I've been quiet lately. While I've been at a few musical events, nothing really sparkled. I heard two Brahms symphonies: the First by the Colorado Symphony, and the Second by the University of Colorado Orchestra. Neither grabbed my fancy, but it's Brahms, not the performances.
We attended a fun happening last Friday night -- the annual Boulder "UnSilent Night" boom-box procession on the Boulder Pearl Street Mall. Over 100 people participated, carrying a variety of music players, all playing one of the four tracks from Phil Kline's Christmas composition. It is a new-age sound that merges chimes and percussion and electronic sounds and choruses. On a crisp, clear night the sounds are wonderful as they merge and reverberate from the buildings. Many thanks to Dan Kellogg from the CU School of Music for starting and coordinating this.
I've been watching Pandora pervade more and more devices. Nightly I listen from my Chumby next to my bed. I can listen to Pandora from my main Linus workstation and from my Mac iBook. My iPod touch has a Pandora App and now I've configured my Roku to stream Pandora's offerings --- Not bad. Still, Pandora is not for serious classical music fans because they only play individual tracks, not complete compositions. A Mahler symphony or a Beethoven string quartet is meant to be digested completely, not in little sips. A curse on the lawyers and executives that force this desecration of art.
While I'm cursing, a pox on the Chumby developers, too. When I'm finished reading at night I like to set the Chumby timer to turn off the music. Clearly no one would ever want to listen for more than 60 minutes! What a silly limitation. Then, when I try to turn the timer on I press and press and press and curse and curse because it just ignores my touch. If I'm lucky I can set it after 5 touches, though sometimes it's many more. I don't know if it's the hardware touch-screen or the software, but most other Chumby features seem to work okay.
Happy holidays to everyone.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Music in a silly movie
In previous rants, I complained about how the legal profession, supporting the recording and movie industries, is damaging art: limiting internet streamed music to tracks, desecrating music by stopping the composers intent.
Last night I was watching a silly 1994 Coen brothers' movie "The Hudsucker Proxy" on my Roku. The background music often was from ballets by Aram Khachaturian. The romantic theme was the luscious "Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia" and at another point I believe they were using "the dance of Gaditanae", both from his "Spartacus". There were other clear quotes from "Gayane" -- the famous sabre dance.
What bothers me is the the lawyers want music to be protected and its use restricted and controlled. However, what's good for the goose isn't apparently good for the gander. As I watched the credits flash by there was only a passing reference to "Themes by Aram Khatchaturian". I guess that's the best creative types can come to giving someone else credit for art. The creator of "themes" is equivalent to a driver, key grip, associate executive assistant or dresser.
Last night I was watching a silly 1994 Coen brothers' movie "The Hudsucker Proxy" on my Roku. The background music often was from ballets by Aram Khachaturian. The romantic theme was the luscious "Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia" and at another point I believe they were using "the dance of Gaditanae", both from his "Spartacus". There were other clear quotes from "Gayane" -- the famous sabre dance.
What bothers me is the the lawyers want music to be protected and its use restricted and controlled. However, what's good for the goose isn't apparently good for the gander. As I watched the credits flash by there was only a passing reference to "Themes by Aram Khatchaturian". I guess that's the best creative types can come to giving someone else credit for art. The creator of "themes" is equivalent to a driver, key grip, associate executive assistant or dresser.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Kinetics
Listening to music is an active thing for me. Ever since I was a little kid I've always listened with my body. My fingers "play" the notes; my head bobs for emphasis; my chest heaves at some endings; feet and legs bounce and bounce and bounce. Nobody has ever complained about it, though sometimes I'm sure I get carried away. Anyway, that's how music affects me -- kinetically.
The reason I bring this up is that the other night I went to a concert of the University of Colorado's student Chamber Orchestra led by Gary Lewis. Conductors move -- that's how they conduct. I don't know why I began looking at the musicians' feet but it dawned on my that there was no motion. Only occasionally would I see some one's foot shift. Not consistently, mind you, but sometimes there was a rhythmic change of the light off the shiny patent-leather shoes. One violinist seemed agonized in wrapping his feet together, almost struggling to stay put on the chair. The pieces were Mozart's "Jupiter" symphony and Prokofiev's "Classical" symphony.
How did they hold back? Weren't they affected by the music? Didn't they get carried away, too? Why were the musicians so still?
As we walked back to the car, I was informed by one of the musicians that tapping toes to keep time is totally forbidden. Music is for the mind and not the body, except where needed to press, pull, pluck or perform a note. Silly me. Of course, it make sense, but I just never thought about it before. Good thing I don't play in an orchestra.
The reason I bring this up is that the other night I went to a concert of the University of Colorado's student Chamber Orchestra led by Gary Lewis. Conductors move -- that's how they conduct. I don't know why I began looking at the musicians' feet but it dawned on my that there was no motion. Only occasionally would I see some one's foot shift. Not consistently, mind you, but sometimes there was a rhythmic change of the light off the shiny patent-leather shoes. One violinist seemed agonized in wrapping his feet together, almost struggling to stay put on the chair. The pieces were Mozart's "Jupiter" symphony and Prokofiev's "Classical" symphony.
How did they hold back? Weren't they affected by the music? Didn't they get carried away, too? Why were the musicians so still?
As we walked back to the car, I was informed by one of the musicians that tapping toes to keep time is totally forbidden. Music is for the mind and not the body, except where needed to press, pull, pluck or perform a note. Silly me. Of course, it make sense, but I just never thought about it before. Good thing I don't play in an orchestra.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Singing, meaning and art
Heavy topic here. Skip if it you like. A few recent concerts have me thinking about the relationship of song words to art. How sung words give meaning.
Last week I heard a spinto soprano, Irene VanHam Friedlob, in recital with Mitsumi Moteki on piano. Spinto was a new term to me, but Wikipedia says it's 'a soprano or tenor voice of a weight between lyric and dramatic that is capable of handling large dramatic climaxes at moderate intervals.' She certain fit that description.
While mostly she sang in Italian or French or German, for the final piece she sang in English. The earlier songs had translations, while the last one didn't, of course. Most words were understandable as she sang, but not every one of them. Words would pop out clearly but their associated meaning didn't. She sang well and enunciated well but the vocal gymnastics necessary to produce song hid the meaning. I didn't think it the singer's fault.
Then this past Sunday night Thomas Hampson sang at the University of Colorado's Mackey Auditorium. It was part of his traveling 'Songs of America' series, with Wolfram Rieger on piano. The performance enthralled the audience. Hampson sings and enunciates as well as anyone. His beautiful baritone was crystal clear even at the back of the auditorium. However, to me the meaning of the songs and the cadence of the sentences from poems just weren't clear enough to understand.
An example was his singing of "The Dodger" by Aaron Copland. I've heard this fairly familiar song several times before and it's a fun song reminiscent of any earlier time in America. The stanzas refer to candidates, preachers and lovers, all "dodgers" with "Yes and I'm a dodger too!" In the intervening stanzas the singer tells why each is untrustworthy. It was here in all cases that the meaning got lost. I don't remember clearly enough if the music was different, but there was something that hid the words explaining why these reputable folk weren't so. You couldn't read the words as the singing progressed because of the lighting. But would that have helped?
So was art preserved? Did the combination of piano and singer and words and music yield good art? Entertainment, surely. But did the composer accomplish what he set out to do? I'm confused here.
Last night CU's favorite baritone, Patrick Mason, sang some Rachmaninoff songs in a recital with Alexandra Nguyen on piano. There was no question of understanding anything sung -- it was all in Russian. So was Rachmaninoff's art achieved? I quickly read some of the translations, but the meaning could only be inferred by some chords, vocal lines, facial expressions and timing. Enjoyable, of course. But successful art?
I'll end with a question that's been simmering within me for years. Is vocal musical art almost always failed art? Is opera, the epitomy of vocal musical art by definition failed art?
Last week I heard a spinto soprano, Irene VanHam Friedlob, in recital with Mitsumi Moteki on piano. Spinto was a new term to me, but Wikipedia says it's 'a soprano or tenor voice of a weight between lyric and dramatic that is capable of handling large dramatic climaxes at moderate intervals.' She certain fit that description.
While mostly she sang in Italian or French or German, for the final piece she sang in English. The earlier songs had translations, while the last one didn't, of course. Most words were understandable as she sang, but not every one of them. Words would pop out clearly but their associated meaning didn't. She sang well and enunciated well but the vocal gymnastics necessary to produce song hid the meaning. I didn't think it the singer's fault.
Then this past Sunday night Thomas Hampson sang at the University of Colorado's Mackey Auditorium. It was part of his traveling 'Songs of America' series, with Wolfram Rieger on piano. The performance enthralled the audience. Hampson sings and enunciates as well as anyone. His beautiful baritone was crystal clear even at the back of the auditorium. However, to me the meaning of the songs and the cadence of the sentences from poems just weren't clear enough to understand.
An example was his singing of "The Dodger" by Aaron Copland. I've heard this fairly familiar song several times before and it's a fun song reminiscent of any earlier time in America. The stanzas refer to candidates, preachers and lovers, all "dodgers" with "Yes and I'm a dodger too!" In the intervening stanzas the singer tells why each is untrustworthy. It was here in all cases that the meaning got lost. I don't remember clearly enough if the music was different, but there was something that hid the words explaining why these reputable folk weren't so. You couldn't read the words as the singing progressed because of the lighting. But would that have helped?
So was art preserved? Did the combination of piano and singer and words and music yield good art? Entertainment, surely. But did the composer accomplish what he set out to do? I'm confused here.
Last night CU's favorite baritone, Patrick Mason, sang some Rachmaninoff songs in a recital with Alexandra Nguyen on piano. There was no question of understanding anything sung -- it was all in Russian. So was Rachmaninoff's art achieved? I quickly read some of the translations, but the meaning could only be inferred by some chords, vocal lines, facial expressions and timing. Enjoyable, of course. But successful art?
I'll end with a question that's been simmering within me for years. Is vocal musical art almost always failed art? Is opera, the epitomy of vocal musical art by definition failed art?
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Two good concerts
Friday night the University of Colorado Symphony Orchestra, lead by Gary Lewis, offered its first concert for the semester. There were three works on the program, all of which tested this young orchestra and all of which were performed very well. The control and evenness of the strings impressed me. I particularly liked Daniel Kellogg's "Western Skies", musical ruminations on the Colorado landscape. Last year at one of the Pendulum Series programs (I think) another Colorado-inspired Kellogg piece was premiered and I liked it too. This was not a premiere for "Western Skies", as it been played by the National Symphony Orchestra in places as far away as Japan and Korea. It is a full orchestra, fairly loud reflection on the openness of the plains, the crystalline clearness of snowy night and the dramatic jump into the mountains. How big a jump? The lowest point in Boulder County is 4890 feet above sea level, the highest 14,255 at the top of Long's Peak. That is a 9365 feet difference in one county, 1.8 miles! Kellogg is from back east (Yale) where the horizon is always muffled by trees and more trees, so his music reflects his agoraphobic reaction to all this open space. "Western Skies" would sound wonderful if it were performed in the thundering wooden shed of Boulder's Chauttauqua Auditorium with Michael Christie leading the Colorado Music Festival.
The second half of the concert was Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony", enthusiastically played. Lewis was so energetic in his conducting that he poked his baton into the principal cellist's instrument and dropped it from the stage.
The other night a new vocal faculty member at Colorado, soprano Jennifer Bird-Arvidsson, made her local debut as part of the Faculty Tuesdays. What a stunning opening! All her selections were female roles "Speaking Her Mind". Particularly striking were two excerpts from Gounod's "Faust" where first an impressionable Marguerite sings of her beauty into a mirror, and then later pregnant bemoans her abandonment. Bird's voice was wonderful and her facial expressions outstanding. As she got into Frau Fluth's character she shot a glance at the pianist Christopher Zemliauskas that told the audience who was in control. Once again the University of Colorado as snared another terrific singer.
The second half of the concert was Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony", enthusiastically played. Lewis was so energetic in his conducting that he poked his baton into the principal cellist's instrument and dropped it from the stage.
The other night a new vocal faculty member at Colorado, soprano Jennifer Bird-Arvidsson, made her local debut as part of the Faculty Tuesdays. What a stunning opening! All her selections were female roles "Speaking Her Mind". Particularly striking were two excerpts from Gounod's "Faust" where first an impressionable Marguerite sings of her beauty into a mirror, and then later pregnant bemoans her abandonment. Bird's voice was wonderful and her facial expressions outstanding. As she got into Frau Fluth's character she shot a glance at the pianist Christopher Zemliauskas that told the audience who was in control. Once again the University of Colorado as snared another terrific singer.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
A George Crumb Celebration
The University of Colorado's Faculty Tuesdays has started up again with the beginning of the fall semester. The first two weeks featured Peter Cooper on oboe, and David Korevaar's Clavier Trio. Both concerts were good starts for the season.
Korevaar chose an interesting transcription of Arnold Schoenberg's "Verklärte Nacht" by Eduard Steuermann. I've always liked this piece but was somewhat taken back by the use of the piano. The violin (Arkady Fomin) and cello (Jesus Castro-Balbi) were too often covered by the piano that it just didn't sit right with me.
And then this week ....... A George Crumb Festival!!
Steve Bruns, Hsing-ay Hsu and Daniel Kellogg, all Colorado faculty members, coordinated four nights of the music of George Crumb to celebrate Crumb's 80Th birthday. Crumb was there each night and was warmly received by the audience, faculty and performers. Some of the scores of some of his music were posted on the walls of a reception room and aren't like anything that I could figure out. Circular staffs, clusters of chords; pointers and arrows; strange inscriptions which must mean something to someone. Typical Crumb, I suppose. At CU there were also afternoon lectures and master classes and recitals that I couldn't make but which, I'm told, were fun.
Crumb began his academic career at Colorado in the early 60s, then taught at the University of Pennsylvania until his retirement in 1999. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1968, among other international prizes. Much of his music is available on 13 CDs from Bridge records.
My first exposure to Crumb was back 8 or 9 years ago when Giora Bernstein conducted a performance of "Ancient Voices of Children" at the Colorado Music Festival. In this work a soprano sings Lorca poems into the sound box of the piano with woodwind and percussion accompaniment I liked it enough to get a CD at the time but over the years when I returned to it the sound wasn't the same. When it's a CD compared to a live performance the CD always pales.
What is Crumb's music like? He's hard to categorize but you can recognize him when you hear him -- I think. I bought several of his CDs and I'm listening to some now. While I can't say I really like it, it is mysterious and interesting.
The first night's concert saw David Korevaar perform Crumb's "Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik" on a "well tampered-with clavier", ruminations on 'Round Midnight' by Theolonius Monk. During the week the pianists performed on a "well tampered-with clavier", a Baldwin. It was modified with a "Dampfenader" to control the damper and sustain pedals so the pianists could stand up and reach the piano's insides without worrying about the pedals.
Also on the opening Tuesday, 4 percussionists from the Colorado Symphony, Hsing-ay on piano, Patrick Mason, baritone and Julie Simpson, mezzo all coordinated by Allan McMurray did "Voices from A Forgotten World". The program stated there were over 150 percussion instruments on stage and I believe it. The songs included some familiar tunes abstracted in Crumb's way. Strangest to me was "Beautiful Dreamer" with Mason and Simpson whispering words to each other -- very memorable for some reason.
The next three nights were more Crumb -- lots of percussion; instruments played in peculiar but interesting ways; and voices whispered, shouted and often very beautiful (particularly Kristin Gornstein). While listening I sometimes wrote notes to myself of impressions of what I was hearing. Here are some in no particular order: instrumental abuse; shouts-singing-whispers; long "loud" silences; round-robin piano - 12 hands; minimalism without repeats; stand-alone sounds; missing melodies; sly inserts; lost sounds; unknowable wrong notes; piano inside and out - a real percussion instrument; tippy-tap and slam; unappetizing sounds; make believe music; endings of long silence.
Crumb has an affinity for Lorca and offers musical settings of his poetry. I've no command of Spanish, so whatever was sung meant nothing to me. Others commented to me about the same language issue. Why not have the songs in ancient Phoenician or Esperanto or some lost language from the Amazon? The communication would be the same.
I tried seeing what the Internet music streaming service Pandora "computed" for a George Crumb "station". After seeding Pandora with just George Crumb's name, it broadcast one of Crumb's "Makrokosmos" piano pieces. Pandora proceeded to then play tracks from works by Stockhausen, Bartok, Varese, Shostakovitch, Morton Feldman and Berio. I tuned it on the next night and got similar results. Crumb's music genome clearly computes to the 20Th century, but he has a distinctly voice.
Was the Crumb Festival successful? Most certainly! Concerts were all well attended, performances garnered standing ovations and everyone seemed to be smiling when they left. I'm glad I went and congratulate the school of music at CU for tackling an ambitious project like this.
Korevaar chose an interesting transcription of Arnold Schoenberg's "Verklärte Nacht" by Eduard Steuermann. I've always liked this piece but was somewhat taken back by the use of the piano. The violin (Arkady Fomin) and cello (Jesus Castro-Balbi) were too often covered by the piano that it just didn't sit right with me.
And then this week ....... A George Crumb Festival!!
Steve Bruns, Hsing-ay Hsu and Daniel Kellogg, all Colorado faculty members, coordinated four nights of the music of George Crumb to celebrate Crumb's 80Th birthday. Crumb was there each night and was warmly received by the audience, faculty and performers. Some of the scores of some of his music were posted on the walls of a reception room and aren't like anything that I could figure out. Circular staffs, clusters of chords; pointers and arrows; strange inscriptions which must mean something to someone. Typical Crumb, I suppose. At CU there were also afternoon lectures and master classes and recitals that I couldn't make but which, I'm told, were fun.
Crumb began his academic career at Colorado in the early 60s, then taught at the University of Pennsylvania until his retirement in 1999. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1968, among other international prizes. Much of his music is available on 13 CDs from Bridge records.
My first exposure to Crumb was back 8 or 9 years ago when Giora Bernstein conducted a performance of "Ancient Voices of Children" at the Colorado Music Festival. In this work a soprano sings Lorca poems into the sound box of the piano with woodwind and percussion accompaniment I liked it enough to get a CD at the time but over the years when I returned to it the sound wasn't the same. When it's a CD compared to a live performance the CD always pales.
What is Crumb's music like? He's hard to categorize but you can recognize him when you hear him -- I think. I bought several of his CDs and I'm listening to some now. While I can't say I really like it, it is mysterious and interesting.
The first night's concert saw David Korevaar perform Crumb's "Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik" on a "well tampered-with clavier", ruminations on 'Round Midnight' by Theolonius Monk. During the week the pianists performed on a "well tampered-with clavier", a Baldwin. It was modified with a "Dampfenader" to control the damper and sustain pedals so the pianists could stand up and reach the piano's insides without worrying about the pedals.
Also on the opening Tuesday, 4 percussionists from the Colorado Symphony, Hsing-ay on piano, Patrick Mason, baritone and Julie Simpson, mezzo all coordinated by Allan McMurray did "Voices from A Forgotten World". The program stated there were over 150 percussion instruments on stage and I believe it. The songs included some familiar tunes abstracted in Crumb's way. Strangest to me was "Beautiful Dreamer" with Mason and Simpson whispering words to each other -- very memorable for some reason.
The next three nights were more Crumb -- lots of percussion; instruments played in peculiar but interesting ways; and voices whispered, shouted and often very beautiful (particularly Kristin Gornstein). While listening I sometimes wrote notes to myself of impressions of what I was hearing. Here are some in no particular order: instrumental abuse; shouts-singing-whispers; long "loud" silences; round-robin piano - 12 hands; minimalism without repeats; stand-alone sounds; missing melodies; sly inserts; lost sounds; unknowable wrong notes; piano inside and out - a real percussion instrument; tippy-tap and slam; unappetizing sounds; make believe music; endings of long silence.
Crumb has an affinity for Lorca and offers musical settings of his poetry. I've no command of Spanish, so whatever was sung meant nothing to me. Others commented to me about the same language issue. Why not have the songs in ancient Phoenician or Esperanto or some lost language from the Amazon? The communication would be the same.
I tried seeing what the Internet music streaming service Pandora "computed" for a George Crumb "station". After seeding Pandora with just George Crumb's name, it broadcast one of Crumb's "Makrokosmos" piano pieces. Pandora proceeded to then play tracks from works by Stockhausen, Bartok, Varese, Shostakovitch, Morton Feldman and Berio. I tuned it on the next night and got similar results. Crumb's music genome clearly computes to the 20Th century, but he has a distinctly voice.
Was the Crumb Festival successful? Most certainly! Concerts were all well attended, performances garnered standing ovations and everyone seemed to be smiling when they left. I'm glad I went and congratulate the school of music at CU for tackling an ambitious project like this.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Right angled tracks
I was listening to Pandora last night, using it's Quick Mix amalgamation of my play list selections. The apparent legal requirement to play only tracks of unrelated music can lead to horrible results. Pandora selected an orchestral piece by Elliot Carter, an atonal disjointed murky piece of music. Then, without a second's break, an equally dissonant contemporary piece by Gregory Kurtag was next. The mathematical similarity between the two pieces, based on some distance function calculation of music content, was obvious. But the musical clash to the ear was jolting -- I really, really objected to the immediate right angled turn. I wasn't really aware it was Carter and Kurtag, but the abrupt clash forced me to figure it out and to think about it. Yuch! I turned off Pandora.
I switched my "chumby" to listening to WQXR in New York. When I lived in Connecticut it was my favorite station, the "voice of the new york times". listened nightly to good music, played in its entirety with entertaining announcers commenting appropriately. It was a first class operation.
When I first connected to WQXR, Haydn's "Farewell" symphony was about finished. The announcer made a few cute remarks about it and then signed off. And then it was just music -- unannounced music -- complete music -- but unknown music. I guessed (correctly as it turned out) that it was guitar concerto by Rodrigo, but why was nobody saying anything? After about 25 minutes it ended with someone saying "check out our online play list to identify the piece you've just heard". Wonderful. Big media's economic problems manifest themselves on WQXR by eliminating the personal touch. Now, at the stroke of midnight the station seems to go on autopilot, playing music from a play list with occasional recorded fragments telling the listener to go to a web site to check out the play list and figure out what was being played. If that isn't a crock! The city that never sleeps now is entertained by an automaton. So much for the state of classical music on the radio and the Internet.
I switched my "chumby" to listening to WQXR in New York. When I lived in Connecticut it was my favorite station, the "voice of the new york times". listened nightly to good music, played in its entirety with entertaining announcers commenting appropriately. It was a first class operation.
When I first connected to WQXR, Haydn's "Farewell" symphony was about finished. The announcer made a few cute remarks about it and then signed off. And then it was just music -- unannounced music -- complete music -- but unknown music. I guessed (correctly as it turned out) that it was guitar concerto by Rodrigo, but why was nobody saying anything? After about 25 minutes it ended with someone saying "check out our online play list to identify the piece you've just heard". Wonderful. Big media's economic problems manifest themselves on WQXR by eliminating the personal touch. Now, at the stroke of midnight the station seems to go on autopilot, playing music from a play list with occasional recorded fragments telling the listener to go to a web site to check out the play list and figure out what was being played. If that isn't a crock! The city that never sleeps now is entertained by an automaton. So much for the state of classical music on the radio and the Internet.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
An observation on Internet streaming music
With the rise of Internet music, in many ways replacing terrestrial FM radio, I've noticed something that's missing from the experience -- the announcer.
Since the Internet means computers and a user's computer has a keyboard and screen, the Internet music providers assume the listener is in front of a screen and attentive. Not so!
I generally listen to Pandora, Last.FM, Live365 (Contemporary-classical.com) or my own music from my MP3 library. At night I use my "Chumby", an interactive media player which is wirelessly connected to my internal network and thus to the Internet. It's actually a small linux-based touchscreen computer with some neat features. Normally I listen to Pandora while reading then set Chumby's timer to turn off as I go to sleep. I still listen to the music after the lights are turned off. But what I'm hearing is often a puzzle -- I know the piece but can't place the name or I don't think I've ever heard it before and really like it. But what is it? Classical music on FM had an announcer saying something like "Now, Bela Bartok's String Quartet No 3 with the Takács Quartet" and then the announcer would say it again after the piece was broadcast. Stations would also publish their prior day's play lists, so that if I missed the announcer's comments I could go to the web page and figure it out. This doesn't seem possible with Internet classical music streaming today.
When you think about it, the insertion of phrases like "Now Bela Bartok's String Quartet No 3 with the Takács Quartet" and "That was Bela Bartok's String Quartet No 3 with the Takács Quartet" is essentially the same as the insertion of an advertisement inserted on web pages by Google's AdSense -- aural additions versus visual ones. It's actually the insertion of two adjacent phrases "That was" PriorPiece followed by "Now" NextPiece. I've suggested to one of the Internet stations that they provide these announcer tips. It could be optional and possibly an additional revenue stream. Make sense to me. While I'm only interested in classical music from these music streaming services, my son agrees that it would be useful for his music(?) too. I guess no surprise there.
Since the recording industry despises their customer base and forces music streamers to live within the tyranny of tracks the inserted phrases would thus have to something longer like "Sibelius symphony number 6 in D minor, Opus 104, second movement, allegro moderato with the Vienna Philharmonic lead by Lorin Maazel". A bit of a mouthful but better than silence and ignorance.
Since the Internet means computers and a user's computer has a keyboard and screen, the Internet music providers assume the listener is in front of a screen and attentive. Not so!
I generally listen to Pandora, Last.FM, Live365 (Contemporary-classical.com) or my own music from my MP3 library. At night I use my "Chumby", an interactive media player which is wirelessly connected to my internal network and thus to the Internet. It's actually a small linux-based touchscreen computer with some neat features. Normally I listen to Pandora while reading then set Chumby's timer to turn off as I go to sleep. I still listen to the music after the lights are turned off. But what I'm hearing is often a puzzle -- I know the piece but can't place the name or I don't think I've ever heard it before and really like it. But what is it? Classical music on FM had an announcer saying something like "Now, Bela Bartok's String Quartet No 3 with the Takács Quartet" and then the announcer would say it again after the piece was broadcast. Stations would also publish their prior day's play lists, so that if I missed the announcer's comments I could go to the web page and figure it out. This doesn't seem possible with Internet classical music streaming today.
When you think about it, the insertion of phrases like "Now Bela Bartok's String Quartet No 3 with the Takács Quartet" and "That was Bela Bartok's String Quartet No 3 with the Takács Quartet" is essentially the same as the insertion of an advertisement inserted on web pages by Google's AdSense -- aural additions versus visual ones. It's actually the insertion of two adjacent phrases "That was" PriorPiece followed by "Now" NextPiece. I've suggested to one of the Internet stations that they provide these announcer tips. It could be optional and possibly an additional revenue stream. Make sense to me. While I'm only interested in classical music from these music streaming services, my son agrees that it would be useful for his music(?) too. I guess no surprise there.
Since the recording industry despises their customer base and forces music streamers to live within the tyranny of tracks the inserted phrases would thus have to something longer like "Sibelius symphony number 6 in D minor, Opus 104, second movement, allegro moderato with the Vienna Philharmonic lead by Lorin Maazel". A bit of a mouthful but better than silence and ignorance.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Restarting at the end of summer
It's been a slow summer musically for me, just two Colorado Music Festival concerts: Mahler's Fourth and Prokofief's Third piano concerto. Most of the CMF season had little appeal, focusing on "world" music, whatever that is. Fortunately I've got lots of MP3's and CDs along with an Internet radio so it was exactly quiet.
I've just finished an interesting book related to music Steve Knopper's "Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age". It is an interesting history of the decline of an industry I've been purchasing from since I was an eleven year old paper-boy. My first record purchase was Pierre Monteux conducting Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" and the "Firebird Suite", a 1957 RCA LP which I still have. I can remember as a young kid pretending to conduct "Petrouchka" in my bedroom with it blasting away, driving my mother crazy.
Knopper describes the disintegration of the industry that allowed my love of classical music grow, though his focus is primarily on the personalities involved in "pop" music: disco, rock-and-roll, rap, country-and-western, etc. He names weirdly-named performers/bands along with the executives involved in this strange business. Classical music is essentially ignored, with only one reference to anyone I even recognized -- Phillip Glass. "Appetite" traces the introduction of the CD, the war against Napster, the RIAA's attack on their customers, and explains the dreary state of the recording industry today. I concluded that this industry, lead by the RIAA, is why we now have legal desecration of broadcast classical music.
Earlier this summer I communicated with an executive of an Internet radio station. He responded to my complaint about the tyranny of the track -- playing individual tracks from a piece of classical music, rather than the whole work. He said "unfortunately that's a licensing constraint; not something we do by choice." So with the rapid decline of classical music on FM radio, classical fans are left with Internet radio. There we can thank a clump of thoughtless lawyers for demeaning our music.
What gets to me is that some pieces are played in its entirety. The other night I heard a complete performance of "Scheherazade", about 25 minutes worth of music. Then later I heard a single movement of Glass's "Mishima" String Quartet, a whole minute and a half. That's just ludicrous.
The last year has shown the "best and brightest" on Wall Street weren't so talented after all. Recording industry executives and their lawyers clearly are the same.
I've just finished an interesting book related to music Steve Knopper's "Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age". It is an interesting history of the decline of an industry I've been purchasing from since I was an eleven year old paper-boy. My first record purchase was Pierre Monteux conducting Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" and the "Firebird Suite", a 1957 RCA LP which I still have. I can remember as a young kid pretending to conduct "Petrouchka" in my bedroom with it blasting away, driving my mother crazy.
Knopper describes the disintegration of the industry that allowed my love of classical music grow, though his focus is primarily on the personalities involved in "pop" music: disco, rock-and-roll, rap, country-and-western, etc. He names weirdly-named performers/bands along with the executives involved in this strange business. Classical music is essentially ignored, with only one reference to anyone I even recognized -- Phillip Glass. "Appetite" traces the introduction of the CD, the war against Napster, the RIAA's attack on their customers, and explains the dreary state of the recording industry today. I concluded that this industry, lead by the RIAA, is why we now have legal desecration of broadcast classical music.
Earlier this summer I communicated with an executive of an Internet radio station. He responded to my complaint about the tyranny of the track -- playing individual tracks from a piece of classical music, rather than the whole work. He said "unfortunately that's a licensing constraint; not something we do by choice." So with the rapid decline of classical music on FM radio, classical fans are left with Internet radio. There we can thank a clump of thoughtless lawyers for demeaning our music.
What gets to me is that some pieces are played in its entirety. The other night I heard a complete performance of "Scheherazade", about 25 minutes worth of music. Then later I heard a single movement of Glass's "Mishima" String Quartet, a whole minute and a half. That's just ludicrous.
The last year has shown the "best and brightest" on Wall Street weren't so talented after all. Recording industry executives and their lawyers clearly are the same.
Monday, June 29, 2009
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!
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!
Friday, June 19, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, June 08, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, May 04, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
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.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Very old and very new
Over the past two nights I heard two completely different concerts at the University of Colorado: Music of the High Baroque and the Pendulum New Music.
Elizabeth Farr played harpsichord in the first. Two Bach pieces preceded by a suite by D'Angelbert from around 1689. I've listened to a lot of Bach, but only during the Bourée did I remember hearing any of it before -- and that, I believe, was sung by the Swingle Singers years ago. While Farr's playing was wonderful, I found the D'Angelbert hard to digest. While I tried to follow or find a melodic line the ornamentation threw me. I was listening to 300 year old music with ears tuned to the 21st century.
The Pendulum New Music project has been a favorite of mine over the years. You hear stuff you've never heard before - some good, some not so. I had never heard the D'Angelbert harpsichord suite, either, though. Last night's concert was at the CU Atlas Black Box Theater which is equipped with lots of high-tech sound and projection systems. Multimedia music was interspersed with live soloists playing with computers and projections. I was particularly impressed with multimedia presentation of Hunter Ewen's Elements. One section which I think of as "Birds" but which he called "Staccato" was particularly clever. The black and white projection of bird shapes first appeared to be bi-laterally symmetric but I realized as I watched more closely there was more more going on and things were not symmetric, even though the music did seem so. Fun. It would seem to me that Mr. Ewen has a future in TV commercials, at the least.
The "known" composer on the program was Steve Reich. His "Pendulum Music" was, how do I say it, "performed". Three microphones were swung back and forth over special spherical speakers on the floor, generating feedback as they moved back and forth. Music? I think not. I like some of Reich's works and I'm listening to his Music for 18 Musicians as I type this. Unlike the earlier D'Angelbert which hid the theme behind ornamentation, Reich's theme is repeated over and over and over, with small ornamentation or variations. "Pendulum Music" apparently has no relationship to the Pendulum New Music program, only a shared word.
I also enjoyed the combination of a live performer playing alongside taped electronic music. We had two tubas and a violin in 3 separate pieces. Michael Dunn, from the faculty and who gave his own concert the prior week, played well again, this time in a minimalistic "Tapestry for Tuba and Tape" by James DeMar. In the second tuba piece, Ryan Wurst's "Flow II for Solo Tuba and Live Electronics", the tuba player Ed Wagner used something to tap on the bell. To me it sounded as if he was using two different things -- there appeared to be two completely different sounds. However, when I asked Wagner after the performance he said it was just a penny.
Elizabeth Farr played harpsichord in the first. Two Bach pieces preceded by a suite by D'Angelbert from around 1689. I've listened to a lot of Bach, but only during the Bourée did I remember hearing any of it before -- and that, I believe, was sung by the Swingle Singers years ago. While Farr's playing was wonderful, I found the D'Angelbert hard to digest. While I tried to follow or find a melodic line the ornamentation threw me. I was listening to 300 year old music with ears tuned to the 21st century.
The Pendulum New Music project has been a favorite of mine over the years. You hear stuff you've never heard before - some good, some not so. I had never heard the D'Angelbert harpsichord suite, either, though. Last night's concert was at the CU Atlas Black Box Theater which is equipped with lots of high-tech sound and projection systems. Multimedia music was interspersed with live soloists playing with computers and projections. I was particularly impressed with multimedia presentation of Hunter Ewen's Elements. One section which I think of as "Birds" but which he called "Staccato" was particularly clever. The black and white projection of bird shapes first appeared to be bi-laterally symmetric but I realized as I watched more closely there was more more going on and things were not symmetric, even though the music did seem so. Fun. It would seem to me that Mr. Ewen has a future in TV commercials, at the least.
The "known" composer on the program was Steve Reich. His "Pendulum Music" was, how do I say it, "performed". Three microphones were swung back and forth over special spherical speakers on the floor, generating feedback as they moved back and forth. Music? I think not. I like some of Reich's works and I'm listening to his Music for 18 Musicians as I type this. Unlike the earlier D'Angelbert which hid the theme behind ornamentation, Reich's theme is repeated over and over and over, with small ornamentation or variations. "Pendulum Music" apparently has no relationship to the Pendulum New Music program, only a shared word.
I also enjoyed the combination of a live performer playing alongside taped electronic music. We had two tubas and a violin in 3 separate pieces. Michael Dunn, from the faculty and who gave his own concert the prior week, played well again, this time in a minimalistic "Tapestry for Tuba and Tape" by James DeMar. In the second tuba piece, Ryan Wurst's "Flow II for Solo Tuba and Live Electronics", the tuba player Ed Wagner used something to tap on the bell. To me it sounded as if he was using two different things -- there appeared to be two completely different sounds. However, when I asked Wagner after the performance he said it was just a penny.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The big brass....
The Colorado Symphony performed Bruckner's 7Th symphony over this past weekend. What a sound! Bruckner has always been one of my favorites and his 7Th was wonderful. I'm listening to it again as I type this. At the applause, the maestro, Hans Graf, gave special attention to the euphonium section, the substitutes for the "Wagner tubas" which highlight the second movement and are heard throught. You don't hear the euphonium often, but at the University of Colorado the other night I heard a faculty concert, "The Winsome Tuba", with Michael Dunn on tuba. During the concery there was a performance with Aaron Tindall on the euphonium of "Michelangelo". The composer was listed as both Sigfart Dagsland and Sigvard Dagsland. I prefer the former, chuckle, chuckle. It's the first time I can recall that I attended an all tuba concert. Fun, but not something I'd want to do again in the immediate future. Dunn showed the extreme ranges of the tuba and played well, so to hear both the tuba and euphonium in a duet was fun and an ear challenge -- well done by both.
Back on Bruckner, my favorite Internet music station, contemporary-classical.com, introduced me to a composer that I've never heard of,Albéric Magnard, the "French Bruckner". I ordered his complete (4) symphonies from Amazon and weeks later, from England, they arrived. Perhaps I'm jaded and perhaps I've listened to too many symphonies by all the greats, but I'm really enjoying these new works by Magnard. One might assume that something broadcast on a contemporary classical internet station might be a bit weird, but these symphonies are not. With some similarities to Wagner and Bruckner and Franck, these are tonal, fairly long and thoroughly romantic works that would appeal to most audiences. Too bad Magnard isn't better know, but I'm glad I found out about him. Thank you contemporary-classical.com.
By the way, Magnard was killed in the early days of World War I defending his home against invading or marauding German soldiers. He was reputed to have a temper and personality like his dwarf name-sake from the Ring. His home was burned, apparently along with some of his other compositions.
Back on Bruckner, my favorite Internet music station, contemporary-classical.com, introduced me to a composer that I've never heard of,Albéric Magnard, the "French Bruckner". I ordered his complete (4) symphonies from Amazon and weeks later, from England, they arrived. Perhaps I'm jaded and perhaps I've listened to too many symphonies by all the greats, but I'm really enjoying these new works by Magnard. One might assume that something broadcast on a contemporary classical internet station might be a bit weird, but these symphonies are not. With some similarities to Wagner and Bruckner and Franck, these are tonal, fairly long and thoroughly romantic works that would appeal to most audiences. Too bad Magnard isn't better know, but I'm glad I found out about him. Thank you contemporary-classical.com.
By the way, Magnard was killed in the early days of World War I defending his home against invading or marauding German soldiers. He was reputed to have a temper and personality like his dwarf name-sake from the Ring. His home was burned, apparently along with some of his other compositions.
Friday, February 27, 2009
More Pendulum swings.
I went again to a Pendulum concert the other night at the University of Colorado. The Pendulum series is one of my favorites: all contemporary music that I'm hearing for the first time.
The featured composer this time as Alan Fletcher, the president of the Aspen Music Festival. Milton Babbit, one of his teachers, told him that he was "French" (as opposed to "German") and his music lived up to that designation. A short, Messiaen-like piece "Green" was beautifully played by Hsing-ay Hsu who then with violinist Lina Bahn performed a delightful "Study: Woman Holding a Balance", a musical impression of Vermeer's painting. While in college I had a print of Vermeer's "Milkmaid", so this piece reminded me of college. Fletcher's music is tonal and accessible and fairly short. Since he's a "local" composer for Colorado, you might expect that the so-called classical music station for Colorado, KVOD, would have broadcast something of his. Nope. I then went to my favorite Internet station, http://contemporary-classical.com and looked there for Fletcher. Unfortunately nothing is available there either.
A student composition, Jökulhlaup, by Paul Hembree was another interesting piano piece at this concert. A Jökulhlaup is Icelandic for a catastrophic flood caused by a volcanic eruption under a glacier -- shades of the cartoon move "Ice Age".
The final piece at this Pendulum concert was an violin octet "Gran Turismo" by Andrew Norman. I'm not into video games, the inspiration for the piece, but I could sense the agitation and speed. Another fun composition well played.
The featured composer this time as Alan Fletcher, the president of the Aspen Music Festival. Milton Babbit, one of his teachers, told him that he was "French" (as opposed to "German") and his music lived up to that designation. A short, Messiaen-like piece "Green" was beautifully played by Hsing-ay Hsu who then with violinist Lina Bahn performed a delightful "Study: Woman Holding a Balance", a musical impression of Vermeer's painting. While in college I had a print of Vermeer's "Milkmaid", so this piece reminded me of college. Fletcher's music is tonal and accessible and fairly short. Since he's a "local" composer for Colorado, you might expect that the so-called classical music station for Colorado, KVOD, would have broadcast something of his. Nope. I then went to my favorite Internet station, http://contemporary-classical.com and looked there for Fletcher. Unfortunately nothing is available there either.
A student composition, Jökulhlaup, by Paul Hembree was another interesting piano piece at this concert. A Jökulhlaup is Icelandic for a catastrophic flood caused by a volcanic eruption under a glacier -- shades of the cartoon move "Ice Age".
The final piece at this Pendulum concert was an violin octet "Gran Turismo" by Andrew Norman. I'm not into video games, the inspiration for the piece, but I could sense the agitation and speed. Another fun composition well played.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Brand of Shame
Beethoven famously scribbled out Bonaparte's name on his third symphony and changed it to "Eroica". Historians suggest this was out of disgust. I normally don't comment politically, but after watching Obama's speech to congress, I realized the network was labeling some in the audience with a similar brand of shame and disgust. Open parenthesis, capital R, close parenthesis. (R).
Friday, February 20, 2009
It's that time of the year
Each year about this time the classical music scene in Boulder explodes with opportunities. The Boulder Chamber Orchestra performed nationalistic pieces by the Greek composer Nikos, Skalkottas, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Josef Suk on Saturday February 7Th. Then last Monday night, February 8Th, I listened to the Takacs String Quartet play Haydn's "Emperor" quarter and Schubert's Quintet, D956 with Judith Glyde. A wonderful evening. I skipped the next night's performance by the CU (University of Colorado) Wind Band due to lethargy, but heard the CU Orchestra perform on Thursday night. I'm always amazed at the quality that this student orchestra demonstrates under the leadership of Gary Lewis. The highlight for me was Ilya Goldberg's performance in the Sibelius Violin Concerto. Ilya lived with us for a short time and I've followed his performances ever since. He did a wonderful job and interestingly, just as he got into an early extra fast passage the shoulder support on his violin slipped. He slightly grimaced but didn't appear to miss a note. Bravo
The next night, Friday February 13th, I went to a performance of the Tasman Quartet. They are the quartet currently studying with the Takacs at CU and are now in their second year. They again performed the Schubert Quartet D810 with strong dynamics and a wonderful tone. The next night my wife and I had friends over for dinner and then attended the Boulder Philharmonic. Butterman. Misha and Cipa Dichter performed Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos, K365 smoothly, then Michael Butterman lead the orchestra in a rousing performance of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony.
I rested for two nights then I heard Bizet's "Pearl Fishers" at Opera Colorado. I had prepared for it a bit by listening to the complete opera a few times. Clearly the highlight was the tenor-baritone duo "Au fond du" but I was very pleased with the entire opera. Listening ahead of time helped and I enjoyed the whole thing, contrary to my impression that I'd be bored after the duet.
The next night I went back to CU for the finals of the Bruce Ekstrand Graduate Student Performance Competition. The judges had to choose between a pianist, a soprano, a harpist, a flutist, a violinist (my friend Ilya Goldberg), and a piano duo. It was a very difficult choice as they were all excellent. Judging such diverse instruments must have been very tough. We in the audience were given a ballot for a separate survey. Try as I did, it was nearly impossible for me to rank one over the other, particularly as a non-musician but devoted listener. I finally selected the harpist but the judges selected the flutist, Melissa Lotspeich, followed by the piano duo of Miroslava Mintcheva and David McArthur. The rest of the audience selected the piano duo. I'm certain that was based on their rousing performance of Bolcom's "The Serpent's Kiss".
Last night, February 19th, I again went to CU for Julia Fischer and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. The two Bach violin concertos and Walton's "Sonata for Strings" were okay, but I enjoyed Britten's "Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge". It's another piece I had recently listened to, so perhaps listening to a piece ahead of time increases my enjoyment, though I've heard both Bach pieces many times.
Tonight we might go to the Boulder Chorale's performance of Haydn's "Lord Nelson Mass", but maybe not. The Upstart Crow's performance of the little known Shakespeare play "The Two Noble Kinsmen" might just beat out the Haydn.
I'm lucky to live in Boulder and have so many musical opportunities open to me. I need to rest my ears a bit so we'll head to the mountains for some skiing. The CU Pendulum series is up again next week.
The next night, Friday February 13th, I went to a performance of the Tasman Quartet. They are the quartet currently studying with the Takacs at CU and are now in their second year. They again performed the Schubert Quartet D810 with strong dynamics and a wonderful tone. The next night my wife and I had friends over for dinner and then attended the Boulder Philharmonic. Butterman. Misha and Cipa Dichter performed Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos, K365 smoothly, then Michael Butterman lead the orchestra in a rousing performance of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony.
I rested for two nights then I heard Bizet's "Pearl Fishers" at Opera Colorado. I had prepared for it a bit by listening to the complete opera a few times. Clearly the highlight was the tenor-baritone duo "Au fond du" but I was very pleased with the entire opera. Listening ahead of time helped and I enjoyed the whole thing, contrary to my impression that I'd be bored after the duet.
The next night I went back to CU for the finals of the Bruce Ekstrand Graduate Student Performance Competition. The judges had to choose between a pianist, a soprano, a harpist, a flutist, a violinist (my friend Ilya Goldberg), and a piano duo. It was a very difficult choice as they were all excellent. Judging such diverse instruments must have been very tough. We in the audience were given a ballot for a separate survey. Try as I did, it was nearly impossible for me to rank one over the other, particularly as a non-musician but devoted listener. I finally selected the harpist but the judges selected the flutist, Melissa Lotspeich, followed by the piano duo of Miroslava Mintcheva and David McArthur. The rest of the audience selected the piano duo. I'm certain that was based on their rousing performance of Bolcom's "The Serpent's Kiss".
Last night, February 19th, I again went to CU for Julia Fischer and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. The two Bach violin concertos and Walton's "Sonata for Strings" were okay, but I enjoyed Britten's "Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge". It's another piece I had recently listened to, so perhaps listening to a piece ahead of time increases my enjoyment, though I've heard both Bach pieces many times.
Tonight we might go to the Boulder Chorale's performance of Haydn's "Lord Nelson Mass", but maybe not. The Upstart Crow's performance of the little known Shakespeare play "The Two Noble Kinsmen" might just beat out the Haydn.
I'm lucky to live in Boulder and have so many musical opportunities open to me. I need to rest my ears a bit so we'll head to the mountains for some skiing. The CU Pendulum series is up again next week.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Les Nuits D'Été
The song cycle "Les Nuits D'Été" by Berlioz was sung last night by Julie Simpson as part of the University of Colorado's Music Faculty Series. What a treat! Some people have commented to me about their negative reaction to Berlioz. Some of his works might be a bit over-blown, but not this song cycle. He only has 28 works with opus numbers, so for someone who lived to be 65, his output wasn't prodigious. Simpson has a silky voice and she hit a home run with her deliverance. She also sang "Arianna a Naxos" by Haydn and the witch's scene from Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel", assisted by Kara Guggenmos and Jennifer DeDominic. It was a wonderful concert.
"Les Nuits D'Été"has only been broadcast on my local , now non-reachable, classical station, KVOD, 11 times since the beginning of 2004. 6 broadcasts were between 8 PM and midnight, and 5 between in the 1 AM and 4 AM. What a shame that listeners in the Denver area don't get much chance to hear this wonderful cycle.
"Les Nuits D'Été"has only been broadcast on my local , now non-reachable, classical station, KVOD, 11 times since the beginning of 2004. 6 broadcasts were between 8 PM and midnight, and 5 between in the 1 AM and 4 AM. What a shame that listeners in the Denver area don't get much chance to hear this wonderful cycle.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The University of Colorado's "Pendulum" series
Last night I went to a concert of the University of Colorado's "Pendulum New Music" series, presenting the best of new music from both students and faculty. It has always been fun to hear new compositions from unknown composers and last night was rewarding.
A guest faculty composer, Ed Knight from Oklahoma City, had his "Trio for flute, viola, and piano" played for the first time. It was an interesting tonal work well worth hearing again. As it progressed I could believe that Knight would do well writing for the movies. What made this piece even more interesting was that the he went on stage and said a few words about it. The evening's program merely named the piece but Knight gave names to the 4 movements. I cannot just image an event or setting just by listening to the music, particularly one which I've never heard before. But Knight's description of the work being influence by the Internet added immensely to its appeal. "Spam", with a hint of the darkness and even a worm made the first movement come alive. While I don't know much about "Classmates.com" or "Matchmaker.com", his brief explanation put substance to the second and third movements. "Ebay bidding war", once named could be imagined musically and was realized with the final spoken word "Sold". It was much fun.
"Pendulum New Music" has always been enjoyable and it's pleasing to hear the student and faculty compositions. It is to the composition faculty's credit that the music comes off as well as it does. The students say a few words about their work and take applause afterwords. Greg Simon's "Prometheus in the Dead Zone" was exciting, but the other works by Matthew Browne and Mary Mixter should be complemented also. Kudos to all involved.
A guest faculty composer, Ed Knight from Oklahoma City, had his "Trio for flute, viola, and piano" played for the first time. It was an interesting tonal work well worth hearing again. As it progressed I could believe that Knight would do well writing for the movies. What made this piece even more interesting was that the he went on stage and said a few words about it. The evening's program merely named the piece but Knight gave names to the 4 movements. I cannot just image an event or setting just by listening to the music, particularly one which I've never heard before. But Knight's description of the work being influence by the Internet added immensely to its appeal. "Spam", with a hint of the darkness and even a worm made the first movement come alive. While I don't know much about "Classmates.com" or "Matchmaker.com", his brief explanation put substance to the second and third movements. "Ebay bidding war", once named could be imagined musically and was realized with the final spoken word "Sold". It was much fun.
"Pendulum New Music" has always been enjoyable and it's pleasing to hear the student and faculty compositions. It is to the composition faculty's credit that the music comes off as well as it does. The students say a few words about their work and take applause afterwords. Greg Simon's "Prometheus in the Dead Zone" was exciting, but the other works by Matthew Browne and Mary Mixter should be complemented also. Kudos to all involved.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
It's been a while.......
I've been still trying to find a decent replacement for my old FM radio. Since KVOD, the Denver all classical music station, essentially went off the air, I've been trying Internet stations from a few different systems. While the broadcast fare from KVOD was tepid, at least all I needed to do to hear it was turn on the radio and there it was -- oh, for the good old days.
While having breakfast the other day it dawned on me that I could listen to some classical music on my TV. Comcast has several stations, so I thought to try them out. They were pretty innocuous but okay. Then I noticed that Comcast also believes in only playing parts of a composition. If a composer only wanted his audience to hear the 2nd movement he wouldn't write a first. It's a petty peeve of mine --- if you broadcast a composer's work of art, play the entire thing!
I've been very happy with the music broadcast over the Internet using the Live365's network, particularly contemporary-classical.com which broadcasts 20th and 21st century composers. I've heard some incredible music on contemporary-classical.com that I've never heard before. Stations like KVOD never took the risk of exposing their listeners to this stuff, instead broadcasting the same old masters over and over and over. Even broadcasting 24 hours each day, they just couldn't risk contemporary music.
The contemporary-classical.com web site went off the air a week or so ago. Two musicians associated with the group "Alarm Will Sound" were staying at our house while rehearsing for a Denver performance. I was telling one of them about the music broadcast on contemporary-classical.com. Later that day I went to check out the web site and instead found a note "Will the owner of this site please contact his ISP". Since I was about to renew my annual membership with Live365, I wasn't sure I wanted to re-up if the main station I was interested in was going away. Using Live365's contact form, I asked what they knew about the site. I got no response. A few days later, still no contemporary-classical.com web site, so I sent another query. The day after the second request to Live365 I noticed that the Contemporary-classical.com web site was back up. The next day Live365 finally responded (twice, separately) and said all was fine, just clear my browser cache. Give me a break! This was not a caching issue. Anyway, I'm back and happy listening to some very interesting contemporary classical music.
Right now I'm listening to Roy Harris's Symphony #7 on Live365/contemporary-classical. Was it broadcast on any of the stations I monitor in the last 5 years? Nope. Harris's 3rd, 4th, 6th and 9th, yes, but not the 7th. Such is the state of broadcast classical music in some of cities around the country.
While having breakfast the other day it dawned on me that I could listen to some classical music on my TV. Comcast has several stations, so I thought to try them out. They were pretty innocuous but okay. Then I noticed that Comcast also believes in only playing parts of a composition. If a composer only wanted his audience to hear the 2nd movement he wouldn't write a first. It's a petty peeve of mine --- if you broadcast a composer's work of art, play the entire thing!
I've been very happy with the music broadcast over the Internet using the Live365's network, particularly contemporary-classical.com which broadcasts 20th and 21st century composers. I've heard some incredible music on contemporary-classical.com that I've never heard before. Stations like KVOD never took the risk of exposing their listeners to this stuff, instead broadcasting the same old masters over and over and over. Even broadcasting 24 hours each day, they just couldn't risk contemporary music.
The contemporary-classical.com web site went off the air a week or so ago. Two musicians associated with the group "Alarm Will Sound" were staying at our house while rehearsing for a Denver performance. I was telling one of them about the music broadcast on contemporary-classical.com. Later that day I went to check out the web site and instead found a note "Will the owner of this site please contact his ISP". Since I was about to renew my annual membership with Live365, I wasn't sure I wanted to re-up if the main station I was interested in was going away. Using Live365's contact form, I asked what they knew about the site. I got no response. A few days later, still no contemporary-classical.com web site, so I sent another query. The day after the second request to Live365 I noticed that the Contemporary-classical.com web site was back up. The next day Live365 finally responded (twice, separately) and said all was fine, just clear my browser cache. Give me a break! This was not a caching issue. Anyway, I'm back and happy listening to some very interesting contemporary classical music.
Right now I'm listening to Roy Harris's Symphony #7 on Live365/contemporary-classical. Was it broadcast on any of the stations I monitor in the last 5 years? Nope. Harris's 3rd, 4th, 6th and 9th, yes, but not the 7th. Such is the state of broadcast classical music in some of cities around the country.
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