Symphonies tomorrow......

Last evening I went to another "Fusion" concert of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra. Over the past year they attempted to fuse music with art, cinema, dance, Shakespeare and pizza-flipping -- not really! Several friends agree that the evenings haven't been well received -- not exactly flops, but distractions to the music being performed. Next year, the Boulder Phil gives us an evening of Frank Sinatra style singing, one with the world premiere of a concerto for Tabla and orchestra, and a family concert "Alien encounter 2: Schnoodle meets Sch(n)ubert." Why?

The Colorado Music Festival, where I seldom miss any concert, has announced a season heavy with "World" music and extremes. How about a night of ukelele music; one of tap dance; the Brazilian Guitar Quartet and the stunt of performing all the Beethoven symphonies in one week? Is this intended to develop audience and generate donations? What is going on here? What happened to a balanced season of plain old classical and contemporary music? Chamber music? Piano soloists? Some new music? I give up. I can see the next CMF season: all 104 Haydn symphonies one long evening and a concerto for claves and washboard.

In the blog Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise Justin Davidson writing about the financing of symphony orchestras notes that "....this doesn't mean that the symphony orchestras are no longer viable, or that they're about to be extinct, only that they have to do everything right.". I have always supported my local orchestras, donating regularly (with a company matching grant) and buying a couple of full subscriptions. Now, looking at what I'm being offered I'm reluctantly deciding that I'll not subscribe but only selectively buy tickets. I'll let the ukelele fans in the area make the donations instead of me. The orchestras just aren't "doing everything right".

Am I being a stick in the mud? Am I failing to adapt? I look forward to contemporary classical music on the radio and love live concerts, but what's happening here?

Strauss had to be wrong.....

Last night I was listening to KVOD (Denver) when the announcer Charles Andrews mentioned that Richard Strauss considered the Mozart String Quintet in g, K 516 very highly. I don't remember the exact words Andrews used, but I thought to myself that if Strauss thought this to be the case, the String Quintet (apparently a string quartet with 2 viola) must really be pretty good. It was written in 1787, somewhere between the "Prague" and the 39th symphony and between the 20th and 21st string quartets. Much to my surprise I found the K 516 mundane. How could a fellow composer like Strauss have held this piece in such high esteem? Strauss comes across as a somewhat enigmatic character in Ross's "The Rest is Noise". I wonder if this comment about this particular Mozart quintet came after the war? I don't know, but to me the quintet was a bore.

Olivier Messiaen

I had the pleasure of attending a concert of all-Messiaen piano music at the University of Colorado the other night. Hsing-Ay Hsu, director of CU's Pendulum New Music series, performed 5 works, some with MinTze Wu on violin and Alejandro Cremaschi, piano. What a great concert and such interesting music. It's Messiaen's Centennial so over the next few weeks there will several local performances of his works.

In Alex Ross's "The Rest is Noise" Messiaen plays an important role. Ross writes about his influence and about his World War II imprisonment in an Nazi concentration camp where he wrote The Quartet for the End of Time. Surprisingly Ross is silent about the Turangalila Symphony and praises From the Canyons to the Star, which I've never heard and which has not be broadcast on any of the FM stations I catalog. Amazon has it, but the price is awfully high. I guess I'll have to wait on Canyons.

What I particularly liked at Hsing-Ay's concert were two excerpts from Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus. She gave a brief explanation of the setting of the work, and called it one of the greatest piano pieces in the 20th century. While I thought that might be a bit of hyperbole, I started to wonder what would be the greatest. The piano music of Ravel and Debussy would probably rank up there, but then what else? I'm not sure that Hsing-Ay's hyperbole might not just be correct.

While I guess it is not surprising, Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus, is seldom broadcast on the 7 all-classical FM radio stations I monitor. Only WQXR(New York) and KUSC(LA) have broadcast movements from it in the last 4 years. Here in Denver, nothing, though, for example, Debussy's Children's Corner Suite has been broadcast 103 times in the last 4 years. Now I really enjoy Debussy's piano music, but as I'm writing this, I'm also listening to an interesting performance by Madelaine Fort of six pieces of Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus with commentary by her husband Alan Forte. The Debussy suite or Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess (133 broadcasts in Denver) are, to me, just not that much better than the Messiaen. So why have the radio stations not chosen to allow us to hear him? Your guess is as good as mine.

On Ross's "The Rest is Noise"

I've just finished The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross. Surprisingly I found it a tough read even though it was on the top of my Christmas wish-list, I had high expectations. What I can't quite put my finger on is how and why he chose to discuss some composers and essentially ignored others. Perhaps it was too broad a brush and too much for one book.

In particular, I was interested in his comments on the last 30 years of the 20th century. I was looking for pointers to new compositions and composers, but I wonder if I really want to hear some of them. Of La Mont Young, he suggests the Berkley music department gave him money 'to get him out of town', then quotes 3 supposed compositions. Do I really want to listen to him? There's a lot on Pierre Boulez and John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and of course Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, but tonal composers? He groups John Taverner and Michael Gorecki but says nothing about them. Gorecki's 3rd Symphony was a big commercial hit, but nothing more is said of him. There are interesting details about Stravinsky, Shostokovich, Copland, Sibelius, Britten and Richard Strauss and the effects of the world around them on their music.

I'm not a musician, so when Ross talks says it "ends in unambigous B-flat major" or "D-flat major, D major with B attached, E-flat major and the notes C and E" he leaves me cold. I can't imagine it and would need a keyboard to sound it out. Perhaps it's meaningful to a real musician, but it's nothing to me.

The historical coverage of the World War II impact on music was insightful. In an earlier post, I noticed the lack of broadcasting of Bruckner's symphonies. Perhaps I now understand it differently. Ross points out how frequently during the Nazi era Bruckner's works were performed. Apparently he was almost as popular as Wagner and Strauss. Is there some anti-German bias creeping into the broadcast selections? I've always concluded his omission had more to do with the length of the symphonies, but now I wonder a bit.

I'm lending my copy to a friend with similar interests. Let's see what he has to say, assuming that he takes the time to plow through the full 543 pages.

Poor Bruckner.

Before I begin, I want to incorporate one of the all time most famous pictures painted by a famous Italian, just to make a point:

Surely you recognize this! Now art is art and whatever the artist gives you is what you should get. You shouldn't be forced to accept an edited version chosen by someone who filters what you see. I shouldn't be putting in just part of of the Mona Lisa, though in your memory you probably see the rest with your mind's eye anyway. But what about this one:

Not as obvious, I suppose. Is your mind's eye missing something. It is a famous picture. or at least part of it.

Now what about music. When a composer produces a piece of art, it is what they write and should be view as a whole. But consider poor old Anton Bruckner, one of the composers ofter referenced as one who produces "Cathedrals of Sound": long majestic symphonies. He did 9 numbered symphonies, along with an early "Study" symphony and one number 0. Listen to it sometime and you'll pick out Bruckner right away.

Now look at this table of broadcasts of his symphonies from a sampling of classical FM radio stations around the country:

symphony:               "Study"  #0  #1  #2  #3  #4  #5  #6  #7  #8  #9
----------------------  -------  --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
Minneapolis, MN(CL24):                            *
Seattle, WA(KING):         1      2   5   2   6   3*  2   5   1*  2   4
Los Angeles, CA(KUSC):                1   7   1   6*  3*  1   2*  4   3*
Denver, CO(KVOD):                                 1   5           1   1
Birmingham, AL(WBHM):                                 1           1   1
Cincinnati, OH(WGUC):                             1*      1           1
New York, NY(WQXR):               2   5       1   3*      1   6*  1   1

Notice the asterisks, *, which indicated that the station chose not to broadcast the entire symphony, but rather just one or two movements. Those in the upper midwest listening to CL24 are only provided with a snippet like the second art fragment above, not the entire beautiful "Romantic" symphony that Bruckner worked so long and hard on. It's a shame that stations choose to do this. Why, I wonder, and can conclude that what Bruckner did was violate the station's operating premise, short works only.

Clearly the two coasts "appreciate" Bruckner more, and middle America needn't bother to listen to Bruckner.

Recognize the second art fragment? Its from "The persistance of memory" by Salvador Dali.

Stockhausen

Both The Week and The Economist had featured obituaries of Karlheinz Stockhausen on Saturday. The composer, called a "genius-madman" by one and "seeker of new sounds" by the other, died in early December at 79. Both magazines pointed out that his picture appears on the famous cover of the Beetle's Sgt. Pepper's Longly Hearts Club Band. I tracked down my copy of it but couldn't figure out which one was Stockhausen. Marilyn Monroe he was not!

With his death recent, KVOD chose to broadcast his Gruppen for three orchestras and Stimmung. I listened and wondered about them. Stimmung, a sextet for unaccompanied voices, made no sense whatsover and I was glad when it was over. For Christmas I've requested Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century and I'm curious to read what Ross says about Stockhausen. I just couldn't get any enjoyment out of his music.

Not related, on Friday night I participated in a new Boulder "event" -- a group performance of Phil Klein's UnSilent Night. There were about 60-70 participants, mostly students from the CU school of music and others interested in the CU Pendulum program. Armed with boom-boxes and powered speakers attached to mp3 players, we wandered for about an hour along the Pearl Street mall, playing segments of Klein's performance piece. The sound, with percussion, bells, chorus and organ reflected off the walls of the buildings and merged with the crunch of feet on the frozen snow. We were all met with smiles of wonderment from shoppers and those wandering the decked-out mall on a cold evening. One woman came up to my wife and asked "What religion is this? It's great!". It was and let's hope it happens again next year.

Symphonies being broadcast.

I was curious about the broadcast frequencies of symphonies by some of the greatest symphonists. Here's a small table of the broadcasts of symphonies over KVOD (Denver, CO) for the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 (through yesterday):

Composers	Symphonies Composed	KVOD 2005	KVOD 2006	KVOD 2007
Beethoven	9	159	224	243
Schubert	9	139	195	156
Schumann	4	81	114	100
Mozart	42	384	451	401
Haydn	104	384	525	569
Saint-Saens	3	38	52	40
Brahms	4	63	96	80
Dvorak	9	48	99	94
Sibelius	7	56	60	66
Tchaikovsky	6	40	74	78
Mahler	10	26	12	7
Bruckner	9	14	9	3
Prokofiev	7	45	44	42
Shostakovich	15	16	35	22

Poor Mahler and Bruckner. Of course what this table doesn't show is the distribution of the broadcasts. For more details see
classicalfmradio.org and click on the button 'Show an interesting report on broadcast symphonies'.

PS: Working from a comcast connection can be a real pain. I've got a cron job which pings my comcast gateway regularly and I'm really getting a lot of dropped pings.
I sure wish there was some competition here -- and don't even mention qworst (qwest).

La Valse

One of the most played pieces on KVOD is Ravel's "La Valse", ranked 15th over the last 4 years. It's not one of my favorites, but I understand the need to broadcast it. It was written for orchestra and that's what is normally played. However, this past week I attended a concert at the University of Colorado where I heard a piano version, one that apparently Ravel arranged. I had never heard it done this way. The pianist was Vladimir Stoepel, a Russian pianist now living in Berlin. He preceded the performance with a brief explanation that Ravel was heart-sick at what had happened in World War I and wanted to reflect the coming darkness he felt was coming to Europe. It was, indeed, a dark and wrenching piece, full of power. Stoepel played with great passion. To sit and hear such a performance; to recognize the to-me syrupy themes and yet to sense the dispare was thrilling. Now if only some of the FM radio stations would broadcast this version instead of the incessant orchestra suite.

The Early Quartets Win

I've probably focused too much on orchestral music when I look at what's been playing.

On the day after Thanksgiving, rather than get wrapped up in Black Friday crap and football, I decided to take a look at Beethoven's String Quartets. I'm lucky to have the Takacs Quartet performing regularly in Boulder, very lucky. They've recorded on CD and won awards for their renditions of the Beethoven quartets. I must admit, though, that even though I love their CD's, nothing is as good as a live performance.

Anyway, here is a table of the broadcasts of the Beethoven String Quartets by KVOD for 2007 through November 24th.

KVOD Broadcasts	Beethoven String Quartet	Time in minutes
11	#01 in F Major, Op 18/1	27
7	#02 in G Major, Op 18/2	23
8	#03 in C minor, Op 18/3	24
10	#04 in A Major, Op 18/4	22
10	#05 in A Major, Op 18/5	28
12	#06 in Bb Major, Op 18/6	24
11	#07 in F Major 'Razumovsky', Op 59/1	40
1	#08 in E minor 'Razumovsky', Op 59/2	40
9	#09 in C Major 'Razumovsky', Op 59/3	32
1	#10 in E flat Major 'Harp', Op 74	32
1	#11 in f minor 'Serioso', Op 95	21
0	#12 in E flat Major [1825], Op 127	35
2	#13 in Bb Major, Op 130 with 'Grosse Fugue'	57
0	#14 in C# minor, Op 131	39
2	#15 in a minor, Op 132	43
1	#16 in F Major, Op 135	25

Now there are only 16 of them, and there are roughly 525,600 minutes each year, so why can't they all be broadcast? What about #12 and #14? And only 2 times for the great Opus 132? Interestingly they did broadcast this on Thanksgiving night, appropriately with it's 3rd movement marked by Beethoven with "Heiliger Danksgesang eine Genesenen and die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart." ("Holy Song of Thanksgiving by a Convalescent to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode", thanks Wikipedia)

So it's the early quartets, a smidge of the middle ones and short shrift to the late quartets, arguably Beethoven's finest. I just can help but wonder why a public radio station can't do better?

It's almost Thanksgiving...

and it's turning into another dismal year for some poor composers of long works. It's just hard for me to understand why a classical radio station that is listener supported finds itself totally unable to broadcast any works of length. My favorite peeve is Beethoven. His first 8 symphonies have been broadcast on KVOD anywhere from 21 times thus far in 2007 (symphony #3) to 29 times (or more) for symphonies 1,2 7 and 8. Yet symphony number 9, the mighty Chorale has only been broadcast 3 times in all of 2007 -- and one of those times was on a special series that I caught that features "Listener Requests"!!!

Then there is Mahler. 2 broadcast each for symphonies 1, 2 and 5. Poor Bruckner has had only 4 symphonies broadcast, one each for 1, 4, 8 and 9. Bruckner has had only 14 pieces broadcast in total for 2007 including smaller religious works. Ravel, on the other hand, clearly a better composer by KVOD's broadcast standards, has had 362 broadcast.

In music appreciation classes (when there were music appreciation classes!) Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique" was often the example of programmatic music. Remember the
"Dream of the Witches Sabbath" and "March to the Scaffold"! Well, the 'all classical music - all the time' stations are broadcasting individual sections and not just the whole piece. KVOD broadcast the entire thing 4 times, WQXR 9 times and KING 6 times.

I cannot understand what causes stations that broadcast round the clock to have to limit pieces based on length. Forget opera, also -- but that's another issue. I also think it somewhat disrespectful to single out individual movements for separate broadcast. But who cares, the composers are dead and not complaining. Perhaps I'm the one complaining too much.

Someone else's interesting observation

A user of my ClassicalFMRadio.org web set sent me an interesting comment supporting something that I've felt for years -- that repetiticious broadcasting is bad for everyone. Thomas, from LA but now living in Boise, commented that "In Boise, we are stuck with a full daily dose of CPRN repetition, and it is horrible! ... Think of what this will do to local orchestras who will only have patrons who want to hear 'From Bohemia's Woods and Fields', or 'In the Steppes of Central Asia', or Handel's Water Music/Royal Fireworks." I couldn't agree more.

Now, having said that, I have to observe that here in Boulder we are very lucky to have the Colorado Music Festival. The CMF music directory, Michael Christie, each summer introduces the audience to some new and very interesting composers and compositions. This July year we were lucky to have a staged performance of Goligov's Ainadamar, a wonderful opera. Additionally we were introduced to compositions by Jennifer Higdon, Dimitrije Buzarovski, Madeleine Dring, Ofer Ben-Amots, and Marjan Mozetich. This last composer, from Canada, is very accessible and tonal. Mozetich has Bassoon and Marimba Concerto, a Concerto for 2 harps and string orchestra and a violin concerto. I recommend them all, thanks to the adventuresome Michael Christie.

In search of contemporary "classical" music

The music broadcast on KVOD tends to be tepid at best. I'm listening less and playing more mp3s of my own rather than just listening to the radio. But how do you find and hear new, interesting music? Generally speaking the FM classical stations focus on only short, easy-listening classical pieces. Lots of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart ...... and Ravel? Forget long pieces, contemporary, challenging classical music.

Saturday night at 10 pm, mountain time, though, KVOD plays some contemporary pieces. I try to listen, hoping to find a few gems every once in a while. The other week KVOD broadcast Jouni Kaipainen's Cello Concerto. I'd never heard of him. While the first movement didn't do much for me, the second and third were very nice. I decided to get a copy of my own from Amazon and, after listening again, think so still. The Cello Concerto comes with his Horn Concerto No. 1. Kaipainen isn't played much on the stations I monitor. Only 3 broadcasts of each, on the 3 "networked" stations, KVOD, WBHM and KUSC, in over 3 years. Too bad.

Toensing and Responsoria

While listening to KVOD the other night I heard some very nice, quiet choral music. Somehow I missed the ending announcer's description. However, I was able to find it from ClassicalFMRadio.org. It was Responsoria by Richard Toensing.

Toensing, it turns out, was Professor of Composition at the University of Colorado here in Boulder and has just recently retired (I think). A local! I even know one of the sponsors of the CD! Since I liked the quiet tolling quality of the piece, I wanted to listen to it again by getting it from the local library. No such luck. Even the local guys don't seem to get acquired for the library CD collection. Amazon had Responsoria so I ordered it from one of their subsidiaries. It showed up promptly and I'm listening to it as I post this. Since I've put it into my mp3 repository, I've decided to donate my copy to the Boulder Public Library.

Responsoria is a setting of the Tenebrae services, the Roman Catholic Church's services of "The Offices of Matins and Lauds". Not being Catholic, nor particularly Christian, the words in Latin have little meaning or effect. But the a capella singing with muted percussion and bells is very soothing and other-worldly. It's 3 CDs, referred to as Books. All much the same, but beautiful none the less.

A new recording by Sibelius

I subscribe to the magazine, The Week, which has a nice digest of news. It also has a weekly review of new CDs, almost always including one of classical music. The other week I saw a positive review of "Kullervo", an early, large-scale symphonic work by Jean Sibelius, his Opus 7, conducted by Robert Spano. I had never heard of it, but when I checked on my broadcast history, I found that 3 stations had broadcast it. WQXR in New York had broadcast as early as February, 2004. I ordered a copy from Amazon. Since the Spano recording was done in May of 2006, the must be other recordings available, though I didn't really check.

What I wonder is are Classical FM stations acquiring new CDs any more, or are they just playing the same old ones? Sibelius symphonies are popular. In 2006, stations KING (Seattle), KCME (Colorado Springs), WUSC (Los Angeles) and WQXR (New York) broadcast all 6 of his symphonies. KVOD (Denver) broadcast all except #6. KVOD likes #2, having played it 70 times in the last 4 years. But it has never played #6. I guess they either don't like it or don't have recording.

"Kullervo" is okay but not memorable, with a thick, brooding, dark, Scandanavian sound. It's based on the Finnish "Kalevala" legends, and, unlike any of Sibelius's orchestral works, has soprano and baritone voices.

iPod's organization with Classical Music

I bought myself an iPod NANO to play around with. It's my 3rd MP3 player after buying an Arcos 'Jukebox' 20 M player and a little Creative Lab's 512 Mb portable. I've had the Archos for several years and it's traveled well, though it's filled now. I use the Creative mostly when I bike or ski. It's light and portable and 512MB is enough to hold the entire Robert Greenburg lectures on the Symphony.

In both of these cases, I was able to take and construct m3u files containing the playlist order of the music and point them to the appropriate mp3 files, organized heirarchically on the player drive. One or two clicks and I'm off into my own world of music. No need for the FM radio, since most portable radios don't pick up the signal well enough to enjoy. Up in the mountains, forget classical music.

So I assumed the use of the iPod would be similar. Map the iPod directories, copy in the m3u and mp3s and keep Apple and me happy. It doesn't seem to work that way. I asked the young fellow at the Apple store and he said 'no problem'. Clearly he was not up-to-snuff, or else I didn't frame my question properly. Anyway, I'm on a quest to make it all work. Apparently m3u's from some Window's applications can be imported, but it sure isn't clear yet to me.

Silly little snippets

On KVOD, the Denver, Colorado classical music radio station, their format is to play a piece, name the piece that's just been played, play a snippet, have a station announcement, play a snippet, then announce and play the next piece. Perhaps it's me, but those snippets -- short, 5-12 second clips extracted from some light classical piece somewhere -- are annoying.

Image the setting. You are listening to some intense piece of chamber music, say a late Beethoven quartet and it reaches its climactic ending. The announcer says the piece, then the music moment is broken with this piece of twaddle which breaks the spell. Silence is better.

I'm not sure why they do it other than the use up some seconds to balance out their timing or some such. But it's annoying

Number Nine - the big loser

After a break of more than a month, I'm back with my constant complaint about long music. Poor old Beethoven. If he had only known to shorten his 9th. Had he, it would be played more. It's now after election day and yet KVOD, in Denver, has only broadcast the 9th 3 times this year. Just Three!
Here are the numbers:

Symphony No 1: 25 times

Symphony No 2: 25 times

Symphony No 3: 18 times

Symphony No 4: 19 times

Symphony No 5: 24 times

Symphony No 6: 24 times

Symphony No 7: 23 times

Symphony No 8: 24 times

Symphony No 9: 3 times

Doesn't that seem odd?

ClassicalFM

ClassicalFM

Not what they are know for:

Okay, I suspect I'm reaching for it here, but suppose the world knew John Lennon only as "a victim of an assassin". If you look for information about him, all you would find about him is the date of death, the location, the assassin, the assassin's punishment, etc. Nothing about what he did prior to the bullet.

Now image the same thing about a composer. You want to hear music by him, but what do you get?

Take poor old Vincenzo Bellini! I noticed that someone checked on his broadcasts on the 8 major FM classical music stations I monitor. I looked too and discovered that his most popular piece is the Oboe Concerto in E flat. So old Mr. Bellini is an oboe composer. Great! Now I do seem to remember that he wrote something called "Norma". And "La Sonnambla". And "il Puritani" and "il Pirati". They must be small pieces for woodwinds or something. Were he still alive, I suspect he would be shut himself into a closet and say "I give up! My music isn't appreciated in this silly century!"

Opera isn't an art form on the commercial FM radio stations anymore -- they take too long.

What about opera?

In most of my posts, I complain about the lack of broadcasts of lengthier works. Mahler, Bruckner, Beetoven's Ninth, "Symphony Fantastique" just aren't broadcast over the FM stations I've been monitoring. Well opera falls into the "don't bother with it" syndrome --- except for the live from the Metropolitan opera on Saturdays during the Met's season.

My local station KVOD, when it was a commercial station, would broadcast "Sunday night at the opera" around 8 pm each Sunday. With some good commentary, often with comments from the local Opera Colorado performers and officials, you could depend on listening to an entire opera.

KVOD was tranformed from a commercial station to part of a public radio duo. KVOD broadcast classical music 24 hours each day, with an "In-depth News" talk radio on KCFR with "All Things Considered" and similar programs. With this switch, opera was deep-sixed. The Sunday program disappeared, the local support of Opera Colorado diminished and opera lovers were sent to their CD collections.

Clearly masters like Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Puccinni -- you know who I mean, are only worthy of fragments from their works. Sad, sad, sad.