CD REVIEWS: SOL GABETTA, BAIBA SKRIDE

posted by James Reel

    Evidence that the major labels have not gone completely down the drain: two fine new concerto discs from Sony/BMG. Now, it’s true that the soloists—cellist Sol Gabetta and violinist Baiba Skride—are tremendously photogenic, but their appeal is more than skin-deep. I just sent in a very brief review of each disc to a magazine you probably don’t read and which rarely posts CD reviews at its Web site, so I’ll share them with you here.

    Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme; Andante Cantabile; Pezo Capriccioso; Nocturne. Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1. Ginastera: Pampana No. 2. Sol Gabetta, cello; Ari Rasilainen conducts the Munich Radio Orchestra (RCA 82876759512).
    Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta introduces herself on disc with the more-or-less complete music for cello and orchestra by Tchaikovsky (a couple of song arrangements are missing), naturally mated with the Saint-Saëns First Concerto, plus the rarely (if ever) recorded orchestral version of Ginastera’s Pampeana No. 2. Best comes first: a fabulous performance of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations. This isn’t for people who prefer big, loud, fast, beefy versions of the work; Gabetta’s way with it is quietly teasing. She tends to operate at a relatively low volume, but makes lots of little dynamic adjustments from bar to bar and stretches out phrases to romantic effect; her rubato in the fourth variation is especially impish, and the cadenza built into the fifth variation is full of personality. Overall, the work has rarely sounded so balletic.
    The rest of the disc comes off well, but with less individuality than the Rococo Variations. The outer movements of the Saint-Saëns are impassioned, and the central Allegretto is especially elegant. The other items respond well to Gabetta’s light touch and impeccable intonation.

    Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1; Janácek: Violin Concerto. Baiba Skride, violin; Mikko Franck conducts the Munich Philharmonic; Marek Janowski conducts the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (Sony 82876-73146-2).
    For her third Sony recording, Baiba Skride takes up what has apparently become a rite of passage for all young violinists: Shostakovich’s First Concerto. Her way with the opening Nocturne is patient and dark; from the beginning, there’s a subtle sense of menace. The Scherzo is properly frantic, the Passacaglia warm and lyrical—not the dry meander it can become—and a fervent cadenza leads to a stunning Burlesque: The intepretation is gritty, but the intonation is pure, even in this concert performance. True, Skride’s tone sometimes does become wiry in high passages, but this happens in spots where it may be a conscious color decision.
    The filler is a welcome bonus, Janácek’s Violin Concerto, “The Wandering of a Little Soul.” There’s more than one reconstruction of this unfinished work, which shares material with the overture to Janácek’s prison-camp opera From the House of the Dead; this version is by Leos Faltus and Milos Stedron. Skide’s approach is as mercurial as it should be.
    This Latvian laureate of the Queen Elisabeth International Competition clearly knows how to execute a keen conception of challenging, unhackneyed music; her earlier disc devoted to Mozart and the Haydn brothers should also be worth seeking out.

CODED MESSAGE

posted by James Reel

    A couple of leading online figures have called for a blogger’s code of conduct, and it’s about time. The code of conduct doesn’t so much address the posts of bloggers as the comments posted by readers. You can read the first draft here at Tim O’Reilly’s site, and find answers to some libertarian objections here. The libertarian types, as usual, are screaming “censorship.”
    So what’s with all this hand-wringing over “censorship,” anyway? There’s a huge difference between controlling someone’s independent expression and supervising the content of a site or publication for which you are responsible. The latter is not censorship; it’s editing, and it’s necessary even in a free, civil society if discourse isn’t to be hijacked by bullies with nothing to contribute.

THE HIGHER PRICE

posted by James Reel

    A friend had considered joining us for this Thursday's Tucson Symphony concert, but then reconsidered. She writes, "It turns out that a ticket, in the front balcony, would cost me $62 -- with Ticketmaster charges etc -- too much -- if it were for Der Rosenkavalier or Magic Flute I would do it in a heartbeat, but not for Orff." She has nothing against Carmina Burana; but she expects a substantial production for that kind of money in Tucson.
     From what I can see from my balcony seat, Thursday-night TSO attendance has been alarmingly low this season. If the orchestra wants to increase attendance next year, raising the ticket price seems, to put it politely, counterintuitive.

LOWERING THE COMMON DENOMINATOR

posted by James Reel

    When the Tucson Symphony announced its 2007-08 season a couple of weeks ago, I was appalled. Now that I’ve looked at the schedule a few more times and given it further thought, it doesn’t seem to pander to the lowest-common denominator audience as much as I initially thought, but the goosebumps of excitement have yet to rise. OK, I like Rossini’s William Tell Overture, Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat suites and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. But why do they occupy an entire program together, aside from the fact that they exist and they’re popular?
    The really bad news is that the core classical series has given up on contemporary music, aside from one item by local boy Dan Coleman (I don’t know the piece, but since it’s sharing a program with Rachmaninov’s big Symphony No. 2 and excepts from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, I can’t imagine that it’s very long), and a very short item by the UA’s Dan Asia. (Why is Asia’s Why (?) Jacob on a program called “Musique de la France”? There’s absolutely no French connection, not even a stylistic one. What a dopey programming decision.) Now, I have complained many times that starting every concert with a five-minute new piece hardly shows much commitment to contemporary music, but even that was better than nothing, which is pretty much what we’re getting next season.
    People might sneer at the November concert with its movie tie-ins—classical pieces used in films, with only one example of original film music—but that’s actually something I wish the TSO and other orchestras would do more of … and I especially wish this would become the pattern again for pops concerts, an evening of well-prepared light classics instead of half an hour of under-rehearsed potboilers followed by an appearance by some has-been pop singer or nostalgia act.
    And in the context of TSO programming history, several of the promised items have hardly worn out their welcome, particularly Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Saint-Saens’ Second Piano Concerto and Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande Suite. (French music has been rather neglected during George Hanson’s tenure.)
    One—count ’em, one—of the programs is very well thought-out: “Old Vienna,” which includes Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony, the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes, Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier Suite and Berg’s Violin Concerto, which the TSO hasn’t done since John Ferrell was concertmaster (he was the soloist last time) and, I think, George Trautwein was the music director, which was more than 20 years ago.
    Still, I’m not looking forward to another shlocky Mathieu piano concerto, and what, exactly, is Ravel’s “Suite from Mother Goose Suite”? Does that mean they’re playing only two or three of the pieces from the standard five-movement suite excerpted from Ravel’s full score?
    So, there are some lapses, but some interesting material does lurk among all the other things I can stay home and listen to in fabulous CD performances without having to submit to the poor acoustics of the TCC Music Hall. But is it worth the rising price of season tickets? The financially troubled orchestra is starting to look a little desperate, moving toward less sophisticated programming and higher ticket prices when other orchestras are actually playing more daring pieces and lowering their prices to attract younger or more casual audiences. I haven’t gotten out my credit card just yet.

TRIALS

posted by James Reel

    I had a couple of good nights at the theater last weekend, and you can read about them in the latest Tucson Weekly. First, something special for Easter:

    I am happy to report that my expectations had been dashed by the time I staggered out of Stark Naked Productions' three-hour mounting of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. This is only Stark Naked's second show, I hadn't seen the first, and although I knew producer-director Eugenia Woods to be experienced and sincere, I figured this would be a worthy but not entirely successful effort with a large and therefore necessarily uneven cast. And the play? A trial in Purgatory to decide if Judas really deserves to rot in hell for betraying Jesus and then hanging himself, with witnesses including Satan, Freud and Mother Teresa, plus a cameo by Saint Monica, a jive-talkin' momma whose favorite word is "motherfucker"? Obviously, we were in for an irreligious farce.
    I was wrong, wrong, all wrong. Not about Eugenia Woods being experienced and sincere; that's what enabled her to assemble a strong, well-directed cast and put on a show of very good production values. This is not some well-meaning, amateurish Easter pageant; it's a skilled presentation of a serious play.
    Oh, yes, the script ... I was wrong about that, too. Sure, it has plenty of jokes and funny anachronisms and exaggerated characters--Pontius Pilate is like a gangsta rapper, and Satan, expertly played by Paul Clinco, comes off like an oily Mob nightclub owner. But in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis asks serious questions about free will and God's forgiveness, and he doesn't foist any easy answers upon us.

    Those rogues at the Rogue Theatre have taken a mildly cynical play by Bertold Brecht and, by stripping away Brecht's contrived happy ending, have solidly affirmed the work's dark view of human nature. And that's all to the good, theatrically speaking, in a play that asks how one can be good in a society that abuses those who try.

RAPID PROGRESS

posted by James Reel

    Well, here’s a fine howdy-do. After arguing for a very long time about whether or not Tucson really needs a big new arena, and then becoming sympathetic to the Tucson Convention Center’s complaint that it can’t accommodate big conferences—sympathy that intensified about a month ago, when the biggest annual conference here bolted for Phoenix—the city council has all of a sudden approved a big new arena and TCC expansion. The trigger was pulled when, less than a week ago, downtown property owner Allan Norville (a longtime thorn in the city government’s side) unveiled his own arena proposal. That got the bureaucrats moving fast, rushing their own proposal before the public perhaps months ahead of schedule. A couple of weeks ago, when I was researching an article on TCC expansion for the Downtown Tucsonan, I asked my various sources if it were true that they were going to put a proposal before the council around the middle of this month (which is the rumor I’d heard). All they’d say is that they’d be going public “by the end of the summer.” Well, they even managed to get it done before the end of spring! Very interesting, what will motivate a bureaucracy.
    Now, of course, that Downtown Tucsonan article of mine is good for background, but it has no worth as a news story.
    Next question: Does earmarking all that money for the arena constitute a slap in the face of those at the University of Arizona who proposed gobbling up almost all the available Tax Increment Financing for a science center on the west side? (For more on that, go here and persevere.)