Carter reviews

Here is a link to a real review of Sunday's concert. Of course, I disagree with the first person who left a comment.

And here is another.

Elliott Carter's farewell

A musical century ended yesterday when the MET Orchestra, conducted (from a wheelchair) by James Levine, presented the first performance of The American Sublime, a cycle of five songs by Elliott Carter. The composer died in 2012, and the music, from 2011, while not the last he wrote, is the last of his that will ever be premiered. For forty years I looked forward to every new work Mr. Carter composed. Now the long run is over, and with it, a large chapter of my life.

All the more wonderful to report, then, that Mr. Carter went out strong.  The American Sublime, a setting of poems by Wallace Stevens (Carter’s second) ― for baritone, wind ensemble, piano and percussion ― is a beautiful piece, brief but haunting. I was particularly delighted by the choice of text for the last song, “This is the thesis …,”which ends thus:  

And out of what one sees and hears and out

Of what one feels, who could have thought to make

So many selves, so many sensuous worlds,

As if the air, the mid-day air, was swarming

With the metaphysical changes that occur,

Merely in living as and where we live.

In his book Music in a New Found Land  (1964), Wilfred Mellers prefaced his chapter on Carter with just these lines, and Carter himself,  in his program notes for the Nonesuch recording of his cello and harpsichord sonatas, quoted them and agreed they captured some of the “main aims” of his work.

“It is quite true,” Carter wrote, “that I have been concerned with contrasts of many kinds of musical characters ― ‘many selves’; with forming these into poetically evocative combinations ― ‘many sensuous worlds’; with filling musical time and space by a web of continually varying cross-references – ‘the air … swarming with ... changes.’ And to me at least, my music grows ‘out of what on sees and hears and out/Of what one feels,’ out of what occurs ‘Merely in living as and where we live.’”

I think of the song as Carter’s artistic testament ― an impression strengthened by the final measures, when the instruments drop out and the baritone finishes alone, as though the composer is addressing us directly. In context, the words “in living as and where we live” were also especially poignant: Carter is out of the game, and it is up to us, the living, to continue the task of inhabiting the sensuous world. 

It was a beautiful moment. Even more beautiful was the second song, “The Woman in Sunshine,” which compares the feeling of sun and air to the “warmth and movement” of a woman who cannot be seen, only felt. (It’s a very erotic image. In setting the words, did Carter, a widower since 2003, feel the presence of his late wife, Helen?) The scoring is spare: piano, vibraphone, and oboe, which contributes a long, lovely line ― a gesture both Bach-like and typically Carterian.

The baritone, Evan Hughes, reminded me a little of old photographs of Rasputin ― rail-thin, dressed in black, with dark lank hair and a few days’ growth of beard ― but he proved an extroverted and sensitive guide to this small region of Mr. Carter’s world.

The rest of the concert, at Zankel Hall, NYC, was equally memorable, beginning with the refined wit of Stravinsky’s Octet and continuing with the raucous wit of Charles Ives’s Scherzo: Over the Pavements. The second half consisted of John Cage’s Atlas eclipticalis and Charles Wuorinen’s It Happens Like This, a cantata for four voices and chamber orchestra to the oddball verses of James Tate. The last was perhaps overlong, with little real inspiration in the instrumental writing, but the vocal lines, which included spoken narration, were inventive, and they brought out the humor and the deadpan absurdities of the texts. There was a lot of laughter in the auditorium. 

Wuorinen himself conducted after Levine bowed out, explaining from the stage that health issues and other commitments had prevented him from giving the music the time it deserved. At 76, five years older than Levine, the composer looked quite spry.  

An occasional piece

The background to this one is rather bizarre. The immortal Pat Robertson recently called marijuana use slavery to vegetables and added that God can help us beat our addiction, since he gave us dominion over all the earth, including vegetables. A group called Poetry Cafe, which I'd never heard of, issued a challenge for verses on the topic. Herewith my contribution. The title, unfortunately, was chosen for me.

ENSLAVED TO VEGETABLES
By Joe Barron

Of all the evils in the world,
From witchery to wedgies,
The greatest evil I have known
Is slavery to veggies.

I live in thrall to celery,

To broccoli and beets,

To endive and arugula,

To lettuce and to leeks.

I take commands from red tomatoes

Stewing in the pot.

They're veggies, too. I'll kill the man

Who tells me that they're not.

And what of carrots, what of corn,

Asparagus and peas?

The USDA pyramid

Has brought me to my knees.

But one day I know I’ll be free

To eat some cheesy fries,

Some donuts and some minty shakes

And lemon custard pies.

For God hath given us dominion

Over everything

That creeps or crawls upon the Earth

Or soars upon the wing.

And since He’s put His whole creation

At our beck and call,

The Bastard’s simply got to watch

My damned cholesterol.

He lived long. He prospered.

Leonard Nimoy as Spock and Arlene Martel
as T'pring in the Vulcan sex-ed episode "Amok
Time." Spock's betrothed proved one can
be flawlessly logical and still
be a heartless C. Still, I'd divert a starship
light years from Altair VI 
to get me some of that. 

Leonard Nimoy died last Friday, and with him a part of my childhood. The obituaries dutifully ran through his long and varied career, but let’s face it, if it wasn’t for the role of Mr. Spock, he would have died in semi-obscurity, another TV character actor whose resume consisted of one-off guest appearances on Wagon Train and Marcus Welby. Spock made him immortal, and in the afterglow of that one gig, we could tolerate the awful singing and the goopy poetry. But Spock is nothing to be ashamed of. He’s one of the great TV characters, a humanized alien and alienated human who touches the nerd in all of us. When I was nine years old, I wanted to badly to be him that one weekend afternoon, I took my father’s barber kit down from the tin closet in the basement and cut my hair straight across my forehead. My hair is much thicker and curlier than Spock’s. It was not a good look for me.

                              

I often think that in creating Spock, Roddenberry and Nimoy misread the zeitgeist of the 1960s. They put forth rationality as an ideal at precisely the time when rationality had become suspect. The counterculture wasn’t interested in logic, which could justify the pitiless violence in Vietnam, or in science, which had created the weapons for it. No, what was wanted in the Age of Aquarius were authenticity, free love and feel-good spirituality, and as Star Trek dragged on into seasons two and three, Spock changed with the times. He became less of an organic supercomputer and more of a space-going maharishi, with his meditation and his quest for truth beyond science. (At the beginning of the first movie, he was actually living as a monk.) I also recall, in the late, bad episode Savage Curtain, one character (Abraham Lincoln, no joke) mentioning the Vulcan philosophy of the One. There’s empiricism for you.

Then there's the question of whether we will ever find humanoid life off the earth (the answer is no), and how in heaven’s name races that evolve on separate planets ever manage to interbreed. Throughout the various incarnations of the franchise, humans have mated with Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons and Beta Zeds, and some of these races have mated with each other. As Carl Sagan said, you would have more luck crossing a human being with an avocado, because they, at least, share a common ancestry and some DNA. A Spock could never exist in reality, any more than warp drive or the teleportation of matter, but in TV, as in religion, reality is not the point. To find Spock, you must look within. 

The Philadelphia Orchestra publishes its 2015-2016 seaon

I rarely attend performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra anymore. Concerts are usually scheduled for Thursday and Saturday evenings and Friday afternoons, and I work the 3 to 11 shift at the paper those days.  And it hurts to admit it, but too often, year after year, the programing has been unimaginative. I find I can hear more inspired concert-making by looking around at smaller, less famous or even amateur groups.

I was pleased, though, when I looked through the program guide for 2015-2016 (they’ve tracked me down in Norristown) and found a few programs that will be worth taking a night off for. To be sure, next season has its share of seat-filling pap ― anyone up for Yo -Yo Ma in John Williams’ Cello Concerto?  ― as well as chestnuts, such as the November performance Appalachian Spring. (You know, Copland did write other stuff. I’d like to hear Statements sometime.)  And yet there are some Easter eggs hidden under the straw.

In February, just a little under a year from now, James Levine will lead the orchestra in Ives’s Three Places in New England, which it played under Ormandy years ago and hasn’t programmed since. Levine conducted a memorable performance of the piece at Juilliard a while back, and I’m excited to hear what he can do with the Philadelphians. The program also includes the Brahms Second (yay), and the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony, which I guess is the price we pay for Ives.

Then, in April, Cristian Macelaru will conduct Stravinsky’s complete Soldier’s Tale, with actors, dancers and a narrator.  You don’t get to see that very often. The program also includes The Rite of Spring, which is overplayed, but never gets old.

There will also be four performances of Mahler’s Symphony of A Thousand in March ― and the fourth is even a Sunday matinee. This work has not been performed in Philadelphia since the mid-1970s.

I should also mention the premiere of a new Timpani Concerto by the fine Philadelphia composer Maurice (pronounced Morris) Wright.

Welcome to my demographic

In the little fitness center at my apartment complex, a flat-screen TV is attached to the wall in an upper corner. It receives a large number of cable channels, including audio services that play music continuously. When I'm there by myself,  I like to tune in to the classical station while I'm plodding along on the the treadmill. Of course, this being TV, there are a few still visual features: the name of the piece that is playing, of course; close-up photos of instruments, scores and flowers; and rotating advertisement placards. The advertisers must have a very clear idea of who is listening to this station, because all of their products and services are aimed at one age group. Guess which one from the following, partial list:

Senior Life medical insurance
Life Alert
Do you suffer from back or knee pain?
 Reverse mortgages from AAG — the Fred Thompson outfit. Obviously, the Fonz would be too scary.

No acne medications, naturally. Not even Viagra.


    

A great night of Copland, Gershwin and some other guy

Pianist Peter Donohoe, left, and conductor Valentin Radu
after the concert Friday night. 

The Ama Deus Ensemble, with guest soloist Peter Donohoe, served up an exciting concert Friday evening. It was a long program – more than two and a half hours, with intermission – but it sure didn’t feel like it. Donohoe joined the orchestra in performances of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and the Concerto in F, as well as the regional premiere of Aaron Copland’s 1926 Piano Concerto. Any one of those would have made the evening feel complete, but as Peter said afterward, he had traveled a long way for this concert. He might as well try to fit everything in.

Gershwin’s third big concert piece, An American in Paris, was also thrown in for good measure at the end of the first half.

The Piano Concerto is not one of Copland’s more famous works, or even, to be honest, one of his best, though it foreshadows the aggressive symphonic jazz Leonard Bernstein would develop in West Side Story. Donohoe and company gave a convincing, confident-sounding reading that betrayed none of the trepidation they must have felt in the face of such complex and unfamiliar music. For me, it was the highlight of the program, even if the Gershwin melodies that followed stick more tenaciously in the mind. Donohoe, reading from a score, was riveting, and the orchestra snapped to attention behind him, which was a relief after the curtain raiser, a somewhat lackluster reading of some lackluster movie music by John Williams. The ensemble stayed at that higher level for the rest of the night, especially in the Rhapsody, when it achieved some moments of genuine grandeur.

I should also mention clarinetist Arne Running and trumpeter Scott McIntosh, who reveled in the solo passages provided by Gershwin. McIntosh, especially, shone in all the blues, the glissandi and the muted wah-wahs. For a few indelible moments, he transformed the Perelman into Preservation Hall.

A lovely way to spend a cold Sunday afternoon

Johannes Brahms,
before his Santa Claus phase

Yesterday, while the rest of America was glued to the NFL playoffs, I and about 500 other people crammed into the Warden Theater at the Academy of Vocal Arts for a free all-Brahms program. (I like Brahms, and I like free, so I figured it was the perfect excuse to leave the apartments.) Students, faculty and guests of the AVA performed nine vocal quartets and the two songs with viola Op. 91. The concert ended with an instrumental work — the F minor Clarinet Sonata Op. 120, performed with modest grace by 22-year-old Robert Kahn.

Not much to say about this event, except that it’s fun to see the stars of tomorrow today, and it’s always a thrill to hear big voices in an intimate setting. There is a physical jolt, a sense of being enveloped in sound, that doesn’t occur in the balcony at the Met, even when the largest of forces are trotted out. One of the reasons I love Brahms because, unlike Wagner, say, he fits into a small room. And his knowledge of Renaissance counterpoint is on full display in his vocal music.

Interesting footnote about the singers in training at the AVA: Reading the bios in the program, I noticed that not a single one was from the Philadelphia area, or even the East Coast. They were all from the Midwest, the Southwest, California, China and Mexico. Maybe the local talent likes to leave home to study. 

They love me in Norway

I'm not good at interpreting  the stats on my blogger dashboard, but apparently, I am very popular in Norway. In the latest round of page views, by country, this little blog got 281 page views in the l;and of the fjords. The next-county country on the list, the US, had 51 -- only 18 percent of the Norwegian contingent. So either someone is trying to mask their country of origin in a foreign server, or the Scandinavians have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Whoever you are over there, I want to move to your country. Would you give me a reference?

Norway	281
United States	51
Germany	39
Ukraine	21
China	18
Russia	8
Ireland	6
Taiwan	6
United Kingdom	5
France	4

Donohoe, Ama Deus Ensemble to perform Copland's Piano Concerto

Photo by Sussie Ahlburg

Peter Donohoe

The pianist Peter Donohoe will appear as soloist in Aaron Copland's Piano Concerto January 16 at the Kimmel Center, accompanied by the Ama Deus Ensemble under the direction of Valentin Radu. The piece is almost 90 year old, but as far as anyone can tell, this upcoming performance will be the Philadelphia premiere. I have mixed feelings: I'm excited, but somewhat scandalized. The century-long delay is typical of this city's attitude toward 20th-century American music. (Ives Fourth, anyone?)

In any event, I spoke with Mr. Donohoe about the concerto late last month. You may see the article that came out of the interview by clicking here.