calimac: (Haydn)
[personal profile] calimac
Felix Mendelssohn gets no respect, says the feature article in this month's SFS program book, attributing this to his failure to lead a life of sufficient Romantic suffering. Though he did die of a predictable stroke at the ridiculous age of 38; come on, what do you want?

Yesterday we had an all-Mendelssohn program to make up for this. Kurt Masur, formerly Felix's distant successor as director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, inched out on stage, older and frailer than when I'd last seen him, looking in fact much like an emaciated version of the late Richard Gruen. This did not prevent him, with his usual minimal gestures, from leading totally winning, boundingly vital, cheerfully brisk, harmonically rich, and utterly confident performances of the Italian Symphony and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The problem with playing the complete Midsummer Night's Dream incidental music, and not just the suite of the overture and 3 or 4 intermezzi more often heard, is that much of the remainder consists of odd scraps intended to punctuate the drama, so it doesn't sit well without context. Context was therefore provided in the form of an actor named Itay Tiran, who sat in the back of the orchestra with a body mike and read a narration consisting almost entirely of dialogue from the play, his rendering of the voices of Oberon, Puck, Titania, Bottom, and Theseus differing sufficiently from each other to be comical. Tiran is Israeli, but unlike many Israelis he doesn't have a heavy accent; on the other hand, I could not always make out what he was saying. The narration worked its way between, around, over, and even through the music. When Tiran first started speaking while the Overture was still playing, for a moment I thought the hall's PA system had gone mad. The program book certainly had gone mad, informing us that the Italian Symphony was written circa 1730, and A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1776. I don't think so.

The one other thing I need to say about Mendelssohn's Midsummer is that, if you know Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe, and then hear Mendelssohn's settings of Shakespeare's two fairy songs (here with the SF Girls Chorus, very fine) for the first time, you are in for a real shock. Sullivan stole it all from Mendelssohn, he licked his boots, he used a photocopier, whatever metaphor you want. The resemblance is as uncanny as Mendelssohn's own ability at the age of 34 to write the incidental music and recapture the youthful inspiration with which he'd written the overture as a concert piece at the age of 17, younger than even Mozart wrote anything equally good.

Date: 2011-03-11 05:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vgqn.livejournal.com
I have always been a huge (untutored) fan of Mendelssohn, so that sounds like a marvelous concert.

We are so awash in cultural opportunities in the Bay Area that I fail to pay attention to most of them, sadly. Perhaps I'll go see if this concert will be offered again.

Thanks, as always, for posting your reviews! I find them fascinating.

Date: 2011-03-11 06:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com
[livejournal.com profile] voidampersand told me he's sneaking out of Fogcon Saturday evening to go to this. (I shouldn't mind: I snuck out of his Corflu to attend OtherMinds.) If you're going to Fogcon, get a ticket and talk to him.

Date: 2011-03-14 12:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vgqn.livejournal.com
I got a ticket and went with twb & his mother to the concert. It was great -- thanks!

Date: 2011-03-11 06:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com
And while you're at it, this. At Flint, too. I'll be there.

Date: 2011-03-12 03:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kip-w.livejournal.com
Back around, oh, 1975, I remember listening to a free-form FM station, KCFR, when they played Mendelssohn's two-piano concerto among the jazz and rock and so on. Afterward, the mellow announcer was telling us what we'd heard, noting that "Mendelssohn was seventeen years old when he wrote that."

He paused.

"Kind of makes you realize your entire life has been wasted, up to now," he added.

Date: 2011-03-12 04:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com
"It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years" - Tom Lehrer. (He's been dead a lot longer than that, now.)

Date: 2011-03-13 03:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] irontongue.livejournal.com
The correct quotation is "dead for three years." :)

I love the music, was less happy with the concert itself than you. I also jumped out of my skin when Tiran started to speak the first time.

I read the Trouble with Felix article last week and rolled my eyes a lot. Mendelssohn is the most classical of the Romantics; his music has a particular grace, balance, and clarity of form that some find unromantic - not mention, it is often exceptionally charming, which I mean in a good way. Whatever; I love it and don't give a damn whether he has the right bio or not.

Date: 2011-03-13 07:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com
No, I double-checked with the recording. It's "two years." It's correct to the nearest year, also. Lehrer was born in 1928, this was 1965, so he was 37.

Date: 2011-03-13 07:34 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] irontongue.livejournal.com
That line is from the spoken intro to "Alma," true? I will have to dig up my copies (I have TWTYTW on both LP and CD).

Date: 2011-03-13 08:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] irontongue.livejournal.com
You are absolutely right, and I've been misquoting that line for a long, long time.

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