BY THE NUMBERS

posted by James Reel

    Saturday night, driving from one play to another and then home, I had “Music Through the Night” on the car radio, and as usual the Minnesota-based announcer did something annoying. When back-announcing one of Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances, she said, “That was from his Opus—oh, let’s just say his first group of dances.”
    Obviously, somebody at C24, which gives us “Music Through the Night,” has forbidden the use of opus numbers on the air. Judging from how the announcer stumbled over herself to avoid giving the dreaded number, the punishment for noncompliance must be severe, on the order of being forced to listen to Lara St. John’s techno-Bach CD at least twice. A similar guideline, though without that penalty, has been in place at KUAT-FM for several years. The theory is that clogging announcements with a lot of numbers and other technical details will alienate listeners.
    There’s good reason to drop the opus number in many cases. Declaring that we’re listening to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in c-sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 isn’t going to be as communicative to a listener as simply calling it Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata. If you hear it on the radio and want to buy a recording or printed music, “Moonlight” Sonata is plenty to point you in the right direction.
    Sometimes, though, the opus number is important. Saying that a dance comes from Dvorák’s “first group” isn’t going to help you track it down. You’ll have to do some sleuthing to learn that the “first group” is Op. 46, which is how every recorded and printed collection of that set is labeled. If you want to buy a recording of that particular dance, knowing right away that it’s from Op. 46 saves you a lot of time and trouble.
    Similarly, the opus number is critical to sorting out Haydn’s string quartets. Unlike his symphonies, the quartets aren’t numbered sequentially, from 1 to 68. For the most part, they were published in groups of six, under widely spaced opus numbers, and recordings are usually released by opus number. Announcing “Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat” is tremendously uninformative, because Haydn wrote more than one quartet in that key. Saying “Haydn’s String Quartet No. 1 in E-flat” is absolutely misleading, because it may be No. 1 in the Op. 20 set, but it’s by no means the first quartet Haydn ever wrote. Giving the opus number of a Haydn quartet is a real service to any listener who wants to find a recording or score; withholding the opus number because some consultant thinks it will frighten the cowering infophobic ninnies they assume to constitute our audience is a disservice and an insult to our listeners.
    We need rules, but inflexible rules are created by and for people who don’t know what they’re doing.

GOOD PLAYS

posted by James Reel

    Today I'm off the air, but still in print. The latest Tucson Weekly holds my review of Scenes from an Execution, a production I suggest you see forthwith, despite some little problems:

    Don't be misled by the title. Howard Barker's Scenes From an Execution is not a death row play; it's a comic drama about the execution of what we'd now call a public-art commission in late 16th-century Venice. And don't be misled by that description. This is neither an ordinary costume drama nor an old-fashioned comedy of manners. It's a thoroughly contemporary play, mordant and funny, about a painter's integrity, vision and sheer misguided orneriness, and the state's clumsy dance with artists it can't quite trust to glorify its exploits. (Think Amadeus.)
    The University of Arizona's advanced student company, Arizona Repertory Theatre, has mounted a gorgeous production that almost but not quite does Barker's play full justice. The problems: intermittently effective but ultimately monochromatic portrayals of two colorful artists, and one directorial decision that yanks Barker's sharp teeth right out of his head. (Think Rent.)

    Let me also turn your attention to Live Theatre Workshop's latest:

Go to see Live Theatre Workshop's production of Broadway Bound, and you'll get the wrong idea about Neil Simon. You'll come away thinking that Simon knows how to subordinate gags to character and storytelling, that he can deliver scenes of tenderness without falling too far into sentimentality, that he can write sensitively about a woman who is no longer young and was never fashionable, that he will with the greatest integrity give a director and actors material of substance while remaining first and foremost an able entertainer.

SAME OLD TUNE

posted by James Reel

    Early Monday morning, the KUAT-FM music library database somehow got corrupted, and Steve Hahn, our music director, couldn’t print out any schedules until our computer guru cleansed the database of its impurities. So yesterday Steve scrounged up a printed music schedule from last November and had us use it again. That should explain to the two or three of you who follow our listings online or in the little printed thingy you get in the mail why what you heard didn’t correspond to what you read.
    This morning, as I drove to the studio, I contemplated scrapping whatever recycled schedule I might find today and playing one of the longer Mahler symphonies instead. But the computer guru had come through, Steve was able to generate a fresh schedule, and you were spared the Mahlerian excesses.
    There have been many long, dreary periods in KUAT-FM’s history when the music schedules were recycled as standard operating procedure. Ed Kupperstein initiated that practice when he was the music director in the 1970s. I think Kup produced about two months of completely fresh schedules when he first got the job, and then merely photocopied the old typed sheets, dropping in two or three new recordings each shift by slopping Wite-Out over an old entry and scratching in the new info by hand. Needless to say, after a couple of years the photocopies of photocopies were harder to read than hundred-year-old gravestones, and the programming was similarly hard, dry, featureless and boring.
    When I succeeded Kup as music director, I programmed every day fresh, but my own successor, Richard Hetland, no doubt with the blessings of Kup (who had moved up the management ladder), resumed the recycling practice. When I returned to announcing here a couple of years ago, I noticed with alarm that Richard’s successor, Steve, was also into reruns. He felt a bit helpless, treading water during a very long transition from one computer system to another. The repetition is what finally drove morning announcer Wayne Angerame away screaming, opening the morning slot for me. When the new computer system was finally in place—about a month after Wayne’s escape—Steve began generating a fresh schedule every day.
    Steve maintains that listeners aren’t likely to notice repetition, and boredom is a problem limited to the announcers, not the audience. I disagree. Back when I was driving from home to the Arizona Daily Star at the same time every day—this was during the Richard Hetland era—I knew that about every two months, at exactly the same time, I’d hear exactly the same recording of the same Schubert symphony, or the same Sharon Isbin recording of the same Leo Brower guitar piece. And, at exactly that time, I’d turn off the radio in exasperation. In broadcasting, consistency is good, but predictability is an audience-killer.

WRECKED

posted by James Reel

    It's nice that the National Public Radio news department is enjoying a hiring binge, but could NPR please employ reporters who are familiar with correct English usage? This morning, one reporter told us that the East Coast snowstorms are "wrecking havoc." This would be a good thing, I suppose; havoc is being "wrecked," demolished, by the snow, and order is restored, right?
    This is a stupid error I'm seeing from a lot of writers these days. Come on, people: havoc is "wreaked," meaning "inflicted." If you don't know the difference, you don't belong in a word-oriented profession.

WHYPOD?

posted by James Reel

    The big buzz in classical music right now—until the next wet-T-shirt contest for all-woman string quartets—is that the New York Philharmonic is launching a music-download initiataive with Deutsche Grammophon. Here’s part of the New York Times report:

Deutsche Grammophon, using live recordings by the orchestra, will release four concerts a year, probably through iTunes and perhaps through other Web sites, said Zarin Mehta, the orchestra's president. The first is due in about two months and will be priced at about $8 to $10, he said. It will consist of this weekend's program at Avery Fisher Hall, Mozart's Symphonies Nos. 39, 40 and 41, conducted by Lorin Maazel. Listeners will probably have the choice of downloading a movement, a symphony or the whole concert, Mr. Mehta said.

    Pardon me while I yawn. First, there’s the matter of repertory. Lorin Maazel is an interesting conductor, despite what the zombie New York critics say, but the last thing we need is a new recording of Mozart’s last three symphonies. This music is already represented by decades and decades of previous recordings, some spectacular, some dull, some middling. Some are already available for download. This project just isn’t necessary. (The Philharmonic will be recording new music for the New World label, but that isn’t part of the download deal I’m discussing.)
    Second, and really more important, is that music downloads are inadequate for anyone who cares about audio quality. The stuff sounds OK through the little computer speakers on my desk, but if I’m going to feed limited-resolution audio through my main system, I’d rather listen to old mono Furtwaengler recordings. And as for the noise coming through earbuds attached to the ubiquitous iPod, that’s just an insult to audio engineers and music lovers alike. Besides which, I don’t want to be plugged in to music wherever I go. Music loses its importance and impact if it’s simply carpeting for one’s ear canal. Silence and ambient sounds can hold their own appeal, too.
    The blogger known as Pliable frequently posts his objections to music downloads, but his reservations mainly relate to musicians’ lost income. That doesn’t bother me, because these days making a recording is less a significant revenue stream than a marketing expense, like paying somebody to prepare and send out press kits. More important to me is the issue of quality. When I can play beautiful new high-resolution SACDs through my surround system, why would I want to stuff gooey MP3 files into my ears?

BOHEMIAN GIRL

posted by James Reel

    In the latest Tucson Weekly I interview a UA voice student who seems poised for good things:

    When college student and budding opera singer Martina Chylikova moved to Tucson in 1995, she left behind not only her native Czech Republic, but also the distinctive Slavic vocal style that had spread from Russia through Eastern Europe.
    "When I started," she says, "my range was very small, because my voice was heavy; it was back in my throat, and I couldn't sing much." But now, after several years of work with the University of Arizona's Faye Robinson, Chylikova's voice has opened up remarkably. Not long ago, she returned to Czechia to sing the mezzo-coloratura role of Rosina in The Barber of Seville. Right now, she's in rehearsal for a UA production of Mark Adamo's recent operatic version of Little Women; Chylikova sings the lead role, the teenage Jo. In a few months, she'll look several decades older on the stage of Prague's National Theater, where she'll sing the important supporting role of the Old Woman in Leonard Bernstein's Candide.

    She’s giving a solo concert on Valentine’s Day. As the Tucson Citizen used to say at every such opportunity, Czech it out here.