Another look at internet classical music services

Last year I began trying out Internet classical music services. I signed up for Last.FM and Pandora and Live365 and I've had varying levels of satisfaction with them all. Initially I had a hard time getting my mind around how these things worked, so I just gave in and allowed the music to play out as they decided. Subsequently I've tried a few other sites including ShoutCast, imeem.com and musicovery.com. With the exception of Live365's Contemporary-Classical.COM all these stations have a serious drawback for serious classical music listeners -- they seem to only play tracks not complete works of music. In a post on January 15Th in 2008 I complained about how some of Bruckner's symphonies were being broadcast on FM station only as individual movements rather than the entire piece. Time seemed to be the issue on FM, but is there something more to it? Is there some legal issue where the copyright holder is enforcing some claim? Is it the lack of classical music exposure and appreciation that causes the programmers to focus on "tunes" and not art?

The issue has become more personal as I've recently purchased a Chumby internet radio. It's a $200 wireless Linux computer, connected to my home wireless network. It's about the size of a large softball with a touch screen, USB inputs and decent on board speakers. Part alarm clock, part game console, part news ticker and part radio it's replaced my old FM radio. Unfortunately only Pandora and Shoutcast are built in, though there are some poorly documented hacks to enable others Internet broadcasters like my favorite Contemporary-Classical.COM via Live365. Pandora is what I've chosen to listen to each night. The programming, based on my personal targeted "genome" is actually very satisfying -- except for the track limitation. I was listening to Richard Strauss's "Alpine Symphony" the other night. Just as the music "climbed to the top of the mountain" it switched to something else. I'm sorry but I find that annoying and disrespectful to the composer.

Kudos to Contemporary-Classical.COM, though. They seem to play entire pieces, not just tracks. A few week back they broadcast all 20 sections of Olivier Messiaen's 'Vingt Regards su L'Enfant Jesus'. They've exposed me to several new composers and lots of intriguing music. Good for them!

More on Musical Chills

Late the other night, when I couldn't sleep, I began to think more about the phenomenon "musical chill". In an earlier post I commented on this noting that Alex Ross wrote about this effect in the New Yorker article on Mahler. Apparently this was initially described by a neuroscience investigator, Jaak Panskepp, who has describe the physical reactions ”in which listeners are suddenly overcome by a physical tremor that runs down the body and raises the hairs on the skin." Mine were more like an internal, deep in the chest slowing, where my body seems to flush and my breath stops briefly. Since sleep wasn't coming, I tried to remember other times when I experienced this "musical chill" since that first one in college many years ago. Here are a few:

During a performance of "Rigoletto" in the city auditorium in Boeblingen Germany, I watch an amazing Gilda. I don't know her name. She was with a traveling troupe from Poland in West Germany, before the wall came down. This was in 1984 and she took my breath away and gave me the "chill". I remember thinking that it was too bad she would probably never be heard in the US since travel for the poles was so limited in those days. I wonder what happened to her.

In the late 80's I heard Kurt Moll sing Osmin's aria from "The Abduction from the Seraglio" at the Met. He took all the low notes and even though I was sitting high in the balcony, I could hear every one. It was an electric "chill", followed by another one as audience sprang up cheering.

Since I'm a fan of the low notes, I also recall a similar reaction in the early 90's when a Swedish(?) Baron Ochs (can't remember his name) went beautifully very, very deep at the end of the second act of Der Rosenkavelier at the Santa Fe Opera. I actually heard him sing Ochs twice within a week, but only the first one had the effect.

"Chills" haven't been frequent here in Boulder, but I do remember two:

During Giora Bernstein's tenure as the conductor of the Colorado Music Festival he once conducted Bruckner's 8th symphony. Giora founded and led CMF for some 20 years then moved on. I knew Giora a little and had talked to him about the Bruckner. He pointed me to a recording conducted by Gunter Wand which I used to "rehearse listening". I distinctly remember two "chills": once at the end of the second movement and at the end of the finale. Unfortunately, the CMF web site apparently doesn't have anything anymore about Giora -- not a nice way to treat the founder.

Two years ago the current CMF conductor, Michael Christie, choose to do a stage performance of Osvaldo Golijov's "Ainadamar". As I often do for an unknown piece, I bought a copy of the CD and listened to it many times. Sung in Spanish, the opera is about Lorca and his execution at the 'Fountain of Tears'. Being lazy I never bothered to read the libretto's translation and as a result never got a good feel for the work. Only the beginning and end of "Ainadamar" appealed to me musically, based on the CD. I went to at least one of the rehearsals and still felt the same way. At the CMF performance, however, there were super titles available and, of course, it was played straight through. The role of Lorca is a "trouser role" and was sung by mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor. The "chill" occurred when she softly began singing the "confession" prior to the execution. I'm listening to it now and still remember the overall wonderful effect.

Most "chills" happen at live performances, but once, and only once, was I hit by a recording. It wasn't the first time I'd heard the end of the third act of Die Walküre. James Morris was Wotan and sang "Leb wohl". Maybe I was drifting off to sleep at that point, but his singing suddenly jolted me with this rare "musical chill".

So I've come up with a total of seven so far --- hopefully, I'll get another one someday.

A class and Mahler's "Resurrection"

It was a musical weekend. On Saturday I attended a one-day session at the University of Colorado on Verdi, taught by Erin Smith, a PhD candidate in Musicology. Smith knows her subject and has also mastered the technology (mostly) of switching from a PC to a DVD player. She started with early operatic forms and used musical samples to illustrate her points. All in all it was a good way to spend most of the day. The highlight of the class was a visit and performance by a CU graduate student who will be performing the role of Violetta in Verdi's "La Traviata" this fall at Mackey auditorium. I wrote her name down in my handy-dandy little pocket notebook, which I unfortunately washed over the weekend. Her name was in there, but now it's all mush, sorry. She gave a delightful performance of the final aria from the first act, then answered questions from the class -- an excellent performance.

This is one of two classes she's teaching, both seeming focused on her interests. Surprisingly, the Music Department at Colorado has offered very few classes through adult or continuing education. I believe there has been one taught occasionally, but little selection. That's a shame with all the talent the Music Department has that there isn't more. Faculty and graduate students have plenty on their plates already, but more would be appreciated.

Sunday my wife and I traveled into Denver for the final performance of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra's 2008-2009 season. Maestro Jeffrey Kahane lead an enormous orchestra and around 250 voices of the orchestra's chorus. The "Resurrection" is one of my all-time favorites. In last week's New Yorker magazine article on Mahler performances, Alex Ross commented about "the phenomenon of the Musical Chill -- the ambiguous tremor of otherness that runs through the body when, for whatever reason, a particular sound overwhelms the reasoning mind." I remember my first "musical chill". I was a senior in college and was being exposed to Mahler for the first time. I remember sitting in my darkened dorm room and listening to the 2nd. It was the second time I had played a newly purchased vinyl recording of Otto Klemperer conducting and it hit me. That was a long time ago but I still remember the effect it had on me. Thanks to Alex Ross for leading me to it's name.

Well, Kahane didn't exactly give me a musical chill this time but he did a wonderful job. Mezzo Sasha Cooke was great in "Uhrlich" and soprano Janice Chandler Eteme's crystalline voice rose above everyone at just the right moments. The orchestra was, as always, outstanding, particularly the brass and the percussion session.

One minor detail disappointed me, though. In 2000 I went to another CSO performance of the "Resurrection". I clearly remember the chorus sitting in darkness and, in unison, opening their music as they began to sing "Aufstehen" in the last movement. The visual and music effect that day did give me a "musical chill". I'm pretty sure the CSO chorus was then also directed by Duain Wolfe. The effect just wasn't quite the same this time as the chorus members just leisurely opened their music as they saw fit. Too bad but if not a full "musical chill" at least a good shiver.

Some end of season catching up.

It's getting to the end of the music season. It will be another dry summer, with only tepid fare at the Colorado Music Festival. They've turned into big fans of "world" music and "themes", so I'll be staying home most of the time. Oh well!

Here are a few comments on the season ending concerts over the last few weeks. The Tasman String Quartet did their farewell concert in Boulder playing the Janacek "Intimate Letters". They did this two years ago, shortly after the Takács Quartet did the same. Janacek has two quartets, "Kreutzer Sonata" and this one. I prefer "Letters" as a performance piece but recordings don't do it justice. As always live prevails. Good luck to the Tasman as they leave Boulder. They'll be missed.

Next up was Britten's "Albert Herring" by the University of Colorado school of music. English sub/super-titles for an English language opera seems like overkill, but in this case they would have been extremely helpful. The male singers were, for the most part, clear and understandable. The female roles though suffered from diction issues. Singing must be hard enough, but singing clearly certainly is harder still. Britten's music here wasn't his best, with no real high points for me. Choosing operas within the reach of undergraduate and graduate singers must be challenging.

The Boulder Philharmonic finished the season with Schubert's "Unfinished" and Jon Nakamatsu playing Brahm's Second Piano Concerto. Both came off well and Nakamatsu received a rousing standing ovation. The Boulder Phil audience is quick to leap to its feet for most performers, but this one was justified. A little bon-bon to start the concert was a short string overture by George Walker, father of the concertmaster Gregory Walker. The music director and conductor Michael Butterman should be congratulated for exposing the audience to this fairly unheard but deserving African-American composer.

The highlight of this stretch of classical music was the season ending Takács String Quartet concert. The surprise of the evening was the inclusion for Menahem Pressler as guest artist. The Takács started with 2 Haydn quartets, or parts of a quartet. Then a Debussy solo piece by Pressler. Still the pianist with the Beaux Arts Trio after 50 years, Pressler is now 85 and a treasure. When he stands on stage with the Takács he seems so short and elf-like, but he has a sprightly spring to his step and clearly enjoys what he is doing. The final work was Dvorak's "Quintet in A Major". I've got a good central seat and could see Pressler's glistening eyes and facial expressions and smiles as he interacted with the Takács. The performance was magical and the audience erupted with cheers. To top of the evening, they played an encore of the second movement of the Brahms Quintet. What an evening!

The next night my wife and I went to Opera Colorado's performance of "Cosi Fan Tutti". It was well sung and interestingly staged, but to me the music is, I hate to say, stale. I think I'm cursed with music memory where themes and tunes constantly recycle in my mind. But for reasons unknown little of this Mozart opera hangs around in my head. I leave the theater empty, so to speak. "Cosi" isn't one of my favorites though I've seen and heard it many times. My wife and I agreed that the next time it comes to town we might just skip it.

Finally, I went to the Boulder Chamber Orchestra's "Pioneers" concert - twice. The conductor, Bahman Saless, is a friend. He asked me to play "name that tune" with the opening piece on the concert, Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll". I went on stage as a "volunteer"; said my name was "Hans von Bülow", an inside joke for Wagner fans; and tried to link parts of the "Idyll" with leitmotifs from the "Ring" operas. It was harder to do that I thought, standing in front of the audience with the orchestra at my back, but I got most of them. Of course I had studied the score and did some background work using Google, a few books, a libretto from a CD which had the translations and a copy of the original scores for "Siegfried". It was fun. The concert came off well, with Andrew Cooperstock performing Beethoven's First Piano Concerto. Cooperstock stepped in at the last week after the Italian pianist chose not to come to the US because of travel warning about the H1N1 flu problem. He did a super job. This was the first time I've seen a pianist use a portable PC in place of a page turner. Cooperstock used a small foot pedal to page through the score.

I've no classical music concerts in my current schedule until a few at the Boulder Chautauqua's Colorado Music Festival, so I'll probably be quiet this summer. I'm still mourning the demise of classical music over the FM radio with KVOD's decision to reduce their transmission power. I noticed on another classical music blog an appeal from Colorado Public Radio, the corporate face for KVOD. They don't appear to be doing well. It shouldn't come as a surprise. The economy isn't doing well and the focus on talk-talk-talk on Colorado Public Radio is driving people like me to mp3 players and occasionally to Internet radio where the choice is much broader and diverse than the tepid music played on KVOD.

I've disabled my ClassicalFM.org's search engine and database. While there were lots of hits to the site from various search engines, with classical music on FM radio drying up, why continue.

An Interesting Day

Yesterday I attended the University of Colorado's Conference on World Affairs. For the last 10 or 12 year I've been going fairly faithfully, but this year I've not attended as much. The topics were a bit lack-luster and it's the same old crew saying the same old things to an overly crowded audience. However, one session piqued my interest, Siriusly, Podcasts, Pandora and the Future of Radio. It was okay but nothing great. Margot Adler made an interesting comment which confirms what I've thought all along -- "Classical music radio has problems". Colorado Public Radio's classical music station basically went off the air when it changed it's broadcasting power. It was an economic decision due to a shrinking listener base, or that's what was intimated by the session moderator, Dan Meyers from Colorado Public Radio.

Another panelist in this session, Molly Sheridan, mentioned that the "gatekeepers are changing" and with the Internet you don't have to listen to the tepid local NPR broadcasts. You can listen select from thousands of stations world-wide. I completely agree with that, though my lousy Comcast connection still causes me grief.

Margot Adler also pointed out that there are still millions and millions of listeners in cars where the Internet isn't really available. Just this morning I noticed an advertisement for an Internet car radio. It was a device which would do a Blue Tooth connection to your iPhone. It seems like a bit of a kluge to me, so I think I'm going to pass on that one for now, particularly since I don't even have a cell phone.

The panelists' comments also got me thinking about their different view of music. They kept referring to "songs" and "artists" and "tunes" -- what the software and services focus on today. The iPod Shuffle plays stuff randomly -- image listening to an opera or a string quartet that way! As a classical music buff, I'm more interested in the "composer" and the "composition" and music has order. Is it a generational gap or an genre difference or is it just me?

Finally last night I went to this year's final Pendulum concert at the University of Colorado's music school. The quality of both the performances and the compositions by these these undergraduate and graduate students was very impressive. I particularly enjoyed a string quartet by Dustin Rumsey called "Lighting Dreams" and the "Piano Quintet No 1: Scenes from Childhood" by Greg Simon. Simon was the winner of an annual award for the best student composition for this quintet and it seems well deserved. The performing string quartet in both pieces was the Tasman String Quartet. I've enjoyed them many times over these last two years while they studied with the Takács String Quartet. I wish them well as they head off to Champagne-Urbana for further studies.

I normally enjoy the summer in Boulder without all those college kid. The area is a little less crowded. However, I'll be missing the music school students and the Pendulum series.

Two nights of strings

Over the last few nights I attended two concerts, both featuring strings. The first was the the Boulder Chamber Orchestra under the leadership of Bahman Saless. Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola was well played by Annamaria Karacason and Geraldine Walther. Karacason is the wife of Karoly Schranz, second violin for the famous Takács String Quartet and Walther is their violist. It's interesting the see a famous quartet member playing outside her normal role.

The piece that intrigued me the most was Verdi's Symphony for Strings in E minor, a transcription of his only string quartet. At the beginning of the piece Saless commented that according to legend, Verdi composed this quickly to fill some time while waiting for a stop in the rehearsals for Aida. Saless said it seemed to him that the movements were about a murder. First the actual mysterious murder, then the arrival on the scene of the detective, an unknown third movement (to Saless) and finally the resolution with the detective pointing out the guilty. It was an amusing premise that got my imagination going during the performance. When the third movement began it was clear to me that this was the time when all the parties were stewing about worrying if the detective suspected them. There is a beautiful flowing cello section that reminded me of a soprano solo early in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. Clearly this was the innocent virgin satisfied in her knowledge that she most certainly did not commit the murder. How did Bahman not pick this out?

The Verdi quartet is an interesting piece with some luscious song like lines which clearly remind you that Verdi is an opera composer. It was performed here a few years ago by either the Takács or the Vinca quartet. On our supposedly all classical FM radio station, essentially off the air in Boulder, the quartet was broadcast 5 times in 2006, 3 times in 2007, 1 time in 2008 and not yet this year. Opera isn't broadcast much save for the Saturday Metropolitan broadcasts, and Verdi's limited broadcast repertoire seems to be snippets of a few of the old favorites. So much for the educational role of public radio.

Last night I went to what would normally be a performance by the Takács String Quartet. Instead, a visiting group, the Albers Trio, performed. Three attractive sisters did a yeoman's job on Mozart's long Divertimento in E-flat, K563, but to me the highlight was a wonderful Serenade for String Trio by Ernst von Dohnányi. I wonder what their early family life was like, with 3 talented musicians? Competion? Pressure? The program notes said they performed as young girls down on the Pearl Street mall in Boulder, so they must have once been somewhat local. They offered an nteresting evening.

Bad, bad music

Boulder had snow today, lots of it.  My wife and I shoveled several times, yet when I went out late tonight there was at least another inch covering the walk.   Why should snow make for bad music?  I'm clueless, but Comcast must know.  I've been trying to listen to my standard internet radio station, contemporary-classical.com.  Tonight, it's musicmusicmic .. rest .. musi ..rest.. musicmu ..rest .. ic .. rest .. music musi ..rest.. etc, etc, etc.  You get the idea.  I've turned it off but wistfully remember the good old days when my FM radio faithfully broadcast classical music.  KVOD went off the air here in Boulder, so it's either CDs or internet radio.  Well, I guess I'm stuck with CDs.  

I've been using the internet a lot today and had horrible results with ssh.  Comcast kept dropping my connections in mid-stream.  Scp wasn't much better, with long delays as I tried to move files from my workstation to remote servers.  

It must have been the snow, freezing the bits.  It couldn't be a faulty Comcast router.