CANCEL THE RESURRECTION

posted by James Reel

Here’s an interesting development: Tonight’s New York Philharmonic broadcast will feature the orchestra’s New Year’s Eve pops program, rather than the scheduled performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony under the baton of Mahler fanatic Gilbert Kaplan, the well-heeled musical amateur obsessed with Mahler’s second symphony, and a man who has bought his way onto the podiums of most of the world’s leading orchestras. Kaplan has even recorded the work twice, once for Deutsche Grammophon. Kaplan’s recent NYP performance got the customary respectful reviews, but some musicians in the orchestra thought the performance was a tragedy, and the griping, including a blog by a trombonist, got significant coverage last month. I wonder if the negative publicity led the Philharmonic’s management to pull the concert off the broadcast schedule?

BOOK 'EM

posted by James Reel

As Robert Rappaport has already blogged, the Arizona Public Media site has a new book and author feature up, and you can find it here. Look down on the bottom left of the page, and you’ll find an audio feature that I did last October, an interview with Jennifer Lee Carrell about her Shakespeare-saturated mystery novel Interred with Their Bones. By the way, I also reviewed the book for the Tucson Weekly.

DASHED HOPES AND DISILLUSION

posted by James Reel

Bad economy means less newspaper advertising means lower page count means I have to cram reviews of two theater productions into a single story in the latest Tucson Weekly. “To say that the main characters in Tell Me on a Sunday and Hedwig and the Angry Inch—both shows that opened here last weekend—are unlucky in love hardly begins to describe their stories. These are two intimate shows of dashed hopes and disillusion.” That’s how the review begins, and you can read the whole thing here.

HUGO DISTLER CD REVIEW

posted by James Reel

Written for Fanfare magazine:

DISTLER Harpsichord Concerto; Music for Knight Bluebeard * Huguette Dreyfus (hc); Martin Stephani, cond; German Bach Soloists; Stefan Malzew, cond; New Brandenburg Phil; Katharina Wingen (sop); Stefan Livland (ten) * MUSICAPHON 56860 (hybrid multichannel SACD)

Hugo Distler was a very accessible and important composer of German choral music and organ music from the early 1930s to the early 1940s; war-related despair led him to suicide in 1942, at age 34. His professional positions involved choral conducting and the teaching of that practice, so he had little motivation or opportunity to write purely instrumental music, other than organ works for church use. The Harpsichord Concerto that occupies the first half of this disc suggests that he might have become a compelling though not original voice in midcentury German orchestral music.

Its first movement is a typical example of the period’s Neoclassicism, more motororic and percussive than, say, Frank Martin’s spidery Harpsichord Concerto. The slow movement is particularly redolent of Hindemith in its harmonic structure and melodic intervals. The third, variations on a theme by Samuel Scheidt, begins in a gently piquant style that would later be associated with Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un gentilhombre, but soon reverts to the engaging sewing-machine manner of the first movement.

The string orchestra, as recorded, is large enough to swamp the soloist occasionally, and its tone is unnecessarily harsh at times, especially at the beginning of the second movement. The reason is something found only in the small print: This is a DSD surround-sound remastering of a recording made in 1964, and while there’s no obvious gimmickry going on in the rear channels, the basic sonics remain hampered by the limitations of the original production (not exactly state-of-the-art in its time). That said, this remains a performance of commitment and vitality, though not perfect instrumental balance.

The incidental music for the play Knight Bluebeard comes from a 2002 concert performance, and includes scattered applause at the ends of a couple of internal tracks, plus a small amount of ambient audience noise between numbers. Distler wrote the score for an ill-fated 1940 production of Ludwig Tieck’s happily nonsensical 1797 treatment of Perrault’s Bluebeard tale, and gave the harpsichord a constant role in the proceedings. Partly, that’s because Distler recycled a few bits and pieces of the concerto into the new score, which involves winds as well as strings, plus vocalists in a couple of brief numbers. The movements are of variable interest, but the slow music again shows the greatest debt to Hindemith. The performance is certainly able, but not enough to persuade anyone that this is a neglected masterpiece. Here, the ensemble is recorded in an over-resonant space that slightly dulls the impact of the wide frequency range (at least we get all the overtones of the harpsichord and triangle).

This disc is strongly recommended for the concerto. James Reel

CATCHING UP

posted by James Reel

Hello again! I took nearly two weeks off, during which I avoided everything resembling work, including blogging. Now, the first thing I should do is catch you up on my recent contributions to the Tucson Weekly, which I wrote before sequestering myself.

First came a preview of two provocative plays; both opened this past weekend:

Two unrelated guys named Johnson—Kevin and Christopher—will soon open intimate musical-theater shows about very confused, conflicted individuals. One of the characters is a woman. The other is, well, something it would be natural to be confused and conflicted about.

The shows in question are Tell Me on a Sunday and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. I’ll be posting the reviews later this week, but meanwhile you can find the preview here.

A review I do have for your perusal:

In a comedy propelled by Jewish stereotypes, the less ham, the better. James Sherman's Beau Jest is the sort of comedy that could quickly become tiresome if all its stereotypes came forth with full force. It's contrary to what you might expect, but Live Theatre Workshop's production of Beau Jest draws its brightness and energy not from fatiguing flailing and shouting, but from the cast and director's courage to underplay the goofiness and treat the characters like real people.

Read the whole thing here. And then check out my review of an eatery I would never have visited had it not been assigned, the buffet at Desert Diamond Casino:

Are you feeling lucky, punk? You've just blown your nest egg at the Desert Diamond slot machines, and your spouse is gunning for you, and rightly so. But before you skip town, you need one last meal, one that won't suck too many of your few remaining dollars from your pocket. So you thread your way through the aisles of slots and past the blackjack tables, and head to the buffet, to take your chances at coming away with a winning meal. OK, I know that a buffet is the antithesis of "winning meal" in most culinary circles: Leave the wrong kind of food in those trays too long, and it can turn dry or tough, and often, the dishes don't even start off well, because they're prepared to suit the blandest of tastes. But it is possible to get decent food at a buffet or cafeteria.

The details await you here.