Through These Ears

Behind The Scenes With Andreas Scholl

Countertenor superstar Andreas Scholl has produced a very nice short film of interviews and rehearsal voyeurism.  Scholl hosts a behind-the-scenes look at rehearsals for Handel's Partenope at the Danish Royal Theater.  Even though they're brief, he gets some good insights into the work from both Music Director Lars Ulrik Mortensen and scenic designer Lous Désiré.

I suppose Scholl wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible with this, so everyone speaks English.  Although you may have to turn the volume up a bit to hear all the rehearsal chatter.

(From il giornale della musica)

Scholl makes an interesting point about Handel possibly adapting to the new (for his day) style simply to satisfy the public.  He ran his own company in London, and had to constantly struggle to turn a profit.  Handel's fortunes went through many boom and bust cycles, and it was a tough scene.  Sometimes the fad was for oratorios, sometimes for opera in the Italian style, sometimes it was something else entirely. Partenope was premiered at the King's Theatre, Haymarket, London, in 1730. 

This was just a couple of years after Handel had to shut down the company he ran for about ten years, the Royal Academy of Music (no relation to today's RAM).  He dissolved his company because everyone in London wanted to see John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and similar works.  So his response was to start a new Academy, and Partenope came along soon after.  Small wonder he was trying to strike a new pose with the music.

So London has been a tough scene for almost 300 years.  No wonder Daniele Gatti was looking for a break.

The short film is well worth watching.  The short-haired brunette is Tuve Semmingsen and the blonde singer we see briefly is the Partenope, Ingrid Dam-Jensen.  Also, it turns out that Scholl's doing three of these behind-the-scenes films, and he has a link to the first two on his own website. And is it just me, or does Scholl's speaking voice sound like a cross between Placido Domingo and Mandy Patinkin?

Danish radio station DR P2 will be broadcasting the performance live on October 11.

Internet Radio Royalty Payments Not Settled Yet - Contrary To Reports

Today's news that the RIAA, DiMA, and the National Music Publishers Association (and other publishing groups) seem to have reached some sort of agreement on music over the internet is apparently not all it's cracked up to be.  Some good will come out of this, should the Copyright Royalties Board (CRB) approve the settlement these groups submitted to them, but, contrary to how this is being portrayed in some circles, it doesn't fix the problem with internet radio.

Here's a good explanation at the Broadcast Law Blog of what's really going on.

This agreement deals with limited-time downloads and interactive streaming.  The latter is becoming increasingly common, so it's good to get that out of the way finally, although since that's mostly about "on-demand" streaming, it doesn't cover anything else.  But how many people really do limited-time downloads?  I wonder if this move is intended to push that to the forefront a little more?  It's certainly a good marketing ploy if they can swing a useful price differential.

One thing this agreement does do, though, is allow people like me to record a stream without being chased down for royalties by the RIAA as if I were an illegal file-sharing college student.  I don't make copies of anything I record off the internet, I don't post it on the torrents, and I don't do anything else except listen to it again once in a while.  So I'm certainly happy about that.

Still, this does not deal with everyday internet radio, which is the real problem.  Live365 and Rhapsody are still in limbo, and this is the biggest obstacle right now for those who want to start new internet radio stations.  I suspect the CRB will want to get the biggest bang for the buck, and stick with the SoundExchange (an unincorporated division of the RIAA, naturally, and a near monopoly) deal they struck last year.  While this year's figure - $.0018 to stream one "performance" to one listener - doesn't look like much, this adds up in a hurry with lots of listeners, tuning in 24/7.  Unless we're talking about an internet radio station that operates for one hour a day, and they only tell their friends about it.

And let's not forget that this configuration is based on the pop music format, i.e. one "performance" = one song. Classical Music gets screwed in places like iTunes, because a four movement symphony counts as four different tracks.  Internet radio has the same problem.  In one sense, this is okay, because Classical works are generally longer than rock tunes, and should cost more.  That's fair enough for direct sales of a recording.  But radio stations can get killed if they handle it this way.

What will happen is just what this commenter on the Broadcast Law Blog said after last year's punt by the CRB:

Strategically, we'll withstand the increase by doubling the minimum length of each selection we play, creating less numbers of "performances", as well as aggressively seeking out marketing deals with labels housed outside the U.S. that are willing to provide airable product and waive U.S. performance rights fees on behalf of their orchestras in exchange for preferred treatment on our station and website.

Guess what this means?  Fewer US records being played, and fewer listeners for US labels, which usually means US artists and composers get shaft as well. And nobody should even bother making a recording of, say, Chopin Waltzes or Preludes, because nobody will play it if they have to pay a royalty for every single short work.

Here's the official press release, if it helps.  I believe the CRB has until Oct. 2 to make a ruling.  Let's hope cooler heads prevail.

Early Music Festival Broadcasts On Concertzender

Tomorrow, Dutch public broadcaster Concertzender will be featuring lots of Early Music concerts.  Earlier in the day, they'll play a recording of excerpts from two interesting concerts from a couple of years ago and earlier this year featuring Spanish music of the 17th and 18th Centuries.

Thursday morning (8:00AM EST) will be music from a concert recorded in April of this year called "Preludium tot het Slaapkamertje".  The complete program isn't listed, but it seems to be cantatas with the theme of mourning.  Slaapkamertje means bedroom or sleeping chamber, and in this case it means the eternal sleep of death.  It's the theme of the concert (I can't find a complete list of the extracts), and the composers are all North German: Nicholas Bruhns, Johann Christoph Bach, Dietrich Buxtehüde, and J.S. Bach.  The Bruhns piece is a Madrigal Cantata entitled Hemmt eure Tränenflut (Restrain the Flow of Your Tears).  The performers for this concert are:

Hannah Morrison and Hayat Chaoui, sopranos
Hanna Kopra, mezzo
Immo Schröde, tenor
Michiel Meijer, bass
Collegium AD MOSAM
Huub Ehlen, cond.
(recorded at the North Church in Amsterdam)

The second hour of will feature excerpts from an Early Music Festival from December 2006.  This is a really interesting program because they'll have tonadas by Spanish composers, before the Italian style had too much influence in Spain, and then music from the following century which display a more European Baroque style.

It's interesting to notice the difference between the various regional musical styles then and the way the Classical Music world is now.  Communication, trade, and other forms of cultural exchange were vastly different, and influences spread more slowly, although not entirely in different ways.  I find it refreshing to hear the different regional flavors, the more obvious folk influences, and the stamp the various languages left on music of earlier eras.

These days it seems like almost the only time anyone talks about the influence of language on musical style is when discussing Leoš Janáček or Harry Partch.  In the 17th Century, there was a much more obvious connection between the folk music and "serious" music all around Europe.  The regional styles were very distinct.  Of course, there are still regional styles today, but they manifest themselves in different ways.

In the case of Spanish music, there was already a long tradition of an Iberian musical character by the time the pieces in tomorrow's concert were written.  From the early Celtic influences in Galatia to the heavy Moorish influence of the Middle Ages, not to mention the unique Basque traditions and whatever indigenous folk tradition was left over from the Visigoths, Spain certainly had its own style.  There's no mistaking a strummed viheula, for instance, and the plaintive Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso el Sabio could not have been created elsewhere.  I can't find a useful overview anywhere online; everything seems to be niche sites on flamenco and things.  For anyone interested in learning more, this book is a good place to start.  There's also some good insight in this interview with Baroque specialist Eduardo Lopez Banzo.

The rhythms of the language are inherent in folk music, and when that gets adapted to the academic tradition of concert music, that character remains for a long time.  More modern composers such as Granados, Albeniz, and Rodrigo drew on this tradition heavily.  In the 17th Century, musicians traveled, as did printed music, but nothing like what goes on today, or even in the last hundred years.  Also, the kind of concert music I'm talking about was, like most places in Europe at the time, largely centered in the courts of the nobility, as well as in the church.  That made for a kind of bottleneck of influences (with two different filters, I suppose), allowing certain ones through and blocking others.  That kind of situation also tended to magnify the effect of some influences.

One of the biggest changes - and this wasn't unique to Spain by any means - is in form.  Gradually, composition grew from the basic strophic-with-refrain format inherent in songs and poetry to a more academically structured work.  The shape of the music adapts to the more complex structure, and more emphasis is placed on the big picture.  Other differences will become apparent as the concert goes on.

Tomorrow's concert will be particularly instructive because the first half will feature music from the 17th Century, much closer to the folk origins, and the second half will be works written in the 18th Century.  The name of the program is "La Rosa que Reyna" (The Rose that Ruled?), after an aria for soprano, two oboes and continuo composed by Juan de Navas at the end of the 17th Century.  That's on the program, of course, as are works by Juan Hidalgo, José Marín, Sebatian Dúron, and Juan García.

(Annoyingly, my record collection seems to have a gap between the composers from the late 16th and very early 17th Century and those working at the beginning of the 18th.  That will have to change.)

The performers are:

Las Esferas
Maria Estefania Perdome Nogales, soprano
Arwen Bouw and Maite Larburu Garmendia, violin
Alfonso José Lopez-Salazar, theorbo & guitar
Jörn Boysen, harpsichord
María Sanchez Ramírez, cello and director

Later in the day, at 2:00PM EST, they're featuring recordings of some of the top Early Music artists working today, to get everyone in the mood for a new Early Music festival which begins on Friday, Oude Musiek Oude Podia (Old Music, Old Stages).  This program is called "De Oude Speeldoos" (The Old Musicbox), and will have music that will be played by these artists live during the Festival itself.  They'll have works by Baroque composers including Rameau and J.S. Bach on recordings by artists including Emma Kirkby, Ton Koopman, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, and Jakob Lindberg. 

The whole program is here.  They'll repeat this program next Thurdsay, Oct. 2, and the actual Festival starts on Friday, Sept. 26.  Concertzender will be recording parts of it for future broadcast.

Proms 73: Vaughan Williams, Xenakis, Holst

(Following from this preliminary post)

Sometimes I have to admit that I'm guilty of being the kind of listener about whom Thomas Beecham said, "The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes."  I'm not English, obviously, but I can't deny that there are times when I just like the cool sounds.

Proms 73 was one of the better programming decisions I've seen in a while, obvious as the them was.  The Planets and Sinfonia Antarctica are not exactly galaxies apart in their character and perspective, and I would imagine that a space-themed work by any composer other than someone of Xenakis's unique vision would have made this program seem much more mundane.  Taking a trip to the Plëiades provided enough separation in time and soundspace to make the Holst sound more fresh than it would have otherwise.  That's what good programming is supposed to do.

Vaughan Williams's Sinfonia Antarctica sounds exactly like what it is:  a score trying to depict musically what a movie is showing visually.  Without knowing this was specifically about an Arctic expedition ("Scott of the Antarctic"), the otherworldly sounds - even the wind machine - could evoke any kind of alien landscape.  In the end it's all a bit too blatant for me, but that's just my own attitude towards the composer in general.

The performance was very straightforward, took the music at face value, and Brabbins even had a bit of fun with it.  This wasn't exactly an inspired performance overall, but for the most part well-played and directed.  Brabbins created the necessary tension most of the time, and mostly let the music do what it does. I was taken to that alien landscape more by the sounds of Vaughan Williams's music than I was by anything special in the performance.  Perhpas I was too busy anticipating the Xenakis to appreciate this properly, but that's how it goes.

There certainly are plenty of cool sounds in Xenakis's Plëiades, and right from the start he creates an entrancing soundworld.  But there's so much more going on that makes these sounds work in the ear, so it doesn't get tedious within two minutes.  It's the shifting patterns that does it; that, and the composer's attention to the details of sound.  There is a wide variety of instrumental color.  The first three sections feature instruments of a particular kind.  The first movement uses metallic sounds, in this case a microtonal instrument Xenakis invented for it called a sixxen - from SIX players and XENakis.  The second movement uses mallet/keyboards (such as the vibraphone).  Next the music combines sixxen and mallet instruments with skins (drums), and the final movement uses drums of different sizes. if figures are repeated, the kaleidoscopic palette of sound keeps it fresh.  This only happens, though, when the composer is extremely skilled, and has the imagination and craft to put it together.

Speaking of skill, the musicians of 4-MALITY and O Duo were pretty outstanding.  They dedicated a lot of effort to this, which is the only that this kind of music ever happens.  Anyone who saw or heard the concert will know that they spent four days of intensive rehearsal with a Xenakis expert (who's name I didn't catch), and played with a click track in their ear for the performance.  That's probably the only way anyone could get through all those polyrhythms and aural textures.

Interestingly, one of the reasons why Xenakis composed in this rather exotic soundworld is because he was interested in working outside of the standard realm of pitch and harmony.  I'll let the composer's own words speak here:

"Linear polyphony is self-destructive in its current complexity. In reality, what one hears is a bunch of notes in various registers. The enormous complexity prevents one from following the tangled lines and its macroscopic effect is one of unreasonable and gratuitous dispersion of sounds over the whole sound spectrum. Consequently, there is a contradiction between the linear polyphonic system and the audible result, which is a surface, a mass.

This inherent contradiction with polyphony will disappear only once sounds become totally independent. In fact, since these linear combinations and their polyphonic superpositions are no longer workable, what will count will be the statistical average of isolated states of the components’ transformations at any given moment."

In other words, cool sounds.  (The above quote is from here.)

The sounds were so inspiring that someone in the audience was apparently moved to vocalize his enthusiasm at the top of his lungs (approx. 9:10 into it).  Because the music had reached one of several ecstatic plateaus, and the sounds were so...well...otherworldly, this extra spontaneous noise hardly even seemed out of place.  I'm sure there plenty of people in sympathy with the feelings of the noisemaker, who in almost any other circumstance would be (quite rightly) shushed within an inch of his life.

The Planets was something of a let-down after all that.  Brabbins did not get the best from the BBC SO players.  Ragged wind entrances and what sounded to me like a lack of enthusiasm in the upper strings much of the time kept this from being anything more than an average performance.  He has some fine ideas for the piece, but the musicians needed to do more than just wallow in the spacey orchestra sounds.  This is one of those cases where I was definitely enjoying the composer much more than the performer(s).

One of these days, I'm going to get someone to organize a concert program featuring excerpts from famous film scores and the serious works from which they were stolen inspired.  Both the Vaughan Williams and the Holst are good examples, even more so because theSinfonia Antarctica is actually a film score turned into a concert piece.  As for the connection between the The Planets and film music, all I can say is that I remember when we played this piece back in my university orchestra days.  So many of the student musicians were muttering, "Man, this is ripped off from Star Wars," that the conductor had to actually stop rehearsal and make the announcement that the piece was was completed in 1916.  I used to have fun with this stuff in my record store (remember those?) days as well.  Any title for this program probably shouldn't include the term "Human Xerox Machine", but I'm sorely tempted.

I must add one comment about the overly intrusive applause between every single movement.  Putting aside for the moment the argument about whether or not anything should be permitted between movements, one thing has become clear to me.  Either my suggestion about encouraging the "shuffle", or any other idea of some way to acknowledge the moment besides clapping would certainly prevent loud noises from stepping all over the last note, as happened at the end of Uranus.  Even if someone just can't wait, or perhaps in the event that someone just couldn't tell the music wasn't over, the soft shuffling of feet or a light murmur definitely wouldn't have killed the moment.  That's really what it's all about anyway. 

Curiously, there was no applause between movements in the Vaughan Williams.  That only started in the Holst.  Did someone, merely intending to show their appreciation for just that moment, unintentionally cause a cascade effect?  It sure got worse and worse after every movement.  Of course, once it becomes obligatory and uniform, the whole point of applauding just for that one bit gets lost.

If one little friendly, polite, non-snobbish, inclusive and encouraging remark had been made beforehand about what sort of gestures or sounds were appropriate in these situations, it would most likely have prevented the most egregious moments,as well as enabled whoever it was to actually communicate his appreciation of the moment to the players. As for the incident of stepping all over the last note, even if one is going to allow clapping for the lack of any other inspired choice, the mere mention of, you know, waiting for a moment before bursting into applause would have helped immensely.  But we're afraid to do that because we don't want to appear snobbish or contribute to the oppressive, stuffy atmosphere that supposedly scares people away, etc.  Argh.  Rant ends.

My recommendations for recordings of all these works are:

Vaughan Williams from the complete set conducted by Adrian Boult (can't find an individual release),

The Xenakis performed by the musicians for whom the piece was written,

and for the Holst, Boult again, or Gardiner with an added bit of fun from Percy Grainger.

Valery Gergiev at the Klara Festival: Ustvolskaya, Tchaikovsky, and Silvestrov

(Following from this post)

This concert both met and exceeded my expectations.  It was great to hear two interesting works which were new to me, and to hear Gergiev in music far outside the Standard Rep.

The program:

Ustvolskaya:  Symphony No. 3
Tchaikovsky:  Violin Concerto*
Silvestrov:  Symphony No. 6

Sergei Krilov, violin*
Maryinsky Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, cond.

I had the broadcast start time as an hour before the concert itself actually began.  It turns out this is because Klara had an hour of preliminary stuff as part of the official broadcast, just to set up the mood for the actual concert program.  There was some discussion of Ustvolskaya and Silvestrov, as well as a nice interview - in English, with quick translations by the host - with Krilov (he likes new music and has new works written for him - I like him already).  He spoke about working with Gergiev,

Interspersed amongst the dialogue were recordings of various violin works, including performances by Salvatore Accardo and .  I don't know how I would feel if I was a journeyman violinist coming in to do one of the biggest warhorses of them all, and the radio station was playing other famous works performed by bigger names for the hour before I went on.  Krilov probably had no idea, of course.  The interviewer asked him if he liked to listen to the rest of the concert when he was performing, or if he just focused on his own concerto and nothing else.  I found that a bit odd.  I understand being curious if the soloist stayed around for the rest of the program after he was done, but before?

The only other oddity was the fact that sometimes they cut off the end of whatever recording they were playing to go back to the live signal.  They even did this in between pieces.  I know they had a lot of air time to fill, but maybe they were trying to avoid becoming the talk-fest that some German and French concerts broadcasts can become. 

Now on to the music.

Much like the couple of chamber works I've heard by Galina Ustvolskaya, her Symphony No. 3 was stark and on the dark side.  It's all sparse textures, often unisons, or tone clusters in the winds.  As seems to be her style, she is very economical with her ideas and figures.  The work is built around a seven-note motif, and a limited set of intervals.  Deliberate pacing, almost laser-like direct musical lines are enhanced by the sharp, pointed winds and percussion which make up the bulk of the instrumentation.  The piece isn't long, only about sixteen minutes or so.

The spoken text (there was no listing for the male voice doing the reading) is from a collection of medieval religious and literary works of a leading medieval scholar and chronicler, Herman of Reichenau, aka Hermanus Contractus ("Herman the Cripple").  All of Ustvolskaya's symphonies feature liturgical texts of some kind, and all appear to come from this source.  The composer herself has stated that she does not practice any religion, but rather considers herself to be "spiritual", and composes her music with that kind of outlook.  So, as there doesn't seem to be any personal connection to the religious text itself, I wonder if the semi-reclusive and physically self-conscious Ustvolskaya feels some sort of kindred spirit in Herman the Cripple?

Ustvolskaya apparently notates her music without barlines, but the deliberateness of the lines and figures probably helps keep things together.  The same note values recur along with that seven-not figure, which seems to a slight reworking of her famous teacher's "DSCH" signature, with one added note and repetition of another.  The figure nearly always ends with the same note repeated three times, which creates a sense of forward motion.  A plaintive, semi-dramatic reading of the "Jesus Messiah, Save Me" text fits right in with the uncomfortable, almost suffering instrumental music.

Apart from the occasional rough wind entrance (like the opening chord), Gergiev had things well under control.  However, I did not get the sense of much inner detail outside of highlighting the seven-note riff and maintaining the same deliberate (there's that modifier again), pointed attack on each note from the both the percussion and winds.  It wasn't like he just glossed over all the details, but more as if he saw the obvious basics in the music, and that was it, let's play.  The composer's economy of means probably makes her scores pretty readable, bar lines or no.  But it sounded to me like there was some deeper context that was left out.

In the end, I think this is a case of Gergiev getting a pretty clean, straightforward performance, certainly bringing out the main points of the piece, but lacking in depth.

An interesting overview of Ustvolskaya and her work can be found in the following link.  As always with composers who lived in or through the Soviet-ear, it's best to take the political stuff with a grain of salt.

The Lady with the Hammer

As for the Tchaikovsky, Krilov was fairly solid at first, if a bit too slow at the opening.  I don't think that was Gergiev.  He's got a nice sound, if not as bold as some, and he and the conductor used quite a bit of rubato, but with excellent taste, never breaking the line or making the larger picture sound disjointed (Kennedy's Elgar could learn from this).  Once things got going though, the runs got rougher and rougher, and Krilov kept falling behind the beat.  He was really not on top of the technical challenges, and strained to hit the top notes of runs, had some out of tune passagework, and didn't really shine at all.  Musicality was a distant second at that point, and Krilov's overly-mannered cadenza didn't really do much to allay that feeling.  In fact it seemed to highlight the technical flaws more than make things like a certain questionable appoggiatura sound spontaneous. Fine playing in the orchestra, for the most part.

The wind writing in the second movement is the best part of this whole thing for me, and that was nice right up until the badly out tune horn stepped all over the otherwise sweet violin entrance.  Ouch.  Both Krilov and Gergiev had just the write colors going (except the horn on its next entrance).  I could have used a more open top end from the violin here.  There wasn't a wide enough range of shading as we keep coming around to the melody.  There's a point where the light needs to shine through at the top of the phrase, and it didn't work.  Good things happening in the winds and lower strings made the difference.

The last movement went the same way as the first movement.  Simple as that.  Apply what I said about that questionable appoggiatura back then to the open pizzicato chords of the last, and then add the bit about not enough openness on top from the second, and nothing else needs to be said.  Also repeat the bit about good things from the winds.  It's nice to hear really good woodwind sounds from a Russian orchestra again.

Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov's 6th Symphony was a treat to listen to, just for the instrumental sounds.  The almost mechanical shifting of the bright colors and sharp angles in strings and winds to darker hues (brass, winds, percussion, piano) made me think of so many pieces from the '50s and '60s where it's just one solid splash of stacked instruments after another.  In this case there was a slight feeling of rotating around a rising scale.

Even though the pacing was just as deliberate as the Ustvolskaya, there was more energy.  Gergiev had the pulsing chords breathing, and the line was maintained much more in this work.  I don't think it was because the note values in the Silvestrov were longer.  This piece could very easily have become a plodding, sloppy mess with all those staggered entrances and hazy chords and rumbling pedal points.  There were quite a few moments of Ligeti-esque textures.  Structurally, the Silvestrov piece seems similar to Ustvolskaya's Symphony.  Both works share a focus on refrains and repeated patterns which both develop and then come back in their original shape.  Silvestrov included a full string section in his score, as well as more winds, and he indulges in a much thicker soundworld.  I think Gergiev heard a little Scriabin here, especially the gauzy strings and harp section, which almost entered some kind of movie dreamworld and played it that way.

The dream state ends, and for some reason the previously hazy clouds of color come together as a slightly fractured Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, done at Leonard Bernstein's pace.  The sharp angles from the opening poke through the Mahler clouds, but don't break it up all together.  What happens is that the elements have become fragmented and fractured enough that they are no more than the little bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, constantly shifting around, but at well-timed intervals.  That's really the overall impression I get of this piece.

I have to admit Gergiev really brought out the details this time.  This is the kind of work that has so many seemingly static, episodic moments which can quickly turn into a disjointed mush.  Instead, I got a sense of clear forms and a focused direction.  He gets some really solid playing from everyone here, especially the brass, and I would imagine that as much as the various chords get transformed over and over, this must be really difficult to play in tune. It's also goes on for a long time (a real critic would say too long, in fact:  just over 55 minutes with no pause).  But to me Silvestrov lets that occasional breath of fresh air come back in just in time to set off the next wave of gauze, so I don't mind.  Gergiev was certainly in no hurry to get through it either.  Some may look down on the heavy reliance on such a famous melody, but in the end I think it ends up being so fractalized that one hardly notices that it's the anchor keeping the rest of the music from floating away and dissipating.

My confidence in Valery Gergiev has been restored somewhat, although not entirely.  I'm also going to find a recording of the Silvestrov, possibly here.

Brahms, Liszt, Scriabin, Andsnes, Muti: Reliving Some Beautiful Music

This was supposed to be the second part of my first attempt to give "before and after" posts about a particular broadcast, as I discussed here.  It didn't work out exactly as planned, but there are still some worthwhile things to be said about the music.

First of all, I have to admit to messing up my "Scheduled Post".  It was meant to go up a day earlier, obviously, and didn't actually appear until something like halfway through the first broadcast I listed.  I'll make sure to post any repeat broadcast of this concert.  The post was up in plenty of time to catch the second one (today's Valery Gergiev concert), and my review of that will be up tomorrow.

In any case, the only truly memorable part was the Liszt, although Leif Ove Andsnes was excellent in the Brahms.  Since there isn't much point in going over a performance nobody heard, I'll just leave it at that and recommend this instead.  Is it possible that Andsnes hasn't recorded the Second Concerto?  I like the first one better anyway.  I'm going to keep my eye out for him doing more chamber music this year.  On the Philharmonic website, they have some very good podcasts and video of an interview with Leif Ove Andsnes about the Brahms and working with conductors (this was apparently his first time working with Muti).  Charles Zachary Bornstein, the Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic, talks about the Scriabin (which to my ears only really got going about half way in).  They completely ignore the Liszt work, so I'll talk about that by itself.

It turns out that I misremembered the opening of Liszt's symphonic poem, "From the Cradle to the Grave".  It's actually his Faust Symphony which opens up with that tone row.  Incidentally that piece also bears the stamp of the Princess Caroline, as it was she who recommended (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) to Liszt that he add that final choral movement, with the tenor solo and Goethe verse.  Of course, Liszt was extremely fond of choral music, and wrote a fair bit of it himself, so he was most likely easily persuaded.  To me, that bit sounded out of place, even before I knew it was only tacked on much later.

"From the Cradle to the Grave", however, was even more beautiful than I remembered, and it's something that I think more people need to hear.  Regardless of whether or not one is a fan of his music (I'm not really a fan of his orchestral music outside of Faust and this), this is a special little piece.  Naturally, it begins with a gentle lullaby.  Liszt is already hinting at darker things to come, nudging just the right note up or down in the middle of a phrase.  At times the opening section hovers between Bruckner's best quiet melodies and a major/minor shifting that is more typical of Fauré.  I must say that Muti has the New York Phil. sounding very French towards the end of this section, and those players really are something when all the planets align.

An uplifting, Italian tune comes into view, quickly becoming more and more energetic, interrupted by a dotted figure in the brass.  This dotted figure becomes an undercurrent, then takes over the entire orchestra.  Eventually the more flamboyant, bombastic Liszt we know from Les Preludes and the like comes through, but the triumph doesn't last long.  That Italian tune points downwards now, slow and somber in the low strings and bassoon and bass clarinet.  The atmosphere is very moody now, with angular, almost menacing intervals that wouldn't be out of place in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which wouldn't be written for another twenty five years.  Muti has the mix of the full string chords and winds sounding almost Wagnerian here; it's quite appropriate, and without overdoing it at all.

The violins turn the melody back around to a reprise of the lullaby, still with a hint of the central melody.  Liszt plays it just as autumnal as Strauss in his famous twilight piece, with some more chords straight out of Fauré.  Since this is a Liszt form, the ominous dotted figure returns, as does everything else, but all is now muted, resigned.  Ever the spiritual one, he looks heavenward as the music slowly winds to a close, almost as if the life of the music itself has gone out.

This was a terrific performance, but this wonderful, different music can be found here (the Naxos version is too fast in the second and third parts).  I'm told torrents of the performance can also be found.

Help Save Concertzender From Short-Sighted Bureaucrats

I just noticed this post at On An Overgrown Path that Concertzender, the terrific Dutch Public Radio broadcaster, is in danger of being shut down.

It seems that the Classical Music channel is getting more action on the cable networks than another popular music channel, the coordinator of which wants the bosses at Dutch Public Radio to simply kill the competition. That other channel has a much higher budget, and I'm sure some bureaucrats are going to look at this from the wrong end.

Enough letters of support came through to make them to temporarily postpone the decision, but Concertzender is still apparently on death row awaiting a phone call from the governor.  Rolf den Otter (who works on their webiste, I believe) sent a message to Pliable at On An Overgrown Path asking for help getting the word out.  And a tip of the hat to him for posting about it.

Here's the Concertzender main page, where you can check out all the channels they offer. They also have a blog, where they follow concerts and the music scene.  They just finished blogging about last week's Utrecht Early Music Festival.  It's in Dutch, of course, but there are plenty of translator apps available for web browsers these days.  (I like to try to struggle through it on my own first, but if I can't hack it I always use Mozilla's Firefox browser with the FoxLingo Add-on, which can handle a good number of languages.)

den Otter also asks for people to send an email to:  mening - AT - concertzender.nl  (I'm not posting the real spelling because letting the spambots have at him won't help anyone.)

Say something like "Please don't pull the plug," and mention where you're from, so they know they have more international support.

Now here's a link to send a message of support to the people who do the good work, to become a Friend of the broadcaster, or even make a small donation. 

Classical Music Radio Broadcasts This Week - Attempting Something Different

(UPDATE:  Apparently today's (Monday) Gergiev concert on Klara doesn't start until 2pm EDT.  My apologies.)

I wrote something a while back about trying to find new and different ways to do music criticism and concert reviews.  With a bit of inspiration from Norman Lebrecht's take on more involved coverage of concerts and festivals, I'm going to try something a little different.

Rather than just a dry listing of a handful of interesting progams - which anyone can find through sites like this one - I'm going to list a couple of concert broadcasts and briefly discuss why I want to hear them, and what I might be listening for.   Afterwards I'll post a review, not only to give my view on the concert, but to follow up on my preliminary comments.  This should be a fun experiment, and we'll see how this kind of music commentary looks at the end of the week.

First, though, a bit of cheating.

I actually heard this concert months ago, but NRK is rebroadcasting it, and it's well worth hearing again, for a couple of reasons.  The program is:

Sept. 7 from 11:00am to 1:00pm EDT, broadcast on NRK Altid Klassik

Johannes Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B, op. 83
Franz Liszt: From the Cradle to the Grave (Symphonic Poem)
Alexander Skriabin: Le Poème de l'Extase

Leif Ove Andsnes, piano
New York Philharmonic
Riccardo Muti, cond.

Other than one brief moment of chamber music, it's been a while since I've heard Leif Ove Andsnes play.  I'm not the biggest fan of the Brahms 2nd Concerto, but I'm always happy to hear Andsnes, as well as that famous cello solo in the second movement.  The main reason I want to hear this concert again, though, is for the Liszt.

From the Cradle to the Grave is the last of his symphonic poems, a form which he invented.  Written from 1881-82, the original title was From the Cradle to the Coffin, but Liszt's long-time lover/companion/editor/advisor/troublemaker advised him to soften the title (a little bit more about the Princess Carolyn can be found here).  I prefer the original title.  It's an odd piece right from the start.  Liszt had already been experimenting with the outer edges of tonality and form, and had even gone so far as to compose a Bagatelle sans tonalité, and had begun to think about breaking free of tonality entirely.  This symphonic poem opens with a haunting line, which is in fact a full-on twelve-tone row.  The piece itself is not atonal, of course, and well within the Late Romantic harmony of his other works of his last years.  But it is, I think, more personal and moody than any of his other orchestral works.  That's no surprise since he wrote it near the end of his life, with declining health.  Forget about the Faust Symphony or Les Préludes. I think I find more interesting things in this piece than in any of his other symphonic poems.  I don't know why Ricardo Muti decided to resurrect this piece, but it's almost a "must hear", I think.

(Anyone interested in seriously learning about his absolutely amazing, heroice life should check out the incredible three-volume biography by Alan Walker.  Even if one doesn't care much for his music, Liszt was superhuman and led an amazing life.)

Scriabin's Poème de l'Extase is a good compliment to the Liszt work, and is one which Muti knows really well and has been championing for a long time.  Combine all that with the excellent sound of the of the NY Phil., and this is a good evening of music.  Yes, I've heard it already, but the Liszt especially deserves attention.

(UPDATE:  Review - sort of - is here.)

Sept. 8 from 1:00pm - 4:00pm EDT, broadcast on Klara

Galina Ustvolskaya: Symphony No. 3 "Jesus Messiah, save us"
Peter Tchaikovsky:  Violin Concerto in D, Opus 365
Valentin Silvestrov: Symphony No. 6 "Pathètique"

Sergei Krilov, violin
Maryinsky Theater Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, cond.

This is from the end of the Klara Festival (Flemish radio).  Gergiev, as usual, has been all over the place this summer, with varying results.  Even though he's doing music by composers from his homeland, there's no guarantee he'll know the scores very well.  The Tchaikovsky, of course, he'll know cold.  I've never heard Sergei Krilov before, so it'll be good to be exposed to a new artist.  As for the other two works, they're both fairly recent (written within the last 25 years or so), and I'm always keen to hear works I don't know by interesting composers.

Galina Ustvolskaya is a rather unusual composer.  She's sometimes described as the heir to Shostakovich, but I think that's more because of the personal connections (teacher/student, alleged lovers) than because of her music.  I don't know too much of her stuff, but from what I have heard (only chamber music, now that I think about it) her music can be both energetic and dark, with rough textures and moods.  The same could be said about Shostakovich, I suppose, but the personalities are quite different.  In any event, I haven't heard any of her music in quite some time, and have no idea how her Third Symphony, from 1983, will sound.

I've only heard a couple of orchestral works by Valentin Silvestrov, and it seemed like he was all over the place.  HIs musical language is wide-ranging, and can be appealing, from what I remember.  Perhaps doing film scores led him to be more cosmopolitan?

In any case, I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting music, as well as new artists, and this concert looks like a good fit.  Will Gergiev be able to fly in from wherever he is now on his insanely hectic schedule and make all this music work?  Does he know the Ustvolskaya and Silvestrov works well enough to get this orchestra through them with his usual cavalier approach to rehearsal?  Who knows.  I hope so.  His conducting technique is beyond reproach, but I sometimes worry about his focus and ability to bring out the details in difficult works.

Sept. 10 from 1:30pm - 4:50pm EDT - BBC Proms #73, broadcast on BBC Radio 3

Ralph Vaughan-Williams:  Sinfonia Antarctica
Iannis Xenakis:  Plëiades
Gustav Holst:  The Planets

Elizabeth Watts soprano
4-Mality
O Duo
Holst Singers (women's voices)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins conductor

There's obviously an otherworldly theme going on here.  The Vaughan-Williams piece has not worn well with me as I get older, but if Brabbins gets a little excitement out of his players and doesn't fall into that lugubrious, ham-fisted film music style that too many people use for this, I might like it again.  I kind of doubt it, but I'll still give it a shot, just because I like Brabbins.

On the other hand, I can't wait to hear the Xennakis.  It took me a very long time to be able to hear all the things he tries to do in his works, and I'm sure I'll discover new things about this one as well.  He wrote several works contemplating space and other worlds.  Plëiades is for massed percussion (to borrow from Percy Grainger) and can be both maddening and enlightening.  The percussion quartet 4-Mality (get it?) and the O Duo lads will take center stage for this big work.  I don't know if they'll be joined by any percussionists from the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

I have to say that I'm not the world's biggest fan of music strictly for percussion ensemble.  I find that too many composers rely on bursts of sound and dense layers, and assume that it's enough to just move these gestures around the different instruments without worrying about real complimentary colors or exploring the varieties of combinations available.  The results are often too episodic, less than deeply thought out, and lacking in direction for my taste, but that's certainly never the case with Xennakis.  This should be fun.

There's not much that needs to be said about The Planets, other than what I already mentioned about the Sinfonia Antarctica.  There's some good music here, which I like a lot better than Vaughan-Williams.  They had different approaches to sound and color, though, and Brabbins will know that and direct his musicians accordingly.

So that's three interesting concerts for the week, and some things to look forward to while listening to them.  I'll post separate reviews for each one, and we'll see how this approach to concert reviews develops.  Any reactions are welcome.

Marc-André Hamelin Champions Busoni, As I Heard It

I had the pleasure of hearing one of the superstars of the piano world on the radio the other day.  WDR3 had a concert by Marek Janowski conducting the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, which featured Hamelin playing a beast seen or heard rarely - Ferrucio Busoni's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra with Male Chorus, Op. 39.

The program opened with two shorter works, as the Busoni is huge.  First up was a hauntingly beautiful account of The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives.  This was minimalism at its most poignant (yes, I know Ives wasn't a "Minimalist"), as Janowski had the strings softly shift their pitches in a way that made me think of Arvo Pärt, or even Gavin Bryars's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet.  As usual, Ives was ahead of his time in so many ways, even in quiet, contemplative moments.  Janowski kept the balance just right, allowing each of the three main voices to speak clearly and independently.  It's a simple enough soundworld on its face, but it's very easy to forget that simplicity when thinking of Ives.  As a miniature (for that's what it really is), it has its own integrity, and can't be played as if it's waiting for the next piece, which some conductors seem to do. Janowski understood that.

On the other side of this coin was Webern's Im Sommerwind, a piece which I don't remember hearing before.  It's one of those early works I come across while browsing through recordings, or looking at programs of upcoming concerts I'm probably not going to attend.  This work is not a miniature, but rather comes across as a young composer trying to find his way in the heady, lush post-Romantic world of Vienna at the beginning of the 20th Century.  Webern wrote this around the same time as his

Big, sweeping orchestral gestures and throbbing chords are the rule of the day, but without a whole lot of reasons for them to be there.  Schoenberg noticed that apparently, and told Webern to stick to smaller forces like the string quartet.  The problem is that Webern's musical ideas just didn't last long enough, or have the same force of direction that the big Strauss/Mahler orchestral sound demands.  It almost sounds like he took snippets of other famous works in the genre, with the resulting impression of half-remembered dreams and incomplete thoughts. There are even a couple of chords from the opening Frühling movement of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs, which was written more than forty years later.

The piece comes across in the end as a bit of a hodge-podge effort, although Janowski gave it his full support.  The Zurich musicians played as if they believed in the music as well, so it had the best shot it's going to get.

After the miniatures, Hamlein took the stage for a work that I almost never hear.  Part of the reason is that it's a big work, requiring serious rehearsal, along with fitting in the male choir, which needs its own rehearsal time.  Obviously the logistics and pitfalls of programming and concert scheduling prevent this from being performed too often.  Also, Busoni isn't really a name most audience members will run to hear, unless it's preceded by "Bach/". 

It's a massive work, and Busoni throws in almost every gesture he can think of.  Hamelin, naturally, was wonderful.  He is the classic example of a musician for whom astonishing technique is merely his toolbox.  His musicality comes from a deep understanding of the possibilities of his instrument combined with a wide-ranging intelligence and appreciation for the music he plays.  I've heard a couple of different recordings of this piece over the years (this one by Garrick Ohlsson and the original one from John Ogdon), and never appreciated it too much.  Even though both pianists were/are terrific, the work itself never had enough overall coherence or interesting things to say.  Or so I thought, anyway.

Hamelin has lived with this piece for quite some time, and abouth ten years ago he made what is supposed to be an amazing recording of it on the Hyperion label.  I'm sure his interpretation has grown even deeper since then (but I think I'll have to get it now, especially with the Hyperion sound quality), and this performance showed.  Whole passages which normally sound bombastic and overblown suddenly take on new, genuine emotions.  Runs which are normally just busywork become intelligent, crystal clear musical statements.  I could go on and on with superlatives and fancy concert review terms, but suffice to say that Busoni never had it so good.  There's much more going on here than I realized in the past, and everyone involved deserved the rousing applause they got, and then some.

Quite stunning, and a testament to Hamlin's musical powers.  He finished the concert with a nice little arrangement of Charles Trenet's "En Avril à Paris" (arranged for piano by another virtuoso, Alexis Weissenberg).  Hamelin has long been perhaps the world's greatest champion of overlooked and underappreciated piano music, and is without question one of the finest pianists around today, if not ever.  Anyone interested in learning more about him can start here and here.  I forget if he's exclusive to Hyperion or not, but here's a list of his recording on that label.

And here's a little YouTubage of Hamelin doing a little Godowsky/Chopin.

CBC Follows Fashion Down to the Lowest Common Demoninator...

...or at least, this is how it starts:

CBC to announce Radio 2 remake in pursuit of younger audience (found via the well tempered blog)

The excuse to drastically reduce Classical Music to the office-and-housework background music slot (10am - 3pm) is the usual one:  the kids don't like it, and the station needs to attract listeners.  However, the wrinkle in this argument is The State Broadcaster's Obligation, which is.....what, exactly?

The ideal behind all government funding of the arts (which is essentially what CBC 2 or BBC 3 or RTBF Musique 3) is that it's a good thing for the government to provide arts to the people.  Obviously there is a direct legacy in Europe from the private orchestras of princes and archbishops to the modern concept of state-funded orchestras and opera companies.  But there is still the idea that the art of music (Classical, in this case) has cultural value, and there is a benefit to society in promoting it.

With this ideal as the basis for Radio 2's brodcasting of Classical Music, what happens when the culture no longer appreciates the value?  Either the State continues to spend taxpayer money on something most taxpayers don't use or want (which never stopped any government before), or they shift that funding to something which will get the listeners' attention.

The main argument that we always hear whenever government funding is taken away from Classical Music is the one voiced by Ian Morrison, spokesman for the watchdog group "Friends of Canadian Broadcasting":

The Radio Two makeover is also a departure from CBC's mandate as defined by the Canadian Broadcasting Act, said Mr. Morrison.

"The Canadian public broadcaster has a responsibility to transmit world classical culture to new generations of Canadians," he said. "They are substantially moving away from that responsibility. They falsely assume that world classical culture is not something that can be marketed to appeal to younger audiences."

The CBC Mandate doesn't say anything about which artforms the broadcaster is required to promote or support.  There is, however, plenty of language here and elsewhere in the Program Policies about the organziation's obligation to promote Canadian culture, and to help maintain it.  While that's certainly a pretty broad canvas, it's hard to prove that Classical Music in general is expressly protected.  Now, there is probably a solid argument for government support of Classical Music organizations which have been around long enough to become cultural institutions, such as the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, or the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.  However, the CBC was most certainly in violation of that policy when they decided to disband the CBC Radio Orchestra.

A main part of that orchestra's mission - and rightly so - was the promotion of music by Canadian composers.  It's no surprise that once the beancounters at the CBC took the position that this part of Canadian culture was no longer of value, they would next devalue the artform itself.

But is the CBC's obligation to a specific artform, or to the public which pays for it?  Obviously, Classical Music fans are going to hold the position that the high arts are beneficial to society, much more so than pop music.  Sadly, the programmers seem to have redefined their mandate from providing the public with (musical) culture to just enlarging their audience share.  In other words, the goal is now ratings, not to promote culture.  Once we switch to "giving the audience what they want", then Mr. Morrison's claim that the CBC's responsibility is to market Classical music to the younger audience they seek is irrelevant.

The problem is that Mr. Morrison's interpretation is based on public tastes from 1932.  Back then, Classical Music was mainstream, and there was nothing like the competition for everyone's ears like there is today.  It was an Important Cultural Artform, and was very much connected to the mostly European origins of Canadians of the time.  It still is, of course, but the younger generations just don't learn about it.  Worse, the artform itself has become devalued in certain academic circles by post-modern relativist influences due to those very European origins.  Then there is the "elitist" charge that Classical Music comes from the world of princes and archdukes, and is therefore no longer as relevant in today's more democratic society.

But it's really all about the ratings.  We're hearing the same noises from the British public about the BBC, which is behaving more like a commercial institution than one interested in providing public service.  The bosses at both believe that they can only justify their existence by the size of their audience.  Quality programming equals quantity of eyeballs and/or ears to them, so "culture" becomes relevant.  Or, even irrelevant.  Of course, catering to the lowest common denonimator also renders the original ideals behind the CBC Mandate irrelevant.

Classical Music radio audiences are dwindling, and the CBC chose to go elsewhere for those ears, rather than to try to bring them back.  This phenomenon is everywhere these days.  I know, I know, it's more due to lousy programming and poor marketing and all those other reasons.  But culturally, the CBC bosses have made a decision.  The artform I call Classical Music is not as important to them as pop culture because it cannot match those audience numbers. 

The only way to beat this is to prove that there is in fact a substantial audience for Classical Music.  That can only be done online, through internet radio, blogging, and webcasting.  Once the numbers are there, the CBC and the rest of them come crying back home in pursuit of ratings.  But by then it will be too late, because they will have probably already rendered themselves irrelevant.