Thematic programming is always a fine thing, even if it's often little more than a pretext for a musical group to do more or less what it was going to do anyway.
Well, that seems reasonable, marketing after all being what it is, and...
Wait. What was that first bit?
Thematic programming is always a fine thing...
Always?
That is a lie.
That is a damn lie and you know it, Kosman. And I, for one, won't stand for it. Exhibit A
Figure 1: Several indicators, including pointless lasers and talking pop-culture robots, point to the underlying seriousness of this effort.
"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him." -- Mark Twain
Every so often it's interesting to see how two different critics review the same concert, same performance.
Today we have Richard Scheinin, of the San Jose Mercury News, and the urbane Joshua Kosman, of the San Francisco Chronicle, reviewing the visiting Los Angeles Philharmonic and the insatiable bunch of energy that is Gustavo Dudamel.
First of all, I love this title. It's just so emphatic, yet open-ended.
figure dudamel: Not just a great conductor, he's also a snappy dresser.
It's been less than a year since the 29-year-old Venezuelan wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel took the reins as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. How's that working out so far?
Interesting question. I'm going to say...splendidly?
Anyone hoping for a definitive answer to that question from this week's concerts in Davies Symphony Hall - and, yes, that includes me - would have come away perplexed.
Ooh...so close. Sounds like the concert left you with a few question marks after Dudamel's performance.
Dudamel and his band offered up a head-spinning mass of puzzlements.
Oh, Joshua...you and your sprightly word play. But the Los Angeles Philharmonic is an orchestra. Orchestra.
Gustavo Dudamel is the hottest commodity in classical music — in decades. Yet the 29 year-old conductor isn't a physically imposing figure on the podium. He is short. He is chunky.
Unlike Esa-Pekka who looked like he might rip your arms off at any moment.
figure esa-pekka: A fun day at the beach.
Appearing at Davies Symphony Hall on Monday for the first of two concerts that have been sold out for six months, he didn't look as youthful and bright-eyed as he did on his last visit, two years ago.
So, 8 months with the LA Phil have aged him horribly?
But, whatever, just hand that man a baton.
Great. Good introductions. What's on the concert?
Monday's program - combining John Adams' new California tone poem "City Noir" with Mahler's First Symphony - was a replay of Dudamel's opening night at home back in October.
Sounds like a dandy concert...
Dudamel led his orchestra through works by John Adams and Gustav Mahler,...
Yeah, I know, Kosman just said that.
...repeatedly blowing the lid off classical music niceties. Take that classical music establishment! Dudamel isn't going to take any of your guff!
How exactly did he do that again?
But anyway, in general, how did Dudamel and the orchestra perform?
In his best moments — and there were many — Dudamel literally seemed to be painting in sound or scraping away surface refinements to expose the raw nerves within the scores.
That sounds painful.
Also, literally?
It got giddy, ravishingly ethereal, rock-band frenzied.
Giddy and rock-band frenzied? A rare combo, but yeah! Rock on, Dudamel!
[I know you can't see it, but I'm do air guitar right now.]
It wasn't perfect. The horns weren't spot-on, and the young conductor — just a few years removed from his career's take-off in Venezuela — sometimes pushed thestrings so hard that a richness of sound was sacrificed. But I don't think Dudamel is going for perfection,...
Perfection is vastly overrated.
...or certainly not only for perfection. He seems to sense a composer's original or true intention...
Which are in conflict with perfection? God...just like a conductor to sacrifice the music for the sake of the composer.
...and has both intellect and intuition to retrieve it, concentrating energy through his gestures, willing his players toward his vision of the music.
In any case, sounds like an exhilarating performance. How about it, Mr. Kosman? Exhilarating, yet not perfect for perfection's sake?
There were readings marked by phenomenal power and inventiveness,...
This sounds exhilarating.
...and others dragged down into a morass of ostentatious mannerism.
And this not so much.
"Morass of ostentatious mannerism." Frankly, that sounds like one of Dante's circles of hell.
At times Dudamel and the orchestra seemed utterly in sync, only to turn the page and come to grief on a simple question of ensemble or instrumental balance.
Yeah, Mr. Scheinin sort of hinted at this...but, you know, Dudamel chose instead to focus on the "composer's" intent. Pssh.
The orchestra itself struggled in parts (the brass was particularly unpredictable)...
Ding, ding, ding! I think we have a match.
...while excelling elsewhere (especially the strings).
Apparently you like your strings without a rich sound. It's okay...me, too.
So, it seems like you're both approaching this concert with different expectations. Scheinin wants his socks knocked off, and Kosman wants to know if the LA Phil and Dudamel can thrive after the new car smell wears off.
Both perfectly valid approaches. So, let's talk about the music. Of course we'll skip the Adams "City Noir" since no one cares about new music anyway.
How about the Mahler?
Dudamel seemed so intent on blazing his own individual path that he often left logic and rhetorical directness behind.
Again, I can only blame his desire to follow the composer's intention.
In particular, his tendency to push and pull at the tempo, and his fondness for long silences, often interrupted the musical flow.
Those quirks were most apparent in the Mahler, a performance for which "unorthodox" would be a severe understatement.
Well, that's just how we roll here in the States. Sounds like he's been reading up on becoming a "real" 'Merican.
figure unorthodox: To best serve the LA Phil, Dudamel decides to step down as their conductor.
So, his Mahler was pretty fucked up, huh? Cool.
Let's talk first movment.
In the long first movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D major, nicknamed "Titan," Dudamel took his time, stretching slow tempos and gauzy textures to the breaking point, almost losing the thread.
Interesting. It sounds like you and Mr. Kosman were picking up on some of the same things in this movement. So, the first movement, was a bit of a mess?
He was that confident — taking risks, poking around, waiting for his point of entry to show itself and then going for it with his players: Boom!
Or not...I guess you like your Mahler fucked up. Me too!
How 'bout Debbie Downer over here?
I was intrigued, if not wholly convinced, by his maverick approach to the main theme of the first movement, replacing the usual hiking tread with a lighter-than-air fairy ballet.
So, it's not all bad. Tempos were crazy, but they seemed to have added some interesting twists to a very famous opening movement.
figure maverick: Come on, Gus, do some of that conducting shit!
And the second movement?
Mahler's Scherzo...
[Quick and pointless aside: I've always thought calling this movement a scherzo is a misnomer. It seems to me to be much more related to earlier symphonic minuet movements than to the scherzo (although, that can be a fine line), especially seeing that the main theme of the movement is an actual 3/4 dance. Just saying.]
...began with wildly ripping and playfully galumphing cellos. One of the front-line players kept trying to tamp down a delighted grin as Dudamel — recovering from a pulled neck muscle, sustained while conducting at Disney last week — stepped back and nudged things along with a little shoulder dance.
Playful, delightful and worthy of a "little shoulder dance". Sound like the second movement I grew up with. In the second movement, Dudamel replaced the music's jaunty, somewhat rustic, rhythms with fierce stompings out of a monster movie....
"Little shoulder dance" and "fierce stompings out of a monster movie." That's basically the same thing.
What else?
...[I]n the third movement, he thumbed his nose at Mahler's tempo marking ("without dragging").
Short and sweet. But I'm beginning to sense that you're not a fan of this interpretation. It's subtle...but I think it's there.
The third movement, built around a minor-keyed "Frere Jacques," cast an enchanted haze of doom, but also captured the garish boom-chick of a rural klezmer band.
I do think it was Mahler's marking of "without dragging" that always kept this piece from having that dreaded "haze of doom". So, I think you guys are still basically in agreement.
The finale to the concert — part of the San Francisco Symphony's Great Performers Series — began with crashing outbursts, beautifully corrosive, with tempos dramatically slowing and the volume drawing down to whispers. Dudamel gathered them back up into a swarm, more than once, and the performance grew frenetic, even savage, exposing the raging nobility of Mahler's score in a way that's not often heard. Gustavo really gets Gustav.
So despite some earlier reservations and quirky interpretations from the maestro, it seems we had a great show! Who would have doubted?
Sum it up for us, Mr. Kosman.
[T]he finale was a mess: loud, shapeless and overbearing.
Exactly.
----------------------------
Both are very nice articles, and should be read in their entirety for the exact context of their comments. But I do find it interesting to see how differently two well-informed critics can review the same concert. Of course, they have their unique styles. Kosman with his "head-spinning mass of puzzlements", and Scheinin and his unbridled enthusiasm: Boom!
I’ll bet Joshua Kosman is just tickled by Michael Tilson Thomas’ deliciously alliterative name, because every time the opportunity arises his prose becomes chock full of wily word play.
Leave it to Michael Tilson Thomas to inject a few welcome shadows into the bubbly breathlessness of the San Francisco Symphony's opening gala.
And...
...subversive stealth...
And...
...ribbons and bonbons...
And, heck, why not pour it on, since Lang Lang is in the house?
...giddy triviality...
And this one, which may or may not have been intentional...
... fondness for garish display largely under control, producing an athletic yet sensitive account of the concerto...
Nevertheless:
Data Table 1. Well done, sir. Well done.
Sheesh! Have we at the Detritus changed our tune of late?
Of course not. But we like to give props, now and then. So don't worry, in short order we will be back to unapologetically subjecting you to the usual tripe of everyday music critiquery!
So, it's been a bit of dry spell for truly awful concert reviews. So in place of the traditional offending critiques, let me say, "Thank god for critics like Joshua Kosman," and offer up a gem of a review.
Read below as Kosman does (in a relatively short review, mind you) what so few before him seem able to accomplish. He's able to both review the performance he's just heard and, most importantly, add to our understanding by offering an intellectual and helpful analysis of the music on the concert.
Now here's the kicker -- there are two works on the concert: one a venerable classic of the literature full of famous solos and memorable melodies, the other, written by one of those Europeans that no one has ever heard of outside of the crusty old halls of academia. Your average reviewer would just write up a blow-job of a critique of said venerable classic (and probably to MTT while he's at it), only mentioning in passing the strange foreign work which really should have been a Mozart piano concerto anyway.
The arcane and alluring music of GiacintoScelsi is always a welcome presence in Davies Symphony Hall, and "Hymnos," a piece of splendidly orchestrated monomania that had its first San Francisco Symphony performance Wednesday night, is no exception.
Monomania: a psychosis characterized by thoughts confined to one idea or group of ideas.
Cool. Scelsi's crazy -- I knew it. (AnthonyS, you owe me ten bucks.)
figure Giacinto: I'd say this guy looks a little monomaniacal. I'm actually worried he might eat my baby.
The perennial mystery is how Scelsi's work, with its obsessive exploration of a single pitch, relates - if at all - to the musical world around it.
I like your suggestion that he's probably a bit crazy.
But the best part of this introduction is that it introduces you to Scelsi'smusic. Not his biography, or some inane personal anecdote used to establish some analogy and contrivance that will explain the entire evening's programming, but his music -- you know that stuff that comes from the direction of the stage.
On this occasion, Michael Tilson Thomas paired "Hymnos" with Mahler's Fifth Symphony, serving it up as an appetizer during the third and final week of the Symphony's Mahler Festival. The piece came off as something of an oddity - although I doubt there are any circumstances under which it wouldn't.
Like many works by this elusive Italian visionary, who died in 1988, "Hymnos" fixates on a single pitch and works as many variations on it as possible over a 13-minute span. To listen attentively to one note, proclaimed in different registers and in a dazzling array of instrumental guises, is the key to Scelsi's vision, a gloss on William Blake's "world in a grain of sand."
Look at him go. Intelligent and informative, not to mention a pertinent elaboration of your observation that the piece is an "obsessive exploration of a single pitch".
But wait, there's more!
But there's more than that going on in "Hymnos," which uses two orchestras and a central organ (Jonathan Dimmock was the soloist) to create various spatial effects. The sheer range of moods Scelsi creates - now craggy and grandiose, now faint and filigreed - helps guide a listener through this journey.
"Helps guide a listener," sounds suspiciously like an argument. 'How so?,'he asked not expecting an answer.
And by establishing a home note so forcefully, Scelsi makes possible a kind of elemental musical drama, in which the listener hears any move away from the pitch as a wrenching dislocation, and a return as welcome relief.
This is a music review isn't it? All this thoughtful, enlightening analysis, and you are talking about new music, right?
Surely, you'll make some sort of judgmental wisecrack about the complexity or harsh sounds of modern music. Maybe make the analogy about the cold, indifferent technologically advanced culture and contemporary music.
The result is a sort of caveman version...
or you could call it a caveman...
The result is a sort of caveman version of the processes of tonal music, bearing the same relation to Mahler that the barter system does to credit derivatives.
How topical. Just the analogy I was looking for.
Or in pictures, you could make the analogy that as caveman, we have:
figure 2: Unfrozen Caveman Mahler -- "I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and was later thawed by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me! But there is one thing I do know -- It is improper, to expressly pursue the Urlinie in performance and to single out its tones...for the purpose of communicating the Urlinie to the listener."
[Of course, I kid Mr. Kosman. His point about the relative complexity of form and overarching function of these pieces is a legitimate and well-taken point. Really, an important one to make given the substance of his argument.]
Also, hear the work in question below (and look at strange pictures of rocks while you're at it). It's a beautiful and intense piece of music, and only elucidate the thoughtfulness of Mr. Kosman's comments.
By the way, Mr. Kosman, do you realize that you just spent your first six paragraphs on Scelsi?! Surely it's time to masturbate over the supreme awesomeness that is Mahler 5...
Improbably enough, "Hymnos" turned out to be more dramatic than the Mahler, which received an uncharacteristically languid and unfocused performance from Thomas and the orchestra.
This is improbable. How many hours of rehearsal did the Mahler get? and how many do you think the Scelsi received?
The first two movements in particular - once past Mark Inouye's dynamic opening trumpet blast, which promised great things - sounded wan and reserved, marked by slow tempos and a deliberative approach to phrasing. At times this paid off, especially in clarifying some of the counterpoint in the first movement, but mostly the effect was dramatically lax.
This is indeed a difficult balance to strike between clarity and emotional vitality. However, personally, I think this is more the fault of the music -- just my own blasphemous opinion of course.
Things improved in the scherzo, ably led by the horn section, and the famous Adagietto, which Thomas paced nimbly enough to keep the melody from sagging, cast its gorgeous spell. But by the time the finale rolled around, blurriness and uncertainty were again the order of the day.
Wonderful review, Mr. Kosman! But only two paragraphs for the Mahler? Surely you will burn in hell.
And let me quickly quote from the one person who commented online about Kosman's piece:
Regarding the Scelsi-while you might call it "interesting, it is not beautiful or even pleasant to listen to...really, what is the point of this piece? Nearly a whole page in this review devoted to it and only a couple of sentences devoted to Mahler?? Makes no sense to me. Wrong priority in my opinion.
Yeah, Mr. Kosman, what is the point of this piece? Clearly, it had no point, so why discuss it. I mean there was Mahler on the concert for fuck's sake!
Also, would you mind closing those quotation marks? And what the hell are you quoting? Kosman didn't use either the word interesting or beautiful "or even pleasant". He loves his vocabulary much too much (filigreed indeed).
Densj, your opinion is stupid and wrong.
(I think that should fulfill my snark quotient for the week.)
Ollie Wilson was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. He did not travel far for his higher education, attending Springfield College (home of the Basketball Hall of Fame). There he played wide receiver for the Springfield footballers, graduating in 1973. He later went on to coach in the NFL with the Atlanta Falcons. Most notably, he was the running back coach for the San Diego Chargers from 1997-2001, where he tutored a young LaDainian Tomlinson, who went on to break numerous team records as a rookie. In late January, Ollie was reinstated as the running back coach for the Chargers, where he can be found today. (photo from Ghetty Images)
Lately though, mostly here at the Detritus Review, Ollie has been the center of some controversy. In the wake of the Cleveland Orchestra’s push to program more new music, American composers, like Ollie, seem to have been snubbed. Don Rosenberg notes:
Orchestras have a duty to perform music by composers of many nations and styles. An American orchestra should pay more than passing attention to its own country's composers, including such established and rising figures as William Bolcom, John Harbison, Nico Muhly and Ollie Wilson.
While Ollie continues to coach the Chargers, his music...
...?!...
Aww fuck! (sigh) Way to go Rosenberg. Pfft. Thanks for your eagle-eyes, anonymous.
-
Today’s Composer of the Day is actually Olly Wilson!
(b. 1937)
Olly Wilson is a composer, not a football coach. And he was not born in Massachusetts, but in St. Louis, Missouri.
More than just a composer, Olly is a double bassist, pianist and musicologist. He has a wealth of experience as a jazz and orchestral musician. He has also worked extensively with electronic media. Notably, as a musicologist, he spent time in West Africa studying indigenous music culminating in a number of published articles about African and African American music.
He has received degrees in music from Washington University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Iowa, where he studied with Robert Kelley, Robert Wykes and Philip Bezanson. He taught at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music from 1965-1970. But, he mainly taught at U.C. Berkeley from 1970-2002, where he is now professor emeritus.
His music has been played around the world, commissioned by such prominent ensembles as the N.Y. Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He’s garnered numerous awards and distinctions, including being elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Unfortunately, I haven’t heard his music and there isn’t much on the interwebs to help out in this department. But from all accounts, his music is extraordinary. No doubt, his music is influenced by his work with jazz, African, African American and European musics. Last year, Joshua Kosman interviewed the recently retired:
Q: What is involved for you in negotiating between these different musical traditions?
A: It reflects the idea that W.E.B. Dubois wrote about in 1902, of "double consciousness." He suggested that African Americans have a consciousness of the broader world of which they're part and also of the inner world of African American life, and one is constantly moving through those worlds. They're not warring, they're integrated, but it's complicated by official racism that exists in the society.
Now, if you're studying music seriously, you're essentially studying European music. That has changed somewhat in the last 30 or 40 years -- we're aware now of a wider world out there -- but the first learned tradition is still a European one. And if you're involved in a musical tradition with its roots in a different ethnicity, then you're dealing back and forth. You have to know who and where you are at all times.
Even though I haven’t heard his music, I whole-heartedly advocate it. You should definitely seek out and listen to his music. And if you’re the Cleveland Orchestra, you should program his music. And if you’re from the Cleveland Pain Dealer, you should correctly spell his name. -
In your lovely review of Simone Dinnerstein’s inventive interpretation of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, one thing needs to be corrected. (By the way, I don’t really like to correct columns on papers’ websites—it just feels dirtier than if we did it here, in a more niche environment.) Anyway, you said that:
[Her rendering] was most memorable in the opening Aria, the spare, richly ornamented melody that forms the basis of the entire 90-minute work.
...when everyone knows that the melody isn’t the basis, but rather its bass line, harmonic progression and rhythmic structure.
Though there are numerous similar and more in-depth analyses, the earliest account of this (that I could find, anyway) was made by Wanda Landowska, Landowska on Music (New York: Stein & Day, 1964), p. 215.
In a review of the same concerts featuring pianist Yuja Wang (see previous post), Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle... well, I’m not quite sure what he does. Suffice it to say it’s awkward. There has to be a better way to say it.
More striking, though, was the way she brought out the humor in the outer movements [...] and contrasted that with the radiant tonal colors of the slow movement.
Italics mine. Did she really contrast the humor with tonal colors? Aren’t they Mendelssohn’s colors? Tonal as opposed to atonal colors? Were the outer movements atonal? Was Mendelssohn’s tonal language ever in dispute? Radiant tonal colors are the opposite of humor?
I’m not entirely sure what is meant by this. Maybe just “colors” would be enough to make this intelligible. Though, even then, I’d want a little qualification, since “colors” isn’t exactly precise.
Later on, the same problem arises.
Perhaps that sense of haste was helpful in goosing the performers out of the unruffled sleekness that is the Academy's house style, or perhaps it was simply Wang's vivacious contributions. Whatever the reason, the concerts sounded rhythmically fresh and tonally firm.
“Goosing the performers” is fun. But...
Tonally firm? This could mean any number of things, including: “Since I believe that one of the priorities of music criticism is to educate the readers, I will do the opposite. I will confuse them to the point where things become ambiguous, or worse, meaningless.” Go MCANA!
Rhythmically fresh could use some qualification, too.
Seriously, does Joshua mean “tonal,” or does he really mean “intoned,” or “harmonic,” or “sonic,” or “winningly sardonic,” or “alluringly misplaced for prosaic effect?”
Either way, it’s confusing. It’s a good thing, too, because...
Mendelssohn's early String Symphony No. 10 in B Minor filled out the program alluringly.
“Once upon a time, Little Red Riding-Kosman was walking through the dark and mysterious forest of Saint Francis on his way to his grandmother’s house to take her to the market. Being from the city, and being that it was a long walk, he kept himself in good spirits by singing a song. It went something like this:
Political power is very serious business, urban survival somewhat less so.
He sang this over and over to his heart’s delight, when suddenly, he came across an enchanted building called the Project Artaud Theatre. He had been to his Grandmother’s house many times, but never before did he encounter this strange theatre. It seemed to have just magically appeared. He could hear that inside there was music—odd sounds like none ever before heard. Being a lover of music, this piqued his interest. But remembering that his Grandmother expected him soon, he decided only to take a quick look inside.
The entrance was guarded by a tall, skinny man with acne, who would let him pass for a small price—two apples and one diet soda, which he eagerly handed over. But the tall, skinny man wouldn’t let Little Red Riding-Kosman inside without accepting two gifts in return. First, the guardian of the theatre handed him, with all seriousness, a thin, rectangular object, covered in numbers. The second, a collection of larger and thinner rectangles. He thought it was best not to offend the guardian, so he accepted them both. Grateful, Little Red Riding-Kosman looked them over well. The first gift was incomprehensible. The second seemed to be a booklet, full of advertisements. Yet, some of the words were unfamiliar. No doubt some magic spells to be cast if in danger.
Dismissing the possible peril of what lurked inside, Little Red Riding-Kosman eagerly ventured inside. The music was much louder than before. He noticed a few people roaming around, mostly with white hair and wrinkled scowls, but few others. They seemed to be searching for something, perhaps the music. So he concluded that he, too, should continue on. With a sharp poking sensation, he noticed someone trying to get his attention.
When Little Red Riding-Kosman turned around, there was a short, fat girl with acne, dressed in the same clothes as the entrance guard, tapping his shoulder. ‘Seet?’ she said. Not understanding her request, he shrugged. ‘Seet?’ she repeated. Not knowing what to do, Little Red Riding-Kosman showed her both of the gifts he had received from the tall, skinny guard. To his astonishment, she immediately took the small rectangle covered in numbers. Why? he thought to himself. After a few moments, the short, fat girl whisked him by the hand and lead him through a large door, which opened to an even larger room with a plethora of chairs facing towards a stage from where the music was coming.
Many of the same wrinkled faces he had seen earlier were already in chairs, looking at the music. But when the short, fat girl brought him in, all of them simultaneously turned their heads towards Little Red Riding-Kosman, as if interrupted. And as quickly as they had turned around, they turned back towards the music.
For what seemed to be more than 70 minutes, he sat there watching and listening to the music, which was
a dark meditation—sometimes, riveting, sometimes merely diffuse—on power and paranoia.
When it ended, he was startled. ‘How could I have been kept here so long! I need to get to Grandma’s!’ He sprinted out of the theatre with an urgent ferociousness that seemed to scare some of the people with white hair. He even knocked over the theatre guard by accident. Once back in the dark Saint Francis forest, he realized he had only an half-hour to get to Grandma’s, otherwise she’d go to the market without him.
So he ran and ran and ran, downhill and uphill, through the curviest roads in all the kingdom. When he finally arrived, he was relieved to find Grandma waiting for him. He made it there on time!
She was only mildly irritated. ‘What took you so long Little Red Riding-Kosman?’
‘I went to a concert.’
‘A concert?’
‘Yes. A mysterious theatre appeared in the dark forest and there was music playing. I couldn’t help myself.’
‘That’s hard to believe. Anyway. Let’s go to the market.’
On their way, Little Red Riding-Kosman described the magical experience in great detail. He described the entrance guardian's gifts and the fat girl's taps and the people with wrinkled scowls. Then he described the music.
‘The headliner was "The Tyrant," Dresher's one-act solo chamber opera about an unnamed despot imprisoned by the very throne that gives him his authority.
"The Tyrant," [...] takes its literary inspiration from the works of Italo Calvino and its format from Peter Maxwell Davies' landmark "Eight Songs for a Mad King." Like Davies' George III, the main character spends most of his time in a large cage, dividing his time among reveries, frenzied outbursts and occasional interactions with the six-member instrumental ensemble.
Jim Lewis' libretto includes moments of mordant wit and compelling tenderness, but neither he nor director Melissa Weaver quite manage to give the piece a clear dramatic shape. Instead, it meanders from one segment to the next as through driven by the whims of the tyrant's unhinged mental processes.
That leaves it up to Dresher and Duykers to keep things in focus.’
‘I suppose it does, Little Red Riding-Kosman,’ Grandma said, with very big eyes.
‘Drescher’s score moves assuredly from ominous paroxysms of anguish”
-
Kids (interrupting): What are ominous paroxysms of anguish?
Empiricus: Uh... They’re a bad feeling that you’ll get violent suffering.
K: ?
E: Got it? Where was I? Oh.
-
“I suppose it does, Little Red Riding-Kosman,’ Grandma said, with very big eyes.
‘Drescher’s score moves assuredly from ominous paroxysms of anguish—there are several passages in which silence alternates with brusque skittering to produce a haunting depiction of the tyrant’s paranoia”
-
Kids: How does brusk skittering and silence show the tyrant’s paranoya?
Empiricus: Do you want me to finish the story, or not?
K: Yes.
E: Okay then. So... “ominous paroxysms of anguish to...
-
“to shapely, lyrical set pieces.”
-
Kids: What are lyrical set pieces?
Empiricus: You’ve got the internets at home, right? Why don’t you just Wiki-dictionary it, then?
K: ...
E: Moving on.
K: How does assuredly going from ominous paroxysms to lyrical set pieces keep things in focus?
E: Just listen to the rest of the story!
-
“And Duykers, a performer of considerable vocal and theatrical virtuosity, drove each point home definitively."
-
Kids: How does a score move?
Empiricus: For the last time, it goes like this: the libretto meanders, so the performer has to have virtuosity in order to drive home the two points—ominous paroxysms of anguish and lyrical set pieces—which are found in the assuredly moving score (ostensibly the music therein), composed by Paul Drescher. Got it?
K: Why isn’t urban survival serious business?
E: It was just the song Little Red Riding-Kosman was singing. I give up. The story ends like this: Little Red Riding-Kosman’s grandmother isn’t really his grandmother at all, but an egg who falls off a wall, breaks and can’t be put together again. Little Red Riding-Kosman goes back to the magical theatre and is devoured by Detritus, the mythical pack of wolves that has internet access.
Thanks for the title Mr. Kosman. But alas, I am not poking fun at you. Instead, I would like to turn to Mark Swed, who has chronic metaphor and coherence spasms, a perfectly common neurological disorder (see here).
Mark reviewed a solo concert by Lang Lang, at L.A.’s Disney Hall.
The audience was antsy, wanting fireworks, and Lang Lang eventually delivered. First, though, he had to prove he was a poet.
By reciting, in Greek, an original poem on the subject of nuclear love.
He is a poet.
See.
But he is an immature poet with a nuclear arsenal, and that makes him a very dangerous poet.
...
Would you care to clear this one up for us, Mark?
The nuclear part of the weaponry is a killer technique.
Uh, and...?
The threat is in the delivery system.
...?...
He has the charisma to hold an audience in his power.
This is still part of the same paragraph, and he is still qualifying “immature poet,” I think.
Responsibility, though, is another matter.
Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.
Yeah! New paragraph!
The first half of Tuesday's recital was refined, elegant and verged on the eloquent. It began with Mozart's B-flat Sonata, K. 333, played with delicacy. Then Schumann's large Fantasy in C brought out ardor. In both pieces, Lang Lang skimmed the surface. But the surfaces he created were flawless.
I think Swed is insinuating that Lang lacked depth. Fine.
Not every lake is best appreciated by jumping in.
...?:”!@&^...?...
But it’s okay Lang doesn’t have depth, because he’s a nuclear threat, which trumps charisma and responsibility, at least for poet-pianists.
I have no idea what he’s saying. In fact, I have no idea what I’m saying anymore. So, I give up. I’m done.
No, really. Thank you. I mean it. Thank you. Thank you so much. I am a better person, now. Because of the article. And how good it was. Seriously. It was good. Thanks. Poets. Wow. I'm amazed at how much I learned. Really. It was good. Very good. So good I am a better person. Thanks a lot. I super-really mean it, tools.
This painful recipe is an American take on the classic German-Greek dish. “It’s underlying form is conventional (Mozart would have spotted it instantly), yet Barber joins it to the [original Greek] text with consummate ingenuity.” The ingredients are the same: one soprano and one orchestra. When done right (“with vitality”), the main ingredient (the soprano) is painted “at the extremity of pain and suffering.” The soprano will “sound energized by all this unrestrained fury,” which will "bite off consonants with barely concealed ferocity.” But, at the same time, the orchestra will match the soprano “punch for punch,” culminating in a “...raw dramatic set piece, [consisting of] all anguish and fervent outbursts.”
Ingredients
One Soprano, “crisp” with “vocal power” and “nervous energy” (if possible, choose a Deborah Voigt)
One Large Orchestra, with a “forward-pushing” Michael Tilson Thomas (best found in the San Francisco region of California)
In a large concert hall, bring the orchestra to rage (“the first few minutes”), while the “soprano contributes comparatively restrained snippets of recitative.” Then, “as the scene continues, the [soprano and the orchestra] reach out to one another, as if in sympathy – first in a stretch of lyrical melody, then in increasingly unhinged bursts of dramatic frenzy.” Next, “gradually [bring] the orchestra and singer into phase with one another,” until a “fever pitch” so that it “still has room for dramatic maneuvering.” Gradually stir in “lament, accusation, pathos, and outcry.” Let rage for "a terse 11 minutes" or until “lament, accusation, pathos and outcry” are all explored in various ways. Serve sporadically.
This nefarious recipe may be paired with Oliver Knussen, Richard Strauss, or an even-numbered Beethoven Symphony.
The task of the music critic is difficult, far beyond mere description and assessment. Yet, when those fail, the rest fails. As the public’s first line of reception and dissemination, critics have a double responsibility, to both the public and to the musical community at large. The deleterious effects of mischaracterization and prejudice (or laziness) contribute to a “classical” stereotype that is wholly incongruent with the reasons we continue to believe in and love the music we love. To seek correction is only natural.
We understand that the role of today’s critic is rapidly changing. Through humor and snark, we seek to provide a dialog, at once humbling, amusing and inviting, out of which may emerge positive critical perspectives and alliances that can benefit the health of our beloved musical climate.
We would not be of use, dear Detritusites, without your thoughtful comments, retorts or corrections. So please take part in our experiment.
Figure 1: Several indicators, including pointless lasers and talking pop-culture robots, point to the underlying seriousness of this effort.
Figure 2: Like eating Nutella with a spoon.
Figure 3: The soft bigotry of low expectations indeed.
Figure 3a (supplementary): Enough with this doe-eyed horseshit.
