TIMELY RETIREMENT

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    Upon the announcement Friday that soprano Anna Moffo had died at age 73, affectionate tributes began to appear in print and cyberspace, but most had to mention that Moffo went into serious vocal decline by her 40s. I’ve enjoyed many of Moffo’s recordings from the 1950s and ’60s, but unfortunately my only experience of her “live” was a negative one. Around 1980 or so, during the George Trautwein years, the Tucson Symphony engaged her to sing … I can’t remember exactly what. Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer? Some of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne? All I recall is that her voice was in poor shape, with a big wobble and a tendency to scoop into notes. It’s a pity that despite all the fine work she’d done earlier, that’s my strongest memory of her.
    A few musicians seem to be able to perform well forever; tenors Alfredo Kraus and Hugues Cuénod sang admirably, well beyond the time the Social Security checks should have started rolling in, and Earl Wild is still a tremendously effective pianist at age 90. Of course, instrumentalists tend to last longer than singers, but even they have their limits. Child prodigy Yehudi Menuhin began to lose control of his bow arm early, but gave concerts and recorded for another 30 years anyway. Isaac Stern kept it together much longer than Menuhin, but even he was in serious decline when he last played in Tucson in the early to mid 1990s. What is it that drives musicians to keep performing even when it’s clear they shouldn’t? Vanity, or a belief that idiot audiences can’t tell the difference? When Glynn Ross took over Arizona Opera in the 1980s, he figured he could boost ticket sales with a bit of star power, and hired some of his old friends, with the emphasis on “old.” What pleasure did anyone take in hearing James McCracken bark his way through a role, or Mary Costa deliver such an embarrassing Merry Widow that she had to be replaced by her understudy after opening night?
    Beverly Sills and Jascha Heifetz had the good sense to withdraw from performance while they were still near their peak, and aside from the occasional off night, they left the public with nothing but positive memories. If only more artists would follow suit. Worse things could be said toward the end of an artist’s life than “Whatever happened to Soprano X? She was so wonderful!”

REVIEW: TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA & CHORUS/GEORGE HANSON

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    If a concert is a musical feast, then conductor George Hanson has fallen in with the slow food movement. Last night he served up a very well-prepared Tucson Symphony concert remarkable not only for its care of presentation but also for its preponderantly broad tempos.
    Slowness was not always a virtue last night. In Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture, its use seemed formulaic: quiet music = slow tempo. Even the loud, final peroration dragged a little; it could work at this tempo, but here it lacked grandeur because the orchestra just didn’t play full out. Hanson had reduced the string complement below what we usually expect for concert Wagner; the rest of the program—Mozart and Beethoven—needed chamber-scale forces, and there was no point in paying a lot of per-service string players for just 15 minutes of music. Despite the lack of forcefulness at the end, the orchestral balance actually sounded better than usual, with a good, solid bass (the cellos were fully audible for a change), and the strings holding their own against the woodwinds and brass (mainly because Hanson seemed to be holding the latter sections back a bit).
    Why, I wonder, did Hanson not also offer the “Venusberg Music,” which emerges straight from the overture in the Paris version of Tannhäuser? It would have added about 10 minutes to a very short first half, and given a little more work to the women of the TSO chorus, which was already positioned on stage for the rest of the concert: Beethoven’s little cantata Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage and Mozart’s Requiem.
    Beethoven fared well last night; especially effective was the beautifully hushed choral/orchestral beginning. The TSO Chorus, prepared by Bruce Chamberlain, sang with admirable precision and flexibility, although the TCC Music Hall’s acoustics blurred the text at full volume, at least by the time the sound reached the balcony.
    The concert’s main matter was Mozart’s Requiem. I’ve heard so many variant editions of this work in the past few years that I’m more confused than enlightened when trying to figure out which one Hanson chose; I think it was a pretty straightforward version of the standard Süssmayr edition. This is not a matter of musicological arcana; Mozart famously died before completing this work, and his pupil Süssmayr finished it off, though not to the satisfaction of all critics, and several other editors have had a go at the work.
    Hanson and his forces took a fairly straightforward approach to the work. The large chorus, adept enough to finesse some tricky little dynamic swells, was solid and powerful, yet it didn’t overwhelm the small orchestra (reduced to two dozen strings plus woodwinds and brass). As in the Wagner, Hanson’s tempos tended to be on the slow side, except in the most dramatic sections. This worked well, without sapping the surprisingly abundant life from this death-soaked music; the Kyrie, for example, was nicely crip and clipped. The soloists—soprano Linda Mabbs, mezzo Malin Fritz, tenor Carl Halvorson and bass Gustav Andreassen—did well, although the two women were not to my taste, applying a wide, nonstop, unvaried vibrato more appropriate to Wagner and Verdi than to Mozart. No complaints about Michael Becker’s suave trombone solo in the Tuba mirum. Now let’s see if the critic in the morning daily characteristically credits that solo to the tuba.

INFANTILE JOURNALISM

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    So the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, of which I’m a board member, puts on a week-long festival with top-notch musicians including the Tokyo Quartet and presents a lot of out-of-the-ordinary music, including a brand-new work by a leading composer, to packed houses. What aspect of this does the Arizona Daily Star cover? The kiddie concert—the element of least possible interest to the adult reading public. It’s also the angle that requires no critical discernment, because the reporter need only recount the children’s reactions to the presentation, not form her own response from an adult perspective. Draw your own conclusions, and pause for a moment of silence for the protracted death of serious cultural journalism.

DÉJÀ VU ALL OVER AGAIN

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    I could’ve sworn I got into the car and drove four miles to see a play at the University of Arizona, but I seem to have stayed home and watched the Turner Classic Movies channel, colorized:

    These days, young classical musicians head straight to the CD shelf to listen to what the pros have done before they dare to develop their own interpretation of a piece. Similarly, I think some of the young cast members of The Philadelphia Story at the UA spent more time watching the classic film version of the play than internalizing their characters. …
    On opening night last week, the first scene didn't seem at all lived-in; the actors were more focused on technical issues than addressing their character dynamics. Gradually, though, the actors found their groove, and began delivering performances of greater involvement. By the end, things were cooking nicely.
    They weren't following original recipes, though. Sarah Hayes didn't play Tracy Lord so much as she played Katharine Hepburn, or, actually, it was more like playing Cate Blanchett playing Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator. Similarly, suave Dane Corrigan filled the role of Dexter by channelling Cary Grant. (In fairness, this is a version with more backbone of a characterization Corrigan offered to good effect in The Rivals, so maybe this is just his natural demeanor.)
    Celebrity impersonation like this can be amusing, often comforting, and in the case of Tracy Lord unavoidable, but ultimately it gives no idea of what an actor can do without hewing to a famous model.

SPIFFY

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    Last week I grumbled mildly that it was hard to find certain local content on the KUAZ/KUAT-FM Web pages. Well, coincidentally, a newer, cleaner, easier-to-navigate design went up this week, and this morning Robert Rappaport also began posting news items on the KUAZ page. There are some other nice features there, too. Take a look!

A GOOD TALKER

posted to Cue Sheet by James Reel

    Sometimes interviewing composers, especially in front of an audience, is about as happy an experience as do-it-yourself dentistry. There are shy composers, who respond to questions with the briefest of unenlightening phrases. There are theory-smitten composers, who respond with the longest, most bombastically unenlightening phrases. There are composers who can put their points across all right, but they've obviously saved most of their personality for their music.
    Interviewing Jennifer Higdon during last night's pre-concert chamber festival talk was, in contrast, a treat. She's in her mid 40s, which means she's come up in a period when composers have been expected to interact with the public. She's fully comfortable in front of an audience, personable, natural, intelligent and articulate. I tried to throw her a few questions she hadn't already answered in a hundred other interviews, and she responded smartly without missing a beat (except for the stall-for-time comment "That's a good question"; she never hesitated or resorted to "umms"). People in the audience later told me how delighted they were by her comments and presentation.
    Her brand-new string quartet, An Exaltation of Larks, also went over very well in its premiere by the Tokyo String Quartet. Like its composer, the work has a distinct musical personality. From the very first bars, I thought, "That sounds just like Jennifer Higdon!" She definitely has an identifiable style, beginning with a Copland-via-Bernstein sonority but relying more strongly on her own distinctive set of thematic gestures, harmonies and textural preferences. No wonder she's fully booked up with commissions for the next five years, including requests from the likes of Lang Lang and Hilary Hahn. Jennifer Higdon is a fine composer, and she knows how to handle herself well.