UNTITLED

posted by James Reel

    Over at the NewMusicbox, the American Music Center’s Web zine (to which I have contributed on a couple of occasions), editor Frank Oteri wonders “why do so many composers still insist on numbering their works rather than naming them? … Sure, we're no longer living in the era of Haydn, Beethoven, and the gang where everything was either Piano Sonata No. 28 or Symphony No. 6, but this strangest of naming games has yet to completely disappear from our collective reflexes. … Why must [compositions] be named as if they were volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica?”
    Well, classical compositions can be about something beyond music, but often they aren’t. What purpose is served by assigning some fanciful title to an abstract work? A certain popular Beethoven piano sonata sounds nothing like “moonlight” to me despite its title (awarded by someone other than the composer); the nickname, at best, is just a faster way to refer to the work than Piano Sonata No. 14 in c-sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2. The title doesn’t change the character or the content of the work, which exists independently of any description.
    Many compositions have been deeply inspired by some poem or story or character, and truly deserve to carry fanciful titles. Liszt first popularized this practice, although he was hardly the first to employ it; today, such composers as Michael Torke and Michael Daugherty almost always write music that refers to something beyond the score—color and texture, if nothing else, in Torke’s case. Some composers have devised titles and narratives for their compositions, but ultimately decided it was best to let the music stand on its own; Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 are examples of this.
    But what point is served by assigning some imaginative title to a piece of music merely as an afterthought? What, exactly, do titles like Structures and Synchronisms, so popular in the 1950s and ’60s, mean? Nothing more, I suppose, than that the works don’t follow some traditional structure like sonata or symphony, and aren’t written for a conventional combination of instruments, like piano trio or string quartet. Well, OK, except that such titles were so abstract as to be ultimately meaningless.
    In traditional forms, calling something merely “symphony” or “sonata” is fine by me; if words could adequately describe what music expresses, we wouldn’t need the music.

POP THE CLUTCH

posted by James Reel

    My right thumb is still a little numb this morning from yesterday’s cello practice. Obviously, I’m not following the advice I reported in a recent issue of Strings magazine, where the subject was playing with a tension-free bow hand. Here’s the beginning:

    THE FIRST TIME A TEACHER HANDS US a stringed instrument, we figure the tricky part will be putting our left-hand fingers in the correct spots to get the right notes. How hard can moving the bow with the right hand be?
    Well, as we discover the moment we first draw the bow across an open string, it’s not that simple. Then, as we try to get a decent sound, a lot of us tighten up that right hand, use the wrong pressure in the wrong direction, and start making noises that remind us that strings used to be made of catgut.

SPACE MUSIC

posted by James Reel

    The aptly named blog On an Overgrown Path has a post that begins with a note on the wonderful Renaissance-music performer David Munrow, then wanders on to a list of the music carried on the two Voyager spacecraft launched some months after Munrow’s suicide in 1976 (Munrow is on the spacefaring music discs). The selection is an aptly eclectic array of what we now call world music, plus a little bit of American rock (Chuck Berry) and several classical items:
    Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F, first movement. Munich Bach Orchestra; Karl Richter, conductor. 4:40
    Bach: Gavotte en rondeaux from the Partita No. 3 in E major for solo violin. Arthur Grumiaux. 2:55
    Mozart: Queen of the Night aria from Die Zauberflöte. Edda Moser, soprano; Bavarian State Opera Orchestra; Wolfgang Sawallisch, conductor. 2:55
    Stravinsky: Sacrificial Dance from The Rite of Spring. Columbia Symphony Orchestra; Igor Stravinsky, conductor. 4:35
    Bach: Prelude and Fugue in C from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1. Glenn Gould, piano. 4:48
    Beethoven: first movement from Fifth Symphony. Philharmonia Orchestra; Otto Klemperer, conductor. 7:20
    Holborne: Music from The Fairie Round. David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London. 1:17
    Beethoven: Cavatina from the String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, Opus 130. Budapest String Quartet. 6:37
    If the music were being selected now, some 30 years later, I wonder if we might present ourselves differently to whatever extraterrestrials could figure out how to play the disc. The pieces themselves would probably be pretty much the same, unimaginative as the assortment is. Perhaps one of the Bach items might be jettisoned in favor of something, preferably not German or Austrian for a change of pace, written between Beethoven and Stravinsky. And it would be nice if the Beethoven Cavatina were replaced by something written during the past 90 years, a bit of a Bartók quartet at the very least. Forget about anything much more recent; the people who select these things would probably argue that nothing since Bartók—who died 60 years ago—has had a chance to stand the test of time.
    Even if the playlist titles didn’t change, what about the peformers? That aspect would certainly be overhauled. Richter’s Bach would be the first thing swapped out, in favor of some period-instrument recording. (Probably by some safely staid English or German group; if you want state-of-the-art Baroque performance, listen to anything recorded during the past 10 years by one of those lively, daring French or Italian ensembles.) Grumiaux is a wonderfully elegant violinist, but again he’d probably be replaced by a period practitioner.
    The Queen of the Night aria could stand as is, although it’s not really typical Mozart. The Stravinsky is essential and logical, and even if his Columbia Symphony version isn’t the best played, it has great vitality and is composer-directed (a period-instrument performance!). Gould’s Bach would probably also hold its place, although one of Bach’s organ fugues, played by somebody else, would be more representative. Klemperer’s Beethoven is slowly beginning to lose its adherents outside of England; his Beethoven Fifth is still a model of the granitic approach to the score, but I bet something leaner and faster would find favor today. Munrow’s early-music recordings still provide much pleasure, but current musicians are even more secure with the old instruments than was Munrow’s adept crew. As for the Beethoven Quartet movement, the once ubiquitous Budapest String Quartet has somehow fallen off most music-lovers’ radar screens. I’d bet the Emerson Quartet would be chosen to represent the current pinnacle of Beethoven playing.
    What compositions and performances, I wonder, would you choose if you were programming E.T.’s iPod?

REVIEW: TUCSON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/KYOKO TAKEZAWA

posted by James Reel

    It’s been about a century since an all-Brahms concert was an interesting concept. Yet for the current cycle, Tucson Symphony music director George Hanson followed the gutless “Mostly Mozart” formula and plopped two fat Brahms warhorses into a single program, prefacing them with a tiny new piece by Jeffery Cotton. However stuffy and unimaginative the overall program may be, Hanson, the orchestra and violin soloist Kyoko Takezawa are delivering performances that make attendance worthwhile.
    First, the novelty: Jeffery Cotton’s new Flights of Fancy, a little curtain-raiser completed last year, loosely inspired by our often abortive but ultimately successful efforts to take wing. The modest Flights of Fancy is trivialized in the presence of the Brahms Third Symphony and Violin Concerto, but in a more appropriate context it would seem a strong little piece. It alternates a sweeping, slighly bluesy trumpet theme (expertly played by Ed Reid) with agitated material for the full orchestra. The style is a conflation of the inner movements of Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1, a lyrical idea threading through a scherzo in an affirmative, unashamed D major. Cotton, who hasn’t written for full orchestra for about a decade, makes adept use of the strings, brass and percussion, but at least in last night’s otherwise confident performance the woodwinds were inaudible except for the occasional flute/piccolo gesture.
    The Brahms Symphony No. 3 ends quietly, which is perhaps the reason Hanson placed it before intermission, saving the more extroverted Violin Concerto for last. But that’s not the only respect in which the symphony proves troublesome. It’s a tough work for an interpreter or a listener to figure out. From the oscillating harmony of the opening material, which dominates the entire symphony, are we to understand this as a storm-and-stress symphony, or a sequel to Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony? In remarks just before the performance, Hanson mentioned the connection between the F/A-flat/F motto of the first few bars and Brahms’ motto, “Frei aber Froh” (“Free but Happy”; “He was a bachelor,” noted the multiply married Hanson). But when he stopped talking and picked up his baton, Hanson proved less interested in freedom and happiness than in the music’s shadowy, dramatic potential.
    The only way to make the first movement sound pastoral is to play it fast, light and buoyant. Hanson took exactly the opposite approach; this was a dark, pliable, rather slow performance. Every detail supported this concept; for example, the cello pizzicati in the second subject, especially in the exposition repeat, had an ominous tread instead of the usual bouncy spring. Rather than seeming free, the music struggled against its baseline tether. A rich bass is essential to most of Brahms’ music, and we certainly got that here.
    The second movement featured some lovely, bucolic woodwind playing, and the third carefully blended warmth with melancholy. The performance of the final movement was quick, incisive and dramatic, an apt conclusion to what Hanson and the TSO proved is more than just a pretty little Romantic symphony.
    In the introductory section of the Violin Concerto, Hanson opted for nobility rather than passion or sweetness. The latter qualities were provided by soloist Kyoko Takezawa, a sensitive, lyrical musician who nevertheless wasn’t afraid to dig into the rustic Hungarianisms of the work’s finale.
    Takezawa is so petite that her Strad, in her hands, looks more like a viola than a violin. It certainly has a big sound, projecting easily into the violin-eating Music Hall. Takezawa has a graceful, fluid bow arm, which is mirrored in her playing, beautifully pure even into the high register. She indulged in a very few slides in the first movement, but generally avoided ear-catching details of phrasing, drawing expression more from her tone quality. Hanson and the orchestra supported her well—Lindabeth Binkley played the oboe solo at the beginning of the slow movement with particular felicity—and Hanson even kept the orchestra from covering Takezawa in the last movement’s coda, no small feat.
    So the TSO’s performance standards are quite fine; it’s the over-cautious programming that needs improvement.

RETURN AND DEPARTURE

posted by James Reel

    I’m back, but my time off the air wasn’t exactly vacation. Wrangling the in-laws swarming all over the house was a job in itself, and I managed to fit in some work-for-pay during the past week and a half, too. Here’s one example, my review in the latest Tucson Weekly of Dearly Departed at Live Theatre Workshop:

    Somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon Line, a Baptist hymn rises heavily from a trailer park; its downbeat is the thud of a fat old redneck hitting the linoleum, and its discordant chorus is the sound of a dysfunctional family trying to harmonize just long enough to bury the S.O.B. …
    The Turpin family is not an easy one to like, especially if you're a member of that family. Yet it swarms through a highly entertaining play, Dearly Departed, a 1991 comedy by Jessie Jones and David Bottrell. The show was such a success for Live Theatre Workshop 3 1/2 years ago that the company has now launched a rousing revival.
    It's the sort of play that gets easy laughs just by mentioning Kmart, and every 10 minutes comes a laugh at the expense of white trash everywhere. One couple shares romantic memories of their courtship, which took place on the sofa in the front yard. Somebody brings macaroni and ham loaf surprise to the funeral. These are Bible-thumpers and mulleted slackers, women whose tongues are as sharp as the men's minds are dull, easier targets than possums crossing a country road.