Musica Espansiva

[musicaespansiva]

The trappings of 19th century opera hold very little appeal for me, so I have a lot of holes in my opera knowledge. I also figure that the 50 most popular operas will be around forever and I'm fine to just wait and encounter (and enjoy??) them later.

That's certainly true of any of Massenet's operas. A reduced version of Massenet's opera Manon by Brooklyn's Heartbeat Opera was about the only way I would see it. They have been doing opera reductions for a few years now and I really enjoyed their scaled down Faust (Guonod) last year, so I was in. The scaled down the score dramatically to 8 instrumentalists, reduced the singing roles to 7 singers, cast some of those roles with musical theater singers rather than experienced opera singers, translated it into English and pared it all down to about 100 minutes -- perfect!

It was a really good summary/introduction to the opera. In the smaller spaces they use it sounded just rightly sized. They were inventive with the sets (including the above chandeliers whenever we were in a high-society location) and the costuming was basic French 18th century dress.

The staging was taut, we had no long digressions or crowd scenes or anything that wasn't placing Manon's story front and center. (I can see from descriptions, there's a ballet in the original too--yes required for the Paris Opera, but fine for me to skip.) Our Manon (Amma Grimsley) was excellent, especially as she turns from devoted woman in love to basking in the high life. The most standout performer was probably our Lescaut (Jamari Darling), who came across believably as the rogue who decides to sell his cousin off to a rich suitor, and he slayed as he lived the high life of having successfully captured Manon for the rich banker Guillot. That man knows how to walk a catwalk and he pranced and reveled in being a part of Guillot's circle -- riveting and fun as hell to watch. I'm not going to name the rest of the cast, but they all fit very well the small space highlighted their acting and agility (no park and bark here!) Dan Schlosberg's musical arrangements were even more full and complete than might have been suggested from 8 players--it never felt threadbare or underwhelming, but rather sized just right. This is a great way to hear 19th century opera--fantastic.

Manon! - Heartbeat Opera, The Space at Irondale, Brooklyn, NY. Dan Schlossberg, musical arranger and conductor. English text adaptation by Jacob Ashworth and Rory Pelsue. 15 February, 2026. Credits: https://www.heartbeatopera.org/manon

[musicaespansiva]

Ensemble Connect is the resident educational ensemble at Carnegie Hall. I mostly encounter them in concerts, either in Zankel or, as tonight, in the Resnick Educational Wing's music hall. As part of the impending semiquincentennial, Carnegie is doing a set of concerts themed as "United in Sound: America at 250." But really, I'm just here because it's a bunch of new or relatively new American music! Unlike previous Education Wing concerts, we have a smaller audience tonight, but that's presumably because of the cold and the massive snowstorm we're still digging out from -- 12 inches in Brooklyn!)

First up is one of the two living composers--Jessie Montgomery with "Strum". This time, even though there is a violin part, she's not playing here (and isn't here at all, though the snow & cold may have something to do with that). What to say except that it's another one of her typical joyous consonant pieces (for string quartet in this case) and it still feels enjoyable to listen to her in this vein.

Next was the only composer I don't know -- Emma Lou Diemer and her 'Quartet for Trumpet, Horn, Trombone and Piano'. Harmonically this is an uneasy piece that seems to never settle itself down. Though eventually with the trumpet all I can think of is Copland's Quiet Night.

Jennifer Higdon's 'Book of Brass' was a quintet, two a horn, two trumpets and two trombones (one bass). There were moments of vitality for me, but also moments that were less so. It was fine.

The finale was by far the most exciting as well as the most complicated -- Christopher Rouse's Rotae Passionis. With seven players, many doubling instruments, including several who occasionally left their regular instruments to play percussion, this piece required a conductor and Marin Alsop was there. (She's some kind of fellow this year.) This was Rouse in his apocalyptic mode -- it was written in 1982 just a few years before the flute concerto, and you can really hear that it's the same composer. The same crashing dissonant chords and even the flute piercing through the thickness of the cacophony. It doesn't have the same heart-wrenching tune as the Flute Concerto, which I still think may be his masterpiece, or at least may end up being a piece that flautists love so much it has significant niche populatiry (much as Arutunian's Trumpet Concerto). I loved it and was blown away - this was a fantastic finale.

Ensemble Connect Up Close, Saturday 31 January 2026, Weill Music Room, Resnick Educational Wing, Carnegie Hall

(See also the review by Daniele Sahr who I sat next to and had a very nice conversation -- https://seenandheard-international.com/2026/02/marin-alsop-and-ensemble-connect-explore-demanding-american-chamber-works/ )

[musicaespansiva]

Warhorses at the Philharmonic

That's Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto #1 and Shostakovich's Symphony #4 (which is a warhorse to me and is one of my absolute favorite pieces).

The Tchaikovsky sounded great -- another energetic pianist from the former Soviet Union (Behzod Abduraimov born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan). Very exciting, but it didn't feel overly broad or sentimental. And he banged out a thrilling notes full encore by Liszt (La Campanella -- looked that up in the archives).

But I have hard time w/ the Tchaikovsky for reasons that are not it's fault. During the 70's as a kid, I listened to the Hooked on Classics records, and the one and only thing that I have never been able to un-imprint is the opening that begins w/ the Tchaikovsky. I still expect to hear a disco beat as soon as I hear those horns blare the opening fanfare. So, I can't really hear this piece -- it all sounds so tired. (The other major childish imprinting is Gilligan's Island's ruining of the Toreador's song from Carmen -- but that's a different story.)

As for Shostakovich's Fourth symphony, I love it. This and the 15th are my absolute favorites. I just love the whirling dervish of ideas that spin out in all directions, the constant changes in tempo & style & intensity, the sly humorous bits, the Mahleresque homages. And this time, just as always I hear little highlights here and there that I don't remember -- a theme by the horns that pops brighter or more emotionally than before for example that happened in the first movement. It's like a gigantic collage painting with all these different things happening. This is Shostakovich before he had to tame himself to focus on creating works that were linear enough to not confuse people too much and thus to not arouse suspicions.

I will never not love this piece, though I'll say that this performance was better on the wild tonal shifts than on the emotional undercurrent. It felt outlandish, but occasionally a little less personal than it could. (This may have been what led to some audience walkouts--not that they knew why, but it did start to seem repetitive that night.)

Kudos to Ginandrea Noseda--he must have enjoyed just having an orchestra to rehearse and conduct w/o having to deal with the nightmarish politics of leading the NSO right now. Who knows how to support both him and the NSO the best? But I didn't go when I was in DC last weekend. (When I was largely otherwise occupied anyway!)

I went to this with Dan before he leaves the US for Europe. I assumed he would like the Tchaikovsky better, but having a violinist background, he actually liked the Shostakovich more (he didn't know either piece). Tchaikovsky's reliance on the winds and horns to provide the thematic counterpoint to the piano wasn't as enjoyable to him as the varied orchestration of the Shostakovich. Unexpected but cool response.

NY Philharmonic, Ginandrea Noseda cond., Bezhod Abduraimov, piano. 8 January 2026.

[musicaespansiva]

New Music at the NY Phil

The first all new music at the Philharmonic this year was at their Sound On event. Music by Chaya Czernowin and Hans Abrahamsen.

Czernowin's "Unforseen Dusk; bones into wings" is a sort of concertante work for 6 singers (the Neue Vocalsolisten) and orchestra. (Upon first reading this in the notes all I could think of was Sinfonia, but then the piece started.) I wrote down "glowing wave of sound" in the first solo that starts off the piece. This is a phenome piece, not a sung text piece -- a lot of breathy singing (and sprechstimm'ing) that may or may not be over-tracked with a recording. (At times it sounded like it, but I didn't seem to find it in the notes, so maybe that was just my imagination.) Czernowin seems mostly concerned with integrating and creating un-heard sound effects in the piece -- this may be much of her emphasis. Did I admire this piece -- yeah, but didn't love it.

I enjoyed the second piece, Hans Abrahamsen's "Ver le silence (Toward Silence)" more. Most striking was the playing with structure. A busy first movement that ended with an outstanding bell-like bowing effect in the strings. The second movement seemed to repeat the emphasis of the first movement, as if recasting it in a different way (or just not differentiating them enough). Here though, it seems almost like the piece is running purposefully out of momentum. The last movement, 'Very Slow, Darkly Flowing" is perhaps structured the best, as it winds down to silence. It isn't as much of a crowd-pleasing finale as Czernowin's, but I still thought it worked better.

We had a bunch of Julliard students augmenting the orchestra -- perhaps, this was why we could have two full-size difficult orchestral pieces on the program. A better start than the way that the NYPhil has sometimes treated the Sound On programs as a bastard stepchild, hosted out of the main hall.

Wednesday, 29 October 2025, NY Philharmonic, Brad Lubman conducting, w/ the Neue Vocalsolisten and Students from Julliiard, David Geffen Hall

[musicaespansiva]

It was 'Mostly Polish Night' at the NY Philharmonic. And it was great

My first concert of the season at the Philharmonic. I was able to grab a rush ticket, thus my sort of terrible angle to the stage.

Originally, it was supposed to be Marta Gardolińska conducting, but she fell sick and ever reliable David Robertson stepped in and did a fantastic job.

First up, a small piece by Mason Bates (who composed Kavalier and Clay over at the Met). 'Devil's Radio'. Though it had lots of his typical propulsion, it was not very devilish -- more light and tingly inside the propulsion. Fun, but eh.

Then, our first Polish piece. Szymanowski's 'Violin Concerto #2' -- yes, they had played it before, but not since 1964. I shouldn't be surprised, but I wish it were played more. The first half lays out a lot of themes in a nice meaty way and then immediately segues into a long cadenza separating the two movements that's a showcase -- Leila Josefowicz tore it up. This piece must be really close to her heart. At the end of the cadenza there's an astonishing chord that kicks off the second movement which dances and sings and integrates folk (pseudo-folk) melodies effortlessly. I want to hear this again, especially in the concert hall. And for an encore, she played a thrilling little contemporary piece with lots of fingerwork that she just dashed off like nothing.

In the second half I had once of those rare experiences where the program notes and the performance style work in tandem to make a piece come alive -- where the notes show you the musical quotations and it's really possible to hear them while still maintaining the excitement of the overall piece. I don't think I've ever heard Lutosławski's Concerto For Orchestra before live -- on disc it never really stuck with me. Here the notes had two quotations of the principal themes of the first and third movements, and laid out the overall structure. Robertson's performance was perfect and clear and you could really follow the introduction and transformation of the two themes. The first movement starts out really strong with the first theme, and ultimately the third movement builds in a chorale (the second quotation) to a dynamic ending. I need to go back and listen again, but I really now feel this CfO gives Bartok's a run for the best one of the 20th century.

Robertson is simultaneously amiable. communicative, and in control and especially given the probably limited time to prepare, this was a fantastic concert.

30 Sept 2025, New York Philharmonic, David Robertson conductor with Leila Josefowicz, violin.

[musicaespansiva]

CMS does contemporary stuff

I don't go to CMS very often -- except for the occasional 'new sounds' type program, I don't find the programs very engaging. (I deeply remember the year they did string quartet cycles by 20th century composers--Schoenberg, Ginastera, Kirchner and -- that was a GREAT season.)

But this week was an all contemporary program of pieces that were evidently in conversation with Beethoven -- whatever it was great music.

Starting off was Duo for Violin and Cello (2015) by Jessie Montgomery. In the basic simplicity and communicativity of her music I feel like she's the 21st Aaron Copland -- again, simple harmonic language that both sounds natural and easy and also particularly hers, while also making the music sound almost folksy/bluegrassy. Very good and fun.

Then surprisingly was Evgeny Kissin's Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello, Op. 6 (!). He didn't play -- I didn't know he composed -- he still looks like an overgrown kid. The music notes clearly communicate that this was his response to Ukraine, and you can see how much he hates Putin -- it's not DSCH, but it is very impassioned and direct if not that deep.

Then, we had our one vocal piece -- Brett Dean's Quartet No. 2 for Strings and Soprano, "And once I played Ophelia" (2014). This piece fails its intentions -- if you hadn't read the notes to know it was about Ophelia, you'd think it was purely abstract singing, with no actual text. But even the notes fail us, since they completely ignore that he was composing his Hamlet opera in the mid-2010's -- there's probably a relationship here, but who knows what it is.

The closest we got to actual 'conversation with Beethoven' was Jörg Widmann's String Quartet No. 8, "Study on Beethoven III". It's dense music in a good way, and at times I thought I heard wisps of Beethoven's 7th Symphony. Very interesting to keep exploring here.

Finally, we had a genuine star (to me) in the new music world -- Wu Man, pipa player, with a string quartet playing 'Concerto For String Quartet and Pipa', adapted by Tan Dun from his Ghost Opera piece (w/ largely the same forces). The theatricality of walking around and playing as you come in didn't work for me that much. (Has it ever worked for anyone other than Schnittke's 1st Symphony?) The music itself was definitely enjoyable. Though it may make more sense just to stick w/ the full piece.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Tuesday 13 May 2025 at Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theatre, Adrienne Arsht Stage. (Where will they put another name when they need to?)

[musicaespansiva]

Moby Dick at the Met

I love the novel. I really want to love this opera. But I don't. I like it, but I don't love it.

Unsurprisingly, this was a much better production than the one in Pittsburgh a few years ago. The vastness of the orchestra does the music some favors. The effect of the Met's humongous Chorus is phenomenal. (When I talked w/ people at intermission, it was the choral parts I praised the most.)

The staging is very good -- the walls that the seamen climb on (as seen in the curtain call above) work astonishingly well as individual whale boats. The dramatic opening of the fold down portion of this set is great and the way it closes up Ahab at the end as the whale swallows him is fantastic. (We don't get a vision of Ahab caught on the side of Moby Dick.) And then his appearance out from under this opening for his curtain call was pretty thrilling.

Though the way they float Pip in the air to show floating along by himself after he's tossed out of a whale boat just led to audience titters. This inability to capture what it feels like to be lost and defenseless in the ocean pre-sages the underwhelming climax.

But I wish the music were better -- the portions for the Greenhorn & Queeqeg are good, and their almost 'love' duet when they're talking about travelling together after the voyage is excellent. But Ahab's music isn't as fiercefully mesmerizing as it should be -- I don't feel caught up in the mania the way I do reading the book. Though Brandon Jovanovich tries as hard as he can and I don't see how anyone could do better. (maybe Jon Vickers, but he's dead, and he'd change some words.) It doesn't help that we get Ahab in the first scene -- perhaps if we got his pegleg walking sound w/o seeing him, we'd have a sense of awe when we do see him. And Ahab should be a BASS, not a heldentenor! (just think of what someone like Rene Pape could do with this type of role.)

The conflict between Ahab and Starbuck feels ill-matched --Starbuck's music is to tentative for us to really care about him, though he's obviously the most rational leader on board. (We didn't get the star, Peter Mattei--maybe he could have made Starbuck more tragic and less pathetic/inconsequential.)

And then there's the ending -- I always remember racing through those chapters--they're so thrilling. But here, the staging is such that what exactly is happening as the boats are attacked is really unclear. We know something is, but w/o anything but an awful animation (that makes him look more like a giant goldfish) we don't get the indestructible sense of Moby Dick -- he's almost supposed to be a figment of the imagination, which is part of the problem. The old etchings from the book give us one idea of him, but even those are so abstract that we can fill in our minds an image of what Melville is describing. An actual puppet or stage thing would probably look silly, but instead we get nothing at all. And the cataclysmic destruction by Moby Dick is mostly opaque.

It's not just the staging though -- the music should be cataclysmic here too and it's not. It's just kinda louder -- I can think of lots of symphonic and opera music that captures a climax better than this does. It's so banal of an ending -- and the almost joke of using 'Call Me Ishmael' as the last line of the opera (when he's calling out to the captain of the Rachel to say his name) doesn't help either.

I still enjoy it, especially for the choral sections. But it's only just good (and doesn't do very well in comparison to Billy Budd, which admittedly has a more archetypal operatic conflict amongst the three principals).

Met Opera, Karen Kamensek conducting Jake Heggie's Moby Dick, Tuesday, 25 March 2025

[musicaespansiva]

(pictures: Wild Up at 92nd St Y, Saturday 22 March & Julliard @ Zankel, Monday 24 March)

Experimental & New Music: Wild Up on Saturday & Julliard @ Zankel on Monday

Saturday night was Wild Up at 92nd St Y. Wild Up is a new music festival in LA that I had never heard of before. But it evidently does a lot of music with an experimental bent, especially playing with alternate tuning, etc. That's what this program was.

Most interesting were the 2nd and 3rd pieces. 2nd was Leilehua Lanzilotti's 'with eyes the color of time'. I've no idea what the title meant, but the piece itself was a variety of different interesting textures -- alternately tonal or scratchy or otherworldly. It felt partially, but not fully organic as the natural interacted and conflicted with structurally architectural hard surfaces. I enjoyed.

I'd never heard much Claude Vivier before -- I enjoyed 'Zipangu'. Again, a lot of different surfaces, mostly surfaces and blocks of sound (quoting from the NYTimes review!), but they fit together well. As opposed to James Tenney's 'Saxony', which mostly seemed arbitrary -- almost but not quite like some of Cage's overlapping 'clocked' pieces. Two seconds before it ended I had no idea it was ending. First had been Scott Walker's "Rubato (It: 'Stolen Time')", which started off with a siren wail and then seemed to have the instruments mimic it/work with it as we heard more sounds of war. (Note that the war theme was explicated after by the conductor/artistic directory Christopher Rountree. It seemed so formulaic. And as an experience of interesting noise, I liked it, but I didn't find any meaning in it. Still, I love experimental experiences like this -- it would be interesting to see Wild Up in its native habitat.

Monday night was Julliard at Zankel. The president of Julliard (a very well-spoken former ballet dancer--he's really good at speaking!) introduced it all with a bunch of self-congratulatory history about Julliard and collaboration. Ultimately, it was about three people: Jessie Montgomery, Matthew Aucoin and Caroline Shaw, all of whom are a creative associates at Julliard.

Jessie Montgomery & Caroline Shaw both partially evoked Copland to me, in different ways. Montgomery's pieces (and her violin concerto which I've been listening to at home) appear to evoke Americana in the broad manner of Copland, but with a far more expansive (aka modern) notion of what America really is. This felt especially true in 'Musings' a set of violin duos. The second piece, 'Peace', was a small gentle piece (inspired by the Pandemic) that was proceeded by a Neruda poem that obviously spoke to the Pandemic. The 'big' piece was 'Concerto Grosso' which was still pretty gentle, melodic and though constructed in a baroque form, still feels to be evoking it's own version of Americana.

I've heard Shaw before, especially her string quartets (sometimes with her own singing accompaniment). Her style is bold chromatic tonalism and it is quite joyous. This reminds me of Copland's statement that there's lots of wonderful music still to be written in C major (or whoever said it -- can't find the quote). Just like Montgomery, all of her works felt right-sized. The two different quartet pieces are small and gentle, and Shaw's introduction of 'audience participation' in the form of humming a b-flat during the piece contributed more than expected. Interestingly, she rescored an Ives song and they were played sequentially -- the transition from the Ives to Shaw was obvious as the chords dropped in place.

In between the two womens' pieces were two much bigger works by Matthew Aucoin. A duo piano work, expanded from a single piano, Leggiero that Aucoin said was probably going to be made into part of an opera inspired by Dostoyevsky's Demons -- the thickness of the work was a sharp contrast to the preceding Montgomery. And his second piece This Earth was big and bold with another big subject--text from Dante's Purgatorio when Dante first emerges into the open air from the inferno. I enjoyed, but they both felt so distinctly different.

After the evening's final piece on the printed program -- a very gentle piano 'unstudy' by Shaw, Shaw came out first to accept applause and then quickly sat down and started playing with the pianist a basic set of chords from the unstudy piece. Then everyone who had played that night came out playing the same chords and the actor who had read the Neruda came out and finished the last line of the poem -- "one ... two .. three" up to twelve. The effect was astonishingly moving -- what could have been kitschy or trying too hard just felt so right and beautiful and touching--an amazing end to an excellent concert.

[musicaespansiva]

Mannes Orchestra: Bauer, Hailstork, Diamond

It's a random Monday night at Alice Tully -- this school orchestra, with an interesting program and a cheap price showed up on the NY Classical Concerts web page. And Alex is working, so why not.

Marion Bauer's Symphony No. 1 was perfectly fine. She is a very forgotten composer. Her fame best rests on being Nadia Boulanger's first American student. This work, from 1950, has only recently been discovered and performed. It feels like very standard 40's somewhat modernist symphonic output. The piece, or the performance, was very thickly scored. This inspired no interest in seeking out other work by her.

Adolphus Hailstork's Ndemara was much better. A chamber orchestra work that draws inspiration from African visions of the constellations and specifically the star known in the west as Fomalhaut, Ndemara is known as 'The Sweetheart Star' by the Shona people and was so named because when it rose high, it was time for lovers to part before being discovered. This piece was a lot better than his over-bearing Oratorio I heard earlier this year. It was gentle and moving.

The finale was the only piece I somewhat knew coming in. David Diamond's Symphony No. 2. This is highly enjoyable music, of the same American modernist vein that inspired Bauer, but with so much more variety, a lot of vigorous, varying orchestration (esp. in the 4th movement) and a great 2nd movement with a long rhythmic section dominated by the percussion. Excellent piece.

The Mannes Orchestra, David Hayes, Music Directory & Conductor, Mon 9 December, 2024 at Alice Tully Hall.

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Ainadamar at the Met

Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar in an intense small little opera. Subtitled 'an opera in three images', it explores the brief life of Lorca via the eyes of a favorite actress of his Xirgu.

It's an opera, but it's also sort of like a passion and is really a meditation. Lots of ritualistic choral singing enacting the feelings of Xirgu's loss for his having died so early in life (and his refusal to leave Spain for Cuba when he might have been able to save himself), and of Lorca's memory as a symbol (perhaps more than the literal words he wrote).

From our vantage point in the balcony, the different types of styles blended well (the NYTimes review said it didn't -- that was either opinion or they cohered more over the run). There was traditional opera, flamenco (singing, guitar playing, Cuban song/style, as well as other Arab and Jewish elements, as well as a heavy flamenco dance component.

Angel Blue was essentially perfect for the part -- emotional and riveting (though Dan said she speaks Spanish like an American--she probably learned the role phonetically). Daniela Mack (a mezzo) was wonderful as Lorca. And the rest of the cast, including Alfredo Tejada (a flamenco singer) as the main antagonist, was excellent.

It may have felt a little short, but to expand it would require more substance, which it doesn't have right now. Still a fantastic evening.

Metropolitan Opera, 6 November 2024, Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducting.

[musicaespansiva]

American Chamber Music

I was attracted by the Ives piece, being played in honor of the 150th anniversary of his birth. The kicker was a chance to hear one of the microtonal quartets by Julián Carrillo.

The Momenta Quartet was doing a cycle of four concerts, each with one of Ives's string quartets or one of his other significant chamber works. Despite the anniversary, Ives has been basically invisible this season. For this concert (the 3rd) the work was the Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano, which contains several characteristic elements. The first movement Moderato plays a little game, where it goes with first with a duo of cello & piano, and then with a duo of violin & piano w/o the cello. And then the movement concludes by all three instruments playing their parts -- it's supposedly inspired by a talk at Yale by an old professor of Philosophy (another Yale school reference!). The second movement, the TSIAJ Scherzo melds a combination of different popular tunes of the day (Ives!). And then the third is a somber movement, using the "Rock of Ages" hymn, calling back to a Sunday service on the campus.

It feels like a distillation of all of his obsessions that I usually get inside his orchestral music--I enjoyed it a lot.

Even better was Julián Carrillo's String Quartet #8, which is his first string quartet in quarter tones. The slithering and expansive sound integrating all these quarter tones show that it's not a parlor trick or just an exploration of an intellectual idea--rather it feels organic and natural as the sound world expands. I look forward to hearing the cycle Momenta is recording for Naxos.

Most conservative was the Piano Quintet in A minor by Florence Price. An excellent work, that incorporates some spiritual and African-American dance rhythms and blends them into a very traditional structure. Very tuneful and enjoyable. I'll enjoy hearing this again also, but it was by far the least radical piece on the program.

Momenta Quartet, Momenta Festival IX: Ives at 150, 22 Oct 2024 in a small room at the Americas Society on Park Avenue. (A new space for me--not great sound, but we're all pretty close so it was fine.)

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Grounded, Jeanine Tesori, Metropolitan Opera.

Like a lot of original operas, it's stronger on dramaturgy than on music. The doubling of the lead character (as her psyche starts to shatter as the stress/PTSD sets in) provides a way for the lead to duet with herself, but it is used only sparingly.

The choral writing is good -- the chorus is as good as ever! The other solo work fits in relatively well. And the music is very well written, if not entirely memorable. The initial 'Blue' chorus/aria that opens the piece is perhaps the most operatic moment -- that's all about freedom of flying up in the big blue sky. The mad scene goes by at the pace of a play, rather than an old-fashioned opera. That may make sense now, but it also makes it resolve so quickly. Emily D'Angelo handles the solo work well and captures the stage. The tenor, Ben Bliss, was born in Prairie Village, Kansas (which turns out to be a sub-division of Kansas City, sigh) -- he fits the part well, but it's really all D'Angelo's show.

It seems impossible to believe that this is the same woman who also wrote Fun Home.

Good staging, though I think this opera would do well in a chamber orchestra reduction--this would appeal to smaller scale opera companies, as long as they're not scared off by the ambiguous cast on the military. (Also, I would want a few woman in the chorus -- as the only female in the military scenes, there's a subtle hint that she collapsed because she couldn't handle the pressure the way a man would.

Scott felt that it cohered for him better the second time -- the doubling and the repeats both in the music and the text stood out more. I'd go again, if it were revived.

Metropolitan Opera, 16 October, 2024.

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Morton Feldman in the cell phone age

Last Tuesday was Morton Feldman's For Philip Guston at the Hauser & Wirth Art Gallery. The painterly connection makes this make sense. And what other venue is going to accommodate a 5 hour performance?

It was Adam Tendler (piano & celeste), Emi Ferguson (flutes) and Nathan Davis (percussion) who soared for almost 5 hours through Feldman's massive structures. As per all late Feldman, each moment consists of small gestures and individual tones but it adds up to so much more. It was hallucinatory and momentous and occasionally boring and absolutely thrilling. Adam told me later the hardest part was the varying time signatures between the players and you could often hear them starting in phase and then gradually slipping out of it. Towards the very end there was a small portion that was fully in phase, as if to wake up the audience that the journey was ending soon. And then it did.

I took no pictures or video during the performance, but many did. I remember the advice I got the first time I heard a long Feldman piece. Three Voices at Weill Recital Hall was introduced by Ara Guzelimian -- it was a sparse crowd and he urged all of us to take off our watches and put them away (this was the late 90's) -- and this wasn't in the pro-forma way done now -- he very explicitly said it and then waited for us all to do it.

Being explicitly aware of the passage of time was antithetical to Feldman's aesthetic. And we just sunk into the space and the music. I had thought it was somewhat boring, but then, after we had passed the mid-point of the piece and were cresting downward (Three Voices has an arch structure), I suddenly felt incredible sadness that we were leaving Feldman's world and returning to our own. That emotional drop is what made me fall in love with Feldman.

But can people get into the structures of Feldman's longer pieces if they're constantly aware of time. Cell phones are such a ubiquitous presence now and I can't see how people drop out of time to just be with the music when you're taking videos or pictures or just looking at the hour or treating the music as background music to your life. (Not that I don't do that at home!) Note that we didn't get but maybe one cell phone ring the entire evening. But do people feel these pieces when they visibly see the minutes passing by?

15 October 2024, Hauser & Wirth Gallery, NYC (picture from after the performance was over.)

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Time:Spans 2024

Quick review of a late summer series of very new classical. Time:Spans is at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. It's a good space, though more of a box than an auditorium. The series always looks interesting, but I manage to miss most of it usually. Today is Longleash, a trio of violin, piano & cello.

First up is Jonah Haven's 'cells mold me'. One of those oddball skreetchy sounds on a violin & cello pieces. Whatever, it was short.

Second was the best -- Katherine Balch's 'different gravities'. Lots of variety in different movements, that were inspired by Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem!! I'd hear this again.

Last was Igor Santos' 'Nossas Māos', for ensemble & video. Another time that the video draws so much attention, that the music feels like accompaniment. The video was all about 'hands' and it went all over the place -- from images of movies/tv shows that people knew to drawings to figures praying to marbles of people praying to a model showing off her hands, etc., etc. The music was pleasant and the juxtaposition was occasionally amusing, but especially since the video had its own audio, it just didn't feel that the music was the point -- can it ever be with interesting video? (And this makes me think of Mary Kouyoumdjian's piece at the Philharmonic all about Artsakh (!). The music just becomes extra.)

This may be something where it never works for me. Like spoken word with music (with the grand Rzewski exceptions). To do multiple media you have to be good in both, and Santos is fine, but isn't that.

Tuesday, August 13, 2024

[musicaespansiva]

Thorvaldsdottir, Pärt & Ligeti

A last minute choice after a frustrating workday. Another Julliard concert, this time AXIOM, the new music group conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky and it was free! And pretty well attended -- contemporary music isn't always forbidding, at least in NYC!

Thorvaldsdottir's "Hrim" was first. It was shorter and more 'wispy' than expected. The notes talk about it being inspired by 'dispersion' (in the biological sense). Moments don't bounce around the small ensemble (12 players) or even evolve as much as they slowly creep, with different players taking up the mantle at different times. Very rarely does it feel like everyone is playing. It's appropriately mood setting in a unique way, though I'm unclear about how substantial it is.

And then it was on to the new music 'warhorses' -- Pärt & Ligeti!

Pärt's "Tabula Rasa" -- I wrote down "God, how meditative". With a gentle rocking accompaniment, it's a piece for 2 solo violins, prepared piano and strings. It is simple, trance inducing, hypnotic and beautiful. It feels like a ritual, and yet it's harmonies (his tintinnabulation) feel modern. The first movement feels more vital and outward facing, while the second movement inspires so much contemplation. (I thought of Reneta Adler's memorable 2001 movie review -- "between hypnotic and immensely boring".) But then I rejected that -- it isn't boring, just repetitive. Milarsky 'conducted' several bars of silence before putting down the baton and even then the audience refused to break the silence until a cough started the wave. I own this, but I've never heard it live. Pärt's music (and he's still alive!!) is surprising even now in it's power.

Ligeti's "Violin Concerto" I have heard before (if my memory is correct -- in Carnegie Hall). I remember it before from it's interesting harmonies, it's effective alternate tuning. Here it came out as more of a summation of musical influences combined w/ mourning and a deep wailing pain. It even veered into Black Angel territory with the violinist screaming out in agony at the end of his massive cadenza in the last movement. (I don't remember that at all!) We still get lots of folk influences & harmonies. It doesn't so much tell a story as it seems to relieve emotional territory from movement to movement. (How much the heavily biographical notes here are influencing me isn't completely clear, but it's still agonizingly immediate.)

The violinist, Dylan Hamme (a 3rd year Julliard undergraduate!) did it all from memory. His performance and musical presence were incredible! And as expected great conducting from Milarsky and the ensemble members.

8 April 2024, AXIOM, Jeffrey Milarsky conductor, Alice Tully Hall.

[musicaespansiva]

The Julliard Orchestra program was interesting, but as much it was just good timing -- Monday is a light day for concerts and it was cheap. It had a Peter Mennin piece and Hindemith's 'Symphonic Metamorphosis'. And, an oddity -- Elgar's Cello Concerto in a viola (!) arrangement.

The Mennin was perhaps his most common piece -- 'Moby Dick', but it makes sense that they would play it given his Julliard connection. And some of his relatives were there because it was some kind of anniversary. It reflects the thrilling part of the novel -- the chase, the passion of Ahab and the crew, etc. -- rather than the reflective, contemplative part. And it sounded pretty good -- I'll have to compare it to the Schwartz recording.

The Hindemith was even better in person. It had all the vitality, along w/ different string & wind balances than I've heard on recordings. And the slashing strokes at the end would be bombastic on a recording, but live were pretty fun!

The first half started w/ Roberto Sierra's 'Fandangos', which I remember as being just as fun as the title suggests, but I didn't take any notes.

It was the uniqueness (weirdness) of the following concerto that made me start writing notes -- Elgar's Cello Concerto arranged for Viola. Amazingly, Elgar's Cello Concerto wasn't that popular in his lifetime -- Jacqueline du Pre really did vault it into its current status. So, when the violist Lionel Tertis asked Elgar if he would approve his transcription it for Viola, Elgar enjoyed it very much and he authorized his publisher to to print it. Indeed, Elgar conducted Tertis in this 'viola' concerto in the last concert he ever conducted.

So, is it sanctioned -- certainly. Does it work? Well, not really. I can't unhear the cello. And the viola, though it has a fascinating range, doesn't sing as low or with as much melancholy as the cello does. A fascinating experience, but not one I'd ever buy or be interested in again.

Julliard Orchestra, JoAnn Falletta, Conductor; Haixan Wan, Viola. Alice Tully Hall, 12 February 2024.

[musicaespansiva]

Ensemble Connect Up Close, at Carnegie Hall.

That's Carnegie Hall in the picture -- the Joan & Sanford Weill Music room in the Educational Wing, that is. Never been before (is this the first ever concert here?) and it's small enough that the room's boxiness doesn't make for bad acoustics.

Tonight was a set of contemporary pieces and premieres curated by Tania Leon (a composer in residence). The two premieres were perfectly reasonable music by younger composers--I liked "insonmnia/black" by Natalie Brown better, but that may be because the other piece had some accompanying choreography which didn't really matter much to me (though the choreographer was cute enough to flirt w/ a bit), especially since the male soloist wasn't very engaging. The female chorus varied, but had some stronger dancers.

The classics were: one of Leon's own pieces "Axon" for solo violin (and electronics), which was harder edged than the other pieces I can remember. At times, it wasn't clear whether the electronics were leading and the violin following or vice versa, and the variation here made the piece more intriguing and as if it really was a duet. (Not clear to me if it was being mixed live or not) And the concert ended w/ Paquito D'Rivera's "Selections from 'Aires Tropicales'". I remember D'Rivera's music from the "A Day in New York" concerts years ago--and yeah, there was an important part for clarinet. Fun, rhythmic as you might expect.

The find was Viet Cuong and his 'Fine Lines'. A wonderfully characterized set of pieces, strongly based upon a couple intervals (as explained beforehand, but very obvious), with movements like Dancer #2, Grasshopper & Sparrow. Often very spare in it's usage of the 5 players (Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Violin & Cello), especially for the animal portraits. Very captivating and in the intro they referred to him as a young up-and-coming composer. I can see why. More of him please.

Monday, 18 March 2024, Ensemble Connect Up Close, Resnick Educational Wing, Carnegie Hall.