not my favorite arrangement, but it counts.

Here is a nice performance with John Williams conducting the Boston Pops:



I am also happy to announce that WGBH Boston will broadcast "A Leroy Anderson Christmas" at 6 p.m. Dec. 3 and noon Dec. 4. Leonard Slatkin will conduct, but you can't have everything.

Bil Keane dies

Bil Keane, creator of the daily comic "The Family Circus," died Nov. 8 at age 89. I was not a fan of his work, but his passing has a nostalgic significance for me, because he provided the occasion for my first appearance in print. In the 1960s, when "The Family Circus" was still new, the Sunday panel included a feature called "Sideshow." The idea was that readers (mostly kids)would send in ideas for puns, and Keane would draw a small picture to illustrate them. Three of them appeared each week. Dreaming of immortality, I sent in a suggestion, and the drawing Keane based on it (it was nothing like the one I sent) appeared in the Philadelphia Bulletin on July 23, 1967.

I still have the letter Keane sent me, which included his autograph and a printer's proof of the comic:




Well, come on. I was only nine.

I haven't followed the strip in many years. I came to dislike "The Family Circus" for all same the reasons most urban sophisticates do: it was insipid, obvious and not very funny. But there was more to it than that. As a former child, I also believe it failed as a depiction of childhood, or at least of any sort of childhood I was familiar with. For me, the best comics about kids — "Calvin and Hobbes," "Peanuts" in its early years, Gahan Wilson's "Nuts," and a handful of episodes of "The Simpsons" and "South Park" — depict their experience from the inside, with all the fear, cruelty, mishchief, disappointment and humiliation intact. Keane's view was resolutely external. He saw children as a particularly dense parent or grandparent would — as adorable ignoramuses whose feelings can't be taken seriously. For anyone who remembers what it was like to be a child, "The Family Circus" rang consistently false.

It was also ripe for parody, and to his credit, Keane was tolerant of the attempts to make his ridiculous little comic look even more ridiculous. I confess I was one of the culprits, for a brief period. In another life, some of the people in my office would cut out the daily comic and change the captions, usually to something involving sex, drugs, or child abuse. I saved a complete file of the desecrations. Here are a few the less offensive. As you can see, my sense of humor has darkened over the years:

For a more inspired use of Keane's art, visit The Nietzsche Family Circus, which pairs random cartoons with random quotations from the philosopher. The weird thing is, it works. I mean, let's face it. Nietzsche was a lot funnier than Bil Keane ever was.

The Third Symphony of Charles Ives

My experience in Danbury back weekend sent me back to my CDs of Charles Ives’s Third Symphony this week. It turns out I have accumulated more recordings of the work in the past few years than I realized — six in all, to wit:

Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbruecken, Michael Stern, cond. (Col legno 20225)
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, no conductor (DGG 439 869-2)
Northern Sinfonia, James Sinclair (Naxos 8.5559087)
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner (Decca 289 466 745-2)
Concertgebouw Orch., Michael Tilson Thomas (CBS Masterworks MK37823)
New Philharmonia Orch., Harold Farberman (Everyman 08 6154 71)

I’ve listened to them all in the past few days, and the winner is — well, I must confess I prefer the larger ensembles. Tilson Thomas has the greatest sensitivity to line, Marriner gets a beautiful tone out of the Academy musicians, and Farberman draws the most organlike feeling from the New Philharmonia, which to me is a plus, since the symphony is derived from earlier organ pieces. Farberman’s recording is also the only one that does not use the so-called shadow lines or the optional chimes at the close. I don’t miss either. I also like his slower tempos, esp. in the central “Children’s Day” movement. These three were my favorites, this time around.

The others are fine, too, in their ways, but the smaller groups — the Orpheus and the Northern Sinfonia — sound somewhat shrill at the climaxes, and perhaps Stern’s pacing isn’t as smooth as it could be.

Ives scholarship seems to be perpetually in flux, and, the dates of the symphony change, depending on which liner notes you read. The older CDs say the piece was “assembled” in 1904 and revised in 1909. The later recordings say it was written between 1908 and 1911. Take your choice.

Regardless of the forces used, it’s a beautiful piece. It’s not necessary to identify all of the borrowed hymn tunes to appreciate the music, and, indeed, I’ve been listening to the piece for decades without making the effort, but thanks to Nancy Sudik’s tutelage, I can now name them all.

On to Three Places in New England.

Ives Day 2011 ("There Is a Happy Land")

I don’t often use the phrase “perfect day," but Sunday nearly qualified — sunny fall weather, congenial company, and the music of Charles Ives. It doesn’t get much better than that. I was in Danbury, Conn., for Ives Day 2011. This year’s observance was devoted to the Third Symphony, subtitled “The Camp Meeting,” a jewel of a piece that may be thought of as Ives’s pastoral.

The day adhered to the standard template: a hike up Pine Mountain, where Ives spent a great deal of time as a boy and a young man, followed by visits to the Ives birthplace and gravesite, and wrapping up with music — this time, the Third Symphony, as rendered by the Danbury Symphony Orchestra. Albert Montecalvo conducted a chamber-sized complement of 23 musicians, which is really all the piece needs.

What made the concert unique was the venue. The performance took place on the upper level of a parking garage in downtown Danbury. (It has a name, too: the Charles Bardo Parking Garage behind the Danbury Music Center. Just what does a man have to accomplish in life to have a parking garage named after him — other than, say, owning a parking garage?) Chairs were set up on the sloping concrete, giving us in the audience a view, over the heads of the musicians, of St. James Episcopal Church a block or so away. At the end of the third movement, Ives calls for bells to be played softly, as if heard in the distance. Tubular chimes are generally in concert halls, but in Danbury, the part was given to the St. James carillon, cued by cell phone. It might have been the first performance anywhere in which the church bells used in the Ives Third were real, and perhaps the first to accurately convey the sense of space Ives had in mind when he wrote the piece.

I have heard better performances of the work as a whole, but no studio recording or concert-hall performance will ever recapture, for me, the moment when the St. James chimes began to ring. I know this music like my own home, and I still wasn’t prepared for the effect, which was stunning. I expect to remember it for the rest of my life.

My thanks to Nancy Sudik, the indefatigable director of the Danbury Music Center — and first horn of the Danbury Symphony — for conceiving the performance and making it happen. Nancy also leads the Ives Day tours every year.

In much of his music Ives famously “borrowed” existing tunes, reworking them into contrapuntal fantasies. He based the Third Symphony on a half dozen hymns he’d heard as a boy and played professionally as a church organist, and Nancy, bless her heart, made sure we knew what we were hearing when the orchestra began to play. She had us sing the hymns at the top of Pine Mountain. She had us sing them at the birth house. She had us sing them on the roof of the garage. It got to be too much for me — I’d strained my throat on the first go-round, trying to hit the high E’s in “There Is a Fountain” — but the crowd kept growing throughout the day, and there were always fresh voices for the chorus.

A group of young composition students from the Hartt School of Music, Hartford, joined us at the birth house and stayed with us the rest of the day. Johnny “Guitar” Provo, who is just discovering Ives’s music, drove in from Rhode Island with a couple of friends. He took the hike up the mountain, and later left a pick on the composer’s gravestone. And there was a man I know only as Allan, who drives up from New Jersey every year and who might be the one person in America who can rival me for the title of No. 1 Ivesian. These are my people. It was good to spend a day with them.

The Bawdy Bard

Just posted a link to my article on Lyric Fest's upcoming program of medieval and renaissance music. The title "The Bawdy Bard" is unfortunate, because it suggests the program is built around off-color passages from Shakespeare, which it isn't. It also suggests a more tongue-in-cheek approach than is probably the case. I'm looking forward to this one, however, since a few years ago I spent a great deal of time playing medieval and Renaissance tunes on the recorder. The program will include a song by Bernhart de Ventadorn (fl. 12th century), titled "Can vei la lauzeta mover," that I've tried to play several times — I even went back to it last weekend while I was contemplating the article — but that I have never been able to make sound like a real melody. I can't figure the tempo, and the flow indicated by the 3/4 meter, as written on the page, doesn't seem to fit the notes. Actually hearing is going to be an education.

Tranquility Comics

Today I have added Tranquility Comics to my blogs list. The drawings are the work of Thomas Hinterberg, son of a friend and fellow survivor of an unpleasant job I used to have. For years he was developing this talent while growing up under my nose, and I had no idea.

Indian Classical music

At left, you'll find a link to an article I just wrote on an upcoming pair of Indian classical concerts. Every so often, journalist has to write an article in which he has no idea what he's talking about, and this one is mine. I felt completely at sea. I had to look up most of the information, and the research sticks out, I think. If anyone out there can explain to me clearly just what a raga is, I would be most grateful. I tried reading the section on ragas in the Grove dictionary, but it was so detailed and technical it only confused me further, and it contained nothing I could translate clearly into a brief paragraph for the general reader.

Sorry, too, that I have been neglecting this blog. Things do seem to grind to a halt over the summer. I attended a couple of enjoyable events in July that I keep neglecting to mention. But there have only one week of August left, which is a relief, and I hope to be back on track soon.

Marvin Rosen dedicated two hours of his radio show to Frank Zappa this morning, and I, stuck in my office, missed it. The computer at my desk doesn't support the webstream from WPRB, either.

Late night thoughts on listening to Charles Ives

I thought, "Ives Lives."

But then I thought,

Wow.

"Ives Lives" should rhyme.

But it doesn't.

That's so freaky.