what a difference the day makes September 30, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : the orchestra world, add a commentWe finished our second of three subscription concerts tonight - a big program of Dvorak, Rachmaninoff and Strauss. It’s so interesting to me the differences in the personalities of the audiences each night.
Usually Saturday night’s audience (which used to the famous “Tuesday Nighters”) is pretty boisterous and excitable. There are usually quite a few whistles, bravos and various screams perpetrated by this audience. In short: they’re pretty crazy about the symphony and classical music, and they let us know about it.
Sunday night’s audience couldn’t be more different. Sometimes I think that Jesus could come down to earth in physical form, play a major piano concerto, walk on water as an encore, and the Sunday night audience would still only give him one curtain call. It’s not that they don’t appreciate what we do, I’m sure of that, but they are just less demonstrative (and apparently more attuned to the length of the drive home) than the Saturday night crowd.
Finally, there’s the Monday group. They’re supposedly the patrician, old-money crowd, but they run hot and cold - some weeks it feels like we scorch the very air with our wild abandon and people are out there giving the ol’ “golf clap”. Other times we give a lackluster and listless performance, only to get 10 minute standing ovations. Go figure. Maybe it has to do more with the performance of the stock market that day than how we play (ooh! I made $300,000 today, that Beethoven was great!).
Whatever night it is, these first two shows sold quite well. The first night was close to sold out, and tonight looked about 85-90% full. Very respectable. Now we just have to do that for about five more seasons and raise a record amount of money, and we just might make it!
is it just the weather? September 28, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : the orchestra world, add a commentToday and yesterday at rehearsal I was so nostalgic during the Rachmaninoff 2nd piano concerto. Usually I get into the music (more or less) during the rehearsals, which leaves me free to concentrate on execution during the concerts. Yes - that’s what I said! I find that I need to have a certain margin of control during concerts which I can only get (usually) if I’m in a calm, focused space. Over-emoting or surrendering to emotion only creates problems for me - I leave the zone, so to speak.
But yesterday, during the indescribably lovely slow movement of the Rachmaninoff, there was a moment towards the last third of the movement, a transition, where the two flutes play five notes in thirds going into a very restful cadence - the denouement of the climax of the movement. It’s an incredible moment, and it made me think of a colleague who is fighting for their life right now against cancer, and I just began to weep (luckily, I was just counting a lot of rests at the time). My thoughts were of this person, and whether I’d ever hear them play again, or see them alive again, or how I could be any sort of help to them in their situation. And the music was the conduit to my innermost self, where these things normally lay under lock and key during public life, and Rachmaninoff had the key to this place, and the door was opened, and so was I. I got myself together during the end of the movement, and all was back to normal by the beginning of the last movement.
Anyone who wonders what music is “about” and why it’s “important” should look to any similar moment they might have had in their own experience as a listener. Music expresses that which would be too painful, too private to express in words or concrete images. Music can do this despite having been written by someone days, years, decades, or centuries ago - and it still has that immediate impact: how did Rachmaninoff know I needed those flutes in thirds yesterday? He didn’t - but the fact remains that those two instruments, capable of being shrill and staccato and strident in their upper register, were instead mellifluous and limpid and soothing at just the right time to open my eyes to what was in my heart. It’s a miracle, really. Tonight, listen to the your favorite moment of your favorite piece, and see what your heart tells you.
rocky 2 September 27, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : the orchestra world, add a comment
This weekend’s first subscription concert at the Oregon Symphony is pretty much a must-see/hear. There’s a terrific piece of Dvorak - his Symphonic Variations - that I’ll bet you’ve never heard live before (and maybe not even on a recording) - but which is both totally charming and an orchestral showpiece. Then there’s the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, which I never grow tired of hearing, which was played absolutely stunningly today at rehearsal by substitute pianist Valentina Lisitsa. Amazing - she plays with no apparent effort, but with great clarity and power. Make sure you come hear her play this piece! Last is the iconic Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss. There’s stunning virtuosity on display all around, and it gives a chance to hear our orchestra 2.0 in all its glory. If you want better seats, availability is best for Sunday and Monday.
classical glass September 26, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : the orchestra world, add a commentCourtesy of the new-ish blog Classical in Seattle, a link to this past season’s semi-staged production ofBluebeard’s Castle by the Seattle Symphony. Renowned (and also perhaps a bit over-hyped) glass artist Dale Chihuly was commissioned to produce blown glass pieces to represent what was revealed behind each door.
In case you aren’t familiar with this opera (a great masterpiece of the 20th century) - here’s a rough synopsis, courtesy of wikipedia:
The setting is a huge, dark hall in a castle, with seven locked doors. Judith insists that all the doors be opened, to allow light to enter into the forbidding interior, insisting further that her demands are based in her love for Bluebeard. Bluebeard refuses, saying that they are private places not to be explored by others, and asking Judith to love him but ask no questions. Judith persists, and eventually prevails over his resistance.
The first door opens to reveal a torture chamber, stained with blood. Repelled, but then intrigued, Judith pushes on. Behind the second door is a storehouse of weapons, and behind the third a storehouse of riches. Bluebeard urges her on. Behind the fourth door is a secret garden of great beauty; behind the fifth, a window onto Bluebeard’s vast kingdom. All is now sunlit, but blood has stained the riches, watered the garden, and grim clouds throw blood-red shadows over Bluebeard’s kingdom.
Bluebeard pleads with her to stop - that the castle is as bright as it can get, and will not get any brighter, but Judith refuses to be stopped after coming this far, and opens the penultimate sixth door, as a shadow passes over the castle. This is the first room that has not been somehow stained with blood; a silent silvery lake is all that lies within, “a lake of tears”. Bluebeard begs Judith to simply love him, and ask no more questions. The last door must be shut forever. But she persists, asking him about his former wives, and then accusing him of having murdered them, that their blood was the blood everywhere, their tears those that filled the lake, their bodies behind the last door. At this, Bluebeard hands over the last key.
Behind the door are Bluebeard’s three former wives, but still alive, dressed in crowns and jewelery. They emerge silently, and Bluebeard, overcome with emotion, prostrates himself before them and praises each in turn, finally turning to Judith and beginning to praise her as his fourth wife. She is horrified, begs him to stop, but it is too late. He dresses her in the jewelery they wear, which she finds exceedingly heavy. Her head drooping under the weight, she follows the other wives along a beam of moonlight through the seventh door. It closes behind her, and Bluebeard is left alone as all fades to total darkness.
If you’re intrigued by the description of the action, I highly recommend a great recording by the Chicago Symphony under the direction of Pierre Boulez with Jessye Norman as Judith and László Polgár as Duke Bluebeard. The climactic ‘kingdom’ door music has enormous presence and splendor in this account. And Norman is spellbinding.
A more classic choice would be the Decca recording with Christa Ludwig and Walter Berry in the main roles, with the London Symphony conducted by István Kertész.
You can see photos here - I particularly like the ‘lake of tears’ door - very evocative and effective!
On a side note, when I asked former Music Director James Depreist why he didn’t program this work (which he liked very much) in Portland, he said that they had, in fact, programmed it (now about 20 years ago) and it was the worst selling concert in OSO history. What a shame…
amazing pianism September 23, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, add a commentA clip of perhaps my favorite living pianist, Martha Argerich, performing the last movement of the Tchaikovsky 1st Concerto. Hair-raisingly good and exciting! I must hear her live sometime…
opening gala thoughts September 23, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : the orchestra world, add a comment
Last night, finally, the regular season was underway! It was a typical gala opening night affair - sold out house (thank goodness!), well-to-do patrons dressed to the nines, the women of the orchestra bedecked in extra spangles and bling (allowed in the dress code specially for the occasion) and a program guaranteed to please most everyone, and disappoint no-one, with a household name soloist and a blockbuster concerto favorite. (more…)
east meets west September 21, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, add a commentEvery now and then I stumble upon some insight that really throws me. These gems, big and small, rough or brilliantly polished, turn my conceptions of the world upside down, make me think of things anew, and get me to question what I know of myself and my view of the world.
Today I was trolling the now premium-content-free New York Times website, when I took a look in the small box that shows the “most viewed” “most emailed” “most blogged” and “most searched” articles and terms of the day. I clicked on the blogged tab and saw a link for an article about this YouTube guitar phenomenon - a Korean guitarist known as FunTwo. In the article (by NYTimes TV columnist Virginia Heffernan) there is an exchange about how Asians and Europeans (and by extension, Americans) differ in their respective approaches to music and music-making. The explanation by FunTwo really threw me for a loop - not in that it was unexpected, but that it seemed so “right”.
Here’s an excerpt:
Jeong-Hyun Lim says that, in his experience, Korean and Chinese kids like difficult, neoclassical music–which he identifies as “soloing” music–because they don’t like to listen to music. They like to play it. They don’t enjoy concerts. They prefer private effort, discipline and production.
He seemed to think this was a cultural shortcoming, although surely it could be seen as a great strength.
Producers of music outnumber consumers of music in Asia, he believes, so producers turn into soloists, working alone in their rooms, perfecting their technique for nothing but the pleasure of getting it right.
Europeans and Americans, he said, with intense admiration and some bewilderment, love to listen to music. Consumers of music outnumber producers in Europe and America, so they have clubs and concert halls and bars and seats to fill. There’s a lot of space on the stages, just ready to be filled with any kind of happy clamor–band music, bar music, three-chord cacophony, Green Day, whatever.
There has been, at least in my experience as a musician, both as a professional and as a student, a perception that there are some subtly different dynamics at work between Asian and Western musicians. It has always been a touchy subject, because there have been a lot of harmful stereotypes and slurs against Asian musicians. This is ridiculous, since anything you can say about an Asian musician you can equally say about a non-Asian musician. I’ve performed with and heard concerts by Chinese, Korean, and Japanese classical musicians that were some of the most thrilling experiences of my life, musically and personally, and by the same token also heard concerts by or played concerts with American, European and Russian musicians that took up time from my life that I’ll never get back, much to my chagrin.
Enough lame pseudo-analysis - go enjoy some cool guitar playing!
Coincidently - just noticed that David Stabler wrote about this article, too - read it here.
tenure troubles in philly September 20, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : the orchestra world, add a comment
As I noted when Ellen DePaquale resigned in protest from the Cleveland Orchestra last year, when internal orchestral machinations make the media, you know that something major has gone on behind the scenes.
Philadelphia Inquirer classical music critic Peter Dobrin writes in his blog about the grievance process filed by Philadelphia Orchestra principal cellist Hai-ye Ni in reaction to her non-renewal verdict at the end of last season.
eartha kitt tears up new york September 19, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, add a comment
Photo: Richard Termine for the New York Times
She’s appearing with the OSO this season, and by the sound of this review in the New York Times, you’d better score your tickets sooner than later, she’s red hot.
Here’s an excerpt from the review by Times writer Stephen Holden:
It is fascinating to watch the flickers at the corners of Ms. Kitt’s lips and eyes during these audience questionnaires. The peevish scowl of an arrogant siren who has been through this ritual a thousand times can suddenly turn into the cunning grin of a carnivore about to pounce on a juicy morsel of filet mignon.
proof that violists ARE coordinated September 19, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, add a commentJust picked this up off of Sheridan’s blog - too good to pass up. It really is viola playing in a nutshell - you watch and listen, waiting for the seemingly inevitable car wreck…
Sheridan, by the way, was a classmate of mine at the Peabody Conservatory, where she studied with BSO principal violist Richard Field, while I was in Roberto Dìaz’s studio. She’s now the principal violist of the Dayton Philharmonic.
BTW - lest there be a misunderstanding, the talented young woman below is not Sheridan, she’s an unidentified student at Oberlin College.
