On Great Performances! No, Just Kidding. Not Really.

Ah, the many mysteries of classical music. What is a great performance?

Classical Review: Portland Baroque Orchestra soars through Bach’s four Orchestral Suites
(James McQuillen, The Oregonian, 5/15/2010)

A great performance offers music as you've never heard it before.

Okay. I’m not sure I agree completely, but that’s potentially interesting. So: newness is good?

Unless you've listened to Ensemble Sonnerie's recent Grammy-nominated recording of J.S. Bach's four Orchestral Suites, Portland Baroque Orchestra's concert Friday night at First Baptist Church did exactly that.

Wait. Unless I’ve listened to the recording…the concert did what? Ah, it offered a great performance, because it would’ve been new. To me, that is. In mixed tenses, apparently.

So if I’d heard the recording, it wouldn’t have been new, and therefore…not great?

I think I have that right. Let me read it again…yup, that seems like the deal.

So great performances are new performances.

Figure 1: "Any good music must be an innovation.” --Les Baxter

That’s actually a pretty damn radical thing to say. I may agree more than I thought; however, I suspect that you don’t mean it.

Obviously, since it occupies the marked position of the introductory paragraph, this argument will be borne out (or at least be investigated) in the rest of the review, so I hope to find out whether this is really what’s intended. Yes?

Featuring violinist Monica Huggett, who directs both ensembles, and PBO principal oboist Gonzalo Ruiz, both recording and concert presented the pieces in lean, probably original versions.

What the fuck?

“Probably original versions”? What in Cyprus are you talking about?

The second suite, in Ruiz' own reconstruction, substituted oboe for the usual flute, creating a radically different sound especially for listeners familiar with the piece performed on modern instruments.

His own construction is…probably the original version?

Jesus shit! That, sir, is taking the Cult of Newness to the radical extreme! Holy FSM, man. That takes some cahones.

Figure 2: Huge ones.

While a flute pierces and soars above the string texture, the baroque oboe is comfortably integrated with the rest of the ensemble.

Okay...sure. Radical...newness?

The third and fourth suites are known today for their grand sound thanks to the use of trumpets, but scholars have shown that trumpets were added later – by Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel in the third suite, and by Johann Sebastian himself in the fourth, when he adapted the music for use in a cantata.

New is the new old! Old newness? Older fucking newness, that’s what’s new! I’m pickin’ up what you’re layin’ down. Ceci n’est pas une critique de musique and all that. I am so down. Let's fucking go there.

Figure 3: "There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself. " --Andre Breton

The playing Friday was first-rate.

But, obviously, that’s not important, unless it was new.

The ensemble was intimate – the two violin sections numbered just four players apiece – and tightly focused behind Huggett, who demonstrated once again that she wields one of the most vividly expressive bows in the early-music business.

Also unimportant, with the same caveat. Is this for contrast to the radicalism proffered above? Or an interrogation thereof?

Nuanced bowing and articulation brought out a wealth of details.

But…radical newness? Bowing details? Found objects? Christmas hat?

Figure 4: Mr. Rabbit needs to think about changing the water in his elaborate smoking apparatus.

In one of the Bourrées in the fourth suite, for example, the violins played a three-note figure several times before passing it off to the oboes.

I don’t…usually, the violins fail to pass the figure to the oboes? I don’t understand.

What are we talking about? Details? Newness?

The continuo group – harpsichordist Susan Jensen, bassist Curtis Daily and cellists Joanna Blendulf and Lori Presthus – was similarly imaginative, giving buoyant underpinning throughout.

Was it a buoyant, radical underpinning, at least?

Ruiz lit up the evening with brilliant solos, especially in the quicksilver finale to the second suite (earning a wildly enthusiastic standing ovation.) His fellow oboists Debra Nagy and Priscilla Smith matched him in verve; along with bassoonist Dennis Godburn.

They were really good? That’s…nice. But what happened to our radical stance on “great performances”?

Tempos were generally pulse-quickening, sometimes just this side of too fast, and the entire program, including all four suites, intermission and an encore by Telemann, breezed by in slightly under two hours.

It was breezy? Awesome.

But Huggett knew when to let up, too, as she did in the famous lilting Air from the third suite. Taken together, the four suites were as compelling and rewarding as any experience of new music, which, in a sense, they were.

Oh. My. God.

Is this some sort of fucking terrible middlebrow cop out?

It was just as rewarding and compelling as if it were new…because it was breezy and well-played and the fucking tempi were adequate.

Crap. I thought someone was taking a stand--an aesthetic stand, any aesthetic stand--and I got excited for a second there.

But never mind. Nothing to see here. Go hear your local orchestra, they’re like totally good and stuff.

No, boys. There's two "O"s in Goose.

Now, I am as forgiving of typos as the next guy -- I guess it's just my liberal leanings. Plus, spelling words correctly (or even spelling them out at all) is apparently quite last century. With all the problems newspapers are currently facing, who has time to get bothered over a their/there incident.

However...

Fear No Music opens season provocatively

...

Nancy Ives, great-granddaughter of a cousin of the composer,...

...also his father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate...

...then performed Elliot Carter's...

Um, Mr. McQuillen -- I believe that Mr. Carter spells his first name with two "t"s. It's okay...a common mistake I'm sure. Really, that extra "t" is silent anyways. Let's not let that ruin a perfectly good review.

Just don't let it happen again. Okay?

...short homage to Charles for solo cello, "Figment No. 2: Remembering Mr. Ives." The famously abstruse Carter generally makes Ives sound as experimental as Stephen Foster by comparison, and the "Figment" was no exception, with bits of "Hallowe'en" and Ives' "Concord Sonata" deconstructed, their fragments heading in uncertain directions. But as the title suggests, Carter's piece was imaginative, as sparkling in its cerebral way as the Ives.

"The famously abstruse Carter generally makes Ives sound as experimental as Stephen Foster by comparison."

Ugh. See, my problem is that the only thing this person judges as "experimental" is a piece's relative atonality, and that's just stupid. Carter does indeed write atonal, very complex music, BUT, that doesn't make his music experimental.

And while Ives wrote plenty of music that was quite tonal, borrowing from popular music and commonplace classical forms of the 19th century, his music was rarely not experimental. It has everything to do with knowing what the words atonal, experimental and avant-garde actually mean with regards to the classical music tradition.

Moving on...

Things turned toward the wild side in the final works. Voglar and Griffin ripped through Stephen Hartke's "Oh Them Rats is Mean in My Kitchen,"...

Now, time for Detrital editorial advocacy, because this is just an awesome piece. Absolutely kick-ass.

You can listen to it here. I insist.

...a crackling, note-bending tribute to early blues inspired by Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Maltese Cat Blues," and the quartet closed with Michael Dougherty's "Paul Robeson Told Me," in which the quartet accompanies...

Wait, a minute. Back that up for second. Michael Who-erty? Mr. McQuillen, I mean, come on.

Misspelling two composer's names is really pretty unacceptable. Seriously.

Same Review, Reviewed Again

How’s this for cliché—the new music piece was difficult; Schumann is no Beethoven; Beethoven was the highlight of the concert? More specifically, how about this—John Adams’ music is more fun than Schoenberg’s, but it isn’t great; Robert Schumann’s orchestration and thematic development is not very imaginative; Beethoven’s worst is still better than most?

Sound familiar? Thought so.

Here’s another rehashing of the same outline, this time filled in by James McQuillen of the Oregonian. At least thesauri abusers make the review sound original.

Enjoy Your Symptom!