I like to think of myself as open-minded, musically speaking. But I am quite enough of a musical snob to have never attended an orchestral “pops” concert. So imagine my mixed feelings when the offer to see Sting, one of the century’s musical superstars, in concert with the pops wing of the Royal Philharmonic came my way. Would it be pure unbridled kitsch or an inspiring and creative fusion of styles? Would it profoundly upset my musical sensibilities to see a miked, funked up symphony orchestra performing in a hockey arena? Or would it open my mind to a whole new world of possibilities for this incessantly “dying” ensemble?

The opening minutes I feared the worst, with all my anxieties focused on the conductor. There is simply nothing more painful than watching classical musicians trying to be hip, and this one was going at it full pelt. His third beats looked like Rafael Nadal taking a backhand, with musical gestures simply hurled across the orchestra. Significant downbeats, meanwhile, were mostly accompanied with an ecstatic leap in the air. And all against a backdrop of swaying, jerking, and gyrating unbecoming a conductor. How on earth does one conduct with panache a man as effortlessly stylish as Sting? I have no idea.

Thankfully, however, I slowly managed to avert my gaze and take in what was going on around this wildly dancing animal. Sting’s voice remains as pure and strong as ever and with some first-rate assistance, I assume, he has produced a bevy of spectacular orchestrations of his best-loved songs for this tour. “Russians” was perhaps the finest for sheer orchestrational spectacle. Beginning with an orchestral introduction featuring some entirely new, glorious, and noisy Russian-style bombast, the rather puny synthesized Prokofiev quote from the original song was then blown up into something approximating the original. To hear an orchestra playing Lieutenant Kije at full volume (and miked) with drums, guitars—the works—was truly a thrill. The audience of aging couples was cheering fit to bust. All in all, this very youthful orchestra did a first rate job with a challenging three hours of highly imaginative, harmonically and rhythmically complex orchestrations, which also featured a number of stunning solos.

Ultimately, I was entirely sold on this fantastic ensemble of diverse musical talent. During the interval the conductor took off his tails and switched into a simpler jacket, a wardrobe change that certainly helped de-classicize him a little, and I found myself increasingly charmed by his leaping, frisbee-throwing, spell-casting moves. Who doesn’t love a bit of musical enthusiasm anyway?

Sting has been exploring all kinds of new musical directions these last few years with varying degrees of success, some of which have been reviewed on Zeitschichten as well. Here, though, he has hit on a winning formula—one which he did not invent, but which he has brought to new heights.

Hagen Quartet

Tonight I had the pleasure of hearing the Hagen Quartet play at the Konzerthaus (I am in Vienna and will be here for the next 2.5 months, so I am certainly looking forward to a lot of concerts!).  This ensemble is one of the premier string quartets in the world and as usual they did not disappoint — except for the fact that they did not play an encore!  The program was Beethoven op. 18/4, Bartók’s String Quartet no. 1, and Brahms’s op. 111 Quintet, also featuring Antoine Tamestit as the second viola.  Needless to say, the performance was virtually flawless and highly appreciated by the crowd (except for some patrons who seemed unimpressed by the Bartók…but this is Vienna…).

I very much enjoyed their rendition of op. 18/4, the only minor quartet of Beethoven’s early works in this genre.  Instead of maximizing the Sturm und Drang to open the first movement, they downplayed the drama, giving the melody almost a light texture.  The Hagen Quartet is very skilled all around, but it would be hard to overstate how effectively they can play in the quieter ranges.  In the Beethoven, this ability led to an almost delicate rendition of the initial theme.  When it returned in the recapitulation, they then exploited its full dramatic potential, lending a cohesive narrative to the form and an inspired interpretation.

The Bartók is one of my favorites from his string quartets so I was very pleased to be able to hear the Hagen version.  I have to say that I wanted more of a ‘seek and destroy’ sound in the last movement — one of my favorite memories of them was hearing them play the complete late Beethoven quartets over the course of a weekend, particularly their ‘seek and destroy’ approach to the Große Fuge.  However, the lines were remarkably lucid, even the lowest parts in the viola and cello which normally sound like a vicious growl.  This piece is fascinating because of its reliance on minor seconds: at first, they are not apparent, particularly because the opening stresses large intervals in the two violins, but what joins these bigger leaps are minor seconds.  By the third (and final) movement, these minor seconds are almost unavoidable.  One of Bartók’s most effective timbres is created by having one of the violins play the open E string simultaneously with a covered E on the neighboring A string.  This piercing sound is then modified with minor seconds above and below it, creating tension that does not dissipate throughout the movement.  The theme that appears after this effect also stresses minor seconds, as do many of the melodies, except for one of the most prominent.  At two points, the music comes to a sudden stop (I felt that the Hagen Quartet could have stopped a little more suddenly, but this is a small quibble) with a lyrical, four-note melody in the first violin floating over the other parts.  Unlike so much of the movement, the minor seconds suddenly disappear: the melody outlines a descending perfect fifth with whole step to a minor third then another whole step.  However, the lyricism is thwarted by the anchoring accompaniment, which leaps up a tritone.  While the intervals it forms with the melody are mostly consonant (starting with a minor third and ending on a major third), the tritone is jarring and unavoidable.  One of my favorite characteristics of music from this era is precisely this tension between consonance and dissonance: the rules of traditional harmony are fading but not absent.  In tonight’s concert, the Hagen Quartet produced an exquisite sound when after the first iteration, this theme was repeated at an astoundingly quiet dynamic.

The Brahms was also wonderful, although I prefer some of the composer’s other chamber works.  Particularly during the second theme of the first movement the warm tone of the Hagen Quartet (with Tamestit) shone through.  All in all, it was a wonderful concert experience and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to hear them live again.

Kent Nagano and Guy Lafleur

For those of you who think that classical music is dead, or that classical music cannot appeal to a mass audience, or even that the funding of classical music organizations is doomed to be perennially on the brink, you clearly did not attend the Montreal Symphony‘s presentation at the Bell Centre on 2 April 2009.  The concert was called the ‘Meeting of the Century’ and combined anniversaries of two of the city’s organizations: the centennial of the Montreal Canadiens — arguably the most successful hockey franchise in the National Hockey League — and the 75th anniversary of the Montreal Symphony.  Linking these two organizations together may seem gimmicky or spurious, but in fact the combination represents Nagano’s keen observations about Montreal culture.  Furthermore the program — while it did feature pieces to do with hockey — was not limited to pops highlights: indeed, the 12 000 attendees were equally enthralled with excerpts from Beethoven, Respighi, and Holst.  A sold-out arena concert is generally in the ambit of a Britney Spears, not a symphony orchestra, so it is worth considering how the OSM presented such a successful show — and benefited from the results, since the funds will assist the orchestra to tour Europe next year.

One of the main features of this concert was a performance of Les Glorieux, a work commissioned last year by the OSM.  The piece was so popular that the concert and rehearsals sold out, leading the OSM to develop the Bell Centre idea for this year.  Les Glorieux is a nickname for the Montreal Canadiens and pays tribute to the historical legacy between the city and its hockey team.  Hockey in Montreal is like baseball in Boston or football in Texas: the city’s natives follow events with a close and critical eye.  Not only is the team important today, it also has an enviable legacy with the most Stanley Cup wins of any hockey team and the second-most championships of any professional sports team in North America (the Yankees have the distinction of 26 to the Canadiens’ 24).  Nagano’s decision to commission the piece shows his understanding of Montreal’s culture and the reverence that hockey has.  Not only did the orchestra perform the work, they also invited several of the legendary players from the team to join them on stage: Guy Lafleur, Elmer Lach, Jean Béliveau, Henri Richard just to name a few.

What was impressive, though, was that Nagano did not allow this event to be only about hockey.  The OSM presented a program primarily of 20th-century pieces and Beethoven.  While several, such as Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and ‘Mars: Bringer of War’ from Holst’s The Planets, can be viewed as appropriate for the pop repertoire, the OSM also played the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and the final movement from the ‘recapitulation’ (entrance of the voices) from Beethoven’s 9th, accompanied by a choir of 1500.  Certainly these pieces are not difficult listening, but I would defy any conductor to present, say, Webern in a hockey arena and capture the subtleties.  The audience, however, was very appreciative of all the works, not just the hockey piece but of the program as a whole.  Imagine an arena filled with people cheering a performance of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ or the last movement of Respighi’s Pines of Rome with an entire additional brass band.  Purists may see this event as little more than a gimmick, but if it brings classical music to 12 000 people while providing much needed support to arts organizations , I think that they should be encouraged.

When I wrote my enthusiastic review of Daniel Panner’s performance at the first Fromm Concert Series on February 21, I should have mentioned, that the other great violist of our time, Garth Knox, was performing in the very same hall just one week prior to the Fromm concert.

Knox, who was invited by the Harvard Group for New Music, performed a stunning program with pieces by Tolga Yayalar, Dominique Schafer, Bert van Herck, and Jean-Francois Charles amongst others.

One of the pieces that struck me most during the performance was “Catalyst” by the Mexican composer Edgar Barroso. “Catalyst” is a very energetic piece that employs a wide variety of sounds and engages the performer not only in traditional playing techniques but also in an activity that is best described as “air fencing!” As you will hear in the free recording that you can download from the composer’s website, at some point during the piece the performer is wildly batting around with his bow (starting at 1:35), creating a sharp zipping sound that contrasts nicely with the whorled crawling of Knox’s fingers on the fretboard.

If you like the piece as much as I do, take a moment to browse the multimedia page on Barroso’s website which contains videos as well as free mp3s of his fabulous music.

I just returned from a great concert at Paine Hall and my ears are still resounding with the fabulous music I heard a few hours ago.

The program was part of the Fromm Foundation Series that always forms the high point of the concert season at the Harvard Music Department for me. This year, Hans Tutschku, the curator of the series, invited the Manhattan Sinfonietta under Jeff Milarsky to perform two programs of contemporary music that couldn’t be more exciting.

Today’s program started with an intricate and playful composition for two flutes by Hitomi Kaneko (Miyabi), which was followed by a cumbrous yet yielding piece for tuba, piccolo flute, and piano by Galina Ustvolskaya. The first half of the concert ended with a world premiere, L’Icône St. Nicolas by David Gompper, a piece that transported me into a dream world somewhere between Alban Berg’s Lulu and Henze’s Gogo No Eiko – almost too sweet and sultry to be true.

After the intermission we heard a wild, and absolutely stunning performance of Arthur Kampela’s Bridges by Daniel Panner, who certainly has to be regarded as one of the foremost violist of our time. The concert ended with Luciano Berio’s expertly played points on the curve to find …, one of the classics by this master of recombination, shuffeling, and layering.

Marcos Balter

The most exciting and refreshing piece on the program was however Marcos Balter’s Raw Item for oboe and small ensemble. Balter who is a native of Brazil composes music that is agile, flexible, delicate and fragile. If the sound of insects crawling through a Tarkovskian landscape of swaying grass is something that you find appealing, spend some time with Marcos’ music. I can’t stop listening to the few samples he has on his website and I am eagerly awaiting more opportunities to hear his music.

If you are in the Boston area, come out to Harvard for the second concert tomorrow night, which will include works by Lei Liang (world premiere), Ivan Fedele, Philippe Leroux, and Donald Martino.

Robert Helps (1928-2001)

The University of South Florida’s School of Music is in the midst of the fourth annual Robert Helps International Composition Competition and Festival.  Each year, this event pays homage to Robert Helps (1928-2001), composer/pianist, who was a faculty member at USF and one of the key promoters of new music during the second half of the twentieth century.  His music is best described as belonging to New Romanticism and he had a particular fondness for piano pieces. Each year there is a $10 000 prize awarded to the most promising composition by a young composer, as well as a performance of the winning work (this year’s winner was Lyudmila German, whose Piano Sonata No. 1 we heard played excellently by USF faculty member Svetozar Ivanov as the second half of tonight’s program).

One of Helps’ traditions was to hold a concert every year on February 13 that highlighted piano repertoire.  The stage of the USF Music Recital Hall would be lit with candles and as the program stated, ‘embellished with an occasional feathered boa, tasteful naughtiness, and good humor.’  Tonight’s concert featured many of these traditions (minus the candles) and showcased a wide variety of twentieth-century repertoire with an innovative programming concept.

In the first half, each piece added to the piano forces of the previous.  For instance, the concert started with Helps’ Saccade for four hands (1 piano), then moved to Berio’s 1965 composition, Wasserklavier for four hands (2 pianos).  Although I found many of the works tonight engaging, the Berio stood out as a particularly fascinating work; the performance of Allan Armstrong and Dharshini Tambiah was nuanced and expressive.  Virtually all of us were surprised that the sounds were far closer to a 19th-century aesthetic than one might have predicted (there is a YouTube recording but it is a later version for one performer. See below).  Then came three works for six hands: Schnittke’s Hommage à Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich (1 piano) and Helps’ Berceuse (2 pianos: one performer sat at one and two at the other).  Next was Tomas Svoboda’s Four Visions for three pianos (6 hands), at which point USF ran out of concert grands and (unfortunately) an upright was added to the mix.  Percy Grainger’s County Gardens (2 pianos, 8 hands) provided contrast to the more serious pieces preceding it, particularly due to the simply splended accessories worn by the performers, including a superbly over-sized straw hat with ample accessorizing fruit sported by Miroslava Panayotova.  Next the pianists brought out the berets for Milhaud’s Paris (4 pianos, 8 hands).  To end the half, we heard Cage’s Fontana Mix (4 pianos, 12 hands).  As the musical material for the Cage, the performers played snippets from the pieces in which they had performed during the first half.  In total, the concert involved 4 pianos, 8 composers, 9 pieces, and 13 pianists — a fitting way to celebrate Friday the 13th and pay tribute to Robert Helps.

Their love of each song was clear not only from their musical dedication but also from their dramatic flair: all four singers have theatrical backgrounds, and the Marathon’s finest performances rendered songs as musical monodramas. Barron provided a forceful close to the fifth concert with a one-two punch of “The New River” and “Swimmers”; an agile and coquettish Harger delivered the most memorable of the team’s nine variants of “Romanzo (di Central Park)”; Arnold’s set of “reverent” works in Concert Three brought intense focus to bear on elusive songs like “Soliloquy” and “Mists.” Many of the highlights came from the formidable Ms. Saunders, including stunning performances of “On Judges Walk” and “Far From My Heavenly Home.” Assisting musicians numbered in the dozens, all enthusiastic and professional: pianist Kim Patterson deserves particular mention, not least for his mesmerizing solo performance of the “Three-Page Sonata.” Events rounding off the Marathon program included a keynote address by Kyle Gann, a pre-concert talk from Helen Boatwright, a post-concert round-table with the performers, and four scholarly panels; attendees were also encouraged join the choir of South Church for an all-Ives service on Sunday morning.

I was delighted by every event in the festival I was able to see, but I had a small number of reservations about the event’s organization. (I should note that I am an alumnus of Wesleyan’s music department and a former student of Professor Bruce.) The process by which works were grouped together was weighted heavily towards thematic affinities; while this is a tried-and-true approach to concert programming, surely there could have been at least one set of songs related by some musical criterion. Why not a set of songs with polytonal elements, or for that matter a set of predominantly diatonic songs? At times the program notes hinted teasingly at new connections uncovered by the performers over their years of study; but if those connections were accounted for in programming, the audience wasn’t notified. In a way this was a surprisingly conservative choice for a Wesleyan event, as was the grouping of scholarly panels along disciplinary lines—composers with composers, musicologists with musicologists. Why not “mix it up”? Who wouldn’t want to see Anthony Braxton discuss Ives with J. Peter Burkholder?

But again, this is more a musicological wish list than a litany of complaints. Everybody won the Ives Vocal Marathon: it was an endurance test successfully passed, and a canon successfully expanded. In a giddy and informal pre-concert talk on Sunday night—the programs had been delivered to the wrong venue—Bruce discussed the Marathon with the audience. One attendee suggested Wesleyan had one-upped Yale, always a plus; another mentioned the Guinness Book of World Records. Once the programs arrived these eager listeners were treated to a grand finale: “Songs of Peace and War,” featuring show-stoppers like “General William Booth Enters into Heaven,” “Majority,” and “He Is There!” They were being rewarded for their perseverance, and also for their dedication: the concert overlapped with the Super Bowl.

The Berlin Philharmonic at home

It felt vaguely ironic to be sitting before our computer in Germantown, New York, watching the first live internet broadcast from the Digital Concert Hall of the Berliner Philharmoniker, with Sir Simon Rattle conducting Dvorák’s G minor Slavonic Dance and Brahms’s First Symphony.

And wonderful.  Being able to be in two places at once was incredible.  We were “there” in the concert hall even though we were thousands of miles away.  What an amazing altering of time and space.  Like all visual recordings of concerts, having one’s attention directed by the camera rather than one’s internal promptings was very different from actually being in the audience, but the intimacy created with conductor and orchestra was a joy.  This is a great thing the Berliner Philharmonica has undertaken. The video quality was superb as was the sound. Oh yes, the music was wonderful too.

The decision by the Berliner Philharmoniker to create the Digital Concert Hall is clearly a step many cultural institutions are beginning to undertake to answer the perennial problem of how to stay solvent, survive, in difficult economic times. They are selling seats to an audience that has no geographic limitation. They have increased the seating capacity beyond the restrictions of physical space.

Is this a continuation of the movement to the virtual world, a world where less and less of our physical presence is necessary for an experience? And when does that experience become accepted as how best to “appreciate” the event. Is it better to watch the football game on the TV with HD quality and eventual 3D broadcast then sit in a stadium far removed from the action but immersed in the spirit of the game.

Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert

As I’m sure many of you know already, each year the Vienna Philharmonic presents a concert from the Musikverein showcasing primarily the music of Johann Strauss Jr. This tradition started in 1939, just after the Anschluss which made Austria a province of Germany — as you can probably imagine, there is a whole story to this, and I will elaborate on it further at another time and in another format. Since the 1950s, the concert has been broadcast around the world. There are several traditions associated with this event, including a minimum of two encores (Strauss Jr.’s Blue Danube Waltz followed by Strauss Sr.’s Radetzky March), and this year’s concert followed in the typical vein. Daniel Barenboim was the conductor.

Because this year was the 200-year anniversary of Haydn’s death, there was also a selection on the program by the grandfather of all Classical genres. A reduced orchestra performed the last movement of Symphony no. 45 (‘Farewell’) and did actually walk off stage to ‘end’ the concert.  Naturally, then all the musicians walked back on and performed the three encores; this year they added one, Strauss Jr.’s Sans Souci Polka from op. 178 from 1856.  If you’re not able to recall that melody immediately, don’t feel concerned that your Straussal skills need work.  There are two basic approaches a conductor can take to the New Year’s Concert: go with the old chestnuts or focus mostly on lesser-known works.  Barenboim seems to have opted for Approach #2, although the American broadcast — which edits some of the concert — left out some of the more popular pieces, such as Rosen aus dem Sueden.

Barenboim did seem to have a prediliction for the Hungarian pieces: the program included two selections from Strauss Jr.’s operetta Der Zigeunerbaron and the Elijan a Magyar polka (which means ‘Long live Hungary’ and even cites the Rakozky March at the end).  I was pleased that Barenboim also included a piece by Josef ‘brother of Johann Jr.’ Strauss, Sphaerenklaenge, because Josef was a fabulous waltz composer.  If you don’t know his works, be sure to check out his Dynamidenwalzer, which was the piece Richard (‘No Relation’) Strauss quoted in Rosenkavalier.

Barenboim certainly enjoyed himself with the ‘Farewell’ Symphony and in giving elaborate conducting instructions during the Radetzky March.  I found his program to be slightly bizarre — a few more of the old chestnuts might have been nice — but mostly fine.  In the American broadcast, Julie Andrews (yes, our host was Julie ‘The Hills Are Alive’ Andrews) told a Strauss Jr. anecdote that I had not heard before, which I found astounding.

Duke Ellington

In 1962, Duke Ellington and arranger Billy Strayhorn collaborated to do a jazz version of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.  The original version was for big band and features nine movements.  The titles have been slightly modified — for instance, the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ becomes ‘Sugar Rum Cherry’ — but the melodies remain relatively easy to identify (even if, at times, Tchaikovsky’s melodies don’t readily swing).

Last night I heard a performance of this piece in St. Petersburg, Florida at the Palladium Theater, a ‘historic site’ by Florida standards (it was built in 1925).  While I wouldn’t describe the Tampa Bay region as musically saturated, one of the major advantages of living here is the opportunity to hear lots of jazz — and high quality performances of jazz, no less.  This concert was no exception.  The group was led by guitarist Nate Najar and featured Mike McCarthy on saxophone, Jon-Erik Kellso on trumpet, Chuck Redd on vibraphone, Robert Redd on piano, John Lamb on bass and Stephen Bucholtz on drums.  John Lamb actually played with the Ellington Orchestra in the 1960s and added a great deal to the performance.

The first half was arrangements of Christmas music, such as ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘O Tannenbaum,’ for the ensemble.  I especially enjoyed Najar’s solo performance of ‘Silent Night,’ which captured the mood of this carol well.  These numbers gave the opportunity for all of the performers to shine and started off the concert with a joyous tone.

In the second half, we heard all nine numbers of the Ellington Nutcracker as arranged by Najar.  Here John Lamb really got to show off and did a great job of creating sounds out of the bass that showed range and versitility (two words I don’t often associate with the bass).  The ‘Peanut Brittle Brigade,’ an arrangement of the ever-popular ‘March,’ featured Chuck Redd with an extensive vibe solo.  ‘Danse of the Floreadores’ replaced ‘Waltz of the Flowers,’ turning the piece from a graceful triple waltz into a bopping duple dance.  The final number ‘Arabesque Cookie,’ was an arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Arabian Dance.’  Hints of Ellington’s ‘Caravan’ emerged here with a similar muted drum sound and parallel motion at the wrong (or more aptly, exotic) interval.  All in all, it was a very fascinating version of the piece and a fabulous performance.