I go to a lot of concerts. When I lived in Germany, especially when I was in Heidelberg, (1999-2000) I went constantly. Darmstadt a half hour away had a good opera house where I saw Janecek's The Makropulos Case. Frankfurt, an hour away, made it possible for me to see a solo recital by Alfred Brendel (my first time seeing him live), the Schoenberg piano concerto with Mitsuko Uchida, and a great performance of Jonathan Harvey's Bhakti with the composer himself running the sound board. I could go on and on: Wagner's Ring in Mannheim (fifteen minutes away), Globokar and Tristan (not the same night!) in Karlsruhe (thirty minutes away), and countless great operatic performances in Stuttgart (one hour away) including Schoenberg's Moses und Aron (the opening of which was wrecked by a cell phone that no German would claim and therefore rang and rang and rang) and Luigi Nono's great opera Intolleranza 1960 whose choral writing strongly influenced my own choral work Walden Miniatures. Heidelberg itself had a decent orchestra and I remember in particular a great concert with the clarinetist Sabine Meyer as soloist, the first (and only) time I've heard her live. I also saw Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre there and must admit finding it somewhat humorous to read about the "big deal" it was when a few years ago Alan Gilbert programmed a concert version of it with the New York Philharmonic. Here's a review of it in the Times:
What's the population of Heidelberg, something like 150,000 people? And packing the house in a city of millions a decade later? How brave to program such a piece in NYC, and then how brave for the audience to come and enjoy it. Give me a break!
Then again, at least the United States is trying to catch up a bit on having missed most of the interesting music written in second half of the last century. I've heard some great concerts of twentieth-century music since moving to the so-called Northeast Corridor. There was an amazing Feldman retrospective put on by Bowerbird (including a magnificent performance of his 2nd String Quartet by the Flux quartet at the Philadelphia Cathedral that kept me riveted to my seat for the entirely of its six hour duration). Mode has put an excerpt of the piece on YouTube, which can be heard here:
Their Cage festival was great too and I especially enjoyed hearing Margaret Leng Tan perform Sonatas and Interludes at the Philadelphia Museum. Her performance was a highlight of the Cage centennial for me!
The Miller Theater in New York City is doing much to improve exposure to living composers, particularly those who write within the continental side of experimentalism and I've enjoyed concerts there, including one this past year that featured Georg Friedrich Haas, who recently left his position in Basel (where my friend, trombonist and composer Mike Svoboda also works) to accept an appointment at Columbia University. I had nice seats, thanks to Mariusz Kozak, a former student of mine and now a colleague of Haas at Columbia, and I enjoyed what I heard. Alex Ross recently made a big deal of his "string quartet in the dark" (No. 3) when it was performed at Carnegie Hall and I like that piece too. Here's his review:
But again I'd already heard the piece ten years ago (in Berlin) performed beautifully by the Kairos quartet so that's not news as far as I'm concerned. By the way, to my memory, the audience didn't get a "test run" in the Konzerthaus. It was just dark. Are concert-goers in the United States so pathetically weak or do they just get treated that way? I vote for the latter. And stop having someone come on stage before concerts and talk. Or worse advertise a sponsor. I HATE that.
Meanwhile, it seems clear to me that few in New York (or elsewhere for that matter) are trying very hard to find out what interesting music is being written right now. Especially when it concerns composers who live here in the United States. Unless, that is, they are writing like the Europeans who are increasingly getting their due in the US, or writing in the trendy style coming out of the top music conservatories, often under the tutelage of composers who themselves constitute what is getting played today by mainstream ensembles. In an essay I wrote some time ago, about the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection's attempt to collect the works of "America's leading composers," those names are mostly forgotten to us now. I suspect we'll also forget a lot of the names I presently read about in the NY Times arts section. Pretty soon too I'm betting.
Here are the best five concerts I heard in 2013:
Shostakovich, The Nose, Metropolitan Opera
The most exciting production I've ever seen at the Met. This is due primarily to the direction of visual artist William Kentridge, whose vision created what looked and sounded like a collaborative work between he and the composer. Another big plus was the Met's percussion section, led by Greg Zuber, who I've known since our days together at the University of Illinois, whose performance was superb. I remember playing the percussion excerpts from the opera, arranged by Mark Johnson (my percussion professor at Michigan State University) way back in the 1970s, but I don't remember anything that sounded as good as what I heard played at the Met!
Atoms for Peace, Temple University, Philadelphia
I've been a fan of Radiohead since the late 1990s, own all their CDs, and have seen some really great live performances, the first of which was a spectacular concert at Red Rocks in Colorado. That performance featured a lot of their guitar-oriented music whereas the last concert I saw, in Camden, featured their more recent dance-oriented stuff. In both cases, there is little room for opening things up. In fact, one of the things I've always liked about Radiohead is how "composed" their music is. So in that sense Atoms for Peace is a real departure. Based on Thom Yorke's compositions, beginning with "The Eraser," (his great solo CD), this is a band that allows Yorke to really cut loose. It's fun to hear. And watch. Especially with the added visual (and aural) bonus of Flea on bass. One of the few instances where I felt like the concert was better than the CD!
Wagner, Parsifal, Metropolitan Opera
I love Parsifal, this performance was good enough to satisfy, and was definitely a highlight of 2013. Still, I thought the piece went by too quickly, with Daniel Gatti conducting, tempos all too fast. Nothing in my mind has ever matched a recording I have of Levine at Bayreuth in 1985. Everyone says it is too slow. I think it's "just right." 2013 was Wagner's Bicentenary and was also Verdi's. That said, special mention can be made here of a great production of Falstaff I saw near the end of 2013. I'd never seen it before and with James Levine conducting (how I wish he'd been well enough to conduct Parsifal) it was certainly a highlight of the year. By the way, one unlikely fan of Falstaff was John Cage.
Beethoven, Symphony No. 9, Philadelphia Orchestra
I've heard (and performed) this piece so many times I would never have guessed there could be something in the piece I hadn't yet heard. In fact, I'd recently heard the Philadelphia orchestra perform the 9th under the baton of Charles Dutoit and it was so unimpressive you could actually have reason to believe there really isn't anything new to hear and because of that even great orchestras under great conductors can get bored with Beethoven. Certainly what I heard that day was boring! So it was quite a surprise when our new music director Yannick Nezet-Sequin led the orchestra in an astonishingly powerful performance of the piece. He's terrible with Rachmaninoff (he destroyed my two favorites, both late masterpieces--his Rhapsody and Symphonic Dances) and I'll likely skip any further attempts. But Yannick has definitely reinvigorated the orchestra and I look forward to what will (hopefully) be a long and productive relationship.
Elvis Costello, Merriam Theater, Philadelphia.
One of the best things about living in Philadelphia is the chance to see Elvis Costello. I've loved his music ever since I bought "Imperial Bedroom" in 1982. And he is one of few artists where I have their entire musical catalogue. But he never came to Albuquerque. Or anywhere in the Southwest that I know of. The only time I ever saw him prior to moving here was in Cologne, his "Brutal Youth" tour in 1994, when I was teaching in Aachen. I was in such heaven I actually sang the missing vocal harmonies, something I usually never do. And hate it when I hear others who do. Here's a brief video of Costello when he appeared with the Imposters at Upper Darby's Tower Theater (I love that space):
That was a great concert and the "spinning wheel" format was a good way to cover a lot of material. Costello's voice now is no longer what it was when I heard him in Germany (I especially liked his singing around the time of "Mighty Like a Rose") but it was still impressive to hear him in a solo concert--what he could do with just himself and a guitar and how he was able to make the many styles in which he's composed work in that minimal situation. Finally, though the tickets cost me a small fortune (I usually buy the cheapest seats but my fear of heights made that impossible in the incredibly steep balcony seating at the Merriam), I did have the pleasure of being probably as close as I'll ever get to one of my musical idols.
No comments:
Post a Comment