PROKOFIEV AND GANDOLFI

posted by James Reel

Here are two more reviews I wrote earlier this year for Fanfare ... one devoted to a 20th-century Russian, the other to a 21st-century American.

PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 5; Lieutenant Kijé Suite * Paavo Järvi, cond; Cincinnati SO * TELARC SACD 60683 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 64:25)

Paavo Järvi’s recording of Prokofiev’s Fifth reminds me of Leonard Slatkin’s recording of Elgar’s Enigma Variations: an essentially dark, somber view of music in which we’re accustomed to hearing more variety. Like Slatkin’s Elgar, Järvi’s Fifth is at least consistent and coherent and, indeed, valid, so it can’t be dismissed simply because we’ve come to expect more bite or more humor.

In the first movement, Järvi interprets the Andante marking as a leisurely walk, in the manner of Ormandy’s classic recording, instead of the brisk stroll we’ve been getting more recently, and rather than deflate the score, this tempo builds the music’s cumulative power. On the debit side, the second subject seems a bit impersonal. Järvi and the Telarc engineers maintain a very clear delineation of the orchestral sections, with the low brass being especially clear without being terribly heavy. At the same time, though, higher-pitched instruments, including trumpet and violins, seem reluctant to come forward in the mix, in ensemble passages as well as in woodwind and brass solos. This balance deepens the grayness of Järvi’s interpretation. All this holds true for the third movement as well. Järvi brings a brighter sound to the second and fourth movements, both benefiting from excellent clarity of articulation; the Scherzo truly scampers, despite the undercurrent of menace. A low-grade nervousness suffuses the final movement; the final section borders on the frantic and desperate, without turning shrill.

There’s less to report on the Kijé Suite; it gets a crisp, thumping performance, full of wit and flair, and not at all controversial. The performance of the Fifth, on the other hand, is strictly for people who can tolerate an anti-heroic approach to a work that is usually thought to be, at least in the end, celebratory. James Reel

GANDOLFI The Garden of Cosmic Speculation * Robert Spano, cond; Atlanta SO * TELARC SACD-60696 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 67:36)

The universe is expanding, and so is Michael Gandolfi’s The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. The work began in 2004 as a four-movement orchestral suite inspired by features of a unique “physics garden” in southern Scotland. Robert Spano’s performances of that with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra were so successful that the organization asked Gandolfi to make it bigger, and seven more movements had emerged by 2007. This now amounts to more than an hour of music, but Gandolfi suggests that performers may extract whatever sequences that make sense to them for public performance. Spano and his orchestra here present the complete score.

The original Garden of Cosmic Speculation was created in 1988 by architect Charles Jencks, as a sort of visual embodiment of the concepts of wave theory, sub-atomic particles, string theory and such. Involving sculpture and landscape architecture, it’s a cross between the English formal gardens of the past and the theoretical physics of today. The park is apparently opened to visitors only one day a year, but Jencks published a book about the property, which is what initially caught Gandolfi’s attention. (Preparing the expanded version of his suite, he visited the garden in person.)

Gandolfi is a faculty member of the New England Conservatory and the Tanglewood Music Center, but he’s not one of the high Modernists that his Boston cultural neighbor, James Levine, is so fond of. Gandolfi’s music is readily accessible (at least to anyone who enjoys the sort of composers Spano promotes, such as Jennifer Higdon and Osvaldo Golijov), and quite eclectic … sometimes, perhaps, too eclectic to allow the composer to establish his own profile.

That eclecticism is fully intentional in the movement “The Universal Cascade,” which in the course of six and a half minutes quotes 28 pieces, mostly pre-Baroque, but including Bach, Stravinsky and Miles Davis. This is followed by “The Garden of Senses Suite,” which quotes Bach themes and forms (a different Baroque dance style or chorale corresponds to each of the senses, including the sixth, intuition). There’s minimalist pulsation and vibration, like mid-period John Adams, in the work’s first movement, “The Zeroroom,” and he adopts a rather French aesthetic, but with American openness and sweep (and sometimes syncopation), in the hurtling scherzo “Symmetry Break Terrace/Black Hole Terrace.” The score as a whole can be dynamic and exciting, witty, at times wonderfully still, and always offers plenty of internal variety, with care for color and clarity, but on the basis of this one 67-minute work, I’m having trouble identifying Gandolfi’s own voice. Even so, I’d like to continue the effort by hearing more of his music.

Telarc’s surround sound is exactly what this score needs: clear, detailed and spatially precise. The Scottish park atmosphere is evoked at the beginning and end by birdsong emerging from all the speakers, but otherwise the balance maintains a normal concert hall perspective. James Reel

SPOKE AND BOW

posted by James Reel

Oregon Symphony violist Charles Noble has produced a blog entry that intertwines two interests of mine, music and cycling, and how to improve your abilities in both pursuits. Read it here.

MOZART ON A DIET

posted by James Reel

MOZART Piano Concertos: No. 11; No. 12 (chamber versions). String Quartet No. 4 * Janina Fialkowska (pn); Ch Players of Canada * ATMA SACD2 2531 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 62:58)

The booklet photo is what looks to be a century-old photo of a girl, possibly hooded, grasping a large umbrella for balance and high-stepping across a tightrope. Perilous balance really has nothing to do with this release of Mozart’s own reduction for piano and string quartet of his K. 413 and 414 piano concerti. By the nature of the composition, the piano reigns supreme except in the tutti passages; these are, after all, concertos, not piano quintets (actually sextets; here, a double bass is added for welcome support at the bottom end). Yet these players treat the scores as chamber music as much as possible; the piano is placed behind the strings, recital style, rather than up front, concerto style (the placement is quite distinct, thanks to Atma’s superb DSD sonics). Soloist Janina Fialkowska is by no means reticent, but she feels no obligation to play forward; she’s happy to engage in interplay with the strings when Mozart allows it, and otherwise plays like a sonata soloist, without muscling through the score.

Compared to the great Mozart keyboard concertos that would soon follow these first efforts of his Viennese maturity, the items at hand can sound rather insubstantial in their standard orchestral garb; in this reduction, Mozart’s melodic felicities emerge to greater effect. (And there’s no reason to lament the loss of the original woodwind lines, which frankly aren’t as delectable as what Mozart would be producing just a few concertos hence.)

Mozart wrote the two concertos on this disc at the same time as K. 415, in 1783, and regarded them as an informal unit, designed to make a splash with the Viennese public, publicizing his own skills as a pianist and as a composer while also generating scores that could be published for the home market. It’s a shame, then, that these performers (or the label) fill out the disc with an early Mozart string quartet rather than the K. 415 concerto. The quartet is well-played, at least. The strings have warmth, and while there’s nothing impulsive or really intense in the playing of the quartet or the concertos, neither are these bland sight-reading sessions. The best word for these performances: gracious.

—James Reel

I DON'T

posted by James Reel

This week in the Tucson Weekly I review a likeable production of an unlikable show:

Live Theatre Workshop has pulled from the archives I Do! I Do!, a dusty little musical from the creators of The Fantasticks. In 1992, when I reviewed a version of I Do! I Do! at another theater company, I wrote that the company "lavishe(d) a wonderful pair of singing actors on a show that nearly undermine(d) the foundation of social conscience" upon which that theater had built more than 20 seasons. However, LTW has never pretended to be a theater of social conscience; it's an organization that does its best to entertain people, usually with pretty good material, in a very small space. I Do! I Do! certainly entertains a lot of people, but that task must fall to the two cast members, because the material is as stale as 40-year-old wedding cake.

See me take a bite out of it here.

MIDORI GOES TO SCHOOL

posted by James Reel

All right, now we’re getting caught up with my contributions to Strings magazine. The current issue contains my cover feature on Midori’s ambitious efforts as a music educator:

Yes, it took tireless practice and dedication for Midori Goto, at age 11, to become a pigtailed prodigy playing in the world’s most prominent halls. But now that the violinist is in her 30s, instead of coasting through a conventional concert career, she’s working even harder. Not content to merely show up and play, Midori has positioned herself as today’s leading performer-educator. She wedges concert engagements into a remarkably full schedule that includes chairing the strings department and holding the Jascha Heifetz Chair in Violin at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. She also creates community-engagement events in the United States and Asia through her Orchestral Residencies Program and projects called Music Sharing, Midori & Friends, and Partners in Performance. Consider her datebook this past February. At the beginning of the month, Midori did a week-long Orchestra Residency Program in Des Moines, Iowa. Midmonth, she joined the Miró Quartet, Marc-André Hamelin, and Johannes Moser in the first two of three programs of a series she devised for New York’s Lincoln Center that examines the musical influences and cultures of Tōru Takemitsu and Alfred Schnittke. At the end of February, she took off on a European recital tour with pianist Charles Abramovic. All this, and USC, too. “She’s a force of nature,” declares Margaret Batjer, Midori’s USC faculty colleague and concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. “She has more energy and more ideas and is more on the ball than anyone I know. It’s amazing to me that she has this whole other life beyond what she does at USC, because her commitment here seems to be full-time to us.”

You can find the full story here.

FRIENDS

posted by James Reel

Although some Tucson theater people would surely like to see me drawn and quartered, I am on friendly terms with several local actors, writers and directors. I try not to get into true friendships with them, unless I knew them before I got into the theater-criticism racket, because that could lead to all sorts of conflict of interest issues, real or perceived: Could a positive review of a friend be trusted? Could I bring myself to write negatively about a friend if that were warranted? Kathy Allen, at the Arizona Daily Star, has gone so far as to marry an actor, and she has to recuse herself from covering anything he’s involved in.

After the Tucson Weekly launched its own Facebook page for marketing purposes, it seemed logical that I, as the paper’s arts editor, should set up my own profile. At a site like this, other people can ask to become your “friend.” Some of these requests come from actual friends and family members; others come from people you may not know well (or at all) but share some of the interests you have revealed; others are just people trying to network, and make you aware of what services they might be able to sell you. (I occasionally get friend requests from cartoonists, who mistakenly believe I have any influence over what comic strips appear in the Weekly.)

What should I do when I get “friended” by some local theater person I don’t really know? At first I was reluctant to confirm or seek out such people on Facebook, because I held a very traditional interpretation of the term “friend.” How would it look if I were Facebook friends with all these people I have to write about? But eventually I realized that these people aren’t necessarily being displayed as true friends in the old sense. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are social networking sites, and having “friends” there isn’t necessarily much different from mingling with people at a Chamber of Commerce mixer. So I decided to open myself to friendship, although I'm not going out of my way to initiate the contacts.

Am I wrong?