HARVEST

posted by James Reel

With apologies for the lack of blogging recently—I’m involved in too many projects, and trying to work ahead a little so I can take next week off from KUAT—here is my weekly link to my weekly contribution to the Tucson Weekly. This time, it’s only a restaurant review, but a highly positive one:

How ironic that Oro Valley, an area synonymous with unchecked sprawl and eco-pillaging, should be home to a restaurant devoted to sustainability, from the seafood to the material used in the servers' shirts. Harvest Restaurant cannot be held responsible for the sins of Oro Valley. That big ol' strip mall would be there even if the restaurant weren't--and the high quality of Harvest's fare is sure to put any Oro Valley hater in a forgiving mood. The restaurant is owned by the MaRKeT Group, which is also responsible for Zona 78 and the Grill at Hacienda del Sol, and all of these venues are lucky to share executive chef Ramiro Scavo. His participation alone signals that the menu will be fairly upscale; in this case, it emphasizes locally harvested ingredients served in peak season. Of course, ahi tuna, Lake Superior whitefish and Arctic charr are hardly local, but they are brought in from "sustainable waters."

Find the full review here.

SECRETS OF RADIO FUNDRAISING

posted by James Reel

What are the secret strategies we use in public radio to get you to part with your hard-earned cash? Listener June Thomas has figured out a lot just by listening to pledge breaks, and she fills you in with this analysis published by Slate.

AUSTRIAN POLAR OPPOSITES

posted by James Reel

Here are two SACD reviews I contributed to Fanfare some time ago, one disc drawing from Austrian Romanticism, the other from Austrian Classicism:

BRUCKNER Symphony No. 9 * Yannick Nézet-Séguin, cond; O Métropolitain du Grand Montréal * ATMA SACD2-2514 (hybrid multichannel SACD: 67:01)

Here’s a gloriously engineered Bruckner Ninth; alas, it’s not a very well-interpreted one. Montreal’s second orchestra, which has fared very well in earlier recordings, offers patches of drab playing here, perhaps the result of lack of inspiration from the score and the podium. It isn’t that Yannick Nézet-Séguin doesn’t have ideas; it’s just that they tend to sabotage the music. The balances can be odd, with the horns particularly distant, to the detriment of some of the chordal and melodic voicings.

Nézet-Séguin, I’m coming to realize, is an all-purpose slow conductor, like late Giulini and, more grotesquely, late Celibidache, and that has deadly results in this particular work. (But keep in mind that Giulini’s mid-career recordings of this symphony are superb; don’t overlook them.) At these tempos, the repeated figures in the first movement’s second subject immediately turn banal, and everything reaches a point of stasis just before the return of the introductory material after the exposition; this should be a moment of anticipation, not torpor. The second movement comes off all right, although it could benefit from a bit more punch, but the third movement fares no better than the first; within five minutes, the score is sinking into mud when it should be striving toward heaven. In general, Nézet-Séguin flounders when Bruckner fails to provide a strong melodic line, but even his manipulations of the best parts lack coherent motivation. Nézet-Séguin and Bruckner seem to be a poor match. James Reel

MOZART Serenade in D, K. 250, “Haffner”; March in D, K. 249 * Gordan Nikolić, cond; Netherlands Chamber Orchestra * PENTATONE PTC 5186 097 (hybrid multichannel SACD: 57:25)

Mozart wrote his K. 250 serenade in 1776 as entertainment music for a party celebrating the coming nuptials of the daughter of Salzburg’s mayor, Siegmund Haffner. This was about the same time Mozart was writing his five violin concertos, so not too surprisingly there’s, in effect, a violin concerto tucked into this work, constituting its second through fourth movements. There’s also slow “serenade” music, a couple more minuets beyond what’s in the concertante sequence, and two full-fledged sonata-allegro movements. Launch it all with the separate march that probably opened the festivities (or at least was played as the musicians made their entrance), and you have nearly a full hour of attractive Classical pleasure-music with flashes of substance going well beyond the requirements of the occasion.

Gordan Nikolić, former concertmaster of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra of Europe, now serves as concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra. He leads this performance from the first-violin desk, and plays his solos with a singing yet pulsating line. He presides over a performance (on modern instruments) in which the stately passages carry abundant inner life, while never sounding rushed, and the fast movements sprint by with lots of punch and impact along the way. It’s a taut, vibrant performance, engaging from beginning to end.

PentaTone has made some of the best-sounding orchestral SACDs on the market, with utterly natural reproduction of ensembles given clear spatial definition, but in this project, the upper frequencies are a little harsh. That’s very unusual for PentaTone, and the only drawback to an attractive release. James Reel

AGAIN UPON THE MATTRESS

posted by James Reel

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time this morning perusing the 25th-anniversary issue of the Tucson Weekly. There’s a lot of fascinating material there, looking back at the last quarter century of the publication and of Tucson, and even looking ahead. But the main item of interest, of course, is my contribution, which this week is a review of a little show on the east side:

_Once Upon a Mattress_ is remarkable--a second-string musical that somehow holds up much, much better than some other 50-year-old shows. This fractured fairy-tale version of “The Princess and the Pea” is witty, a little cynical and not the least bit dated. It's getting an enjoyable production on Tucson's far eastside by the Da Vinci Players.

Note that the use of “eastside” in that last sentence was imposed by the editor. I would never use a compound word like that as a noun, no matter what the increasingly idiotic AP Style Manual says. “Eastside” is an adjective; “east side” is the noun. “Backyard” and “backseat” are adjectives; “back yard” and “back seat” are the nouns. There can be no argument over this until people start using “frontyard” and “frontseat” as nouns, too.

Anyway, you can read my review here.

A NON-CLASSICAL MUSICAL OBSESSION

posted by James Reel

At another blog, I stumbled upon a video of Jacques Brel singing his terrific song “Ne me quitte pas.” As you’d expect, Brel superbly brings out many of the song’s dark elements—but there’s a version by someone else I’ve always liked even more. First, get the song from the composer’s mouth (and seeing his face is tremendously important here):

If you can believe it, there’s an even more devastating version by Frida Boccara from 1970; by the end of the song, she sounds like she’s a candidate for the Suicide Hotline. This clip doesn’t show Frida singing; it’s just a montage of stills. But listen to her intense, disturbing performance:

CLASSICIZING ITUNES

posted by James Reel

The people who design the leading databases that organize music files have never understood the special needs of classical music—like, for instance, the composer serves as a far more important organizing field than the performer. In this imperfect world, Randy Salas of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune offers a primer on how a classical fan can best manage iTunes.