New York's "leading young early-music ensemble" perhaps looking a touch younger than they do today (God, I'm going to get myself killed one of these days...)
For someone who insisted that he was re-taking the classical criticism world by storm, I've been pretty quiet these past five or so weeks. Time, it stops for no one. Motivation has been hard to come by. I know I'll never have more time for personal projects than I do right now, and yet every time I think about, say, writing a full-length article, my stomach turns. I feel somewhere on the cusp of too busy, burnt out, and just plain lazy -- but some of those things are constants in my life.
I've still been going to concerts -- it's not like I have so many other hobbies. A few highlights from the past month:
The Sebastians performing music by Bach and friends with live-produced paintings. Embarrassingly, I actually still owe them a review -- they were kind enough to give me a press ticket. A lovely program, lovely playing, lovely conversation after. You'll read more on them soon, but for now: Daniel, Nick, Ezra, Jeff, and Karl, if you're reading this, consider me your biggest fan.
Terence Blanchard's Fire Shut Up In My Bones at the Met -- standing room only. Absolutely destroyed my lower back, but well worth the pain.
Voces8 later that same day. My first time seeing them live. Left me conflicted, but satisfied.
Robert Ashley's eL/Aficionado at Roulette in Brooklyn. My date, editor, friend, and once review topic Anna Heflin wrote a phenomenal review that followed the strange format of the piece.
Brahms chamber music with Garrick Ohlsson and the Tákacs Quartet. Tákacs plays Brahms in a way that makes me think they excel at Bártok (they do). Slightly choppy, but hey, Brahms is comfort food -- a slightly soggy French fry is better than no French fry at all.
And then, all of a sudden, it was November. Spooky, huh?
Clearly, I'm a little tired of the conventional review. I mean, the joy of reviewing comes from some idea that one's opinion matters. I've asked myself this question for the the last eighteen months -- why does it matter what I think? -- and I still can't figure it out.
So instead, I'm going to approach the concert from the other side: looking forward. I'm in the process of assembling a list of the concerts that I'm most excited for this month. Think of it as the Classical Music Geek concert calendar, a curated selection from other NYC-area lists, highly targeted Facebook ads, and things my friends are performing. (Just because I'm quick to disclose a conflict of interest doesn't mean I'm not also super excited.) Hopefully, I can provide some value to the reader, not just to the performer -- although, every time a performer quotes me in the Press section of their website, my heart does sing a little bit.
But that's too many words for right now -- first, sleep. Look out for that calendar in the next couple days.
Second update: I made it to October break in (more or less) one piece. And you know what that means: another concert binge.
I know I've been making noise about a ten-concerts-in-five-days October blitz. But a couple weeks ago, after one too many nights staying up until 3am doing schoolwork, I looked at the list of ten concerts I had planned and only one thought popped into my head:
"This feels like a bad idea."
So I'm only going to seven (maybe eight) concerts this break. And I'm going to blog about all of them, but it's not going to be a formal concert blitz. I'm just going to blog for fun. You know, like a normal blogger -- quality over quantity (what the hell was I on when I thought up of #1Summer50Concerts?). The reviews will come out over the next few weeks.
I love finding ways to put off schoolwork. So, a few weeks ago, when I should have been writing papers, I reached out on a whim to the Carnegie press office, asking if they had any extra tickets for this particular concert. They were so nice, but the gist of what they said was: "Get in line."
Yesterday morning, literally the day of the concert, I got the coveted email: there's an extra ticket, it's yours if you want it, just let me know. I squealed. My breakfast date (Sarah, I know you're reading this) rolled her eyes and didn't talk to me for the rest of the meal.
I dropped my alternate concert plans (we all have those, don't we?) and booked it to Carnegie as soon as my train got in (twenty minutes late, by the way). I sat down and looked around; for the first time in who knows how long, I didn't recognize a single other person in the audience.
I see good concerts all the time. I see great concerts less often, but still regularly. But only once in a while do I see a concert and think, "Wow, that was stupid good."
Well, the Dovers are stupid good.
PC: Carlin Ma
Okay, confession time. You may recall that I reviewed the Dover Quartet this summer for Opera News, but I couldn't really tell you guys what I thought because I didn't want to give the magazine old news. Well, that review is now in print, so I can say whatever I want. So full disclosure: I've known that the Dover Quartet was fantastic for, like, four months now. But now I can finally say it loud and proud: I'm a diehard Dover fan.
Of course, I'm glad I got to see this whole program. But I'm especially glad that I got to hear the Dovers' take on Britten. Outlandish but not wholly unfollowable, Britten's first quartet proved the perfect canvas for Dover to release their inner cheekiness. The quartet managed to invoke that dry British sense of humor in a way that was full, unfettered, and most importantly, entertaining. The tender violin duets of the first movement were so theatrically interrupted by bawdy prestos that there may as well have been a laugh track. Cellist Camden Shaw's eyebrows tracked the satire through the off-kilter scherzo. The slow movement highlighted violist Milena Pájaro-van de Stadt's flawless playing (to quote the older European gentleman sitting next to me: "Viola playing doesn't get much better than that!"). And the blazing three-minute finale brought everything to a close with adequate pomp and circumstance.
Oh yeah, the Brahms was also great. But like...the Britten.
This is how Barber originally wrote the Adagio for Strings before revising it
twice (once for string orchestra, once for choir). I think it's best for quartet.
And then there was the Schumann. It takes one hell of a quartet to be a match for Emanuel Ax, and I've seen instances where Ax plays with a chamber group that is most certainly not up to his level. But this was perfect. Dover is very new-school, Ax is very old-school, and the collaboration let each explore aspects of the other's playing. The quartet was a little bit warmer and rounder; Ax kept his crisp touch, but was lighter on the pedal than usual. The result was a harmonious tone that could only be described not as the Dover Quartet, not as Emanuel Ax, but as "the Dover Quartet with Emanuel Ax."
The performance was so fantastic that I barely noticed the faint, but ever-present sound of the NQRW trains roaring past the underground Zankel Hall. Whose bright idea was that, again?
WHO: Faculty of Chamber Music Conference of the East WHAT: SCOTT WHEELER Piano Trio No. 2 "Camera Dances"; HINDEMITH Kleine Kammermusik, Op. 24 No. 2; BRAHMS Piano Quintet, Op. 34 WHERE: Greenwall Auditorium, Bennington College, Bennington, VT WHEN: August 3, 2019 at 8:00pm
An abridged list of things I did during my week at Bennington:
Play the Beethoven "Ghost" trio
Play Shostakovich's 7th string quartet
Play a Beethoven quartet (Op. 18 No. 6, for those who are counting)
Play a Mendelssohn quartet (Op. 12)
Explain to my friends approximately 47 times that yes, I go to a music camp that requires me to learn four full pieces in one week, and yes, this is my idea of fun
Get called a masochist approximately 47 times
Have a conversation with the Bennington College music librarian that ended with, "I'm so glad that score of Schoenberg's Book of the Hanging Gardens (which was on sale for $2 at the annual music sale) is going to a good home." Why yes, I'll feed it and water it and turn it towards the sunlight, just like I do with the rest of my....scores?
Read Shostakovich's second piano trio (read: really really hard) with one of those pianists who is like "oh yeah, I'm just sightreading" and then proceeds to nail 90% of the notes at full tempo. She may be reading this. She knows who she is.
Eat lots of dining hall food, reminding me that yes, I am happy to have a kitchen this upcoming year
Pitch the #1Summer50Concerts project approximately 47 times
Explain approximately 47 times that yes, I went to 50 concerts and yes, I enjoyed myself
Get called a masochist approximately 47 times
Blog while sitting on a bench that overlooks miles and miles of open field (with a little path weed-whacked into it so people can go on walks through the waist-high grass) while listening to Alexandre Tharaud's recordings of the last three Beethoven piano sonatas (would recommend)
Explore said open field, for shits and giggles
Come across a mystical forest path that looked something like this:
Enter the forest path
Come out the other side to this view:
Scare a mama deer a little further down the path
Stargaze
Obsess over shoes and Bruno Helstroffer (the world's sexiest lute player) with a group of snarky childless 40-somethings
Sweat. A lot. The music building wasn't air conditioned.
An unabridged list of things I did not do during my week at Bennington:
WHO: Anthony McGill, clarinet; Bella Hristova, violin; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Juho Pohjonen, piano WHAT: MOZART Violin Sonata No. 32 in B-flat major, K. 454; BRAHMS Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114; ARENSKY Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 32 WHERE: Alice Tully Hall WHEN: July 14, 2019 at 5:00pm
I have exceptional luck when it comes to getting into sold-out concerts. From Chunky in Heat at the very beginning of the summer, to Pierre Hantaï in mid-June, and a couple others pre-summer, I usually can negotiate myself into at least standing room.
I've only been turned away from one concert this summer, and that was the first of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's first summer evening concert on July 10. The Wednesday evening concert, which featured works of Schubert and Dvořák alongside Mendelssohn's rarely heard piano sextet, was sold out except for one seat which was offered to me at a premium of $85 -- to be expected considering the lineup, which included famed pianist John Kimura Parker, NY Phil principal violist Cynthia Phelps, and Tokyo Quartet cellist Clive Greensmith.
So I decided to come back with some friends and try for the next concert. Three $10 tickets later and we were sitting in the third row waiting eagerly for the downbeat.
Our anticipation was met with a heaping bowl of meh.
I mean, it wasn't unpleasant. The notes were correct, at least. But the musicians were, for the most part, dialing it in. Bella Hristova's Mozart wasn't particularly musically interesting, not that you could hear her above Juho Pohjonen's hammer-hands. I think the Mozart might have suffered from Hristova's nerves, though -- her Arensky was much looser and more refined.
Nick Canellakis's vibrato covered up anyone who he played with, most notably clarinetist Anthony McGill. From what I could hear of him, McGill played the most genuine performance of the evening, granted I could hear precious little over the opaque stylings of Canellakis and Pohjonen. And Pohjonen had possibly the most awkward stage presence I've ever seen, his face motionless and his body just kind of jerking around.
I don't want to belabor negativity, but I'll finish by saying this: I could see Canellakis being a great soloist in a thousand-seat concert hall. Pohjonen as well. I know for a fact Hristova can play the shit out of her instrument -- see the video at the top of this post. But this was simply not their day.
At least there was free wine after the performance :)
P.S. I'm no style guru, but CMS seriously needs to learn that white jacket + black tie is not an indoor look. Period.
I've been known in the past to give tepid, if not negative reviews of the NY Philharmonic in the past. I saw them a couple times in their last season with Alan Gilbert, and their affect often seemed listless at best. It seemed like a group of accomplished soloists each playing without much regard for what the rest of the orchestra was doing.
I'm glad to say that era is on its way out. Jaap van Zweden, the notoriously fierce Dutch conductor who took over as the Phil's music director this year, is fixing them. The orchestra will almost certainly be back to its Bernstein-era glory in a few years.
Still, though, the Phil is in an intermediate period. There are moments where everything clicks and they sound like the most expressive, polished orchestra on this side of the Atlantic. One of those moments was at the beginning of the Brahms's Tragic Overture, which started this concert. Quite frankly, I find the piece to be very take-it-or-leave-it. Is it better than I could have written? Absolutely. Is it Brahms's magnum opus? Nowhere near. But the Phil brought certain moments to life -- the opening (and the recap) sounded almost like a period ensemble, with hard-sticked timpani and vibrato-less strings, a timbre that van Zweden clearly thought out well. The rest? It was fine.
I suppose I should mention the caveat that I had a TERRIBLE seat for the first half of the concert. The box office refused to sell me a student-priced ticket (even though there were empty seats everywhere?????), so I was stuck with the only other seat that was in my budget: top floor, side boxes, partial view. And it was still twice as expensive. UGH. I moved to a top-floor front-facing seat for the Corigliano (and thank god I did -- that partial view would have blocked out the mandolinists!).
To give you an idea of where I was sitting...Fray, van Zweden, and the orchestra
Both of Mozart soloist David Fray's last two albums have been Bach interpretations -- his concerti for multiple keyboards in 2018 followed by his sonatas with star French violinist Renaud Capuçon. I've like his Bach (much as I usually prefer my Bach on harpsichord), so I was interested to hear his Mozart. His Mozart (the 24th piano concerto) struck me as a little far removed from his Bach; his use of pedal was a little more liberal than I would have liked, though not totally outlandish. That being said, his slow movement was incredible: heartfelt, musical, and not too soupy. Special mention to the wind section Phil for that same slow movement.
I was proven wrong. But I still don't think the mandolins were *totally* necessary.
I really didn't want to like the Corigliano. At first glance, the orchestra seemed too big, almost big for the sake of being big. But John Corigliano himself came onstage and gave some verbal program notes, on the verge of tears as he remembered the people this piece eulogizes, friends of his who died in the AIDS epidemic. Once the piece started, I understood why that orchestra was so huge. Corigliano accurately encompasses so many emotions in this piece -- terror, sadness, wistfulness, nostalgia -- that even the most emotionless of listeners is moved.
The highlight of the piece was the opening of the third movement, in which principal cellist Carter Brey delivered a solo (in commemoration of a cellist friend) that was not only polished, but also so deeply felt that a cavern opened up in my stomach and I was fighting back tears. Overall, a tremendous performance.
If you get a chance to see the NY Phil, certainly do it. While they are not necessarily the best orchestra in NYC (that honor goes to the MET Orchestra), they are definitely worth a visit, even in their acoustically dead hall. But, more importantly, if you get a chance to see John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1, jump at it. I hear the Chelsea Symphony is doing it at the end of this month (June 29-30), who's going with me?
