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music at last
Aug. 9th, 2005 06:09 amThe Menlo Festival that I wrote about last week is continuing, and I was determined to get as much out of it as I could before I leave. So were my editors who, not satisfied with having me review all six of Beethoven's Opus 18 quartets last week, asked me to review all three of his (much larger) Opus 59 Razumovsky quartets this week. In one concert, phew. Vaguely aware that some of my reviews have been showing off my technical vocabulary in a way that I wouldn't do if I actually knew more, I attempted to cure myself of that this time by a trick I sometimes use for second drafts, of rewriting the entire review from scratch at one o'clock in the morning. It's online here.
Also mentioned in the review: trying to complete as much of the Beethoven set as I could, I heard the next two quartets, Opi 74 and 95, four days later.
And I decided to drop in on one of their Young Performers Concerts. This was truly strange. More than a music festival, Menlo is a teaching workshop for all ages: master classes for the young professionals, going all the way down to private lessons for eleven-year-olds. And even the eleven-year-olds get to play before an audience, as the first acts in a variety show extending all the way up through high schoolers. Watching three of those little kids gamely scraping their way through a Haydn string trio – they were well-trained, but their technique was so immature that I couldn't tell how talented they actually were – and watching the audience full of parents with video cameras on tripods, parents so dedicated that, when one of the 18-year-olds' music threatened to fall off the stand, a mom jumped up on stage to hold it in place, and I don't even think she was his mom – well, I really had to wonder about these kids. Are they old enough to appreciate the artistry of what they’re trying to do? Or have they been forced into it by parents who name their daughters Kendall and train them to give little speeches that begin "Haydn was born in 1832"? (It was 1732, but never mind: the important part is that the kid was up there saying it.) Classical music rolled off my back until it suddenly clicked for me at the age of 12, and I think maturity had something to do with the change. That doesn't mean others must mature at the same rate or in the same way, of course. I'm just wondering.
The older students were better, though, and banished all thoughts of uncomprehending slave labor from my head. Those three high-schoolers who effortlessly zipped their way through Mendelssohn's Op. 66 piano trio could turn pro tomorrow. They were a treat to hear. I see their pianist is going to be playing Bartok's Third Concerto with the Youth Symphony next year. Not an easy piece. But I'm sure she can handle it.
And on Saturday – this was planned long before I knew I'd be covering Menlo – I had a ticket for the Cabrillo Festival over in Santa Cruz. Marin Alsop is not their first music director, but she’s been there for 14 years now and owns the place. Alsop may be controversial in Baltimore, but Santa Cruz loves her.
This was a typical Alsop Cabrillo concert. First, a short new piece, River's Rush by Kevin Puts, a regular at the festival. Typical contemporary tonal music: brittle with touches of slightly chromatic lyric melody here and there, and lots of clattering percussion. Then, the also brand-new Second Piano Concerto of Philip Glass, played by Paul Barnes for whom it was written. Recipe: ceaseless piano obbligato rumblings for forty minutes underneath Glassian orchestral noodlings, the whole with astonishingly bad sonic balance (brass and percussion sticking out like sore thumb, everything else inaudible), which must be the composer's fault because the other pieces came out OK. The concerto was written to commemorate the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark, so naturally there had to be a "Sacagawea" movement, which featured a second soloist: Navajo musician Carlos Nakai on the cedar flute, an instrument of uncertain and variable tonality, uh-huh.
The third and final piece was by far the oldest (1981) and the best: Steve Reich's Tehillim, his setting of Psalms. Four female voices virtuosically jumping around and interweaving, complex hand-clapping and hand-held drum banging from the batterie, and the rest of the orchestra providing long sustaining chords. One local critic described it as "like a million photons, glowing and blinking as the whole constellation slowly turned." Evocative if unscientific.
It was an odd-sounding piece, jumpy and irregular on the short term but so serene on the large that it had an intensely spiritually calming effect, of a kind that no other music produces in me as purely as do the masterworks of minimalism. Even the physical aches that had made me wonder if I should skip out just vanished for the length of the work. I sat there feeling completely content to just be. The longer the music went on, the more of it I wanted to hear.
But it had to end, and now so do I. I'm all packed, and I leave for England in three hours. (I'm posting now mostly to preserve the link to my review, which will vanish from the front page into the haze of the archives by the time I return.) B. will keep the home fires, and I'll see you all in three weeks.
Also mentioned in the review: trying to complete as much of the Beethoven set as I could, I heard the next two quartets, Opi 74 and 95, four days later.
And I decided to drop in on one of their Young Performers Concerts. This was truly strange. More than a music festival, Menlo is a teaching workshop for all ages: master classes for the young professionals, going all the way down to private lessons for eleven-year-olds. And even the eleven-year-olds get to play before an audience, as the first acts in a variety show extending all the way up through high schoolers. Watching three of those little kids gamely scraping their way through a Haydn string trio – they were well-trained, but their technique was so immature that I couldn't tell how talented they actually were – and watching the audience full of parents with video cameras on tripods, parents so dedicated that, when one of the 18-year-olds' music threatened to fall off the stand, a mom jumped up on stage to hold it in place, and I don't even think she was his mom – well, I really had to wonder about these kids. Are they old enough to appreciate the artistry of what they’re trying to do? Or have they been forced into it by parents who name their daughters Kendall and train them to give little speeches that begin "Haydn was born in 1832"? (It was 1732, but never mind: the important part is that the kid was up there saying it.) Classical music rolled off my back until it suddenly clicked for me at the age of 12, and I think maturity had something to do with the change. That doesn't mean others must mature at the same rate or in the same way, of course. I'm just wondering.
The older students were better, though, and banished all thoughts of uncomprehending slave labor from my head. Those three high-schoolers who effortlessly zipped their way through Mendelssohn's Op. 66 piano trio could turn pro tomorrow. They were a treat to hear. I see their pianist is going to be playing Bartok's Third Concerto with the Youth Symphony next year. Not an easy piece. But I'm sure she can handle it.
And on Saturday – this was planned long before I knew I'd be covering Menlo – I had a ticket for the Cabrillo Festival over in Santa Cruz. Marin Alsop is not their first music director, but she’s been there for 14 years now and owns the place. Alsop may be controversial in Baltimore, but Santa Cruz loves her.
This was a typical Alsop Cabrillo concert. First, a short new piece, River's Rush by Kevin Puts, a regular at the festival. Typical contemporary tonal music: brittle with touches of slightly chromatic lyric melody here and there, and lots of clattering percussion. Then, the also brand-new Second Piano Concerto of Philip Glass, played by Paul Barnes for whom it was written. Recipe: ceaseless piano obbligato rumblings for forty minutes underneath Glassian orchestral noodlings, the whole with astonishingly bad sonic balance (brass and percussion sticking out like sore thumb, everything else inaudible), which must be the composer's fault because the other pieces came out OK. The concerto was written to commemorate the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark, so naturally there had to be a "Sacagawea" movement, which featured a second soloist: Navajo musician Carlos Nakai on the cedar flute, an instrument of uncertain and variable tonality, uh-huh.
The third and final piece was by far the oldest (1981) and the best: Steve Reich's Tehillim, his setting of Psalms. Four female voices virtuosically jumping around and interweaving, complex hand-clapping and hand-held drum banging from the batterie, and the rest of the orchestra providing long sustaining chords. One local critic described it as "like a million photons, glowing and blinking as the whole constellation slowly turned." Evocative if unscientific.
It was an odd-sounding piece, jumpy and irregular on the short term but so serene on the large that it had an intensely spiritually calming effect, of a kind that no other music produces in me as purely as do the masterworks of minimalism. Even the physical aches that had made me wonder if I should skip out just vanished for the length of the work. I sat there feeling completely content to just be. The longer the music went on, the more of it I wanted to hear.
But it had to end, and now so do I. I'm all packed, and I leave for England in three hours. (I'm posting now mostly to preserve the link to my review, which will vanish from the front page into the haze of the archives by the time I return.) B. will keep the home fires, and I'll see you all in three weeks.
