If you read the Tucson Weekly only online, rather than picking up the print version so you can peruse the fine smut section in the back, you might overlook my preview of the Tucson Poetry Festival, which this time explores affinities between poetry and painting. The story is tucked away in an unusual spot this time, not on the Arts page. Here’s a direct link.
Yesterday afternoon, six Naxos discs arrived in my mailbox. They contained the Schubert quartet cycle recorded over the past few years by the Kodály Quartet, something I need to listen to in preparation for a magazine feature I’ll be writing on that ensemble. A couple of decades ago, I would have anticipated seven hours of string-quartet playing on a budget label with dismay. Remember all those Vox Boxes? Interesting music you couldn’t find anywhere else, played by groups with wiry tone, sometimes ragged ensemble and the dull efficiency of sight-readers. The performances by the likes of the Kohon Quartet, the Copenhagen Quartet and the Macalester Trio weren’t fundamentally bad, just unpretty. Today, in contrast, it’s difficult to find scrappy chamber-music playing on even the bargain-basement labels. The worst you’ll find anymore is a group like the recently disbanded Lindsays, whose first violinist, Peter Cropper, would often sacrifice his intonation to the excitement or intensity of the overall performance.
We owe part of the change to the improvement of music education throughout the northern hemisphere; the situation in American public schools is difficult, of course, but at the college and conservatory level students are better drilled in technique than ever before. Even an out-of-the-way land grant college like our own University of Arizona is now graduating some fine young players. And there are more of these expert players than ever before, so record companies have a greater number of ensembles to choose from.
Is there work for all of them? Well, not as soloists, and the orchestra employment situation has its ups and downs, although every American and European city big enough to have two McDonald’s franchises seems determined to have an orchestra, too, even if the players would make more money and have greater job security flipping burgers. In terms of chamber music, more and more colleges are funding quartets-in-residence, and there are plenty of presenters like the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music creating a strong touring circuit. But the list of available ensembles is getting as thick as the Nogales phone book, and there aren’t enough concert slots to support them all, so many of these performers are spending more of their time teaching … grooming more expert young players with whom to compete.
An economist would probably warn us that a boom like this can’t be sustained, and will lead to a crash within a few years, so we music consumers should enjoy it while we can. If we can. I haven’t addressed the issue of interpretation, which is a concern that has fallen by the wayside in pursuit of technical excellence, but that’s a rant for another time. Meanwhile, I’m actually taking pleasure in hearing the Kodály Quartet play six discs worth of Schubert on a budget label.
If you’re interested in how critics are responding to the premiere of the John Adams/Peter Sellars opera Doctor Atomic, about the genesis of the atomic bomb, Lisa Hirsch provides a great many links at Iron Tongue of Midnight (that's an allusion to Shakespeare, not an S&M site; trust me). Doctor Atomic is a very big deal, garnering more coverage than anything else in recent classical-music memory. Critical opinion of the work is somewhat divided, but the score, at least, seems to—if you’ll pardon the expression—blow everyone away.
Ever wonder how a performer copes with distractions—exactly what goes through the performer’s mind when unrelated noises intrude on the proceedings? Pianist-blogger Jeremy Denk reveals what was running through his mind as he played Bach recently for BargeMusic, a long-running concert series given on a barge docked near the Brooklyn Bridge. It seems that neither sirens nor choppy water can prevail over a Bach sarabande. But we already knew that, didn't we?
Members of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra used to require some settling-in after their long summer break, but they and music director George Hanson were already in top form for last night’s season-opening concert. It was a program packed with flashy, colorful music, which is exactly the sort of thing the TSO does best.
The potential disappointment on the program was the loss of a piece by contemporary composer Roberto Sierra; TSO officials, slamming their heads against the door of their depleted bank vault, were dazed enough to believe they could improve anything by jettisoning all the high-rental scores (meaning the most interesting pieces) and replacing them with safer material from the library. But for this week’s concerts, at least, Hanson did something smart: He revived Wondrous Night, which Tucson composer Dan Coleman wrote for the orchestra a couple of years ago. New music rarely gets a second outing, so a repeat of Coleman’s little six-minute opener was most welcome. It’s an attractive item; Coleman’s use of light percussion, high woodwinds and trumpets creates a starry sparkle. The work’s ecstatic throb and shimmer calls to mind portions of John Adams’ Harmonielehre, and the orchestra played with apparent relish.
Pianist Christopher O’Riley made his long-overdue return to the TSO. In 1991, his last engagement with the orchestra, he was embedded in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. This time he had the spotlight to himself in Prokofiev’s more challenging Piano Concerto No. 3. Both O’Riley and Hanson presented this as an essentially lyrical rather than percussive work, from clarinetist Jeremy Reynolds’ liquid solo at the beginning through O’Riley’s frequent cascades of nimble passagework. Again, the word “sparkle” comes to mind in a work that too many soloists treat as an opportunity to hammer the klavier, and O’Riley’s light touch cast into strong relief the passages of truly beefy chordal writing.
O’Riley brought a slightly boozy swing to the theme of the second, variation movement, and he gave the last movement real impetus through his clear articulation and rhythmic definition. Hanson and the orchestra provided completely sympathetic partnership, except that, as frequently happens here, the the strings often vanished into the tutti passages.
As an encore, O’Riley offered one of his transcriptions of Radiohead songs; most of these items don’t have a strong enough melodic profile to hold up without their lyrics, but this one at least featured enough odd modulations to sustain attention. Even so, its main interest lay in its elements of technical display; O’Riley almost made this trifle seem a flashier piece than the whole Prokofiev concerto.
For the concert’s second half, Hanson trotted out the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique for the second time in four years. This is way too soon for an orchestra with a limited schedule; why not the same composer’s Harold in Italy or the orchestra-only half of Roméo et Juliette instead? In consolation, Hanson and company did make the opium-crazed symphony worth hearing again.
The first two movements really belong to the strings, and the TSO players and Hanson beautifully brought out the music’s surging lyricism. Through sensitive use of rubato and little dynamic swells, the musicians neatly conveyed the first movement’s lovesick sighs, and the violins beautifully sang out the idée fixe, the theme that threads through the entire symphony. (Hanson, by the way, wisely kept the musical action moving by ignoring the exposition repeat.) In the second movement, if the violins lacked the last measure of mercurial ballroom grace, they came close enough. Principal trumpeter Ed Reid took the cornet option in this waltz movement, and blended the instrument’s sweet tone well with the rest of the ensemble rather than sailing out over it all.
The third movement featured some especially fine offstage solos by oboist Lindabeth Binkley and English hornist Sara Kramer. (The oboe section’s William Balentine left the stage for a while, so he may have been involved in this, too; the players were out of sight, but at least it’s obvious they weren’t clarinetists, as falsely reported by the Arizona Daily Star’s nonspecialist critic.)
The “March to the Scaffold” came off with all the necessary fiendish pomp. The final “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” got off to a grab-you-by-the-throat start, but the performance then lost a bit of momentum coming out of the intoning of the sinister Dies Irae theme. Still, Hanson whipped up plenty of energy for the final bars.
The evening included a few brief extras, some worthwhile and others decidedly not. Before the Berlioz, Hanson gave a superb, succinct introduction that linked the music’s storyline to its structure. After came a rousing encore, melding “When the Saints Go Marching In” with fragments of Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus, meant to inspire the audience to contribute to the Gulf Coast Orchestra Relief Fund.
But the evening began with an unnecessary little speech by the orchestra’s president that didn’t do anything that couldn’t be accomplished by a line of type in the printed program; at least she didn’t hawk raffle tickets. Then came a pompous arrangement of “To Anacreon in Heaven,” an English drinking song whose vocal range can be negotiated only by drunkards. We know it as the national anthem, a dreadful ditty poorly fit with dated, bellicose lyrics. Patriotism is not noble; it’s a combination of xenophobia and overweening pride, barely one step above brute tribalism. As Samuel Johnson might have noted, this is bad music pandering to scoundrels who shouldn't be taking refuge in the concert hall.
One former director of a major local arts organization used to grumble around town that I couldn’t find anything nice to say in my reviews. Well, the guy didn’t give me anything nice to say; once he was eased out and the company offered more professional, intelligent productions, there was plenty to praise, although by that time I’d gotten out of the music criticism racket and become an Evil Editor.
Anyway, I am certainly capable of offering praise when it’s due, and I have almost nothing but nice things to say in the latest Tucson Weekly about two recently opened plays.
First, there’s Criminal Hearts by the pseudonymous Jane Martin:
Part hip, pop-psych farce, part social critique, part theater of the absurd, part screwball revenge fantasy, part con-artist caper (one way or another, almost every character is conning at least one of the others), Criminal Hearts can't quite decide what sort of play it wants to be, but its indecision creates a more interesting, less-clichéd work than it would have been had it settled into a single genre.You’ll find the complete review here.
While the identity of the author of Criminal Hearts, now at Beowulf Alley, is in question, I have no doubt that Dead Certain, which opened last week at Invisible Theatre, was also written pseudonymously. This mystery thriller is credited to an Englishman named Marcus Lloyd, but surely the true author is M.C. Escher, the artist whose prints toy with symmetry and perspective, manipulating our quirks of perception and causing us to believe in infinite loops of impossible objects.You can sort all that out here.
James Reel's cranky consideration of the fine arts and public radio in Tucson and beyond.
