Stranded in Ann Arbor? What to do: Go to a bar and give a concert
So, your concert in Symphony Hall in Chicago gets canceled by a blizzard and you’re stranded in Ann Arbor, Michigan, without a gig. What’s a Cleveland Orchestra member to do?
Zachary Lewis, the Plain Dealer’s Cleveland Orchestra critic, reports in today’s paper about Wednesday evening’s cultural offering by several of the orchestra’s members. Joshua Smith, William Preucil, Frank Rosenwein, and others showed up at Silvio’s pizza and gave an impromptu concert as part of Ann Arbor’s ongoing “Classical Revolution” series (a branch of which takes place in Cleveland). Some of the performers used borrowed instruments, because their own were already on the way to New York for the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall concerts later this week. Franz Welser-Möst showed up to listen, and—most unusually—French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who is touring as soloist with the orchestra, arrived and played a Brahms work on what Mr. Lewis charitably describes as a “modest upright.” Yee-haw!
The more music the better! Yay to these hardworking musicians for bringing Cleveland’s best to Ann Arbor on a snowy night.
Now *this* would be something: Wim Wenders “Ring” at Bayreuth
Deutsche-Welle reported on January 7th that the film director Wim Wenders is in discussions with the directors of the Bayreuth Festival to direct Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in 2013 to mark the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth. It would almost certainly be striking.
Groban Sing’s Kanye’s Tweets
This has been making the rounds of the internet, but first was presented on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. It is hilarious.
Severe medieval music
In the January 10, 2011, issue of The New Yorker, music critic Alex Ross writes about current vocal groups performing medieval and Renaissance polyphony. Among the groups he discusses are the Tallis Scholars, Alamire, Blue Heron and Stile Antico. But one passage of his review article especially caught my interest:
The most daring approach still belongs, after several decades, to Marcel Pèrés’s Ensemble Organum, whose tremulous, darkly florid delivery of medieval and Renaissance music is based more on Byzantine chant than on the familiar Benedictine manner. … Pèrés and his singers presented Guillaume de Machaut’s “Messe de Notre Dame.” Severe, relentless, devoid of ambient comfort, it was an eerie approximation of an unrecoverable past.
Now THAT seemed like my kind of music. So I found Ensemble Organum’s recording of the Machaut Mass on iTunes, and it is extraordinary. Note especially the French pronunciation of the Latin text
Here’s an excerpt, the Gloria in excelsis:
It reminds me of Roman Catholic Church vs. American shapenote singing. Not the kind of vocal production we normally associate with religious music, but arresting.
Cleveland’s famous Beckerath organ gets a boost with a $100K donation
Donor gives $100,000 to Trinity Lutheran Church’s Beckerath organ restoration fund
Published: Tuesday, January 04, 2011, 11:38 AM Updated: Wednesday, January 05, 2011, 10:46 AM
By Donald Rosenberg, The Plain Dealer
Thomas Ondrey, The Plain Dealer
Florence Mustric plays the Beckerath organ at Cleveland’s Trinity Lutheran Church. The instrument is undergoing a restoration that should be completed this year, thanks to a $100,000 contribution from an anonymous donor.An anonymous donor who loves Baroque organ music has pumped $100,000 into a fund supporting the restoration of the Beckerath organ at Trinity Lutheran Church on Cleveland’s West Side.
Until recently, the Beckerath Organ Restoration Fund stood at $142,000, about half the amount needed to refurbish the 1956 instrument. The $100,000 donation will enable the project to be completed this year, said organist Florence Mustric, who chairs Friends of the Beckerath.
Mustric said 92 percent of the $142,000 came “not in major gifts, but in small and modest donations over three years, ranging from a great many $1 bills to a few $1,000 checks.” The donors have comprised music lovers from across Northeast Ohio and the country, including members of the Organ Historical Society.
The church’s admired organ was built by Rudolph von Beckerath of Hamburg, Germany. It is being restored by Leonard Berghaus, founder of Berghaus Pipe Organ Builders in Bellwood, Ill., who was inspired to become an organ builder by Trinity’s Beckerath.
The instrument has been undergoing restoration in stages, as funding has allowed, since 2007. After a concert Sunday, Jan. 16 by organist David Tidyman, who’ll present a program titled “Bach as Visionary and Mystic,” pipes and several divisions of the Beckerath will go to Berghaus for restoration.
Mustric said this stage should be completed by April, after which the final stage, including renewal of the console, will follow.
The anonymous donor has been a fan of the Beckerath for two decades, said Mustric.
“When we first met, I expressed surprise that he knew nothing about it,” she said. “I said, ‘I have the keys to the candy store’ and invited him to come hear it and play it. His first words on hearing it were, ‘This is not the candy store.’ Stunned, I said, ‘No?’ He said, ‘This is no candy store – this is Fort Knox!’ ”
Mustric said the $100,000 donation will make it possible for her and Trinity organist and director of music Robert Myers to pursue foundation support for the restoration.
“Bob is speechless,” said Mustric of the $100,000 donation. “I’m stunned, but, as you see, I am not speechless, which is a good thing.”
Mustric and Myers alternate as soloists in free recitals on Wednesday afternoons in Trinity’s Music Near the Market series. The church is at 2031 West 30th St., Cleveland.
Congratulations to the indefatigable Florence Mustric on this great advance in preserving the historic Rudolph von Beckerath organ at Trinity Lutheran Church. It is one of the treasures of Cleveland’s musical culture.
Rachmaninov’s “Vespers” by the Estonians
Tonight I’ve been listening to the amazing recording of Rachmaninov’s “All Night Vigil” (commonly known as his “Vespers”) by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
The Rachmaninov “Vespers” has, of course, been recorded by many fine conductors and choruses, including Robert Shaw and his Festival Singers
English Landscapes
Tonight is my night for recommendations. If you’re looking for an engaging collection of mostly familiar English orchestral music, try English Landscapes
It contains such favorites as Vaughan Williams’s beautiful “The Lark Ascending,” Bax’s tone poem “Tintagel,” and a couple of pieces by Frederick Delius. Rounding things out is a short choral excerpt by Edward Elgar, “As Torrents in Summer,” which takes the evening’s prize for lugubriousness.
This collection is great if you just want to relax at the end of the day.
In praise of Audio Galaxy
I have a personal digital music library at home over 500 GB in size, and, yes, it is all either ripped from CDs I own or purchased from legitimate sources. It’s too large to carry around on an iPod or to have replicated on my office computer for when I want to listen to some obscure piece or other.
Over the past few years I have tried virtually every piece of software that has come out for streaming music from my home Macintosh to a remote location. A few I have used: Simplify Media (the first and most popular; acquired by Google); ootunes (works pretty well, but tries to do too much, you have to mess around with router settings, opening ports to make it work, and it has a very unpolished user interface); lala.com (you had to upload your music to their servers and then were able to stream it to a web page; you could buy “tracks” for $.10 that you didn’t own but could stream as much as you want; you could also buy and download the tracks; didn’t work well for classical music/multi-disk sets; acquired by Apple and put out of business.) There have been others, now lost in the mists of time and technology.
The latest of these services that I have found, and the best so far is audiogalaxy.com. It’s been around for a while, in a previous incarnation, but the current version streams from your own home (or wherever) machine, using a tiny piece of server software that runs in the background. And—best of all—it just works. No need to change router settings; the preference settings are minimal: pointing out your music library. It defaults to iTunes and uses the iTunes playlists, although you can choose other music folders if you wish. There are apps for iPhone/iPod Touch and Android. (I’ve used both, and they work really well). And you can listen from the audiogalaxy web site to stream your own music. It is not trying to stream internet radio, video, or other sources. It does one thing really well, streaming music. (My home ISP is Time-Warner cable, average home speed, so nothing very fast.) The listening experience at a remote site (even on cellular 3G service) is steady, with very few drop-outs. Audiogalaxy uses the cover art embedded into the sound file. It streams a variety of file formats, but no DRM protected files.
There is a limit of 200,000 songs, but even with my large library, I’m nowhere near that. If you want to, you can sign up for audiogalaxy using your Facebook credentials, but to their credit, audiogalaxy doesn’t add anything to your Facebook feed unless you want them to. Audiogalaxy is still in beta. A feature that will eventually become available is the ability to browse other audiogalaxy users’ collection. You can disable this function. You can also have audiogalaxy automatically display correct tagging information, even if your tags are incorrect. It doesn’t, however, make any changes to your music files.
If you’re looking for an easy way to listen to your home music library remotely, I highly recommend audiogalaxy.
For the music collector with everything….
Bach’s Goldberg Variations on….. THE ACCORDION!
Teodoro Anzellotti plays ‘em. (No, I do not own this recording, although I’m tempted.)
In memoriam Joan Sutherland
It is reported that Joan Sutherland has died at the age of 83. The blogger Opera Chic has an excellent tribute.
Here she is in one of her greatest scenes, the mad scene from Lucia, in 1960.
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