Belated Bartok Birthday

I missed Bartok's birthday on March 25. (Thanks to Lisa Hirsch for her post.) So here, in compensation, is the second movement of his First Piano Concerto, which contains one of my favorite moments in the composer's entire output.

Name change?

Thinking of changing the name of this blog to Topless Jihad — you know, out of solidarity. But then what would happen to the music content? The irony of this protest, as others more perceptive than I have pointed out, is that Facebook has censored the photo.

Carl Nielsen's "My Childhood"

Carl Nielsen about age 14

I recently finished rereading Carl Nielsen’s brief memoirr, My Childhood, which, as the title states, deals entirely with the composer’s formative years. It ends with the author, at age 19, departing for Copenhagen and his studies with Niels Gade. It’s a pocket-sized paperback, only 152 pages, but it cost me almost twenty dollars back in the eighties. It was printed in Denmark, and I suspect it is available only at Nielsen tourist-site gift shops. How it turned up at the Border’s bookstore in White Flint Mall is anyone’s guess.

The book is available at Amazon for about the same price I paid for it, and if you have any interest at all in music, or memoirs, or life in a time and place different from your own (one of the major reasns I read at all), I urge you to order yourself a copy. I read it for the first time when I first bought it, and I had forgotten how full of eccentric characters it is. Some of them would be not be out of place in a story by Chekhov. There is Outzen, a pianist who lives on the charity of a innkeeper and who introduces Carl to the Well-Tempered Clavier. Then there is Jens Søby, a member of the army regiment that Nielsen joined as a bugler at age fourteen. Søby is a man of dubious reputation, destined, he says, to lead a dissolute life, and Nielsen’s mother warns her son not to fall under his influence. But he knows what he is, and he takes pains to shield Carl from the life he has chosen. He also believes in Carl’s talent and Carl’s future. Ultimately, Nielsen writes, he dies in America — “in great misery.”

I can’t do do justice to the wealth of incident or personalities in this modest little volume. Music is central to the story, of course, but it always seems to be in the background, discovered almost incidentally. One day, little Carl is trying to pick out tunes on a violin. Another, he is playing at wedding feasts in his father’s band. Then is he is submitting a string quartet to Gade, hoping to be accepted as a student, and in the next-to-last paragraph, he is “off!”, as he says, setting out on the career some of us love him for.

Carter Volume 9 - not an April Fools' joke

Was poking around Amazon a moment ago and came across the announcement that Vol. 9 of Bridge Records' Elliott Carter Edition will be issued May 1. I have pre-ordered my copy. Here is the description from the Amazon website:

This retrospective disc presents music composed by the late Elliott Carter over a period of more than 70 years. Unquestionably, the major work presented here is the late Charles Rosen's performance of Carter's Piano Concerto. Rosen, a great advocate of Carter's music, had recorded most of Carter's solo piano music over the course of his long career, though he never made a studio recording of Carter's brilliant concerto. The release of this radio recording, featuring the superb Basel Sinfonietta, conducted by Joel Smirnoff, was one of Rosen's last wishes. Volume 9 of Bridge's ongoing Carter series opens with vocal works of Carter's from the 30s and 40s, and proceeds to Steven Beck's electrifying accounts of late solo piano music, and the Slowind Quintet's performance of Carter's quintet, Nine by Five, completed during the composer's 101st year.

For me, the real excitement her involvesthe Piano Concerto (this will be the fifth commercial recording of the piece, but you can never have too many) and the first recording of Nine by Five. I attended the premiere of the piece in February 2010. and I remember it as a refreshing return to the kick-butt Carter of the 1970s.

Here is the complete playlist from Bridge:

Tell Me Where is Fancy Bred (1938) Rosalind Rees, soprano; David Starobin, guitar
Voyage (1943, orch. 1979) & Warble for Lilac Time (1943, orch. 1979) Tony Arnold, soprano; Colorado College Festival Orchestra, Scott Yoo, conductor
Piano Concerto (1964-65), Charles Rosen, piano; Basel Sinfonietta Joel Smirnoff, conductor
Two Thoughts about the Piano (2007) & Tri-Tribute (2007-8), Steven Beck, piano
Nine by Five (2009), Slowind Wind Quintet I can't wait. Thanks to David and Becky Starobin, as always, for their tireless efforts. This will be every bit as much fun as a concert by the Phillyorch would have been.

Philadelphia Orchestra announces an all-Carter program

The Philadelphia Orchestra announced today it has scheduled a special, non-subscription concert devoted entirely to the music of Elliott Carter. The concert will take place Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 5, the first anniversary of Mr. Carter's death. The program is not final, but advance word is that it will include A Symphony of Three Orchestras, which the orchestra last performed in 1984, and the Flute Concerto, with principal flutist Jeffrey Khaner as soloist.

"We are very excited the board has approved this project," Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the orchestra's music director, said in a press release. "This will be a unique tribute to one of America's great creative minds. Philadelphia has been a mecca for new music since the days of Maestro Stokowski, and it has always taken Mr. Carter to its heart.

"We are expecting a sell-out crowd, and we are confident at least half a dozen people will stay for the whole thing."

The St. Matthew Passion and the will to live

I want to say that the Philadelphia Orchestra's Good Friday performance of The St. Matthew Passion raised my spirits and refreshed my soul, or at least put me in an otherwordly frame of mind, but I'd be exaggerating, if not quite lying. I can't put my finger on why: an undoubted masterpiece (the Sistine Chapel of music) presented by a world-class ensemble, and I wasn't bored for a second, yet the whole affair seemed rather workmanlike and uninspired. It was all too much to absorb, and the essential message seemed to be, "Jesus died because for all the bad things you've done, and he did it without a word of complaint. So if you happen to be suffering, too, you should have the good grace to shut up about it."

I have now seen Yannick Nézet-Séguin in person twice, and I have not been transported either time. There's something stodgy about his conducting, I find, despite his dynamism on the podium and the well-publicized eloquence of his gestures. Still, there was some beautiful singing, and some beautiful playing, and at times, James Alexander's unobtrusive stage directions did enhance the storytelling. Tenor Andrew Staples, as the Evangelist, was given the freedom of the stage. He made a compelling narrator, ringing and expressive, and he worked the crowd like a Bible belt preacher.

I was also taken with mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill. For me, the highlight of her evening was the aria “Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott.” The violin obbligato was played by concertmaster David Kim, and Cargill sang directly to him, swaying in front of his stand while hugging her score to her breast. It was a true, loving duet, and I wanted it to go on forever.

Wagner, Tchaikovsky at SPSO

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Symphony Orchestra will play orchestral highlights from the Ring April 6 in observance of Richard Wagner's bicentenary, which is coming up on May 22. (Has it been two hundred years already? It seems like just yesterday he was creating the artwork of the future.) The program will also include the Tchike Violin Concerto. ("Tchike," I have learned, is musicians' shorthand for Tchaikovsky. I have never seen that mentioned on any other blog.) Not one of my favorite works, and not one of my favorite composers, but I shall try to succumb. I truly shall.

I have written a preview of the concert, which may be read here. So read it, why don't you?

Philadelphia Orchestra to perform the St. Matthew Passion

The Philadelphia Orchestra will perform the St. Matthew Passion three times during Easter week. They've brought in a stage director named James Alexander to add some lighting and movement. He spoke to me on March 15 by phone from Glasgow, and the resulting article may be read here. I have little to add, except that Mr. Alexander was a very, very nice guy. At the beginning of our talk, I apologized in advance for my presumption and I asked him what the music of Bach would gain from a staging.

"Oh, no, it's not presumptuous," he replied. "It's a very good question."

We were friends after that. I am planning to attend the Good Friday performance.

Shout out to Carl Nielsen

I've written a column published in today's Times Herald. It's a nothing, puff piece on Read Across America and the wonderfulness of books, but I did manage to mention the two little books by Carl Nielsen I've been reading. They were both finds. I stumbled across "My Childhood" many years ago at a Barnes and Noble or a Border's. (I always got them confused.) It was like $17 for a tiny paperback, but I paid it because I knew I would never come across it again. And I was right. It's in English, of course, but I suspect it is not sold in English speaking countries. I have the feeling it’s available only at the gift shops at whatever Carl Nielsen tourist spots there are in Denmark.

Talk about self-important navel gazing

The New Yorker now has a blog that congratulates its other blogs for their — wait for it — best sentences. Sheesh!

I also think Amy Davidson has too much time on her hands. She is surprised that Seth MacFarlane was crude and sexist? What in heaven's name did she expect?