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Monthly Archives: October 2010

Paging Dr Atomic

Tonight’s Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) concert featured a full program of interesting selections, including Johannes Brahms’ Tragic Overture, John Adams’ Doctor Atomic Symphony, Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and Béla Bartók’s Suite from the Miraculous Mandarin. Guest conducting tonight from the St Louis Symphony was David Robertson.

Of course the unfortunate story of tonight’s concert was not that of the musicians on stage but the absolutely awful audience. Truly, on behalf of the audience, I apologize to the BSO for our collective behavior tonight. Now, the somewhat expected cacophony of coughing and seat cushions are excusable at the beginning of what will surely be a long cold season. It could be a good time to suggest that coughing should be suppressed, if at all possible, until the loud parts, but even then we should not feel open to pretending like there aren’t 2,000 other people who are trying to listen and enjoy the music. Also not particularly at fault are the Falling Chairs, which I’ve written about before as a metric to gauge attendance on any given night. Tonight’s Falling Chairs were plentiful, though I didn’t need them to know that the two nearly completely empty rows around me were indicative of a more sparse attendance that usual. However it was none of these usual things that were particularly prevalent tonight that bothered me.

Rather, it started with the incessant whispering behind me in the middle orchestra section. Several other, loud distractions were also audible, including what sounded like a dropped box of wood from a balcony and the distinct sound of a glass bottle hitting the floor and rolling for a few seconds. The worst offenses of the evening were the no fewer than two cell phone rings that went off at various points. This is the beginning of my third season of attending concerts at Symphony Hall, and in that time, this might be the first time I can recall a single cell phone going off, let alone two. Overall, the noises were distracting and mostly avoidable, and it’s by far the worst experience at Symphony Hall I’ve ever had in this regard.

Musically I’m ashamed to admit that it was difficult to concentrate or relax fully. Coming in, I was most familiar with the Brahms, since I love his music. I would not say that I am so well versed in the progression of the relatively short Tragic Overture, but I would need to hear the BSO performance again in order to make a judgment. There was an element of seriousness that I was not feeling, though it’s unclear if this was a byproduct of my overall experience or whether or not a starker contrast in dynamics, for instance, might have helped.

Perhaps most anticipated was the Doctor Atomic Symphony. My college degree is in physics, so it’s not a terrible surprise that anything called “Doctor Atomic” might pique my curiosity. In this piece, Adams has adapted his opera into a symphonic form. It lends itself well to this setting, arranged in three parts: The Laboratory, Panic, and Trinity. Since I’m not familiar with the opera, I was most intrigued by the idea of Trinity being the third movement. The line demarcating peace and fright was unclear, and I’m not sure that my one experience alone was able to resolve this. I enjoyed Adams’ use of solo horns to create a sense of urgency. The frenetic tempo throughout The Laboratory and Panic were well suited for the task of engaging a nervous energy. Generally speaking, pieces like this are tough for me to appreciate, I think in part because I don’t ever understand the back story. But here, it was easy to envision a story for this piece, while knowing something however abstract about its background. Perhaps my only regret for this piece is that its title inevitably reminds me of some kind of 40s-era Marvin the Martian cartoon, where Doctor Atomic tries to take over the planet and the Duck Dodgers of the 21-1/2 century try to save the day.

Following the intermission, pianist Nicolas Hodges performed Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2. This is a frenetic piece that looked like it would challenge any soloist, but Mr Hodges performed it admirably. I appreciate Prokofiev’s ballets and much of his other music, but between the Tragic Overture and Doctor Atomic, it was difficult for me to wrap my head around this piece.

Finally on the concert program was Bartók’s Suite from Miraculous Mandarin, a ballet. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, and my general impression of Bartók is not particularly favorable but also not particularly memorable. My friend DA enjoyed this piece and the Brahms the most, and while I’m glad I heard the Bartók, I won’t likely reach for a recording any time soon.

This concert in particular got me thinking about the difficulty of programming a concert. By this I am referring to the process of selecting music that will be played together at any given concert. In many ways, it’s similar to creating track lists for a standard length 74 to 80 minute CD, especially considering that a concert is around 120 minutes with the intermission. Sometimes the themes are obvious, such as All-Mozart or Romantic Symphonies. But often times the themes are more subtle. I think that there might have been a reason to include four intensely dramatic pieces together, but like the symphonic musical form, I’d often appreciate a break of sorts that introduces lighter material thematically. Regardless, one of my favorite aspects of the BSO is its ability to introduce me to new music and challenge my pre-conceived notions. I’m grateful that tonight’s concert succeeded in both regards.

Guaranteed Romantic

The current subscription performance concert going on at the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) features our new assistant conductor Marcelo Lehninger at the helm for his first of hopefully many engagements. To get my effusive praise of Mr Lehninger out of the way, I think that he’s an excellent addition to the BSO and brings a lot of energy to the podium. He led the BSO in a concert featuring Samuel Barber’s Overture to The School for a Scandal, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. Being a great admirer of the Romantic period, I was giddy with the possibility of hearing the Beethoven and Tchaikovsky performed live by the BSO. This excitement only escalated after attending the Wednesday night rehearsal the previous evening. Tonight, I was accompanied by my trusted symphony friend CB as we sat in excellent center second balcony seats.

What I was not at all familiar with was Barber’s Overture to The School for a Scandal. This piece fit in naturally with the remainder of the program. Barber spends time developing themes and reintroduces them, and in this work, he creates a groundswell of emotion that continually builds and can easily be attributable to some kind of movie action chase scene. I think there are probably superheroes involved. The main melody is quite beautiful and provides moments of tranquility between the action. It finishes in a spectacular way as well, as it rings out, repeats a chord, and instead of either sustaining that chord or even raising in pitch, it descends down in somewhat of a surprise. This gives me the impression that, while grandiose, it’s not necessarily a happy ending to whatever narrative was told here. I’ll be interested to read more about the piece when I can, but I highly recommend it. It’s always satisfying when the piece I know least about turns out to be the one I appreciate greatly.

For the Beethoven, violinist Pinchas Zukerman joined the BSO, and to have a giant of music on stage was, once again, a treat. The cadenza is worth noting once again, as it was every bit as spectacular as I had experienced just the night before, and I really would like to learn more about who penned it and under what circumstances. It’s quite a unique feature of classical music that the cadenza can strongly flavor the concerto, leave the unique signature of a modern performer, and still respect the original composition. If not so daunting, it makes me want to learn carefully the cadenza variations of some of my favorite violin concertos to be able to distinguish differences in interpretation and writing in these sections.

The Beethoven is quite long, with the first movement alone approaching 25 minutes in some performances. But one thing I noticed tonight about Beethoven is that he takes a musical fragment or idea and then explores it fully, breaking it apart and piecing it back together again, handing off the melody to different instruments and reworking the entire music around it. It means that multiple performances of the piece are continually rewarding, in that one discovers turns of the central themes that are explored in new ways. It’s another example of Beethoven’s genius to have been able to understand this immediately.

Finally, Tchaikovsky is another of my favorite composers, and perhaps my favorite symphonist, so Symphony No. 5 was a treat. Not to diminish his abilities, but he was among other things an excellent song writer. The piece is approximately 50 minutes long, but I find it endlessly engaging. There’s a suspense that builds gradually, and Tchaikovsky is a master at utilizing different instruments as different voices in his symphonic narrative. From the first, détaché notes of the clarinet, the melody exists somewhat but not quite alone. Soon they are accompanied by the bassoons, taking their time and ending on a muted, unceremonious end. A moment of silence passes until the instruments reappear, to finally give way to the slightly brighter strings. Great restraint is built up slowly and beautifully here and punctuated by brief moments of gaiety.

The theme introduced in the Andante cantabile by the horns is longing and hopeful, an introduction to a movement that moves me every time I hear it. The gracefulness of the third movement waltz unsurprisingly harkens to a ballet. In the last movement, the strings take the lead in the grandiose theme of the final movement that eventually gets usurped by the horns before being returned. There’s a march-like quality in the percussion that culminates in a drum roll before the triumphant ending. The entire piece is marked by fluidity and seems to have a particularly identifiable character.

I appreciated the tight programming of this concert. I’m fine with this especially since I learned about the Barber, my asterisk piece for the evening. I greatly enjoyed hearing for the first time live a great violinist in Zukerman perform Beethoven, the BSO doing what they do best during the Tchaikovsky, and the new (to me) Barber which excites me to further explore his music.

A measure before ‘A’

The performance schedule for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) bears repeating: scheduled concerts for a given program generally open on Thursday and continue through Friday matinee, Saturday evening, and the following Tuesday evening. The next program starts on the next Thursday. Rinse, repeat, for an entire season almost uninterrupted.

This means that the rehearsal schedule for the musicians is demanding as well, and it likely means that at least sectionals for the next piece occur while the ongoing piece is being performed. My understanding is that there is at least one sectional per concert and at least one large group rehearsal for each concert. This may not be correct at all, but whatever the schedule is, the success of the BSO performance after performance speaks highly to the professionalism of this group.

For a few of the concerts, they have open rehearsals for which tickets can be purchased. While these generally begin at 10:30 in the morning, this week’s open rehearsal took place on the Wednesday night before the program’s opening night. A friend EMM accompanied me to the rehearsal, and it was not only her first trip to Symphony Hall but her first orchestral performance. While it would have been nice for her first BSO experience to have had the polish, shine, and penguinness of the full concert, it was a truly unique look into a working symphony that she said that she enjoyed very much.

We debated for a moment where to sit during the rehearsal. There are so many good seats in Symphony Hall during a concert, and I have a few preferred ones. As I’ve said before, no electronically reproduced music quite captures the feeling of a live performance, especially in a place like Symphony Hall. Sitting near the center back of the concert hall is what an ideal set of speakers should aspire to sound like. Sitting near the front of the hall, one loses a lot of the soundstage and I think some of the nuances of the dynamic range, but this is very like what the perfect pair of headphones might sound like. The only section I have yet to sit in at Symphony Hall is the first balcony very near to the stage. Those might be interesting seats, but I probably would still prefer first balcony center for soundstage. We ended up deciding on the closest seats we could find to conductor Marcelo Lehninger, in the second row, slightly to the audience right. I believe we were in seats 13 and 14. This turned out to be fortunate, as we had perfect seats to hear Lehninger interact with the musicians.

The rehearsal at this level consisted of them running through most of the movements of each piece. I think there might have been a slow movement or two removed, though I cannot recall. A public rehearsal is somewhat strange, because the audience was treating it almost like a performance and clapping, but it was clear that this working rehearsal was for the musicians, and it was very difficult at times for the orchestra members to hear the conductor and vice versa while they were talking. Interestingly, the rehearsal was reminiscent of old orchestras I was a part of in high school and beyond. For instance, they still count measures from the lettered landmarks throughout the sheet music, and even professionals still make the mistake of counting backward several measures from F before realizing that all of the measures are numbered already. It’s funny that, in this small regard, not much has changed from those ensemble rehearsals to the biggest possible stage.

Lehninger treated the musicians very professionally, as one might expect, praising them and adding suggestions. His dialogues with the principals of each section was also interesting, and it was the first time I had heard concertmaster Malcolm Lowe and others as they interacted with him. As they went through a small section of Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5, the first violin section came in slightly harsh on one of their entrances, which was corrected in two takes, a very subtle change that refined its presentation substantially.

Something I learned from the rehearsal, and equally from our proximity to the stage, is exactly how much our musicians interact with the conductor during a performance. It was interesting to watch the musicians as they took cues from Lehninger. Principal flutist Elizabeth Rowe looks up frequently at the conductor, while cellist Sato Knudsen doesn’t seem to look up much at all. It could be that he follows his section leader more or can see the conductor out of his periphery.

Violinist Pinchas Zukerman of course was on hand for the rehearsal of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, and it was a treat to see him perform up close. The first movement cadenza was especially amazing, intricately weaving the melodies into several rich chords: it was just before the brink of unrecognizable, which made recognition especially satisfying. At some point in the final movement, the rehearsal abruptly stopped for some reason, but they quickly regrouped and continued through.

This was also my first rehearsal in the three BSO seasons that I’ve attended. I hope to go to future rehearsals, since it offers glimpses of insight into the process of building a world class orchestra, with nearly an entire performance as well. While nothing is quite the same as the polish of a live concert, this is also its own experience.

NPR First Listen: Christmas in October

I’m a huge fan of NPR’s First Listen, an online resource at which full albums spanning a wide variety of musical genres are available to stream in their entirety before the commercial release. The quality is what one might expect from streaming, but at least NPR are very good at streaming. I’ve mentioned First Listen in the past, though I more often forget to mention things I’m listening to more casually.

Currently featured on First Listen is yet another recording of Tchaikovsky’s iconic ballet “The Nutcracker”. However, the praise for this recording is high, and it features Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker, whom I have been fortunate enough to see live in Symphony Hall, home to our beloved Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO). I haven’t listened to this recording yet but am hoping to soon. It’s not posted when it will expire, but it’s usually around the time of the CD release, which is 25 Oct 2010.

Another interesting looking recording featured is Bob Dylan’s The Whitmark Demos 1962-1964, for which select songs are available through Oct 19.

Octet for Eleven

Stepping foot inside Jordan Hall is always a treat. Its modest exterior gives no indication of the delight within, and immediately one feels somewhat nostalgic, until it hits you that the features of the stage are strikingly similar to those in Symphony Hall just up Huntington Ave. Jordan Hall is the primary performance space of the New England Conservatory (NEC), and their theatre is beautiful. From my second row balcony seat, I sat sloped toward the stage and tried to recline with the lean. In all honesty, I’m always just happy to be there for the Boston Symphony Chamber Players concerts, which only perform about four times a year on Sunday afternoons. Each concert represents a one-time program, and this afternoon’s featured Bohuslav Martinu’s Four Madrigals, the world premiere of André Previn’s Octet for Eleven, Daris Milhaud’s La Cheminée du Roi René, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor. It was admittedly my first time hearing all four pieces.

This excellent program began with principal violist Steven Ansell’s announcement that Mr Previn had injured his hand in an epic battle with a door and that he would not play in the piano quartet as scheduled. Most of us in the audience it seemed were unable to catch the name of the replacement pianist, though I believe he is affiliated with NEC. Naturally, we wish Mr Previn a speedy and full recovery.

The Martinu featured oboist John Ferrillo, clarinetist William R Hudgins, and bassoonist Richard Svoboda in a trio that is strikingly different from those involving strings that I am more accustomed to. To my ears, the voices are clearly distinct but share enough commonality in timbre to be slightly transparent at times. I love the tone of the oboe and bassoon, and the clarinet provides the higher range. The Lento was particularly beautiful with the wind ensemble, though I enjoyed the entire piece.

Previn’s Octet for Eleven, written this year, had an interesting arrangement of the eleven players on the stage. Seated in their natural positions were the strings, with BSO Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe and BSO second violin principal Haldan Martinson on the audience left, and BSO cello principal Jules Eskin (one of my favorites to watch) and BSO viola principal Mr Ansell seated on the audience right. Behind the deeper strings sat BSO principal bassist Edwin Barker. In an arcing row behind them sat BSO principal flutist Elizabeth Rowe followed by Mr Hudgins, Mr Ferrillo, Mr Svoboda, and BSO principal French horn player James Sommerville and finally BSO principal trumpet Thomas Rolfs. Whew.

This piece is arranged into three movements, whose fairly straightforward names really do not leave anything to interpretation: for instance, the first movement is entitled, “♩ = 92″, signifying that each quarter note occurs at 92 beats per minute. No “Allegro moderato” is found here — clearly a composer who knows what he wants! The piece itself was unassuming, fairly straightforward through the first two movements but seemed to grow in complexity by the final movement. It was easy to hear the give and take from the winds and brass to the strings, creating a nice conversation. As always, I enjoyed Ms Rowe’s brief but memorable solo playing. I often do not know what to expect from modern compositions, but I did enjoy this one. Mr Previn was on hand tonight despite the injury and was greeted to a standing ovation for the successful premiere.

After the intermission, we heard a very pleasant piece, Milhaud’s La Cheminée du Roi René (The Fireplace of King René). This seven song wind quintet featured Ms Rowe and Mr Ferrillo, Hudgins, Svoboda, and Sommerville. It reminded me of period music such as that which one might hear at a Medieval or Renaissance festival but with modern wind instruments. I half expected to see a person skipping across the stage while playing the recorder, but for better or worse, it didn’t happen.

Finally, with apologies to our unknown pianist, the Mozart Quartet in G minor for piano and strings (K. 478) was performed by Mr Lowe, Ansell, and Eskin. I believe that Mozart is very difficult to play properly, perhaps more so than other composers. While Mozart is often serious music, it is also often times playful and carefree. This piece manages to capture the moods of both, with dark and dramatic starts and finishes but lighter throughout. Perhaps it is my narrow interpretation of Mozart, but I believe that, especially with the lighter side of Mozart, the bowing technique and attack matters enormously in effective performances. By and large, this chamber group succeeded in that heady task, with special compliments to our currently nameless pianist: the piano seems to be an instrument on which it is particularly difficult to execute properly staccato notes while maintaining the proper amount of air or space in its wake, and the pianist did marvelously in this regard.

I love small ensemble concerts at Jordan Hall for its acoustics and intimacy. Ensemble performers can never really blend into the surroundings of the orchestra and thus have to be nearly flawless in their execution, and the reliable Chamber Players certainly don’t disappoint.

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