I was just watching a special feature that AMC produces with each new episode of Mad Men, where the creator of the show, Matthew Weiner, was describing the thematic subtext of the episode. It was about displacement, going away to another place, and being with who you want to be with while doing so. This gave me pause, as I hadn’t really been thinking about anything like that when watching the episode. Today, I realized that my experience was like that of many concertgoers who hear a piece of music, and are affected by it – sometimes deeply so – and aren’t aware of why. The piece of music can be completely and justifiably enjoyed without knowing how it is constructed or why it was constructed in that manner. Some pieces are better appreciated if their deep structure is known, but most music can simply be enjoyed (or not) on the listener’s own subjective criteria.
Category Archives: appreciation/criticism
short, seasons, and saint-saens
This week’s classical series program is quite an interesting one, at least to me. It begins with a symphony of Aaron Copland that is still seldom performed, the Second Symphony (also known as the Short Symphony). It’s a slight, three movement work, which could be compared to neoclassical works of Igor Stravinsky such as his Dumbarton Oaks or Symphony in Three Movements. It is instantly recognizable as Copland, but it predates the so-called Americana pieces (Billy the Kid, Appalachian Spring, etc.), so there is not the folk music influence that one might expect. It is rhythmically complex, with the time signatures changing often in the course of the outer movements. This rhythmic complexity, along with the transparent orchestration, led to some cancelled premieres by Stokowski’s Philadelphia Orchestra and Koussevitsky’s Boston Symphony due to a lack of adequate rehearsal time. Copland wrote this about the piece:
In [this work] I continued the effort, begun with the Piano Variations, to expand my style, both harmonically and rhythmically. The Short Symphony’s preoccupation is with complex rhythms, combined with clear textures. Sonority-wise, the most rhythmically complex moments have a certain lightness and clarity. The work is in three movements (fast, slow, fast) played without pause. The first movement is scherzo-like in character. The second movement is in three brief sections—the first rises to a dissonant climax, is sharply contrasted with a songlike middle part, and returns to the beginning. The finale is once again bright in color and rhythmically intricate.
Click here to listen to a 1980 NPR interview with Copland followed by a performance of the work by the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas.
The next piece on the program is Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (Estanciones Porteñas), which was originally written (between 1965-70) for Piazzolla’s own ensemble, a quintet of violin (doubling viola), piano, electric guitar, double bass, and bandoneón. In 1991 it was arranged by Jaques Morlenbaum for the ensemble of woodwind quintet, three cellos, and double bass. Finally, around 1999, the Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov made an ingenious arrangement featuring solo violin with string orchestra which combined the forms and gestures of Vivaldi’s original with Piazzolla’s South American seasons. The soloist for these concerts is an audience favorite, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. Click here to listen to a performance by violinist Steven Copes with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.
Finally, we come to one of the enduring warhorses of the symphonic repertoire, Camille Saint-Saëns’ Third Symphony “Organ”. It will feature a huge electronic organ that actually does a fair job of imitating a pipe organ (if you’ve heard the work at the Schnitz before, then you’ve heard this same organ used). I actually like this piece quite a lot. It gives our winds and brass a chance to really shine, and the big organ chord that opens the finale is always fun to hear (and to watch the audience react to).
The last interesting feature of this concert? It marks the first classical guest conducting appearance of former PYP music director (and now music director of the Memphis Symphony) Mei Ann Chen. It will be great to see how she’s grown in her years since being in Portland, and should be a nice homecoming for both her and the orchestra.
is music really just a luxury?
Sometimes, even we professional musicians begin to believe the sentiment that music is ‘just’ a luxury for people with too much disposable income. We forget that music is an activity that we have partaken in for as long as there have been humans (witness the ancient bone flute dating from over 35,000 years ago), and that is serves a deeply seated need to connect with something that transcends our everyday mortal existence in a way that even religion cannot even touch. Please, take a few minutes and watch this remarkable video excerpt from an upcoming documentary (opening in NYC this month) called Alive Inside:
another rave review for ‘music for a time of war’
Aside
Michael Miller of the Berkshire Review (whose contributor Stephen Kruger wrote the liner notes to this recording) writes a rave review of the Oregon Symphony’s hit recording “Music for a Time of War”.
concert report for march 31
Tonight we played a concert that seems completely standard by modern symphony orchestra standards. It followed the time-honored format of overture, concerto, intermission, major symphony. But, as is always the case, things weren’t quite as they appeared.
The Haydn Overture to his last opera, The Soul of the Philosopher, or Orpheus and Euridice, is one of those tiny miracles that only Haydn could pull off. It’s a sparkling piece, deceptively difficult technically to pull off, which is almost over before it starts. We never think of Haydn as an opera composer, but he wrote 15 of them. Not quite up to his output of 104 symphonies or 77 string quartets, but not an insubstantial output of operas nonetheless!
As Carlos Kalmar mentioned in his remarks from the podium before the program began, from Haydn we get the tradition of the modern symphony, and from Mozart we get the modern opera and the piano concerto.
Which brings us to the second work on the program, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 “Jeunehomme” in E-flat major, K. 271. The soloist was Garrick Ohlsson, who is a frequent (and very welcome) guest artist with the Oregon Symphony. I’m always amazed at Garrick’s fluency in virtually any style of piano concerto, and his Mozart was no exception. 
He just has the most magical touch at the piano. It is miraculously ‘soft’, in that no matter what the volume, his sound remains (unless he wants it otherwise) round, soft, and warm. So his Mozart is lush without being overstuffed, and clear without being brittle or dry. This concerto was new to me. It’s acknowledged as Mozart’s first masterpiece in the piano concerto genre, and it has a couple of striking moments for me. The first is the opening of the slow movement, which to me sounds very influenced by the Sturm und Drang symphonies of Joseph Haydn, all darkness and yearning. The other is the menuet interjection in the finale, which is otherwise a perfectly respectable rondo movement. In this section in simple 3/4 time, Mozart produces in the orchestral tutti section towards the section’s close one of those sinuous melodies that seems to come from another world. It is something that would become more commonplace in his music (if such divine genius could ever be considered commonplace) as it grew in sophistication and complexity, but here it is, coming out like a ray of filtered sunshine, joy tinged with melancholy, in the midst of an otherwise straightforward rondo form movement.
The final work on the program was Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony (substituted for a postponed Tenth). I was saying to my stand partner this week (Brian Quincey) that this was a piece that terrified me in school and at early festivals I took part in, because of the high and exposed viola section solo in the first movement. Now, after preparing for dozens of auditions (almost all of which require this famous excerpt), it’s a pretty routine experience. However, it was less routine this week. First of all, I’m back on the second stand because our newest violist, Silu Fei, is on the first stand for his probationary review week (a standard part of our contract for evaluating new hires before they’re granted tenure). So, sitting on the outside, I can easily see much of the orchestra without really having to turn my head and drawing attention to myself in doing so. If I’d been in my normal position, I’d have missed our new percussionist Sergio Carreno playing some of the best cymbol crashes I’ve heard since my student days listening to the Philadelphia Orchestra’s legendary percussion section under Riccardo Muti, or Matt McKay on bass drum timing his attacks at the end of the finale with timpanist Jonathan Greeney with surgical precision. There is some seriously world class playing happening at the back of the orchestra in our revitalized percussion section!
It was also fabulous to hear new principal flutist Jessica Sindell playing incredibly softly and gorgeously throughout the symphony, with principal oboist Martin Hebert playing with heart-rending beauty in the anguished and lonely slow movement solo. There is so much great playing in all of the sections of the orchestra these days, and that makes coming to work both enjoyable, and a challenge to rise to.
Sunday morning brings our first round of live auditions with our seven semi-finalist candidates for the Resident conductor position to replace the departing Gregory Vajda. That should be interesting, and I’ll write a bit about my impressions in a general fashion after the process is completed on Monday.