Monotonous Forest

Sorry, no bassoon this month

Piano, Piano and More Piano.  The Juilliard Journal, March 2008.

Buried Berio

To begin their second night, Pierre Boulez and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra pulled out a twelve-minute Luciano Berio blockbuster, Quatre dédicaces, four miniatures written between 1978 and 1989, for orchestras in San Francisco, Dallas and Rotterdam.  This performance (and the ones in Chicago) are the first time they have been performed as a set.  All four are extroverted, brilliantly written squibs that show off what a large orchestra can do.  The rest of the program wasn't exactly unexciting, either: Susan Graham, luminous and affecting in Berlioz's Les Nuits d'été, and a riveting Stravinsky Pétrouchka (the original 1911 version) that was nothing less than a sonic onslaught (in the best sense).

But I'm rooting for Boulez and the group to record the Berio. 

[Photo: "Four Colors Four Words" (1966) by Joseph Kosuth, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden]

Painter Pintscher

In the first of two evenings with Pierre Boulez conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, to my ears the highlight was a gorgeous new work by Matthias Pintscher called Osiris (2007).  Initially inspired by a collage by Joseph Beuys using individual pieces of cardboard mounted on canvas, Pintscher muses on the death of the mythical god of fertility and ideas of disintegration and metamorphosis.  He emerges with an equivalent array of tiny musical gestures, twinkling with fantastic colors in a way that Beuys might have admired, and it is easy to see why Boulez likes it.  The hardworking percussion section has the last word, as the final note is a whisper of sandpaper.

[Photo: "Virgin, April 4, 1979/June 23, 1979" by Joseph Beuys (1979), from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum]

Late noise for "Noise"

I've been skipping around through The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross's brilliant commentary on the music of the 20th century, refracted through politics, art, sociology and whatever else strikes his agile mind.  Most impressive is Ross's ability to write with beauty, intelligence and insight in a style accessible to a large number of potential readers; you don't have to be a musicologist to find it fascinating.  With the Met's new Peter Grimes opening this week, he posted an excerpt from the chapter on Benjamin Britten, a splendid sample.  It's one of the most engrossing books on the music of this era to appear in a long time.

Thoughtful ear-opener of the week

Last Wednesday's concert by Either/Or at the Austrian Cultural Forum (right) drew primarily from young Austrian composers, most of whom were new to me.  Particularly striking was Weiss/Weisslich 4 ("White/Whitish 4", 1990-92) for piano and ensemble by Peter Ablinger (b. 1959) for any combination of five or more players--in this case, violin, cello, saxophone, flute and percussion--and just six minutes long.  While the ensemble pulses in barely audible chords with a vaguely machine-like timbre, the pianist--quietly, slowly, deliberately--plays a precisely notated scale, up and down.  The effect is sort of like hearing a faint industrial hum three miles away, while someone's ten-year-old daughter is practicing the piano upstairs.

[Austrian Cultural Forum designed by architect Raimund Abraham.  Photo by David Sundberg, Esto, via Arcspace.]

"Steve's Excellent Adventure"

In a surprising revelation to end the week, writer Steve Smith is off to Pyongyang, North Korea, to cover the New York Philharmonic's hotly debated concert there next Tuesday.  For those who haven't heard, it will be not only the orchestra's first appearance there, but the "first significant cultural visit by Americans to that country," as Daniel Wakin wrote in The New York Times. 

The visit has been criticized by some who see it as implicit affirmation of the current government's policies; others feel it is a first step toward possibly de-icing diplomatic relations.  My own feeling at the moment is that in the short run, the concert will probably not do any outright harm, even if the longterm results remain unclear.  I suspect that in the end, the trip will repay the investment in unexpected ways.  Of the many articles offering food for thought, perhaps crucial are conductor Lorin Maazel's own comments about the trip in The Wall Street Journal.

In any case, the concert will be broadcast next Tuesday night on PBS's Great Performances, both on television and online.  (I will have to catch it later as I will be hearing Pierre Boulez in the second of his concerts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.)

And I wish everyone involved--Maazel, the musicians, the Philharmonic staff, and Steve--a safe journey.  It is some kind of landmark.

Goodbye, Alain

Somehow the news of Alain Robbe-Grillet's death touched me more than it might have at another time, since scarcely three weeks ago I saw Last Year at Marienbad again, enjoying it through the eyes of two friends who had never seen it.  They were talking about it for days afterward.

Weekend recap

Funny what you sometimes learn during pre-concert talks, and before last Friday night's explosive reading of Messiaen's vast Turangalîla-symphonie, conductor David Robertson mentioned that cartoonist Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons) is apparently a huge Messiaen fan.  In fact, one of the main characters in his series Futurama was named "Turanga Leela" (with the voice of actress Katey Sagal).  After intermission, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra turned on the ecstasy, with Cynthia Millar adroit at the ondes martenot, and Nicolas Hodges positively on fire in the punishing piano line.  (I've said it before: in places the piece could almost be characterized as a piano concerto.)

On Saturday night, Continuum offered a rare glimpse into the ascetic world of Galina Ustvolskaya (left), a student of Shostakovich who famously told her, "It is not you who are influenced by me: rather it is I who am influenced by  you."  What the five works here had in common is a starkness, a dogged focus on timbre, repetition and volume that places her in the company of composers like Feldman and Scelsi, but she is unlike either.  The completely unorthodox Piano Sonata No. 6 (1988) is a fine example: scarcely six minutes long, it is one long breath of barbaric cluster chords, hammered at maximum volume (played here with gusto by Cheryl Seltzer), with only a tiny oasis--three or four measures of calm near the end--before the crunching conclusion.

And Sunday afternoon, James Levine and the MET Orchestra gave another one for the ages, and any one of the four works would have been enough by itself, not to mention either of the two guests, pianist Alfred Brendel and soprano Deborah Voigt.  More gushing prose later, but for now, I will confess to being one of those who continued to applaud following the astounding reading of Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra, until Levine finally returned for a third curtain call.

Postscript: in case you missed Gustavo Dudamel on 60 Minutes--I did, since a friend and I were having dinner to calm down after the MET concert--here is the segment (thanks to Tim Mangan at the OC Register Arts Blog).  New to me were glimpses of his Beethoven Ninth (with the Venezuelans), the Mahler First (with the Vienna Philharmonic) and from 2004, his prize-winning performance at the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition.

Weekend anticipation

Tonight: Messiaen's Turangalîla-symphonie with David Robertson and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. 

Saturday night: the new music group Continuum plays works by Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) at Merkin Concert Hall.  At last summer's Bang on a Can Marathon, I encountered her Composition No. 2 for eight double basses, piano and percussion (a large wooden block struck with mallets), which will also be on Continuum's program.  It's a beast.

Sunday afternoon: also at Carnegie, James Levine and the MET Orchestra help Alfred Brendel say farewell in between blockbusters by Webern and Berg, and then Deborah Voigt will probably blow the roof off with the final scene from Salome.

Update: Yikes, we match!  (Well, almost.)

Inga Nielsen (1946-2008)

Today I found out that soprano Inga Nielsen died last Sunday, as a result of her longstanding battle with cancer.  A close friend in Los Angeles recalled our memorable trip to Amsterdam in 2002, when we saw her in Salome at the Netherlands Opera, and I could hardly believe that at 55, she was more than a little believeable as Strauss's petulant teenager.  Her recording, with Michael Schønwandt and the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, is one of the most vividly characterized modern versions.

Barry Millington's fine obituary appears in The Guardian.

[Photo: Inga Nielsen by AFP/SCANPIX /Arch.- Bjarke Orsted]