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another day at Menlo
Aug. 3rd, 2010 09:20 pmI spent the day at Music@Menlo again because my car was in the shop. Or, rather, I chose today to have it in the shop because it was a good day to spend at Menlo. The car was having some kind of protective waterproof cover put on some small electrical part, a recall assignment which apparently would take all day. I attended a master class, a lecture/listening session, and an unexpected concert that literally materialized from nowhere right in front of me.
The master class was by Ralph Kirchbaum, cellist, with two chamber groups, a piano quartet playing Brahms and a string quartet playing Beethoven. Not favoring the cellists with his interest, he deployed some obviously well-worn but amusing anecdotes in the service of increasing the emotional expressiveness and improving the phrase balancing of the groups. Made me want to rush right home and listen to the Takacs Quartet's recording of the Beethoven (Op. 18/4), but I couldn't, because my aforementioned car was in the aforementioned shop.
The listening session, conducted by the festival's artistic administrator, gave some short works connected with, but not played at, some of the main concerts. During the course of the talk, the speaker deployed the well-worn canard that if some of the works on recent programs (specifically, George Crumb's Music for a Summer Evening and Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony) sound queer and funny to your ear, well, Beethoven's Eroica did to listeners when it was new too, so there.
( Why that was a dumb thing to say )
Enough of that, on to the magic. After lunch, I settled down with a book on a small wooden bench on the Menlo campus, under a tree and overlooking a lawn. No-one else was about. Suddenly, the entire age ten-to-teen "young performers" contingent of the festival, accompanied by several adults, ran onto the lawn and settled down in a circle, right in front of me as it happened, after which the adults led them in several performances, shifting the two parts between different groupings of the students, of Steve Reich's Clapping Music. Steve Reich's Clapping Music. Steve Reich's Clapping Music. Steve Reich's Clapping Music. One of his early phase music masterpieces. After explaining to the children what "phase music" and who "Steve Reich" are, of course. It was just an exercise for them, and not intended for me, but the one-person audience was charmed.
The master class was by Ralph Kirchbaum, cellist, with two chamber groups, a piano quartet playing Brahms and a string quartet playing Beethoven. Not favoring the cellists with his interest, he deployed some obviously well-worn but amusing anecdotes in the service of increasing the emotional expressiveness and improving the phrase balancing of the groups. Made me want to rush right home and listen to the Takacs Quartet's recording of the Beethoven (Op. 18/4), but I couldn't, because my aforementioned car was in the aforementioned shop.
The listening session, conducted by the festival's artistic administrator, gave some short works connected with, but not played at, some of the main concerts. During the course of the talk, the speaker deployed the well-worn canard that if some of the works on recent programs (specifically, George Crumb's Music for a Summer Evening and Schoenberg's First Chamber Symphony) sound queer and funny to your ear, well, Beethoven's Eroica did to listeners when it was new too, so there.
( Why that was a dumb thing to say )
Enough of that, on to the magic. After lunch, I settled down with a book on a small wooden bench on the Menlo campus, under a tree and overlooking a lawn. No-one else was about. Suddenly, the entire age ten-to-teen "young performers" contingent of the festival, accompanied by several adults, ran onto the lawn and settled down in a circle, right in front of me as it happened, after which the adults led them in several performances, shifting the two parts between different groupings of the students, of Steve Reich's Clapping Music. Steve Reich's Clapping Music. Steve Reich's Clapping Music. Steve Reich's Clapping Music. One of his early phase music masterpieces. After explaining to the children what "phase music" and who "Steve Reich" are, of course. It was just an exercise for them, and not intended for me, but the one-person audience was charmed.
