Hands Off My Music!

My teacher at CCM, James Tocco told me that when he played Aaron Copland’s Piano Fantasy for the composer, he was pleased but offered no real suggestions. He was just happy to have great musicians play his music.

Several composers I've worked with have told me that performances change how they perceive their own piece, and for that reason they like to let performers get on with it without too much interference.

I'm preparing a program of graphic scores by the Polish-Austrian composer Roman Haubenstock-Ramati. I wrote to Carol Morgan, who worked with him and recorded a number of his works, and she sent me back this story:

When I first came to Vienna I was asked to play his early Klavierstücke I. I thought I ought to play them to him before the concert to see if he thought it OK, so we arranged a time to meet, and all he said was he didn't want to hear them, he was sure it would be fine, he would hear them at the concert.

That’s a new level of composerly laissez-faire—how could the composer not even want to hear the piece before it is performed?

A Hearty American Feast

The last Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra concert for the season finished with a bang. Copland's Third Symphony is not my favorite Copland piece, but Robert Spano and the symphony made a powerful case for this quintessentially American classic.

I was less impressed with All Things Majestic, a four-movement symphonic work by Jennifer Higdon that concludes her residency with the symphony this year. In general, I'm a big fan of her music. She has an uncanny way of finding the perfect orchestral color for every moment, and her music is as outgoing and friendly as she is. I imagine instead of her writing her musical strokes on the page, that it's a big, friendly dog licking colors onto a smooth musical canvas.

This piece didn't really speak to me, however. I think one of the best things about Higdon's writing is that it's accessible to the players as well as the audience—she keeps things simple on the page, without unnecessary technical complications. This piece seemed almost too simple though, as if it was written for a talented high school orchestra instead of a top professional group, and the players seemed unsure of what to do with the music. They weren't helped by Spano, who offered little musical assistance. The principal cellist, Ilya Finkelshteyn, made a valiant effort to grind some expressive nous out of his solos, but the other leading strings seemed uninspired by solos which never turned out to be soloistic. There were also moving images in the background, courtesy of the local PBS station CNET. It's very hard to make visual elements work with orchestras, and every time I've experienced the combination I've wished they hadn't taken the trouble. But I hope to be convinced otherwise someday.

I hadn't seen Spano conduct before. His loose black shirt and thick glasses gives him the appearance of not caring too much about appearance, as a kind of dismissal of the showmanship that dominates the show biz of Classical music. His conducting was equally undemonstrative, with few expressive hints visible from the audience, let alone the histrionics of the podium actors. He often reverts to symmetrical conducting, his left hand mirroring his right. There must be a powerful intellect behind his conducting, however, which came to the fore most notably in the Copland. He built the work intensely and purposefully, in granite blocks, without unnecessary prettiness.

The highlight of the evening for me was undoubtedly the Barber Piano Concerto, performed by Garrick Ohlsson. Garrick Ohlsson is a giant bear of a man and the piano looks like a toy instrument next to him. He projects his sound so easily over the orchestra, even in Music Hall which I've found to be unhelpful to more restrained soloists. Like Spano, Ohlsson lays out the music simply, smoothing out the expressive bumps in favor of a expansive structure. I always found it interesting that Ohlsson, a pianist who does everything so well, should have won the Chopin Competition of all competitions and built his career on Chopin. I like his Chopin playing, but if I had to choose I'd like it little less facile at times. The Barber Concerto suits him perfectly, and his performance was utterly magnificent, I think the best piano performance I've heard at the CSO this year.

Perfectly Cromulent

I'm a vegetarian and a food fanatic, and I plan my concerts like I plan my meals. I like to keep the palate unencumbered with an overdose of sauce and murky textures, preferring simple ingredients that complement each other's flavors and allow the discerning gourmand to appreciate the subtleties of each. I confess I have a sweet tooth, but even the puff pastry at the end of the program needs a twist of lemon or an accompanying rooibos tea to put the sweet and the light in context. My favorite part of every cooking show is when the chef enlightens the tasters to the raison d'être of his plat du jour. Both cooking and music need no explanation, but sometimes the right words can be the key that lets the consumer see through the eyes of the creator.

I like my ingredients locally sourced, and I work with area producers to ensure the finest quality and to prepare their food in a way that is satisfying for them. Recently I've been working with the Latin-flavored hors-d'oeuvres of Reinaldo Moya and the carefully-seasoned wild greens of Lindsey Jacob, with an added improvisatory touch for some extra spice. I am a fan of the staple grains from the American plains. I program the Piano Sonatas of Elliott Carter and Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland's Piano Fantasy as often as I can. I spent seven years in Australia refining my palate and I've imported some unusual finds that are hard to find on these shores by Roy Agnew, Richard Meale, Larry Sitsky, and others. My wife is an accomplished pianist (currently on sabbatical preparing for our soon-to-be born son), and I have concocted a few postprandial nibbles which we present as a duet team. Our most popular is "Some Enchanted Evening" from South Pacific, although I have a few good ones from other musicals—Fiddler on the Roof and My Fair Lady—as well as a fandango, Niña del Fuego.

Inon Barnatan at CSO

I met the Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan at the Tel-Hai Piano Masterclasses in 2001. That was twelve years ago and he was still in his early twenties, but he was already a fully mature musician. I still remember his blistering performance of Ravel's "Scarbo" in the opening concert—I don't believe I've heard a more breathtaking interpretation since.

I bought tickets to hear Lars Vogt—a pianist I haven't heard—play the C minor Mozart Concerto with the Symphony last Saturday, and when Vogt had to cancel at the last minute, Barnatan stepped in, playing the same concerto. His performance was simply amazing, and revealed a stronger and more nuanced musical mind. The C minor concerto is one of Mozart's thorniest, with a dark undercurrent but in a setting that often feels awkward. It doesn't have the natural operatic flow of the D minor Concerto, Mozart's only other piano concerto in a minor key. I like my Mozart fully dramatic, and I don't worry about the "stylistic requirements" that I've felt has lead too many musicians to treat his music with kid gloves. Barnatan managed to combine his fluid tone with just the right amount of excitement at the right moments. The orchestra was an exemplary accompanist, although the conductor Roberto Abbado seemed to struggle to set the tempos at the beginning of each movement, which tended to be slightly on the slow side. I have noticed that a number of big name soloists treat Cincinnati as a kind of backwater and don't give their performances here, but Barnatan was fully engaged and gave it his all.

The second half of the concert was Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony. It's a reminder how indebted our movie soundtracks are to a soundworld created in Austria a century ago. Abbado really made his presence felt on the podium and moulded the sprawling 50-minute work so that every moment was taut with interest and the character of each section was clearly etched. The highlight for me, however, was the remarkable playing of the individual solo instruments, particularly in the wind section.

As a side note, this tone poem has an important history with the Cincinnati Symphony. According to Wikipedia, In 1916, the conductor Ernst Kunwald and "influential Cincinnatians" managed to acquire the music for this piece, premiered the previous year in wartorn Germany and were planning the American premiere when Leopold Stokowski, Kunwald's predecessor at the CSO, suddenly announced that he would perform it with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra on April 28, six days before the scheduled CSO performance. Rehearsals were hastily scheduled and the Cincinnati Symphony eked out a performance just in time to beat the Philadelphia "American premiere" by just over 24 hours.

A Lull in Menlo

My wife and I are on spring break this week, enjoying the hospitality of my aunt Miriam in Menlo Park. Appropriately, I spent the plane trip reading Joel Sachs' excellent biography of Henry Cowell, A Man Made of Music. Much of Cowell's childhood was spent in Menlo Park not far from here. Yesterday was a hiking day covering Angel Island and John Muir Woods, and on the drive we passed the San Quentin State Prison where Cowell was imprisoned for four years on a morals charge.

I've been catching up on much-needed practice for my recital at CCM in three weeks, playing on Miriam's 100 year old Henry F Miller piano. It's a real workhorse—heavy action, and a boomy sound that the aging dampers struggle to contain that leaks out and fills her living room with glorious resonance. We've been to a couple musical events—last Sunday we were at George Lopez's recital at CNMAT. He played four piano pieces written in the last ten years, including powerful performances of Sylvan Pieces by Cindy Cox and "at the cusp of dawn, a breath" by Vineet Shende. Sylvan Pieces were inspired walking through the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Each of the five pieces begins simply, in the middle of the piano, before rapidly spiraling outward. My wife called it "inspired minimalism" because of how clear the development process seems to the listener. Lopez was at his best in Shende's piece, with exotic Indian-inspired sounds that produced hypnotic sound world on the piano. Unfortunately the Young Chang piano and the acoustics in the small hall made an uncomfortable fit for this piece.

My brother plays violin in the orchestra at UC Berkeley where he's a PhD student in statistics, and we headed over to the orchestra lunchtime concert on Wednesday. I've found that university orchestras are particularly responsive to a good conductor. David Milnes is not a demonstrative conductor on stage, but he gets a great result from the orchestra. They began with a relatively new work, Wide sea, changeful heaven by Reynold Tharp, with thick orchestra textures and scalar melodies that explored the outer registers. It reminded me of Ligeti, although Tharp's voice is indisputably original. The bulk of the program was the Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements, which was despatched with flair and not a little dollop of humor.

Szymanowski's Bolero

I think of Szymanowski as a "neglected" composer. Probably there are too many recordings and performances nowadays for that label to really be valid, and I'm not sure that they really need more exposure. His music is probably best in the penumbra of not-quite-so-well known.

I first discovered the Mythes for violin and piano about 12 years ago in the unmatchable recording on Deutsche Grammophon by Krystian Zimerman and Kaja Danczowska. The textures in that piece, the sensuality, the achingly languid melodies, show straight away what a genius the composer was. What a masterwork! I performed it with a violinist only once, and despite our preparation the concert was curiously unsatisfying, not helped by a unsympathetic piano. While I'd love to do it again, the sensation of reaching for the unattainable performance without quite making it seems in keeping with the wistful of Szymanowski.

I'm playing another violin and piano piece, the Nocturne and Tarantella, next week. While the Nocturne is truly beautiful, I didn't appreciate the Tarantella at first. It's grown on me. While it shows an early Szymanowski still finding his voice, I like to compare it with a late work by Ravel, the Bolero. Both works are by the greatest orchestrators and musical sensualists of all time, and are rhythmic and repetitive to an uncharacteristic degree. If anyone else had written these pieces, no one would be playing them. But the subtle shifts in color and dynamic in the Tarantella, if done right, change the piece from a bland virtuosic romp into something with a quiet internal glow despite all the outward ruckus.

Half a Stravinsky

My first experience with Stravinsky's Violin Concerto of 1931 was at Juilliard a few years ago, when I was enlisted by Francesca Anderegg to accompany her on a few days' notice. Stravinsky's twisted harmonies and his middle-period polyphony was causing me enough grief at the time that I don't think I appreciated the music fully. It's almost a Bach concerto, deconstructed and rebuilt in a cubist form. Listening to Fran playing the piece again last weekend with the St. Olaf College orchestra (the live recording is archived here), I almost didn't recognize parts of the piece because the solo part was so heavily boosted in the audio mix! Fran has a beautiful, rich tone on her instrument and a steely intellect that brought real clarity and direction to the solo part. With scarcely any backing from the orchestra, it sounded almost like a Romantic aria. It was a wonderful new perspective on the piece for me, and Fran's playing was so engaging I didn't really miss the orchestra that much. Interestingly, the live acoustics in the hall apparently made it hard to hear her, so I might have had the better deal through internet streaming.