Modern music that doesn’t suck (one in a series): Timothy Andres’ “Shy and Mighty”
My new music recommendation for the day is Timothy Andres’s 2010 album on Nonesuch Shy and Mighty for two pianos. The music is deceptively simple sounding, but when you listen more carefully it has quite a lot going on, and periodic “explosions” that force you to pay attention.
The composer is one of the pianists on the album, along with David Kaplan. They are a formidable duo, with unearthly precision.
I am especially fond of the track “Out of Shape.”
Gyndebourne’s “Turn of the Screw”
Over the last couple of years the Glyndebourne Festival in England has been producing a series of CD recordings of outstanding past opera performances from the festival, made from live performances. The latest of these recordings is from a very fine production of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw in 2007, with soprano Camilla Tilling as The Governess and tenor William Burden in the dual role of The Prologue and the ghost Peter Quint. Edward Gardner conducts members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Henry James’s ghost story, in which nothing is certain and everything might be imagined, is turned by Britten and his librettist Myfanwy Piper in 1954 into a creepy opera in which Britten portrays the ghosts Peter Quint and Miss Jessel as very real and on the make for the two children, Miles and Flora, left in the Governess’s charge by an uncle who is too busy to care for them himself.
The performance is excellent. Camilla Tilling’s portrayal become increasingly unhinged as the story progresses. William Burden’s bright, light tenor is a worthy successor to that of Peter Pears, Britten’s life partner and the originator of the role. The two children are played by Joanna Songi (Flora) and Christopher Sladdin (Miles). Since this recording is taken from a live performance, there is a considerable amount of stage noise, especially during the scenes when the children are playing together. The elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, whose belief that the Governess has seen the ghost of Peter Quint, the former valet, sets the story in motion, is by mezzo Anne-Marie Owens. Soprano Emma Bell plays the small but essential role of the former (and now dead) Governess Miss Jessel, who was forced to leave the house because of an unnamed scandal with Peter Quint. Conductor Edward Gardner leads a taut performance. A few of the vocal/orchestral balances are not quite right, but this is undoubtedly because of the conditions of live performances. The orchestral playing is precise and virtuosic. The opera is a set of variations on a theme that appears at the beginning of the first scene. Each variation sets the tone of the next scene; thus, the orchestra is a prime character in the drama.
Glyndebourne’s CD production is lavish. The two CD set is bound into a 60 page book featuring color photos of the production, synopsis and complete libretto, and an essay about the opera by Britten scholar Michael Kennedy. The CDs are already available in the U.K., and will be released in the U.S. later in June 2011.
I highly recommend this new recording. It stacks up well with the composer’s own recording (in mono) with the original cast, as well as such later recordings as that by Britten expert Steuart Bedford with the excellent Felicity Lott as the Governess.
Penderecki’s “Passion”
This evening I have been listening to a recording of Krzysztof Penderecki’s St. Luke Passion, composed in 1966 to commemorate the thousandth anniversary of the introduction of Christianity into Poland, and for the 700th anniversary of Münster Cathedral, where it was first performed. Penderecki has been a leading light of the European musical avant garde since the early 1960s. His Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima was a landmark (and has been used as source material for any number of movie soundtracks.)
The Passion is for three mixed choirs, boychoir, soprano, baritone and bass soloists, spoken narrator, and very large orchestra. It is a daunting work combining twelve-tone writing with vocal lines based on Gregorian chant, aleatoric passages as well as huge climaxes that end on shockingly diatonic major chords. The form is similar to the Bach passions: large choruses interspersed with narration and arias that comment on the action in Luke’s gospel. Other contemplative texts are taken from the psalms, Roman Catholic antiphons and hymns, sequences (Miserere mei Deus; Pange lingua; Stabat Mater, etc.)
The drama of the choruses is astonishing. Who could not be shocked by the screams of “Crucifige ilum.” (Crucify him)? Later there is an a capella setting of the “Stabat mater” describing Mary, the mother of Jesus, at the foot of the cross. The final chorus proclaims, “In Te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in aeternum.” (In Thee, O Lord, I put my trust; let me never be ashamed.)
Penderecki’s Passion is a masterpiece that should be performed more often. Too bad it’s so expensive to produce and no one (but me) wants to hear it….
(And of course, I’ve been listening to Penderecki while procrastinating practice the organ continuo part for the Bach Passion I have to play on Friday evening.)
A follow-up to my post-fire essay
Blogger Donna Guillaume, a church musician based in St. Petersburg, Florida, has written a lovely essay inspired by my most recent post commemorating the one-year anniversary of the EACC fire.
I recommend her blog, The Organist-Choir Director, especially to those who are actively involved with church music. She publishes a new essay every Thursday.
A Year Ago… EACC fire remembered
It was a year ago today in the early hours of the morning that fire destroyed Euclid Avenue Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ, which was my church home (and employer) for twenty-seven years. The fire began during a freak thunder and lightning storm late the night before. I’d had Rosie out for her last walk of the night, and I remember wanting her to finish her business because it was starting to thunder. I’d also had a series of annoying spam calls on my cell phone, so I had turned it off before I went to bed at midnight. Had I not done that, I would have been among the first (perhaps the first?) to get the call about the fire, since I live in close proximity to the place and occasionally would receive calls from the Cleveland Clinic security about issues at the church. As it was, I did not know anything until early the next morning.
This all took place the Wednesday before Palm Sunday and Holy Week. There was a meeting of church leaders and staff in the morning on Wednesday, and by the end of the day the church found a temporary home thanks to the congregation of the former First United Methodist Church, who had recently vacated the church to merge with the former Epworth Euclid United Methodist Church. It was quite a miracle—a spacious facility with a large pipe organ, grand piano, hymnals in the pews. The EACC congregation is still meeting there a year later as they determine their future as a church.
The impact to me personally was considerable, since the church’s organ was lost, as was the choir’s music library and much of my own personal organ music library. I received a very generous insurance settlement, and I have replaced a lot of the music; I also received several very generous gifts of organ music from professional colleagues. Almost every week, however, I still discover something else that is gone. And money alone can’t replace the personal nostalgia that I had for some of the music, with its accumulation of forty years of markings, fingerings, and teachers’ markings. Some of the music was falling apart; other things had never been played.
There have been, of course, many challenges since then, and I salute those church leaders who have worked so tirelessly over the past year. The year was not without conflict, but the EACC congregation continues to be the resilient body it has been for over 160 years.
There have been many changes in the past year: Rev. Terri Young, the Interim Pastor at the time of the fire, has moved on to a new situation; the church has called Rev. Courtney Clayton Jenkins as its permanent pastor; and I have retired from the church as its Director of Music, with the intention of not playing every Sunday.
Hardly a day goes by that I don’t still think about the old church, and the magnificent Karl Wilhelm organ, which can never be replaced at any price. It was a unique instrument in a specific environment. One of the wonders of being an organist is that one’s instrument is integral to the architecture in which it is installed. Sometimes that equation works; other times it’s out of kilter. The Wilhelm was a perfect fit.
As Isaac Watts’ hymn said, “time, like an ever-rolling stream,” keeps on going. We survive; things change; things get better or worse. All the tears in the world won’t bring back the past. Optimism for the future is what sustains us.
There will be a service of remembrance at the site, 9606 Euclid Avenue, tonight, March 23, 2011, at 6:00 PM.
Our God, hour help in ages past,
Our Hope for years to come,
Be thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.
– Isaac Watts, 1674-1748
Tomás Luis de Victoria: The Tallis Scholars’s celebration of 400 years
As its contribution to the 400th anniversary of the Spanish composer Tomás Luis de Victoria’s birth (1548-1611), The Tallis Scholars are making available a compilation at a bargain price of three of the Scholars’ discs of music by Victoria. This collection includes Victoria’s three most important works, the Requiem, the Lamentations and the Tenebrae Responsories. The recordings are on the Scholars’ own Gimell label. Through the Gimell site you can get it either as a specially-priced 3-CD set or as a download in either mp3 or (for $1 more) uncompressed FLAC files.
As usual with the Tallis Scholars, the performances are intense, with perfect blend and impeccable musicianship, and the sound of the recordings (I’ve been listening to the FLAC versions converted to AIFF format.) is clear and full. Listening to these great works, by these great performers, is almost a religious experience in itself. I highly recommend this music and especially these performances.
The International Music Score Library Project
An article in today’s New York time by music critic Daniel J. Wakin about the International Music Score Project library (also known as the Petrucci Library), draws attention to this vast digital library of music scores and parts that are in the public domain. That is, these editions of published music are no longer protected by copyright and can be freely downloaded, reproduced and used for whatever purpose.
I have used the IMSLP quite often in the past year, especially after the Euclid Avenue Congregational Church fire, when much of my personal organ music was destroyed. There were many things that I had originally purchased that in subsequent decades have now become public domain, including works by Bach, Franck, Reger, Guilmant, and many others. Among other things that church choirs use all the time are the G. Schirmer scores of standard choral works: Messiah, Elijah, Brahms’ Requiem, etc. Debussy’s works are now all in public domain (in the same Durand editions that you can pay through the nose for), as are many of the works of Sibelius and Mahler. Most of the operas by Puccini are there, as are the operas of Verdi and Wagner, often in multiple editions.
The NYTimes article points out that the public domain scores are old and don’t have the benefit of modern scholarship that might be available in new editions. But often new editions don’t provide great value (or at least not as great a value as their editors might have us believe.). While the music of Johann Sebastian Bach has had much valuable scholarship since the Bach Gesellschaft Edition was published in the 1800s, there is not a lot of recent work on Guilmant or Reger. Sometimes I just want to look at a score and then later decide to purchase it. There is value added by having a professionally printed and bound score. Some of the scores in the IMSLP are available commercially through such publishers as Dover and Kalmus.
Whether you’re a poor student, interested amateur or professional musician needing a quick look at at a standard repertoire work, the IMSLP is an invaluable resource.
About John Adams’s “Nixon in China”
The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross pointed out this blog post by Daniel Stephen Johnson about the recent Metropolitan Opera production of John Adams’s Nixon in China. There has been a lot written in the last few weeks about the 1987 opera, but this one is the best I’ve read. I recommend it without reservation:
http://www.danielstephenjohnson.com/2011/02/adams-behemoth.html
P.S. Check out the advertisement for the T-shirt in the upper right corner of the page. It’s how I feel sometimes.
Music for a break-up: Poulenc’s “La voix humaine”
Have you ever been dumped by a boyfriend (or girlfriend) and feel that you just can’t go on? That you would do anything to talk to your beloved again and that you can talk him or her into getting back together again. Francis Poulenc’s one person opera La voix humaine (The Human Voice) is based on that premise. In 1930s Paris an unnamed woman waits in her bedroom for the man who has broken up with her to call her. The libretto is by Jean Cocteau, and we hear only the woman’s side of the conversation with her former lover. She flatters, cajoles, cries, begs him not to leave. She even describes her poor dog, who doesn’t understand why the man isn’t there. He may or may not be calling from a restaurant where he is with a new girlfriend.
This 1990 film (released on DVD in 2009) of the 50-minute opera stars the American soprano Julia Migenes. It is hard to imagine a better performance. The realistic set representing the woman’s apartment is lavish. The camera work focuses on the woman’s increasingly unhinged emotions. At the end, it is revealed that the lover is leaving the next day for Marseilles, and the woman will be alone. She clutches a handful of sleeping pills as the scene fades.
Unless you are fluent in French, be sure to use the English subtitles. Unlike a lot of operas, the words in La voix humaine are almost more important than the music.
“Nixon In China”—finally at the Met after all these years
Last night, February 2, 2011, John Adams’s iconic 1987 American opera Nixon in China finally had its Metropolitan Opera premiere, with the composer conducting his own work and with James Maddalena, the baritone who created the role of Richard Nixon at the opera’s first performance, making his Met debut as the U.S. president who visited the People’s Republic of China in 1972 and set in motion a chain of events that only now do we see fully expressed.
I listened to the performance via SiriusXM’s very steady, high quality stream. The Met also streamed the performance from its own web site. The opera will be performed on the Met HD video series on Saturday, February 12, at 1:00 PM.
The opera was given in a production modeled after the first production at the Houston Grand Opera. Peter Sellers made his Met debut as director. The widely published image of the production is that of the Air Force One 747 nose “landing” on the stage, with Dick and Pat Nixon (Scottish soprano Janis Kelly, in her Met debut) and Henry Kissinger (Richard Paul Fink) then descending the stairs to greet the Chinese delegation, including Chou En-lai (in the Met performance played by the elegant German baritone Russell Braun).
Nixon in China was John Adams’s first opera, and the music he composed—for both singers and orchestra—is fiendishly difficult. The orchestral parts are fraught with rhythmic difficulties; and the vocal lines have many repetitions, often at a very high range. There are several set-piece “arias,” including Nixon’s antic “News, news, news” at the beginning; Pat Nixon’s “This is prophetic” during the second act, and, most astonishing, Madame Mao’s coloratura triumph, “I am the wife of Mao Tse-tung.” The characters of Mao and Kissinger are treated more as caricatures, without being fleshed out as much as some of the other roles. (In the third act, Henry Kissinger has what must be the most humiliating exit in all of opera, when he asks Cho En-lai where the toilet is and exits for the rest of the opera.)
The performance itself was for the most part spectacular. James Maddalena’s Nixon must be considered definitive. However, the singer seemed to be struggling with a bad cold. His voice sounded very husky, he had trouble maintaining the lines, and his voice cracked several times during the impossible music that Adams composed for Nixon in the first act. It is a marathon for a singer at the peak of form; it must have been torture to feel not up to par. Janis Kelly played a very sympathetic Pat Nixon, who tolerates the slights she receives from her husband, but who displays spunk during the Chinese opera performance of the second act, when she steps into the action to “protect” a Chinese peasant being beaten by a sadistic man not yet “converted” to communism. Kathleen Kim (who also performs coloratura biggies as Mozart’s Queen of the Night and Strauss’s Zerbinetta) tossed off her big showpiece aria at the end of Act 2 as if it was a little ditty.
The music of third act has a sense of greater repose than most of the rest of the opera. The principal characters, the Nixons, the Maos, Kissinger and Chou En-lai play the act on six single beds spread across the stage. It is at the end of the Nixon visit; all are exhausted. The act is one long intertwined ensemble in which each of the characters express regrets of the past and comment on what might be in the future. Chou En-lai has the last words, in which he ruminates on the coming of the new day. The opera’s libretto by Alice Goodman is highly poetic. The singers did an excellent job with their diction; the words were understandable, but much of the context is lost without benefit of the printed libretto. (Poet Alice Goodman is an interesting character. She is a friend of director Sellers and had never before written an opera libretto. After Nixon in China, she went on to collaborate on the libretto for Adams’s second, highly controversial opera The Death of Klinghoffer. In more recent years, she converted from Judaism to the Anglican branch of Christianity and now serves as a chaplain at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge.)
Pride of place must go to the incomparable Metropolitan Opera orchestra for their precision and beauty of sound. John Adams has long been a convincing conductor of his own works. He is clearly a skilled conductor, and this was not just a vanity engagement.
I’m looking forward to the HD video broadcast. That will be the fourth performance of the run. We can hope that the cast will be restored to full health. Nixon in China is an important musical work of the twentieth century. We can celebrate its appearance at the Met.
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