dashing concert-goers
Nov. 10th, 2005 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacA 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.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-10 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 08:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 02:42 am (UTC)Did the tenor sing the song in falsetto? One of the things Mike (in Houston) told me about the piece is that Previn's was one of the few recordings where the tenor sang in falsetto, as directed (my score doesn't seem to mention the directed use of the head voice, but I see that I had penned in two more verses of the poem that weren't used in this setting -- see below: Orff used verses one, two, and five) instead of from the chest to prove he could. Macho, macho tenors!
Boosey & Hawkes in London had an exact facsimile for sale of (I think) the book that many, if not all, of these were taken from. Different colors of ink and everything. It was cool, but a bit expensive, and I wanted twenty other things that day.
I was whiter than snow / Prettier than any other bird / Now I'm blacker than a crow."
no subject
Date: 2005-11-11 08:50 am (UTC)No falsetto, just a strong high tenor.
The 1847 Schmeller edition? That's the one Orff worked from.
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Date: 2005-11-11 06:10 am (UTC)I loved the percussionists in the Revueltas piece -- best part of it, I thought. We wondered where the conch shell came from. Does the symphony have it as part of their percussion collection? Or is it from someone's personal collection? Is it especially tuned? Did they choose it out of thousands? And what was the percussionist with his arm in a sling playing anyhow? (We didn't notice him until the end.)
Yes to all your Carmina Burana comments. Bride of Frankenstein, that's exactly what I said! And yes, the tenor swooping and turning on the spit was delightful. So sad that he only gets that one number, but it's a goodie. Did the piano strike you oddly at all? It seemed jarringly prominent where I was sitting, more so than in the recordings I've heard. Maybe it was an accident of the acoustics.