For years, I was under the impression that the multiple rings in the Olympics logo represented the many continents from which competitors originate, but I must have been wrong. Judging from NPR's top-of-the-hour newscasts, only Americans are competing now. What happened to the rest of the world?
I have managed, Sgt. Bilko-like, to work out a scheme that will enable me to target specific CDs for addition to the KUAT-FM library, despite the statewide Legislature-induced budgetary disaster. We have 6248 active items in the classical library already, so you’d think all the standard repertory would be well represented by now, but not so. Recently, I’ve been filling a lot of Haydn gaps.
Somehow, we’ve limped along for 20 years with only one set of Haydn’s “Paris” symphonies, which are among his most popular works. Appallingly, that single set was not Leonard Bernstein’s New York Philharmonic series, the best place for anybody to start exploring Haydn’s symphonies. So one of the first things I did was acquire Sony’s boxed collection of all of Bernstein’s New York Haydn recordings: the “Paris” symphonies, the “London” symphonies, a few major Masses and “The Creation.” Most of these stand among the finest recordings by anyone of anything by Haydn, and now you’ll be able to hear them on the air from time to time.
The biggest gap in our Haydn collection for many years has been the piano trios. Until a couple of years ago, we didn’t even have a single version of the popular “Gypsy Rondo” trio. Right now, I’m taking care of that by cataloguing the splendid 1970s nine-CD traversal of all Haydn’s trios by the Beaux Arts Trio. By no means are these all significant works, but they are all at the very least pleasant, and about half a dozen of them are essential listening for anybody who wants to learn the basics of chamber music and be highly entertained at the same time. These will start slipping into the schedule next month.
I’ve also acquired the Angeles Quartet’s survey of all Haydn’s string quartets—which are already fairly well represented in our library, but not completely—and Antal Dorati’s classic traversal of all 104-plus Haydn symphonies. But I won’t have time to get those into the database in time for March scheduling.
But it isn’t all Haydn all the time; I’m also trying to establish better representation of significant artists who for some reason are largely absent from our library, starting with two colorful and controversial conductors: Constantin Silvestri and Leopold Stokowski. Brace yourselves.
Here are two reviews I contributed to Fanfare last year of items from a new series of high-resolution recordings from James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
BRAHMS Ein deutsches Requiem * James Levine, cond; Christine Schäffer (sop); Michael Volle (bar); Boston SO; Tanglewood Festival Cho * BSO CLASSICS 0901 (hybrid multichannel SACD: 70:23) Live: 09/26-27/08
With the collapse of the major labels, more and more orchestras are launching their own audio series, on disc and online. So far, they seem to have learned little from the fates of the majors; for the most part, they’re churning out standard repertory conducted by conductors who have recorded the music before, and have little new to say about it. (The Mahler series from Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony has been the major exception to this trend.) Now the Boston Symphony Orchestra has launched its own vanity label, and sure enough, its first two releases are standard fare that the orchestra’s music director, James Levine, has already recorded. Yet in terms of interpretive insight and audio quality, these discs deserve to enter the troubled marketplace with great fanfare.
I review Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé elsewhere in this issue; the subject here is Brahms’s German Requiem, which Levine recorded for RCA with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in 1983. In the quarter century between that version and Levine’s new in-concert recording with the BSO, the conductor’s timings have hardly changed. The new version is, overall, a mere 20 seconds shorter, and the greatest difference, such as it is, comes in “Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt,” the penultimate movement, which has now bulked up with all of 28 seconds—not a significant amount over the course of an 11- or 12-minute piece. Yet Levine’s conception of the music has changed greatly over the years; indeed, it has deepened and matured.
As only one example, consider the aforementioned penultimate movement. In the Chicago recording, the beginning is as light and airy as if it had been lifted from one of Brahms’s early orchestral serenades, and the first climax is dominated by the typically bright, prominent Chicago brass section (exacerbated by RCA’s tinny, early-digital sonics). In Boston, the opening passage is more processional and subdued (but not undercharacterized)—more like a Requiem than a serenade—and more ominous in the baritone’s early interactions with the chorus and orchestra. At the first climax, the Boston brass are well blended with the rest of the ensemble.
In other words, Levine has fundamentally rethought his approach to the score; he no longer leads it like a serenade, or as if it were Fauré’s gentle welcome to Paradise, yet he doesn’t impose more drama than Brahms placed in the score, as if it were Verdi or Berlioz (two composers with whom Levine has long experience in the opera house). This is a reading of greater gravity, in which each movement gradually unfolds, revealing more and more layers along the way. This is by no means Wagnerian music, but Levine as an experienced Wagnerian has clearly mastered the art of pacing.
The Tanglewood Festival chorus sings this challenging music beautifully—from memory, as is its usual practice—and the two vocal soloists, Christine Schäffer and Michael Volle, are fully satisfactory, although they can’t beat Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau in the classic Klemperer recording, still on EMI; Fischer-Dieskau, especially, has the finest sense of line and color I’ve ever heard in this music.
The surround recording was produced by Elizabeth Ostrow with the technical services of the staff of sound/mirror, the excellent Boston firm that transformed many of the BSO’s old Living Stereo recordings into SACDs. They’ve done a superb job here, taking advantage of Boston Symphony Hall’s warm acoustics to create a spacious yet well blended soundstage.
So in almost every respect, this new release marks a great advance over Levine’s earlier recording of the Requiem (almost every respect; the Chicago Symphony Chorus was certainly wonderful in the RCA version). It’s also more insightful than the Robert Spano SACD from Telarc. This and the Ravel disc I review many pages hence augur very well indeed for BSO Classics. James Reel
RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé * James Levine, cond; Boston SO; Tanglewood Festival Cho * BSO CLASSICS 0801 (hybrid multichannel SACD: 54:55) Live: 10/05-06/07
James Levine recorded Daphnis with the Vienna Philharmonic for DG in the mid 1980s. I’ve never heard that version; Gramophone liked it, which is not necessarily a good sign (critics there generally favor discretion over passion), but I imagine that Levine’s ear for color and fine technical control coaxed an effective performance from an orchestra not usually associated with Ravel’s idiom. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, of course, made one of the greatest Daphnis recordings half a century ago under Charles Munch (and acceptable ones in the 1970s and ’80s under technicians Seiji Ozawa and Bernard Haitink). Now, with James Levine, the BSO has made yet another of the score’s finest recordings.
People think of Daphnis as a sonic spectacular, but it’s much more than that; just listen to the delicacy Levine and his musicians, including the chorus, bring to the hushed opening pages. Thanks to the performers and the recording team, the overall sound is plush, not overtly analytical, yet all the various instrumental and choral lines are expertly balanced throughout. That said, it’s possible to differentiate one trumpet from its neighbor at the back of the soundstage. Still, the emphasis is on sensuality, even through very precise attacks and ensemble work. The excellent solos are flexible and dreamy, but the pirates’ orgy has tremendous punch and precision, and the final scene is stunning. The concert audience is silent until its outburst at the very end.
As far as I can tell, there are only two complete recordings of Daphnis on SACD: this one, in 5.1 surround, and the mid-50s Munch, in two channels. Both are equally superb performances; Levine’s has the sonic edge. James Reel
Last night I had one of those performance-anxiety dreams. For students and ex-students, it’s the one in which you’ve gotten several weeks into the semester without bothering to attend a particular class, and now you’re hopelessly behind with an exam coming up, and you can’t even find the classroom. For radio announcers, it involves dead air. I have both dreams from time to time. Last night, though, was something that sneaks through my subconscious far less frequency: a dream about actual performance.
It seems I’d been engaged as a piano soloist with the Tucson Symphony. But I hadn’t bothered to prepare, and didn’t even know what piece I was supposed to play. Backstage, I looked at some music, and it turned out to be Janácek’s Capriccio for piano left-hand. Well, not using the right hand would make the job much easier, I thought. I looked at the printed music, and it didn’t seem too hard, but I found myself figuring out the first note on the treble staff by using the old mnenomic “Every Good Boy Deserves Favor,” and I realized that there’s no way I’d be able to pull this off by sight-reading. (I did take a few weeks of group piano lessons many years ago, and got pretty good at playing scales, but my later instrument was the cello, so I’m more comfortable on the bass clef.)
This is pretty mundane as such dreams go; if you’d like to read a much more sophisticated account along the same lines, try the novel The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, or, for the linguist’s version of the dream, Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy. The reason I had my own version, I’m sure, is that my brain was telling me I have too many non-KUAT projects coming to fruition, and I’m not quite ready. Let’s take a look at my schedule over the next couple of weeks.
This afternoon, I have to drop off with a director a recording I made of about 60 seconds worth of lines from the play Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, which is being produced by the new group of which I’m the board president, the Winding Road Theater Ensemble. From there, I’m heading out to Academy Village for a meeting about a course I’ll be teaching in late April and May for the Arizona Senior Academy; the topic will be 19th-century French theater, and aside from having decided which playwrights to cover (Musset, Hugo, Rostand) I’ve put no thought into the project yet. That’s because I have other thigns to worry about before April.
Things like wading through about 350 reviews and features that I have to proofread for the May-June issue of Fanfare magazine (I recently, against my better judgement, agreed to be the magazine’s classical music editor). This coming Monday night I have a Winding Road board meeting, at which, among other things, we’ll be planning a fundraising event for late April. Wednesday night, I need to attend a concert presented by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, of which I’m the vice-president and dictator-in-waiting. Next Thursday, I have to help run the box office at the preview performance of Frankie and Johnny, duties I’ll repeat later in the run.
On Feb. 15 I have to give a presentation on the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival for a gated community way north of the city. The festival itself will take place March 7–14, during which I’ll be giving the five pre-concert talks and emceeing a special kiddie concert. In conjunction with the festival, I’m co-teaching a chamber-music course for Exploritas (formerly Elderhostel). I’ve done this before, but for this year I really need to revamp my main presentation. Which I haven’t done yet.
Meanwhile, I’ve got gigs scheduled with Chamber Music Plus—not the Chopin program originally announced, but a new version of something I did a few months ago for the Arizona Cultural Forum, in which I play Claude Debussy and Charles Baudelaire, Steve McKee portrays Edgar Alan Poe, and Rex Woods plays some Debussy preludes, in a music/theater piec by Harry Clark exploring the influence of Poe on Debussy and certain French poets. The first performance will be Feb. 19 in Scottsdale, then we’ll do it again two days later in Tucson, possibly with a fundraiser performance in between. At some point in the days leading up to that weekend, we’ll need to rehearse a little. Steve and I will be reading from the script, but there are some complicated segments in which we have to talk over the music.
Let’s see … anything else? Aside from my regular duties at KUAT, that pretty much covers it into the middle of March. Believe me, it’s more than enough.
One of the great things about public media is our ability to respond to community needs -- all while keeping you, our audiences, informed.
Last month in response to events in Haiti, Arizona Public Media (AZPM) kept you up to date with the latest breaking news. Reporter Robert Rappaport wrote of local efforts with his blog and news updates. Special programming like Hope for Haiti Now, brought you a live music performance by today’s top stars that raised millions for relief efforts on stations all across the country, including our PBS-HD Channel 6.
The President’s State of the Union was covered on all of AZPM’s platforms: radio, television, and online. PBS-HD broadcast President Obama’s first State of the Union address and the Republican response by newly inaugurated Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell. At 9 p.m. PBS World Channel 27.3 (Cox 83 and Comcast 203) aired an encore broadcast of the address and response. The event was also available live online at the “Live Events” section of the On Demand video page, and NPR's coverage of the address included a one-hour nationwide call-in hosted by Neal Conan and NPR's political junkie, Ken Rudin.
Arizona Public Media also brought to Tucson a live national radio performance of Garrison Keillor’s, A Prairie Home Companion. More than 6,000 people crowded into the TCC’s Arena to see Garrison and the local Chicano band iMas, legend of the accordion Joel Guzmán, accomplished singer and picker Dave Rawlings, and singer-songwriter Andra Suchy, who were his special guests. Also featured were The Royal Academy of Radio Actors; Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Fred Newman, The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon. Sue Scott, the female voice on the show, is a University of Arizona alumnus and spent time before the show in a workshop with UA students from the Drama Department.
In February, we have a number of terrific specials on our television and radio stations including Faces of America, a new four-part series on Channel 6, with Skip Gates who you may remember from last years’ African American Lives I & II. And our radio winter pledge campaign is underway. I hope you will consider all that AZPM does for our community and become a member or renew your membership today. It is your support that gives AZPM the resources necessary to respond to our community.
Now, that I grabbed your attention with the headline, let me explain what I mean...
AZPM has just launched a special politics page to help you understand the big budget mess with which the Arizona Legislature is dealing. At this writing, Arizona has about a $10.5 billion budget, with a shortfall of $1.45 billion this fiscal year. That deficit is projected to expand to $2.59 billion by the next fiscal year. Those figures are from the Joint Legislative Budget Committee.
Our new site highlights some of the budget bills being considered right now and aims to explain the mess in general.
The headline of this blog has to deal with a multi-part YouTube presentation from Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett about how the state budget works and where all the money comes from (and goes out). He uses a big Kleenex box to represent $1 billion. The presentation is simple, using the old KISS principle I learned in college (Keep It Simple Stupid). You'll find the first part of the series on our new page and I've also posted it below as a convenience.
Our site just went up (rather hurriedly) this past Friday, but will continue to grow. We're also making an effort to cover more budget stories on our air.
Last, but certainly not least, you can find video of our hour-long special last week dealing with Arizona's economy. It originally aired on Arizona Illustrated.
