The View From My Window

Happy and safe weekend to all . . . Be sure to listen to more Mahler. I am!

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We Interrupt Our Regular Programming

WKCR, the world’s greatest radio station, is five days into their glorious celebration of the centennial of Benny Goodman’s birth – the programming, non-stop King of Swing, will run into the beginning of June! So tune in.

And help them too. They are running one of their infrequent fund-raisers (the last was April 2005). Their need is greater than any NPR station, they fund-raise far less, and they are entirely volunteer. With all that, they are absolutely without equal on the radio. They know as well as anyone that times are tough, but they would appreciate anything you can give, and I mean anything.

Music Humor

If you’ve attended a music school, or even a music camp, you’ve heard a lot of viola jokes (not to worry, there are jokes about most other instruments as well). I’ve been mildly amused by a few, but I never felt the inclination to pick on the viola – like Mozart, I’m particularly fond of the instrument. I love the range along which it lies, the baritone lows to the feathery highs, and especially the woody, throaty timbre which to my ears is closest to reaching the special vocalized quality that makes the gamba so lovely. Now we are fortunate to have a new recording that renews the case for the instrument, “first things first” from Nadia Sirota on the continuously impressive New Amsterdam label.

This is a recital album, a series of new works that place the viola at the center, and although it’s not flawless, the whole is in this case greater than the sum of its parts. Sirota’s playing has a great deal to do with this success; her sound is full-bodied, her intonation is excellent and she plays everything with conviction and musicality. The other important element is that the recording is extremely well assembled. It is a real album, with the pieces placed in such a way that the weaknesses are lessened and the strengths reinforced, and I would credit both Sirota and co-producer Judd Greenstein with this.

Greenstein is also the composer of the most successful works on the album, the solo piece ‘Escape’ and the concluding work for viola accompanied by the Chiara String Quartet, ‘The Night Gatherers.’ The latter piece, which brings the album to a rich and satisfying conclusion, is a lyric and romantic minor key ballade full of beautiful, lush sounds, exquisitely crafted and performed. ‘Escape’ is the literal and aesthetic centerpiece of the album and demonstrates the craft of composition at its best. Greenstein starts with minimal melodic, harmonic and rhythmic material; a repeated, accented descending minor third, then he composes. He moves the interval around, pairs it, adds a transitional note and rhythm, expands it, takes it apart, develops a range of dynamics and textures. He turns a fragment into an involved, and involving, solo work, full of emotional and intellectual intensity. The connection between where the music began and where it is and is going is always in our ears. It’s a tour-de-force work and a tour-de-force performance by Sirota.

Two other composers are featured on the album, Nico Muhly and Marcos Balter. Muhly’s three pieces, ‘Duet No. 1, Chorale Pointing Down,’ and etudes ‘1’ and ‘1A’ represent the spectrum of strength and weakness within. The first piece, the album opener adds Clarice Jensen on cello and is bracing and fascinating. It opens with a dramatic gesture, forceful, minor key and dissonant intervals, and then proceeds to take that material apart and build new music from it, music different in style and emotional tone. The turns and transformations are natural and interesting – this is another fine, satisfying work. The etudes are the opposite, studies in rhythm that try and make too much out of weak material. The problem is the rhythm itself, a sharply dotted figure that has some overdubbed accompaniment but which never changes (is never actually studied), and is itself is awkward and slightly irritating, sounding too much like and attempt to notate swing. Compared with ‘Escape,’ these are just at the level of quasi-improvisatory sketches, not finished pieces.

Balter’s ‘Ut’ and ‘Live Water’ are studies as well, but a successful ones. A piece that is truly an etude should present something to be explored and offer some possibilities. These are basically simple but sonically evocative works about the possible qualities of sound that the instrument can create, and sound environments in which to place the viola. They are full of timbres; glassy, rich, ghostly, plucked and sawed strings and enhanced with some signal processing and, on ‘Live Water,’ a whispered voice. They are meditative dreamscapes and serious explorations of the instrument and work as material that brings together the strands of exploration and meditation that are the final, lasting sensations of this fine album.

As a postscript, in my library I now have a decent sampling of New Amsterdam releases, some I’ve already written about and others that I’ve had just for myself. The music that I’ve heard covers a range from sophisticated and experimental pop to contemporary chamber music and jazz big band and all of it is clearly selected and prepared with a catholic attitude and excellent taste for what makes each an excellent representative of its style and thinking. This is an impressive and exciting beginning, and my admiration goes out to all who work at the label.

Mahler, The Conclusion

The Mahler cycle came to a close Sunday afternoon with Barenboim conducting the 9th. Since my previous post, I had attended concerts of the 6th and 7th, with Boulez and Barenboim respectively, but unfortunately missed the 8th and Das Lied from being under the weather and a more important commitment – my wife’s play! The best laid plans . . .

Having reached the end, I can see the whole more clearly, and it was embodied in these last three events. Boulez, as always, produces a wonderful sound, and Mahler’s orchestrations in these later works press all his colors farther, particularly the acrid, shining and dark flavors. The conductor presents these beautifully, and shapes the movements carefully. He placed both the cowbells and tubular bells of the final movement offstage, which had a wonderful effect of presenting a far-off and unobtainable solace. Boulez is great at giving you the music, in small and large scales. Where he sometimes disappoints is in presenting the narrative drama, which is essential to Mahler, so the finale of the 6th didn’t grip me with a sense of impending, and inevitable, tragedy, until the coda.

After the incredible 5th, I anticipated more spectacular music-making from Barenboim, and his 7th was mostly ravishing and exhilarating. While I find the 4th increasingly odd, I find the 7th increasingly understandable – it’s almost Mahler’s go at absolute music. The relentless major key tone of the finale can be hard to pull off well because the previous sense of conflict is less than accustomed, but Barenboim drove it hard, too hard I think. He is sincerely excited and thrilled by the music, but like Bernstein’s self-identification with the composer, a bit of control, a small step back can make the most of that feeling. Barenboim is involved. That concert opened with a beautiful performance of the Wayfarer songs by the great Thomas Hampson. He’s not just an excellent singer but an artist as well, offering thoughtful and sincere characterization of the sense and context of the music, without falling into mannerisms. I’ve seen him sing Mahler a lot, and it’s always special.

The 9th was frustrating. Barenboim began with slightly fast but well-measured pace, and pressed the intensity of the turbulent passages. However, rather than finding a way back to repose, he continued to press that intensity, which was a problem for the performance overall. This is an almost unfathomably profound work, and the nothing I know of equals it for depth and breadth of feeling and experience. To do it justice, I believe, it must be approached with a broad view, both emotionally and musically. But Barenboim pressed everything; the landler was brittle, lacking humor; he muddled the tempo of the rondo-burleske and so could not build from intensity to frenzy. The finale was overdone – Mahler does demand some extremes, but opposing ones, these were homogenous.

The orchestra, amazingly, still sounded fairly fresh at the end. They are a little below the top flight groups, especially in terms of the brass and horns, but they have a great sound and play idiomatically with ease. I want to especially note the exceptional concertmaster, Wolf-Dieter Batzdorf, as well as superb playing from Hartmut Schuldt on Bass Clarinet and Tatjana Winkler on the English Horn. While I’m sure they were exhausted, I think the experience was renewing in a way. I find myself loving Mahler even more, and in fact listening to Mahler even more. Hearing the works in concert brought me back to recordings, and my days were filled with the same sounds, and it was always new and exciting and beautiful. For listening, I found myself going through Simon Rattle’s cycle and always returning to the Gary Bertini set, which more and more I think is the single best boxed Mahler cycle in terms of performances and value. I also want to mention the great essays by the two conductors in the program book, Boulez’s especially is stunning, and I’m going to be exploring it’s implications, and very specific Mahler works, in the near future. Thanks for sticking with me.

Mahler 4 & 5

The Mahler cycle continues tonight, with Boulez leading the Sixth. Yesterday was a refreshing break, after concerts of the 4th and 5th symphonies over the weekend. Saturday night it was Boulez leading selections from the Wunderhorn songs and the 4th, with Dorothea Roschmann back singing. The songs were nicely done, but I find excerpts from that work far less compelling than the thing as a whole – there is a lot more charm there than a handful of selections can convey. The 4th symphony has a surfeit of charm, and as the most compact and immediately pretty of the composer’s works, it’s quite popular. I found it increasingly strange, however. Sleighbells! Country fiddle! A song about, literally, a heavenly feast! This is Mahler consolidating his skills and leaving himself to private pleasures, I think. The emotional content is non-narrative and hermetic, the composer’s thoughts to himself. It’s lovely, inventive music, it always sounds unexpected, yet I cannot think of a way that the individual movements fit together in terms of meaning. It is less clear each time, which says a lot about how I listen and think. The performance was relaxed, the slow movement properly rapturous, and Roschmann was excellent in the finale, singing with the appropriate child-like unselfconsciousness.

The Mahler 5th Symphony Sunday afternoon, preceded by Thomas Quasthoff’s excellent performance of the Ruckert Lieder, was one of the great concert-going experiences of my life. I have never heard this work conveyed with such a sense of ultimate possibilities – it was not merely the greatest performance I’ve heard, it was the greatest I can imagine. The orchestra played with utter physical and emotional commitment and concentration, but credit must go to Barenboim. His focus, decisions, control and taste were astonishing. Not only was each tempo perfect, but each modulation and shade of dynamic was perfect for the moment. He conveyed all the luster, dignity, poise, joy, fire, rage and violence by drawing exquisitely fine contrasts between all these states, which meant he never needed to indulge in any one to make a point. His take on the famous Adagietto was extraordinarily thoughtful and imaginative – this has taken on the guise of funeral music in contemporary, which it is not, and is often played at a dirge-like tempo. There is some confusion that Mahler created, by marking both adagietto (a little slow) and Sehr langsam (very slow). Conductors primarily choose the latter. Barenboim began with a marvelous, lithe fade-in from absolute silence, then carried the music along at a true adagietto, relaxed but flowing. It was only at the coda, with a reprise of the opening material, the he slowed the tempo. Simple, brilliant, powerful. He also shaded the relentless major keys of the finale with enough dynamics and color to keep the tension alive, and so the glorious climax was especially rewarding and moving, and all without have to press for more volume or less speed. An enthralling performance, exciting in it’s sheer incredible skill and artistry, that I wished would not end and that I still carry with me. Bravissimo, maestro.

Mahler 3

This is my least favorite of Mahler’s works. It’s full of fantastic music, but has a rough opening movement. The themes lack his usual elegance, and the transitions can blunt. The last movement is triumphal, but since this is his nature narrative, there is not the same sense of darkness to overcame.

But Boulez has long experience with it, and he and the orchestra believe in it. Again, a powerful performance. There was tremendous magic in the commodo movement, a beautiful sense of the landscape that you are strolling through, lost in reverie, when gradually you hear the posthorn in the distance, not announcing the arrival of the mail in the next town, but lost in its own reverie. Just breathtaking.

Tonight, the 4th, which will be refreshing after the outsized emotional content of the last two nights.

Mahler 2

Boulez is an important curious conductor his studio recordings are often sonically dazzling and emotionally clinical, but live he is intense. Mahler 2 last night was an example of this. It moved along and was musically involving but seemed a bit emotionally distant for a time. Then, as the scherzo movement went along, and especially as the long finale began, I realized that he had a large-scale view of the work that was paying off. And payoff it did. A spectacular final movement, with excellent pace and modulations of tempo. The Westminster Symphonic Choir was terrific and the soloists were stupendous, Michelle DeYoung and especially Dorothea Roschmann, who is new to me but has a beauiful, commanding voice.

So far, this cycle in concert seems refreshingly old-fashioned, There’s the old-school sound of the orchestra, but also a refreshing and direct view of the music. Barenboim and Boulez are certainly looking for emotional insight and communication, but they are not trying to present a new case for Mahler. Mahler presents himself, there is so much there that always seems new and that we have yet to understand. So they are just playing it, as if this was the 1920s and the musicians decided to see what this Mahler guys was all about. There is a non-polemical sense of renewal that is very exciting. The concerts have been thrilling so far and the audience has been going wild. Nice moment during the 4th or 5th ovation when the concertmaster sort of forced Boulez up onto the podium to take a bow. Bravo maestro.

Tonight, Mahler 3 with Boulez back at the helm. I’m starting to feel tired already!

Mahler 1

Last night’s sequential Mahler cycle started not only with the Symphony No. 1 but with his Kindertotenlieder, sung by Thomas Quasthoff. It was surprisingly flat – Quasthoff sang with surprising emphasis and vehemence, which I think is a wrong choice in this music, which is best performed with understatement. The poetry itself only refers to the tragedies through allusion and metaphor, and the work is about bearing the unbearable by circumscribing it. Also, singer and conductor did not always seem to agree on how things should go.

The orchestra played beautifully. This is a very special ensemble, with what the imagination says is a classic mittle-European sound; throaty winds, brass fresh off the parade ground, dark horn tone, woody string sound. There’s not many ensembles like this left, if any, after the long process of homogenization of orchestral sound that recordings have wrought. It’s not just their sound, they play with great skill and expression, and can get nice and loud!

The First Symphony was excellent. In the program notes, Barenboim writes about the lost art of portamento and how essential it is to Mahler. It’s an important detail in his straightforward approach – he applied it dramatically in the Trio section of the second movement and all of a sudden the music made sense in a new way, as both a mockery and embrace of the classic Viennese waltz. That’s Mahler, cruel and loving at the same time. The bass solo opening the third movement as as good as can be, and the finale was played with both great power and control. Extremely long ovation, and deserved.

Tonight, the Second “Resurrection” Symphony, conducted by Boulez.

Mahler Blogging Continued

I’m wearing a big, goofy Mahler button. Program notes from Barenboim and Boulez are fascinating.

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Mahler Blogging

Heading to the F train with my just arrived Nerd magazine.

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