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dashing concert-goers
Nov. 10th, 2005 09:01 amA trip to Berkeley to scout out possible alternative sites for a future Bay Area Mythcon (for our usual site is so pleasant that other groups want it too) lasted long enough that I barely made it over to the City in time for the start of the San Francisco Symphony concert.
The first work was a suite compiled from the music for a 1939 film, La noche de los Mayas, by Silvestre Revueltas, el Jefe of the Primitivist Maximalist composers of all Mexico. Revueltas must have been getting a kickback from the Percussionists' Union, for he requires no fewer of 14 of them to perform in his suite. When they were all playing at once, it sounded like a lot of playground equipment falling down stairs.
Then, the all-too-familiar strains of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. I must have heard Carmina Burana live more often than any other choral work save the Messiah. Fortunately I like it more than any other choral work save the Messiah. What I did not know until reading the notes for this concert was that CB's American premiere was not held until 1958, over twenty years after it was written, and occurred right across the street at the SF opera house.
A solid exciting performance led by David Robertson, with good work by the orchestra and the resident chorus, the SF Girls Chorus, and the Pacific Boychik, er Pacific Boychoir, yes that's how it's spelled. Soprano Patricia Petibon was expressive and strong-voiced, and chose not to wear the Bride of Frankenstein hairdo in her publicity photo. Baritone Christopher Maltman was very expressive but rather weak-voiced. Highest honors for tenor Richard Troxell, who in his only solo not only sang (very well) but attempted to act out - sort of - CB's finest number, the Lament of the Roasted Swan.
Every time I hear Carmina Burana I remember one particularly memorable occasion, a concert by the old San Jose Symphony. In those days their pre-concert talks were given by a violist whose deep understanding of how music works, and his ability to convey this, were unsurpassed, but who was afflicted by a loathing for the music he was forced to play, which grew over the years into a mania. He resented the standard repertoire for taking up programming space that could have been devoted to difficult modern music, and he resented any modern music that was not difficult, for the same reason. That music could be beautiful, moving, or exciting apparently meant nothing to him. He worshipped solely at the shrine of intellectual complexity. I like complex music too, but the complexity has to serve emotional and artistic ends. I draw a distinction between simple and vacuous.
That he had to play in Carmina Burana drove our violist to heights of phlegmatic fury. He delivered himself of a typically lucid and insightful lecture on the work's musical elements, than devoted the rest of his talk to attempting to squash Carl Orff like a bug. His final proof that Orff was a composer of utter and complete insignificance was that he'd looked in the prestigious St. James Dictionary of Contemporary Composers, and Orff wasn't even listed.
That was too much. I raised my hand.
"If you read the St. James Dictionary's preface," I said, "you will see where it says that coverage is limited to composers who were still alive at the time of its compilation. Orff had died eight years earlier, so his omission proves nothing."
Sometimes it pays to be a reference librarian.
The first work was a suite compiled from the music for a 1939 film, La noche de los Mayas, by Silvestre Revueltas, el Jefe of the Primitivist Maximalist composers of all Mexico. Revueltas must have been getting a kickback from the Percussionists' Union, for he requires no fewer of 14 of them to perform in his suite. When they were all playing at once, it sounded like a lot of playground equipment falling down stairs.
Then, the all-too-familiar strains of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. I must have heard Carmina Burana live more often than any other choral work save the Messiah. Fortunately I like it more than any other choral work save the Messiah. What I did not know until reading the notes for this concert was that CB's American premiere was not held until 1958, over twenty years after it was written, and occurred right across the street at the SF opera house.
A solid exciting performance led by David Robertson, with good work by the orchestra and the resident chorus, the SF Girls Chorus, and the Pacific Boychik, er Pacific Boychoir, yes that's how it's spelled. Soprano Patricia Petibon was expressive and strong-voiced, and chose not to wear the Bride of Frankenstein hairdo in her publicity photo. Baritone Christopher Maltman was very expressive but rather weak-voiced. Highest honors for tenor Richard Troxell, who in his only solo not only sang (very well) but attempted to act out - sort of - CB's finest number, the Lament of the Roasted Swan.
Every time I hear Carmina Burana I remember one particularly memorable occasion, a concert by the old San Jose Symphony. In those days their pre-concert talks were given by a violist whose deep understanding of how music works, and his ability to convey this, were unsurpassed, but who was afflicted by a loathing for the music he was forced to play, which grew over the years into a mania. He resented the standard repertoire for taking up programming space that could have been devoted to difficult modern music, and he resented any modern music that was not difficult, for the same reason. That music could be beautiful, moving, or exciting apparently meant nothing to him. He worshipped solely at the shrine of intellectual complexity. I like complex music too, but the complexity has to serve emotional and artistic ends. I draw a distinction between simple and vacuous.
That he had to play in Carmina Burana drove our violist to heights of phlegmatic fury. He delivered himself of a typically lucid and insightful lecture on the work's musical elements, than devoted the rest of his talk to attempting to squash Carl Orff like a bug. His final proof that Orff was a composer of utter and complete insignificance was that he'd looked in the prestigious St. James Dictionary of Contemporary Composers, and Orff wasn't even listed.
That was too much. I raised my hand.
"If you read the St. James Dictionary's preface," I said, "you will see where it says that coverage is limited to composers who were still alive at the time of its compilation. Orff had died eight years earlier, so his omission proves nothing."
Sometimes it pays to be a reference librarian.
