Monotonous Forest

Buried treasure

The New York Chamber Music Festival: Franco Alfano and Vernon Duke.  MusicWeb International, September 25, 2009

From the (apparent) minority

At last night's new Tosca at the Met, James Levine, Karita Mattila, Marcelo Álvarez, George Gagnidze and the rest of the cast received hearty ovations for some magnificent musicmaking, but the production team received an equally passionate round of boos.  While I have no problem in theory with booing, I think Luc Bondy and his colleagues deserved better.  I don't consider my time wasted, nor do I think the concept was some kind of "Eurotrash nightmare."  As I said to friends later, it's not as if the director had the cast clad in purple-and-orange raincoats, milling around while a giant phosphorescent frog wanders onto the stage.

 

The biggest problem, based on comments overheard after, is that a beloved production—Franco Zeffirelli's—was finally shelved, giving another director a shot at interpreting this quintessential bit of music theater on one of the world's great opera stages.  Richard Pedruzzi's more minimal sets, helped by some marvelously subtle lighting washes by Max Keller, helped focus attention on the music and the story, where it belongs.  And of Milena Canonero's marvelous costumes, my favorite was the reptilian leather coat when Scarpia makes his entrance.  I'm not convinced that Zeffirelli's mountain of detail, handsome as it was, was the zenith of what Tosca can be.

 

But back to last night's conflagration.  A botched final scene was no doubt the final indignity to some, like a match to gasoline; yet it appeared to be a technical glitch, and probably fixable.  As Mattila rushes up an imposing brick turret, high over a gorgeous night skyline, she leaps from the window and is caught in mid-jump with a strobe flash—or at least, that is one version of what is supposed to happen.  What I saw: Mattila, or her stunt double, fell forward from the window and froze, like a corpse stuck on a diagonal, but with a blackout coming afterward, much too late to help create any kind of illusion.  What should be a spine-chilling end to a devastating story looked at best, anticlimactic—at worst, ridiculous.  Is there no way Mattila, as athletic as any singer today, could do a creditable, actual leap from the tower?

All hail Gilbert

Opening Night of the New York Philharmonic 2009-2010 Season.  MusicWeb International, September 22, 2009

Andriessen comments du jour

Somehow I missed this post from over the summer on Music as Weapon? (a.k.a. composer David T. Little), on Louis Andriessen's Workers Union, one of the masterpieces of the 1970s.

Coming late to Kirchner

Despite the large body of work of Leon Kirchner, and the breadth of his influence, somehow our paths had not often crossed, making this concert last year by James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra an evening I will long treasure.  If in hindsight, The Forbidden ultimately represented a new path for the 90-year-old composer, it was an arresting one.  And although I didn't write about it, I did attend a rapturously received 90th-birthday tribute last January at Miller Theatre, eloquently described by Allan Kozinn here.

Frank Oteri's article was the first I read of Kirchner's death today, apparently after a long illness.

[Leon Kirchner in 1955 (age 35) working on a new score, photographed by Gordon Parks, via the LIFE Photo Archive]

Heady times at the Philharmonic

Wednesday's opening night at the New York Philharmonic seems unusually auspicious, and not only because conductor Alan Gilbert makes his debut as Music Director.  For the first time in years, the season will begin with a world premiere commission, EXPO (about 9'), by Magnus Lindberg, the orchestra's Composer-in-Residence.  Also sure to cause a buzz is Renée Fleming, singing not Verdi, Massenet or Richard Strauss but Messiaen's Poèmes pour Mi (1936, orch. 1937), written for the composer's wife, Claire.  The evening closes with Berlioz's swirling bit of thunder and lightning, Symphonie fantastique.

The concert will be broadcast on PBS on Live From Lincoln Center, as well as outdoors on the Lincoln Center plaza.  (Seats are free, but get there early.)  And the day begins with a free dress rehearsal at 9:45 in the morning.  This all bodes well for what looks like, on paper, one of the most exciting beginnings to a season the orchestra has had in years.

This comes on the heels of a startling and laudable gift to the orchestra, announced yesterday: $10 million by financier Henry R. Kravis, who endowed the Composer-in-Residence position, and created a $250,000 composition prize to be awarded every other year.  In these economic times, such magnanimous support for contemporary music is almost unheard of.

[Photo: Avery Fisher Hall lobby in 1962, by Alfred Eisenstaedt, via the LIFE Photo Archive]

Blades of glory

Last weekend's trip to Coney Island had an unexpected twist.  During a break riding the Cyclone (six times with my friend Lisa), we ambled over to the sideshow, where we met the vivacious Heather Holliday.  Heather is a petite young woman, heavily pierced and tattooed, whose day job puts her in unnervingly close proximity with very long and very dangerous metal objects: she is a professional sword swallower.  (Click here and scroll down for a photo that might not be for the squeamish.)

I forgot to ask her if she likes contemporary music, but hey, next time.

[Photo by Lisa Abbott-Canfield]

Obsidian is cool

If Jules Verne were alive and craving jazz, he might be persuaded to check out Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, an 18-piece ensemble led by its eponymous composer/conductor.  Argue describes his work as "steampunk big band," evoking an era when people imagined, say, traveling to the moon in dirigibles.  (I personally have a fondness for that Victorian submarine in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.)

Over the summer I finally had the great pleasure of hearing Argue and his terrific group live, and their July 15 show at (Le) Poisson Rouge is now online.  Even better, their first recording, Infernal Machines (on New Amsterdam Records), was released at the same time and is a must for those seeking an adventurous big-band rush.  With an eclectic fusion of jazz, minimalism, contemporary classical (pardon the oxymoron) and whatever else flows into his fertile brain, Argue comes up a unique, strangely irresistible sound, with cryptic titles like "Jacobin Club" or "Obsidian Flow."  Don't miss it.

Two pianists, seven discs

Schubert's Sonatas, Serene and Stormy / Ecologically Sound Pianism.  The Juilliard Journal, September 2009