This weekend Joshua and I helped my mother and father begin to get things ready for Easter, when my brothers and my older brother’s family will be home.
Josh and I will spend Easter in Oklahoma with Josh’s family, as Josh has already written.
Josh and I went over to my parents’ house early Saturday morning, and we took my Dad out to breakfast. When we returned to my parents’ house, we spent the rest of the morning working on my mother’s kitchen floor, stripping old wax and applying a new coat.
We spent Saturday afternoon doing some cleaning around the house, and we spent Saturday night polishing silver and cleaning my mother’s kitchen cabinets.
Sunday, after church, we washed and cleaned the cars, inside and out, and we cleaned the downstairs family room from top to bottom. On Sunday night, we cleaned my father’s downstairs den and library.
During much of the weekend we listened to music. We listened to a set of discs Josh and I had borrowed from my father about a month ago and have been listening to ever since, “Fifty Years Of Vox Recordings”, a three-disc set containing four hours of music. The set celebrates the first half-century of the Vox label.
This is a fascinating set of discs, containing excerpts from Vox recordings issued from shortly after World War II until the mid-1990’s. There are 39 tracks in the set, covering repertory from Bach through Hindemith.
A few of the performances are exceptional. The set contains the finest recording ever made of Carlos Chavez’s Symphony No. 2 (“Sinfonia India”), performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under Eduardo Mata. The set also contains the finest recording ever made of Hugo Alfven’s Swedish Rhapsody No. 1 (“A Midsummer Vigil”), performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under Sergiu Comissiona.
The latter performance is one of many, many recordings Vox made with American orchestras in the 1970’s, when Vox virtually cornered the market in recording America’s second-tier ensembles. Orchestras in Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Dallas, Minneapolis, Rochester, Saint Louis and Salt Lake City all recorded for the Vox label in that decade. With a handful of exceptions, all of these recordings have long since been deleted from the active catalog.
Some artists built their recording careers during those American Vox years, the two most conspicuous examples being conductors Erich Kunzel and Leonard Slatkin. Some artists had already lost their allures for the major labels by that time, leaving Vox as their only available recording outlet, the prime examples in this category being conductors Thomas Schippers (dumped by Columbia and EMI) and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (abandoned by Mercury).
The Minnesota Orchestra under Skrowaczewski did a great deal of recording for Vox during the 1970’s. The Minnesota Orchestra recorded the complete Overtures and Incidental Music of Beethoven during the decade, as well as the complete orchestral works of Ravel. The Minnesota Orchestra also recorded Bartok, Handel, Mozart and Prokofiev for the label.
It is the Overture to Handel’s Water Music that makes an appearance in the Vox anniversary set, a peculiar choice to represent the Minnesota Orchestra’s work for Vox. It is a dull, slow, heavy performance, shortly to be overtaken by the original-instruments movement that was to transform the performance of Baroque music.
Some of the recorded selections on the set are indescribably bad. The first movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 29, recorded in 1954 by the Vienna Symphony under Jonel Perlea, is awful. A performance of the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 19, recorded in 1950 by Isidor Philipp and the Pro Musica Orchestra (whatever that is) under Jean-Baptiste Mari (the noted conductor of ballet scores), has to be heard to be believed. The first movement of Schubert’s Symphony No. 4, recorded in 1951 by the Lamoureux Concerts Association Orchestra under Otto Klemperer, is the worst thing I have ever heard from that conductor (I blame the orchestra).
Most of the artists who spent entire careers recording for Vox are represented. Ingrid Haebler, Grant Johannesen, Anthony Newman, Guiomar Novaes, Michael Ponti, Ruggiero Ricci, Aaron Rosand and Abbey Simon all make appearances, although only Newman and Novaes are represented by more than one selection. Novaes, fittingly, is awarded two tracks; Newman, unaccountably, is awarded three. Few of the selections represent any of these artists at their best. One is left to ask, over and over, why a particular selection was chosen for inclusion in the set. A defensible answer seldom comes to mind.
Basically, this set of discs is a dog’s breakfast of musical items, seemingly programmed at random, with no thought given to a coherent listening program. It is akin to a radio station’s rush-hour listening schedule: a little of this and a little of that, with nothing too lengthy thrown into the mix. Bach is programmed after Villa-Lobos. Ives is programmed alongside Grieg. Handel is sandwiched between Debussy and Sousa. A Ruggles piece is followed by Wieniawski. It is a peculiar shuffle. I loved it.
The set is accompanied by a lavish and lengthy illustrated booklet setting forth the history of Vox. The text was written by noted program annotator Richard Freed. All in all, the set is a fascinating document of a recording label that is now, for practical purposes, defunct.
This week we will go to Saint Paul to hear Lang Lang in recital. The following evening we will go to Bloomington, where the State Ballet Of Georgia, from Tbilisi, will be in town to perform “Giselle”. Nina Ananiashvili will dance the title role.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Friday, March 07, 2008
Serious And Thoughtful
Last evening, after work, Joshua and I walked over to Orchestra Hall to hear Alfred Brendel in his final Twin Cities appearance.
According to the Minnesota Orchestra program booklet, this week marks Brendel’s sixth week of subscription-concert appearances with the Minnesota Orchestra. Brendel’s first appearance with the orchestra was in 1975.
The hall was almost sold out last night, a rightful tribute to Brendel’s stature.
I had heard Brendel several times in the past, but Joshua had never heard Brendel until last evening.
I have never been a Brendel fan, especially. Among pianists of the Central European school, I have always preferred his teacher, Edwin Fischer, as well as Wilhelm Kempff and Wilhelm Backhaus.
Brendel is a serious and thoughtful pianist, to be sure, but I have never found him to be a magical pianist. His technique is satisfactory, no more, and his concentration ebbs and flows noticeably over the course of a performance. There is a start-and-stop quality to his playing, more apparent in recitals than in orchestral appearances. Further, Brendel’s playing is often perfunctory, as if he is fearful of displaying too much individuality or too much personality.
Last evening Brendel played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, one of the most sublime works in the literature. I thought Brendel was splendid, perfectly observant of the work’s Classical requirements while lending weight and gravitas to Beethoven’s writing. I do not think I have ever heard Brendel to better effect than last evening. His final Minneapolis concerts will no doubt leave many warm memories for concert-goers here. My parents will hear a repeat performance tonight.
I am glad that Josh got to hear Brendel. Josh loved the Beethoven, more for the music than for the performance.
The conductor was Osmo Vanska. Vanska is not a good Beethoven conductor. Vanska’s Beethoven is romantic, not classical. He overdoes the rhetoric inherent in Beethoven, at the expense of proportion and classical line. He also emphasizes dynamics far too much, playing up pianissimos and fortissimos to such an extent that they call undue attention to themselves. Musical tension dissipates as listeners (and players) wait for Vanska’s next abrupt shift of dynamics. Ultimately, it all sounds rather vacant.
I have no argument against romantic Beethoven. In many ways, Otto Klemperer was a romantic Beethoven conductor, and yet Klemperer’s Beethoven was incomparable: strong, uncompromising, concentrated, expressive, dramatic, all-encompassing. In contrast, Vanska’s Beethoven is finicky, empty and full of posturing.
The second half of the program was devoted to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6.
The Sixth Symphony has an unusual structure. A very long Largo opens the symphony. The Largo is longer than the two movements that follow, combined (an Allegro and a Presto). Many commentators have noted, for decades, that either the first movement belongs in another symphony or the final two movements belong in another symphony.
I have never cared for this work. The musical argument is feeble and of no inherent interest whatsoever. The symphony only works when a conductor practically rewrites the score, inserting all sorts of extraneous expressive devices to make the work cohere into some sort of bitter, semi-comic tragedy.
Vanska did not know what to do with the symphony. In his hands it sounded vapid and empty, as it usually does. The result was a very long thirty minutes.
The concert opened with a performance of Webern’s early Passacaglia. Inspired by the final movement of Brahms’s final symphony, the Webern made no impact in last night’s performance. The different musical lines were not highlighted, as they must be in order for the work to “sound”. The orchestra produced a thick, dull, gray paste of sound. The result was a performance that sounded like sludge.
This weekend Joshua and I will help my parents begin to get the house and yard ready for Easter. We are looking forward to it.
According to the Minnesota Orchestra program booklet, this week marks Brendel’s sixth week of subscription-concert appearances with the Minnesota Orchestra. Brendel’s first appearance with the orchestra was in 1975.
The hall was almost sold out last night, a rightful tribute to Brendel’s stature.
I had heard Brendel several times in the past, but Joshua had never heard Brendel until last evening.
I have never been a Brendel fan, especially. Among pianists of the Central European school, I have always preferred his teacher, Edwin Fischer, as well as Wilhelm Kempff and Wilhelm Backhaus.
Brendel is a serious and thoughtful pianist, to be sure, but I have never found him to be a magical pianist. His technique is satisfactory, no more, and his concentration ebbs and flows noticeably over the course of a performance. There is a start-and-stop quality to his playing, more apparent in recitals than in orchestral appearances. Further, Brendel’s playing is often perfunctory, as if he is fearful of displaying too much individuality or too much personality.
Last evening Brendel played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, one of the most sublime works in the literature. I thought Brendel was splendid, perfectly observant of the work’s Classical requirements while lending weight and gravitas to Beethoven’s writing. I do not think I have ever heard Brendel to better effect than last evening. His final Minneapolis concerts will no doubt leave many warm memories for concert-goers here. My parents will hear a repeat performance tonight.
I am glad that Josh got to hear Brendel. Josh loved the Beethoven, more for the music than for the performance.
The conductor was Osmo Vanska. Vanska is not a good Beethoven conductor. Vanska’s Beethoven is romantic, not classical. He overdoes the rhetoric inherent in Beethoven, at the expense of proportion and classical line. He also emphasizes dynamics far too much, playing up pianissimos and fortissimos to such an extent that they call undue attention to themselves. Musical tension dissipates as listeners (and players) wait for Vanska’s next abrupt shift of dynamics. Ultimately, it all sounds rather vacant.
I have no argument against romantic Beethoven. In many ways, Otto Klemperer was a romantic Beethoven conductor, and yet Klemperer’s Beethoven was incomparable: strong, uncompromising, concentrated, expressive, dramatic, all-encompassing. In contrast, Vanska’s Beethoven is finicky, empty and full of posturing.
The second half of the program was devoted to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6.
The Sixth Symphony has an unusual structure. A very long Largo opens the symphony. The Largo is longer than the two movements that follow, combined (an Allegro and a Presto). Many commentators have noted, for decades, that either the first movement belongs in another symphony or the final two movements belong in another symphony.
I have never cared for this work. The musical argument is feeble and of no inherent interest whatsoever. The symphony only works when a conductor practically rewrites the score, inserting all sorts of extraneous expressive devices to make the work cohere into some sort of bitter, semi-comic tragedy.
Vanska did not know what to do with the symphony. In his hands it sounded vapid and empty, as it usually does. The result was a very long thirty minutes.
The concert opened with a performance of Webern’s early Passacaglia. Inspired by the final movement of Brahms’s final symphony, the Webern made no impact in last night’s performance. The different musical lines were not highlighted, as they must be in order for the work to “sound”. The orchestra produced a thick, dull, gray paste of sound. The result was a performance that sounded like sludge.
This weekend Joshua and I will help my parents begin to get the house and yard ready for Easter. We are looking forward to it.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Two Theater Outings
I returned from Dallas late Friday night.
Last week was a long week for me, and I was glad to be back home.
Joshua stayed with my parents while I was gone, so Josh had a much better week than I did.
Josh and I did not do much on Saturday. We ran errands, and took care of necessary things around the apartment.
Late Saturday afternoon, Josh and I and my parents went downtown to attend a performance of “My Fair Lady” at the Orpheum Theater. We had an early dinner downtown before the show.
The Orpheum Theater is one of three grand old theaters in downtown Minneapolis, all dating from the early 20th Century, which have been fully restored and which are now used for touring Broadway productions.
Last month we went downtown to attend a performance of “Sweeney Todd” at the State Theater, another of the grand old theaters in Minneapolis, and at the time I wrote about the history of the State Theater.
The history of the Orpheum Theater is virtually identical to that of the State Theater. It, too, opened in 1921, during the great post-World War I boom in the Upper Midwest. Like the State Theater, the Orpheum was built as a Vaudeville house, at the then-enormous cost of one million dollars. The Marx Brothers were part of the opening bill.
With the decline of Vaudeville, the Orpheum became a movie palace in 1927. It remained a movie palace until 1959, when it converted to a house for touring Broadway productions.
In 1988, the city bought the theater, and shortly thereafter a $10 million restoration began. The stage was substantially enlarged in order to accommodate the most elaborate of modern Broadway productions.
The most notable feature of the auditorium is a 15-foot, 2000-pound chandelier beneath the domed ceiling, itself lined with 30,000 leaves of silver. The restored theater seats 2600 patrons.
The Orpheum Theater is today’s Twin Cities venue for the most complicated touring productions. It reopened in 1994 with a production of “Miss Saigon”, and has since hosted the world premiere productions of the stage musicals “Victor/Victoria”, “Beauty And The Beast” and “The Lion King”.
This touring production of “My Fair Lady” originated in London in 2001. Produced by Cameron McIntosh, directed by Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Matthew Bourne, this production enjoyed a long and profitable run in the West End.
My middle brother and I almost attended a performance of this production in 2002, solely because the role of Professor Higgins was being played at the time by Anthony Andrews, but we elected to go see Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” that night instead. Our evening enduring “The Mousetrap” was one of the most gruesome nights of our lives.
The program booklet for this touring version of “My Fair Lady” contained a wealth of detail about the production.
Each performance involves a cast of 35 actors, an orchestra of 16 musicians and 25 stage technicians. Ten 45-foot trailers are required to move the production from one venue to the next, and 73 persons are needed to strike and remount the production
There are 425 books on the set of Professor Higgins’ study.
There are 300 separate lights in the lighting rig, with a combined 250,000 watts, and the lighting equipment cost over one million dollars. There are 171 lighting cues at each performance.
Over seven miles of electronic cable are used in the show.
The production uses 88 pieces of flying scenery. The scenery flown during each performance weighs over 5,000 pounds.
The floral arch set, in itself, requires eighteen different stage motors to strike or mount. The study set, in itself, requires twelve members of the stage crew, three fly operators and one automation operator to strike or mount.
The “marbles” used when Eliza learns to speak properly are actually chewable mints.
Cast members consume, onstage, eight bread rolls, 24 chocolates, 32 mints, four blocks of cheese, two ginger cakes, four jam tarts and four liters of Coca-Cola (which substitutes for brandy) at each performance.
There are 162 individual stage costumes in the production. Eliza’s ballroom dress has 5897 beads, each of which is hand-sewn. There are 195 costume changes at each performance. The largest hat in the show, worn during the Ascot scene, is one yard wide.
After each performance, there are six commercial loads of laundry to be washed, including 24 shirts that must be starched and ironed. Over five pounds of laundry detergent are consumed each day.
A total of 46 wigs are used in the production. Twenty are compiled from human hair, while twenty-six are made from synthetic materials. Eight fake mustaches and one fake beard are used in the production. The company goes through ten cans of hairspray each week—and 800 wipes to remove stage makeup.
This mind-numbing proliferation of detail in the program booklet was, alas, twice as interesting as the show itself. Whoever decided that this “My Fair Lady” needed to be inflicted on American audiences? It was God-awful.
The production was poorly-designed and looked cheap, no matter how many thousands of personnel were involved in its planning, construction and maintenance. The cast members appeared to be less interested in the proceedings than the audience, which was a genuine accomplishment of sorts, since the audience appeared to be bored out of its mind. I doubt I have ever seen a stage presentation of anything so ossified and stale, except perhaps my readiest frame of reference, that “Mousetrap” performance back in 2002.
Josh and my parents hated this “My Fair Lady” as much as I did. In fact, we discussed leaving at the intermission. We would have done so, except we wanted to hang around to see if the actor portraying Professor Higgins died onstage during the second act. He was three decades too old for the part, and surely he is prone to go soon.
This morning Josh and I had my parents over for breakfast before church. We gave my Dad a big breakfast because we knew we would have no time for lunch.
After church, we headed straight downtown again for a 1:00 p.m. matinee at the Guthrie Theater. We attended a performance of “Third”, Wendy Wasserstein’s final play.
The play was weak. Wasserstein mined the same thin vein, the world of the New York pseudo-intellectual, over and over, and Wasserstein was never a particularly talented writer to begin with. Her saving grace as a playwright was that, in addition to knowing her core constituency and taking it seriously, she also made relentless fun of that same group. The tension between admiring and deploring this jaded set is the only thing that makes a Wasserstein play watchable.
After the matinee, we returned to my parents’ house and helped my mother prepare an early dinner. We had whitefish, accompanied by a garden salad, plain pasta and steamed mixed vegetables. The dog was given his Sunday-night chicken. For dessert, we had raspberries and ice cream.
This will be a busy week at work again. The only item on our schedule is at week’s end, when we will go hear Alfred Brendel in his final Twin Cities appearance. Brendel is scheduled to play Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra. Whether the performance be good, bad or indifferent, at least Josh will be able to say that he heard Brendel.
Last week was a long week for me, and I was glad to be back home.
Joshua stayed with my parents while I was gone, so Josh had a much better week than I did.
Josh and I did not do much on Saturday. We ran errands, and took care of necessary things around the apartment.
Late Saturday afternoon, Josh and I and my parents went downtown to attend a performance of “My Fair Lady” at the Orpheum Theater. We had an early dinner downtown before the show.
The Orpheum Theater is one of three grand old theaters in downtown Minneapolis, all dating from the early 20th Century, which have been fully restored and which are now used for touring Broadway productions.
Last month we went downtown to attend a performance of “Sweeney Todd” at the State Theater, another of the grand old theaters in Minneapolis, and at the time I wrote about the history of the State Theater.
The history of the Orpheum Theater is virtually identical to that of the State Theater. It, too, opened in 1921, during the great post-World War I boom in the Upper Midwest. Like the State Theater, the Orpheum was built as a Vaudeville house, at the then-enormous cost of one million dollars. The Marx Brothers were part of the opening bill.
With the decline of Vaudeville, the Orpheum became a movie palace in 1927. It remained a movie palace until 1959, when it converted to a house for touring Broadway productions.
In 1988, the city bought the theater, and shortly thereafter a $10 million restoration began. The stage was substantially enlarged in order to accommodate the most elaborate of modern Broadway productions.
The most notable feature of the auditorium is a 15-foot, 2000-pound chandelier beneath the domed ceiling, itself lined with 30,000 leaves of silver. The restored theater seats 2600 patrons.
The Orpheum Theater is today’s Twin Cities venue for the most complicated touring productions. It reopened in 1994 with a production of “Miss Saigon”, and has since hosted the world premiere productions of the stage musicals “Victor/Victoria”, “Beauty And The Beast” and “The Lion King”.
This touring production of “My Fair Lady” originated in London in 2001. Produced by Cameron McIntosh, directed by Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Matthew Bourne, this production enjoyed a long and profitable run in the West End.
My middle brother and I almost attended a performance of this production in 2002, solely because the role of Professor Higgins was being played at the time by Anthony Andrews, but we elected to go see Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” that night instead. Our evening enduring “The Mousetrap” was one of the most gruesome nights of our lives.
The program booklet for this touring version of “My Fair Lady” contained a wealth of detail about the production.
Each performance involves a cast of 35 actors, an orchestra of 16 musicians and 25 stage technicians. Ten 45-foot trailers are required to move the production from one venue to the next, and 73 persons are needed to strike and remount the production
There are 425 books on the set of Professor Higgins’ study.
There are 300 separate lights in the lighting rig, with a combined 250,000 watts, and the lighting equipment cost over one million dollars. There are 171 lighting cues at each performance.
Over seven miles of electronic cable are used in the show.
The production uses 88 pieces of flying scenery. The scenery flown during each performance weighs over 5,000 pounds.
The floral arch set, in itself, requires eighteen different stage motors to strike or mount. The study set, in itself, requires twelve members of the stage crew, three fly operators and one automation operator to strike or mount.
The “marbles” used when Eliza learns to speak properly are actually chewable mints.
Cast members consume, onstage, eight bread rolls, 24 chocolates, 32 mints, four blocks of cheese, two ginger cakes, four jam tarts and four liters of Coca-Cola (which substitutes for brandy) at each performance.
There are 162 individual stage costumes in the production. Eliza’s ballroom dress has 5897 beads, each of which is hand-sewn. There are 195 costume changes at each performance. The largest hat in the show, worn during the Ascot scene, is one yard wide.
After each performance, there are six commercial loads of laundry to be washed, including 24 shirts that must be starched and ironed. Over five pounds of laundry detergent are consumed each day.
A total of 46 wigs are used in the production. Twenty are compiled from human hair, while twenty-six are made from synthetic materials. Eight fake mustaches and one fake beard are used in the production. The company goes through ten cans of hairspray each week—and 800 wipes to remove stage makeup.
This mind-numbing proliferation of detail in the program booklet was, alas, twice as interesting as the show itself. Whoever decided that this “My Fair Lady” needed to be inflicted on American audiences? It was God-awful.
The production was poorly-designed and looked cheap, no matter how many thousands of personnel were involved in its planning, construction and maintenance. The cast members appeared to be less interested in the proceedings than the audience, which was a genuine accomplishment of sorts, since the audience appeared to be bored out of its mind. I doubt I have ever seen a stage presentation of anything so ossified and stale, except perhaps my readiest frame of reference, that “Mousetrap” performance back in 2002.
Josh and my parents hated this “My Fair Lady” as much as I did. In fact, we discussed leaving at the intermission. We would have done so, except we wanted to hang around to see if the actor portraying Professor Higgins died onstage during the second act. He was three decades too old for the part, and surely he is prone to go soon.
This morning Josh and I had my parents over for breakfast before church. We gave my Dad a big breakfast because we knew we would have no time for lunch.
After church, we headed straight downtown again for a 1:00 p.m. matinee at the Guthrie Theater. We attended a performance of “Third”, Wendy Wasserstein’s final play.
The play was weak. Wasserstein mined the same thin vein, the world of the New York pseudo-intellectual, over and over, and Wasserstein was never a particularly talented writer to begin with. Her saving grace as a playwright was that, in addition to knowing her core constituency and taking it seriously, she also made relentless fun of that same group. The tension between admiring and deploring this jaded set is the only thing that makes a Wasserstein play watchable.
After the matinee, we returned to my parents’ house and helped my mother prepare an early dinner. We had whitefish, accompanied by a garden salad, plain pasta and steamed mixed vegetables. The dog was given his Sunday-night chicken. For dessert, we had raspberries and ice cream.
This will be a busy week at work again. The only item on our schedule is at week’s end, when we will go hear Alfred Brendel in his final Twin Cities appearance. Brendel is scheduled to play Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra. Whether the performance be good, bad or indifferent, at least Josh will be able to say that he heard Brendel.
Dallas Symphony Orchestra
On my final evening in Dallas, I attended a performance of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center is easily America’s most beautiful concert hall. The building’s architect was I. M. Pei and it is, I believe, Pei’s only concert hall. It is a remarkably successful structure.
The exterior is very fine, with clean lines and lots of glass. It is beautiful at midday, in the hot Texas sun, and it is beautiful at night, illuminated within and without.
The auditorium itself is the building’s glory. Surely it is the most beautiful interior of a concert hall anywhere in the world, painstakingly designed and artfully decorated with a subtle and sublime mixture of woods, metals and fabrics. The color scheme is cool and elegant and understated, free of the plush red velvet and gilded surfaces that mar so many American concert halls.
The program was an odd one, combining British music and Italian music under a German conductor. It was also short. The first half was devoted to Britten’s 20-minute “Sinfonia Da Requiem”. The second half was devoted to Verdi’s 40-minute “Four Sacred Pieces”.
The conductor was Claus Peter Flor, who has worked regularly with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for many years. He has been Principal Guest Conductor of the orchestra for the last several seasons, but that association ends at the conclusion of the current concert season.
In fact, this weekend’s concerts marked Flor’s final concerts with the Dallas Symphony. He is not scheduled to return in coming seasons, a situation that has caused some unhappiness among Dallas subscribers. Many Dallas subscribers believe that Flor should have been named the orchestra’s next Music Director.
Flor is a very fine conductor, especially in the Central European repertory. He does not conduct often in the United States and, when he does, it is generally in Dallas and Houston. Otherwise, his career is centered in Europe and Asia.
I would have preferred to have heard Flor conduct Mendelssohn and Martinu, not Britten and Verdi, because Flor had nothing special to bring to either of the works on the program. His readings were solid, not special. He was better in the Britten than in the Verdi.
I have always liked Britten’s “Sinfonia Da Requiem”. In fact, I think it is Britten’s finest work for full orchestra and his most successful piece of absolute music. In three movements, played without pause, the “Sinfonia” is a memorial to Britten’s own parents (the composition was actually commissioned by the Japanese government, a commission the Japanese government rejected after becoming aware of its overt Christian content). The work was premiered by John Barbirolli and the New York Philharmonic in 1941.
The composition’s themes are unmemorable. The orchestration is colorless. The development of the materials is strikingly unimaginative. Nonetheless, the piece works, in large part because of its brevity and concision.
Britten’s music is very fashionable now, at least in English-speaking countries. Indeed, his music is more fashionable now than it ever was during the composer’s lifetime. This is because the American music establishment, from about 1980 onward, began to reject complexity and modernity in music in favor of accessibility. Britten, like Shostakovich, has been one of the primary beneficiaries of this current trend, and this trend is likely to continue for another decade or so before it inevitably reverses course.
Igor Stravinsky, Herbert Von Karajan and Pierre Boulez, among others, always described Britten’s music as fundamentally weak, decidedly uninteresting and unavoidably second-rate. Who cannot agree with that assessment? Britten’s music lacks passion and deep emotion and individuality. It is also—fatally—thin of content. It has an impersonal surface facility that sometimes pleases during a performance, but Britten’s music does not stick in the mind or the ear or the heart after a performance has concluded. By the time the applause has died down, the music has vanished in a puff of smoke.
Benjamin Britten was the mid-20th Century equivalent of Charles Villiers Stanford. Both composers wrote highly-skilled, polished and pleasing music, in a multitude of forms, but both composers wrote music that ultimately lacked depth or memorability. In essence, Britten’s music lacks true greatness. Like Stanford’s music, which has virtually disappeared, Britten’s music is destined to be dropped from the repertory.
Music lovers in English-speaking countries are often unaware how infrequently Britten’s music is performed or even known outside Great Britain, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and how little resonance it carries on the European continent. In Europe, Britten is viewed, when he is viewed at all, as purely an opera composer, and it is “Billy Budd”, and not “Peter Grimes”, that is most often produced in European opera houses. Britten is virtually a one-work composer outside the English-speaking world, a modern-day Mascagni.
Often, when non-English conductors perform Britten’s music, it sounds like Shostakovich. In Dallas, Flor’s Britten did not sound like Shostakovich, which signifies that the performance was, largely, a success. The orchestral playing was clean, even elegant, but Flor displayed no deep mastery of this score. I was pleased to hear the work, but the finest account of “Sinfonia Da Requiem” I have heard remains Andre Previn’s EMI recording from the mid-1970’s, a performance superior even to the composer’s own.
Verdi’s “Four Sacred Pieces” is a compilation of four independent choral compositions written between 1888 and 1896, near the end of Verdi’s life. Although nothing binds the four separate works together, all four were published together in 1898. “Four Sacred Pieces” is seldom programmed, and I was happy to have an opportunity to hear the work in person, although I would have much preferred an Italian conductor on the podium.
I did not think the performance was successful. For one thing, the work is very hard to bring off. Each of the four pieces is discrete; there is no cumulative impact obtained by programming all four at once. Further, Flor had no special feel for the work. He is definitely not a Verdi conductor—there was no plasticity, no undercurrent of drama, no Italianate line or warmth, in his conducting. His conducting was entirely foursquare, failing to bring out whatever individuality lies in the score. The entire time I was listening, I was reminded how much Verdi’s work bears a distinct resemblance to the Mass In D of John Knowles Paine—and not necessarily to Paine’s disadvantage.
Moreover, Flor did something totally bizarre that veritably destroyed the performance: between movements, he inserted orchestral arrangements of Bach chorales—including, of all things, Stokowski’s arrangement of “Sheep May Safely Graze”! Given this perverse idea, it was hard for me to take the performance at all seriously.
The work of the Dallas Symphony Chorus was not strong. I suspect that the chorus was unrehearsed—Verdi’s “Requiem” will be programmed in Dallas in another couple of weeks, and the “Requiem” may be absorbing much of the available choral rehearsal time—but I also heard nothing in the chorus’s work to make me believe that this is one of America’s finer choral groups.
The women’s chorus became insanely out-of-tune in the a cappella movement. In fact, I thought it might become necessary to stop the performance and re-tune the singers midway through the movement.
The orchestra, however, was exceptional. The playing was at the highest possible level.
The Dallas Symphony is the great “unknown” American orchestra. It is better than the Minnesota Orchestra. It is better than the West Coast ensembles. It is better than the Saint Louis Symphony or the Atlanta Symphony or the Cincinnati Symphony, all of which are better-known quantities to most American music lovers. If the Dallas Symphony were to appear in New York more often, and if the Dallas Symphony were to cultivate the New York music establishment, its reputation for excellence would become much more widespread. However, the orchestra’s management has not been willing to make an investment in a New York presence, a longstanding orchestra policy that was a recurring source of deep friction between the Dallas board and a former music director.
The brass section of the Dallas Symphony is the orchestra’s strongest section. Dallas has perhaps the finest brass section of all American orchestras other than Chicago. Its brass section has a gleaming, even brilliant sound, and it never attempts to overpower the rest of the ensemble. The brass sound is beautifully blended, and beautifully blended with the rest of the orchestra. The trombone section may be the finest in the world.
The Dallas Symphony is one of the few American orchestras that has its own style. There is a coolness and an elegance and an urbanity and an understatement in its playing that is very attractive and unique in the U.S., a lasting legacy of the Eduardo Mata years (and a legacy that Andrew Litton was unable to destroy). I wish I could hear the orchestra more often.
The string section needs work. Its sound is not rich enough. When the string players are asked to provide maximum volume and intensity, the string sound loses its beauty and its transparency. It becomes glassy, almost strident, and yet it still sounds under-nourished, lacking a deep core to the sound.
No doubt one of the reasons Jaap Van Zweden has been engaged to be the next Music Director in Dallas is because of his expertise in developing string players. I think Van Zweden is an interesting—and perhaps an inspired—appointment, and I look forward to hearing this orchestra under his stewardship.
Perhaps, in coming years, Dallas will finally receive the acclaim that is its due.
The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center is easily America’s most beautiful concert hall. The building’s architect was I. M. Pei and it is, I believe, Pei’s only concert hall. It is a remarkably successful structure.
The exterior is very fine, with clean lines and lots of glass. It is beautiful at midday, in the hot Texas sun, and it is beautiful at night, illuminated within and without.
The auditorium itself is the building’s glory. Surely it is the most beautiful interior of a concert hall anywhere in the world, painstakingly designed and artfully decorated with a subtle and sublime mixture of woods, metals and fabrics. The color scheme is cool and elegant and understated, free of the plush red velvet and gilded surfaces that mar so many American concert halls.
The program was an odd one, combining British music and Italian music under a German conductor. It was also short. The first half was devoted to Britten’s 20-minute “Sinfonia Da Requiem”. The second half was devoted to Verdi’s 40-minute “Four Sacred Pieces”.
The conductor was Claus Peter Flor, who has worked regularly with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for many years. He has been Principal Guest Conductor of the orchestra for the last several seasons, but that association ends at the conclusion of the current concert season.
In fact, this weekend’s concerts marked Flor’s final concerts with the Dallas Symphony. He is not scheduled to return in coming seasons, a situation that has caused some unhappiness among Dallas subscribers. Many Dallas subscribers believe that Flor should have been named the orchestra’s next Music Director.
Flor is a very fine conductor, especially in the Central European repertory. He does not conduct often in the United States and, when he does, it is generally in Dallas and Houston. Otherwise, his career is centered in Europe and Asia.
I would have preferred to have heard Flor conduct Mendelssohn and Martinu, not Britten and Verdi, because Flor had nothing special to bring to either of the works on the program. His readings were solid, not special. He was better in the Britten than in the Verdi.
I have always liked Britten’s “Sinfonia Da Requiem”. In fact, I think it is Britten’s finest work for full orchestra and his most successful piece of absolute music. In three movements, played without pause, the “Sinfonia” is a memorial to Britten’s own parents (the composition was actually commissioned by the Japanese government, a commission the Japanese government rejected after becoming aware of its overt Christian content). The work was premiered by John Barbirolli and the New York Philharmonic in 1941.
The composition’s themes are unmemorable. The orchestration is colorless. The development of the materials is strikingly unimaginative. Nonetheless, the piece works, in large part because of its brevity and concision.
Britten’s music is very fashionable now, at least in English-speaking countries. Indeed, his music is more fashionable now than it ever was during the composer’s lifetime. This is because the American music establishment, from about 1980 onward, began to reject complexity and modernity in music in favor of accessibility. Britten, like Shostakovich, has been one of the primary beneficiaries of this current trend, and this trend is likely to continue for another decade or so before it inevitably reverses course.
Igor Stravinsky, Herbert Von Karajan and Pierre Boulez, among others, always described Britten’s music as fundamentally weak, decidedly uninteresting and unavoidably second-rate. Who cannot agree with that assessment? Britten’s music lacks passion and deep emotion and individuality. It is also—fatally—thin of content. It has an impersonal surface facility that sometimes pleases during a performance, but Britten’s music does not stick in the mind or the ear or the heart after a performance has concluded. By the time the applause has died down, the music has vanished in a puff of smoke.
Benjamin Britten was the mid-20th Century equivalent of Charles Villiers Stanford. Both composers wrote highly-skilled, polished and pleasing music, in a multitude of forms, but both composers wrote music that ultimately lacked depth or memorability. In essence, Britten’s music lacks true greatness. Like Stanford’s music, which has virtually disappeared, Britten’s music is destined to be dropped from the repertory.
Music lovers in English-speaking countries are often unaware how infrequently Britten’s music is performed or even known outside Great Britain, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and how little resonance it carries on the European continent. In Europe, Britten is viewed, when he is viewed at all, as purely an opera composer, and it is “Billy Budd”, and not “Peter Grimes”, that is most often produced in European opera houses. Britten is virtually a one-work composer outside the English-speaking world, a modern-day Mascagni.
Often, when non-English conductors perform Britten’s music, it sounds like Shostakovich. In Dallas, Flor’s Britten did not sound like Shostakovich, which signifies that the performance was, largely, a success. The orchestral playing was clean, even elegant, but Flor displayed no deep mastery of this score. I was pleased to hear the work, but the finest account of “Sinfonia Da Requiem” I have heard remains Andre Previn’s EMI recording from the mid-1970’s, a performance superior even to the composer’s own.
Verdi’s “Four Sacred Pieces” is a compilation of four independent choral compositions written between 1888 and 1896, near the end of Verdi’s life. Although nothing binds the four separate works together, all four were published together in 1898. “Four Sacred Pieces” is seldom programmed, and I was happy to have an opportunity to hear the work in person, although I would have much preferred an Italian conductor on the podium.
I did not think the performance was successful. For one thing, the work is very hard to bring off. Each of the four pieces is discrete; there is no cumulative impact obtained by programming all four at once. Further, Flor had no special feel for the work. He is definitely not a Verdi conductor—there was no plasticity, no undercurrent of drama, no Italianate line or warmth, in his conducting. His conducting was entirely foursquare, failing to bring out whatever individuality lies in the score. The entire time I was listening, I was reminded how much Verdi’s work bears a distinct resemblance to the Mass In D of John Knowles Paine—and not necessarily to Paine’s disadvantage.
Moreover, Flor did something totally bizarre that veritably destroyed the performance: between movements, he inserted orchestral arrangements of Bach chorales—including, of all things, Stokowski’s arrangement of “Sheep May Safely Graze”! Given this perverse idea, it was hard for me to take the performance at all seriously.
The work of the Dallas Symphony Chorus was not strong. I suspect that the chorus was unrehearsed—Verdi’s “Requiem” will be programmed in Dallas in another couple of weeks, and the “Requiem” may be absorbing much of the available choral rehearsal time—but I also heard nothing in the chorus’s work to make me believe that this is one of America’s finer choral groups.
The women’s chorus became insanely out-of-tune in the a cappella movement. In fact, I thought it might become necessary to stop the performance and re-tune the singers midway through the movement.
The orchestra, however, was exceptional. The playing was at the highest possible level.
The Dallas Symphony is the great “unknown” American orchestra. It is better than the Minnesota Orchestra. It is better than the West Coast ensembles. It is better than the Saint Louis Symphony or the Atlanta Symphony or the Cincinnati Symphony, all of which are better-known quantities to most American music lovers. If the Dallas Symphony were to appear in New York more often, and if the Dallas Symphony were to cultivate the New York music establishment, its reputation for excellence would become much more widespread. However, the orchestra’s management has not been willing to make an investment in a New York presence, a longstanding orchestra policy that was a recurring source of deep friction between the Dallas board and a former music director.
The brass section of the Dallas Symphony is the orchestra’s strongest section. Dallas has perhaps the finest brass section of all American orchestras other than Chicago. Its brass section has a gleaming, even brilliant sound, and it never attempts to overpower the rest of the ensemble. The brass sound is beautifully blended, and beautifully blended with the rest of the orchestra. The trombone section may be the finest in the world.
The Dallas Symphony is one of the few American orchestras that has its own style. There is a coolness and an elegance and an urbanity and an understatement in its playing that is very attractive and unique in the U.S., a lasting legacy of the Eduardo Mata years (and a legacy that Andrew Litton was unable to destroy). I wish I could hear the orchestra more often.
The string section needs work. Its sound is not rich enough. When the string players are asked to provide maximum volume and intensity, the string sound loses its beauty and its transparency. It becomes glassy, almost strident, and yet it still sounds under-nourished, lacking a deep core to the sound.
No doubt one of the reasons Jaap Van Zweden has been engaged to be the next Music Director in Dallas is because of his expertise in developing string players. I think Van Zweden is an interesting—and perhaps an inspired—appointment, and I look forward to hearing this orchestra under his stewardship.
Perhaps, in coming years, Dallas will finally receive the acclaim that is its due.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
A Theater Day
On Saturday, Joshua and I and our landlady attended two theater productions.
At the end of last week, our landlady, who loves theater, had mentioned to us that she thought we needed to devote one of our weekend days to theater. Josh and I decided that it might be fun, and we agreed with her. We chose to make Saturday, not Sunday, our theater-going day.
Consequently, on Saturday afternoon we went to Bloomington to see a Bloomington Civic Theater production of “The Fantasticks”.
Josh and I had never seen a performance of “The Fantasticks” before, and we were not quite sure what to make of this show. The show did not come across in the Bloomington production—our landlady said that the production was too bold, even brassy, for the material—and I am not sure that I would ever find this show to be appealing. The show struck me as thin and wispy, straining to be whimsical, but perhaps this was the fault of the production and not the material. Nonetheless, I am totally puzzled that this show managed to rack up a forty-year run in New York. I saw and heard nothing in the show to warrant such a lengthy run.
The Bloomington Civic Theater generally produces musicals to a very high standard—we all saw a lavish “Funny Girl” there last year, with full orchestra, that was at a professional level—but I do not think that this “Fantasticks” production will go down in the company’s annals as one of its finer efforts.
We caught “The Fantasticks” at the end of its month-long run, so the actors were as settled into their parts as they were going to be. I thought they were floundering. The Saturday matinee performance was sold out.
After “The Fantasticks”, we drove downtown and ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant. On these rare theater excursions with our landlady, we always seem to choose Chinese food.
After dinner, we went to Theater In The Round to attend a performance of “Henry V”.
I normally try to avoid American productions of Shakespeare, because American actors cannot recite Shakespeare’s texts. Iambic pentameter is simply beyond the capability of American actors—they always sound as if they have learned their lines phonetically.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the Theater In The Round production enormously. In fact, it was one of the most enjoyable Shakespeare productions I have ever attended.
Simply put, the production worked. It was a spare, even spartan production, cleanly staged. It was paced swiftly and lucidly, so that anyone unfamiliar with the play could follow the action easily. The text was cut—about forty-five minutes of the text had been lopped off, to bring the production in at two-and-a-half hours, with one intermission—and I had no problem with that.
The actors were OK, and I thought the young actor playing Henry V did an excellent job. He was a trifle bland and a trifle tentative, but he created a convincing Henry V. The real Henry V was a young man at the time of Agincourt, still feeling his way into his role, still learning how to be a leader among men, and casting a young actor as Henry V emphasized this aspect of the King without reducing the power of the role or the play.
I am very pleased that our landlady encouraged us to attend this “Henry V” because otherwise we would have missed it. All three of us liked this production. It was as fine a Shakespeare production as I have seen in the United States, and better than anything the Guthrie Theater has done with Shakespeare in my adult lifetime (for Shakespeare, the Guthrie brings in “big name” directors who get bogged down in “concept” productions that never work).
Today we did not do anything. After church, Josh and I had my parents over for lunch and dinner. (On our way home from church, Josh and I stopped and picked up my parents’ dog so that he could join us, too.) We gave them a lunch of tuna-and-noodles and a tomato-cucumber salad. We gave them a dinner of roast chicken and stuffing, mashed potatoes, peas, glazed carrots and fresh cranberries. For dessert, we had apple crisp.
All afternoon, we talked and listened to music and played scrabble. We talked to my brothers a couple of times on the telephone. We took the dog outside a couple of times for a good long romp. It was a nice, quiet afternoon.
First thing Tuesday morning, I have to travel to Dallas on business. I will not return until Friday evening.
Josh will stay with my parents while I am gone. That way he will not have to stay by himself in a lonely apartment.
My parents will take good care of him.
At the end of last week, our landlady, who loves theater, had mentioned to us that she thought we needed to devote one of our weekend days to theater. Josh and I decided that it might be fun, and we agreed with her. We chose to make Saturday, not Sunday, our theater-going day.
Consequently, on Saturday afternoon we went to Bloomington to see a Bloomington Civic Theater production of “The Fantasticks”.
Josh and I had never seen a performance of “The Fantasticks” before, and we were not quite sure what to make of this show. The show did not come across in the Bloomington production—our landlady said that the production was too bold, even brassy, for the material—and I am not sure that I would ever find this show to be appealing. The show struck me as thin and wispy, straining to be whimsical, but perhaps this was the fault of the production and not the material. Nonetheless, I am totally puzzled that this show managed to rack up a forty-year run in New York. I saw and heard nothing in the show to warrant such a lengthy run.
The Bloomington Civic Theater generally produces musicals to a very high standard—we all saw a lavish “Funny Girl” there last year, with full orchestra, that was at a professional level—but I do not think that this “Fantasticks” production will go down in the company’s annals as one of its finer efforts.
We caught “The Fantasticks” at the end of its month-long run, so the actors were as settled into their parts as they were going to be. I thought they were floundering. The Saturday matinee performance was sold out.
After “The Fantasticks”, we drove downtown and ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant. On these rare theater excursions with our landlady, we always seem to choose Chinese food.
After dinner, we went to Theater In The Round to attend a performance of “Henry V”.
I normally try to avoid American productions of Shakespeare, because American actors cannot recite Shakespeare’s texts. Iambic pentameter is simply beyond the capability of American actors—they always sound as if they have learned their lines phonetically.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the Theater In The Round production enormously. In fact, it was one of the most enjoyable Shakespeare productions I have ever attended.
Simply put, the production worked. It was a spare, even spartan production, cleanly staged. It was paced swiftly and lucidly, so that anyone unfamiliar with the play could follow the action easily. The text was cut—about forty-five minutes of the text had been lopped off, to bring the production in at two-and-a-half hours, with one intermission—and I had no problem with that.
The actors were OK, and I thought the young actor playing Henry V did an excellent job. He was a trifle bland and a trifle tentative, but he created a convincing Henry V. The real Henry V was a young man at the time of Agincourt, still feeling his way into his role, still learning how to be a leader among men, and casting a young actor as Henry V emphasized this aspect of the King without reducing the power of the role or the play.
I am very pleased that our landlady encouraged us to attend this “Henry V” because otherwise we would have missed it. All three of us liked this production. It was as fine a Shakespeare production as I have seen in the United States, and better than anything the Guthrie Theater has done with Shakespeare in my adult lifetime (for Shakespeare, the Guthrie brings in “big name” directors who get bogged down in “concept” productions that never work).
Today we did not do anything. After church, Josh and I had my parents over for lunch and dinner. (On our way home from church, Josh and I stopped and picked up my parents’ dog so that he could join us, too.) We gave them a lunch of tuna-and-noodles and a tomato-cucumber salad. We gave them a dinner of roast chicken and stuffing, mashed potatoes, peas, glazed carrots and fresh cranberries. For dessert, we had apple crisp.
All afternoon, we talked and listened to music and played scrabble. We talked to my brothers a couple of times on the telephone. We took the dog outside a couple of times for a good long romp. It was a nice, quiet afternoon.
First thing Tuesday morning, I have to travel to Dallas on business. I will not return until Friday evening.
Josh will stay with my parents while I am gone. That way he will not have to stay by himself in a lonely apartment.
My parents will take good care of him.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Fun In New York
New York was fun.
We got in late Thursday night, too late to have a normal dinner at a normal time, so we had a light supper of omelets, and went to bed not long after.
We stayed in Friday during the day, except for a couple of walks. All of us took a walk Friday morning after breakfast—even my nephew took a walk with us, although his Dad carried him most of that time—and my brothers and Josh and I took a second walk Friday afternoon while my nephew was taking his nap. Otherwise, we spent all day Friday playing with my nephew.
On Friday night, we went to see “August: Osage County”. All of us attended the play except my older brother, who has no interest at all in theater. He happily stayed home with my nephew that night.
We sort of enjoyed the play, not because it was any good, which it most certainly was not, but because it was sort of entertaining. “August: Osage County” is, fundamentally, nothing more than a Carol Burnett comedy skit about a dysfunctional family—but a comedy skit that goes terribly awry, turning incredibly nasty if not absolutely vicious a few minutes into the first act. There was an undeniable fascination in watching members of a seedy and sordid family go after each other tooth and nail, tearing at old wounds and opening new ones. However, the play itself is a formulaic commercial vehicle, created not by a genuine dramatist but by a purveyor of pre-packaged synthetic materials.
The author, Tracy Letts, has obviously spent a lifetime parked in front of his television set. Every single dramatic device, every single character, every single situation, every single line, derived purely from the swamp of present-day television. Indeed, Friday night’s audience instinctively recognized this, reacting to the play as if it were watching the tube at home. The audience chattered during the play, and laughed at inappropriate times and at inappropriate lines, and even interjected jeers and cheers when characters in the play were in discomfort or received a comeuppance.
A patina of seriousness hangs over “August: Osage County” because, lathered into this unpleasant and distasteful vat of television writing, playwright Letts has liberally inserted vast chunks of the family dramas of Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge, Edward Albee, Neil Simon, Paul Zindel and Sam Shepard. It is all startlingly derivative, dismaying in its lack of originality.
Ironically, these deficiencies happen to be the play’s saving grace. Because it is so derivative and so unoriginal, and because it is so heavily-beholden to television, the play is easily laughed off. If the play were more powerful and more true, and the characters more believable, it would be disturbing. As it is, it is just a contemporary commercial vehicle, very much of its time, an entertainment that theatergoers may happily forget as soon as they exit the theater door.
“August: Osage County” has been a modest commercial success during its limited Broadway run. Since it opened in November, it has played to between 50 and 70 per cent capacity, depending upon the week. It is scheduled to close in April.
On Saturday afternoon, we had four tickets for Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” at the Metropolitan Opera. Josh and I wanted to go, and so did my mother. However, we had trouble getting anyone else to use the fourth ticket. My father decided he would rather stay home and play with his grandson. My sister-in-law decided that she did not want to go—she was still soured, she said, by “August: Osage County” from the previous evening.
Josh and I and my mother were preparing to head out by ourselves, intending to give our fourth ticket to an opera-goer looking for a ticket outside the opera house, when my middle brother decided at the last minute that he would accompany us. I’m glad he did. He enjoyed the performance very much.
I like “Manon Lescaut”—I have always liked “Manon Lescaut”—and I enjoyed the performance, although it was hardly one for the ages.
The Met’s production of “Manon Lescaut” is from 1980. It is a realistic production, clunky and not handsome in the least. I had not seen it before, although my mother had seen the production many years ago. For this revival, the Met should have retired its own “Manon Lescaut” production and borrowed Bologna’s production.
Singing Manon was Karita Mattila. This was the fifth time I had heard Mattila. I first heard her in 2003, singing “Salome” at the Paris Opera. In 2005, I heard her sing Amelia in “Un Ballo In Maschera” at Covent Garden. Exactly a year ago, I heard her sing “Jenufa” at the Met. Last April, I heard her give a recital in Saint Paul.
Mattila does not have an Italianate voice, and Puccini’s music does not come naturally to her. She does not know how to shape the phrases convincingly, and she does not know how to take advantage of the emotional swells written into the vocal line. It was a game try for a singer with a white voice, but Manon is definitely not Mattila’s role.
Mattila creates a striking and compelling stage figure, but as an actress she simply goes through the motions. She is strictly a by-the-numbers stage actress. There was no depth to her Salome, Amelia or Jenufa, and there was no depth to her Manon, either, despite the fact that she was trying very, very hard. In fact, I thought that Mattila was trying TOO hard, to the point of discomfort. Her Manon did not convince me for one moment, and much of what she did onstage was simply irritating.
The success of a Puccini performance always rests with the orchestra and conductor, and Saturday’s performance would not have worked, even if a great Puccini singer like Renata Scotto in her prime had inhabited the name part, and this was because the orchestral score was so poorly handled.
For some reason, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra can no longer play Puccini. The orchestra simply cannot summon the right sound for Puccini. Puccini requires, above all, an orchestral sound of great opulence and radiance, even glamour. A luxurious orchestral fabric, streaked with melancholy, must be on hand, with transparent strings, ravishing and dark-colored winds, and golden-toned brass, weaving Puccini’s orchestral lines into sounds and moods that create nothing so much as unending rapture.
Antonio Pappano must have the aural image for Puccini in his brain, because Pappano can elicit the Puccini sound from practically any orchestra he conducts. Pappano’s Puccini in London is a miracle, the most miraculous I have ever heard. Daniele Gatti also can summon the Puccini sound at will.
However, no other conductor today is able to create the right sound for Puccini, not even the three leading Italian conductors of our day. Claudio Abbado finds Puccini’s music to be treacle, and he never performs it. Riccardo Muti DOES perform Puccini, albeit infrequently, but Muti is a rigid Puccini conductor, looking mainly for moments of power and brilliance in the scores, at the expense of tenderness and expression. The end result: Muti’s Puccini is brittle. Riccardo Chailly’s Puccini is a “work in progress”, mostly convincing, but Chailly is not an innate Puccini conductor like Pappano.
The sound James Levine summoned from the Met orchestra was a Richard Strauss sound. It was too plushly-upholstered for Puccini, heavy and thick when it should have been translucent, glowing and luminous. The strings lacked lightness and transparency and color, the winds lacked character and piquancy and bewitching timbres, and the brass . . .well, the brass sound would have been apt for a performance of Ein Heldenleben, perhaps.
Levine’s conducting was also inflexible, as it always is in Puccini. Puccini requires a firm pulse that can be stretched and contracted endlessly without ever losing the basic thread. Levine cannot do this, and he has never been able to do this. Levine’s Puccini is inelastic and aimless, always either too slow or too fast, and incapable of maintaining and carrying the grand emotional arcs of Puccini’s music. There is no ecstasy in Levine’s Puccini, no melancholy, no tension, no momentum, and no emotional payoff. Levine should remove Puccini from his repertory. Levine’s Puccini is no better today than it was in the early 1980’s, when EMI abruptly cancelled a prospective Levine Puccini series once the first unhappy results were captured on tape.
After the “Manon Lescaut” matinee, my brother took my mother home, while Josh and I remained in the area around Lincoln Center, since we had tickets for Saturday night’s performance of New York City Ballet. We killed time between the opera performance and the ballet performance by walking around the Lincoln Center area and getting coffee and a sandwich.
The New York City Ballet program we attended was devoted to three George Balanchine ballets. Specifically, the company presented three Balanchine ballets all choreographed to the music of Tchaikovsky.
My mother and my sister-in-law did not want to attend this performance because, over Memorial Day Weekend last year, they had attended a New York City Ballet performance featuring two of the same three works Josh and I saw Saturday night: “Mozartiana” and “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2”.
Back on May 29, 2007, I had written at some length about my mother’s and my sister-in-law’s visit to New York City Ballet over Memorial Day Weekend. As I wrote that day, my mother and my sister-in-law had attended the Sunday matinee performance of May 27. At the time, I knew they had enjoyed the performance very much, but I was unaware that Robert Gottlieb, America’s best active writer on dance (I believe Arlene Croce considers herself to be retired, mostly), was soon to describe that very same performance in The New York Observer as “a nearly perfect afternoon at City Ballet, certainly the best all-round program I’ve seen in years”.
Saturday night’s program was “Serenade”, “Mozartiana” and “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2”. It may or may not have been one of the best New York City Ballet performances in years, but it was definitely a great night in the theater.
I love Balanchine. For me, ballet IS Balanchine. I can hardly watch the work of any other choreographer without observing how inferior the choreography is to Balanchine. Sometimes, I actually wonder if I even like ballet—it often strikes me that I like Balanchine in particular very much, but that I like ballet in general very little.
I could watch “Serenade” every night, I sometimes think. It is one of Balanchine’s most fascinating works. It is full of event, of mystery, of emotion, of drama, of wonder. It is one of a handful of the greatest ballets ever created.
Josh loved “Serenade” from the moment the curtain rose on the breathtaking sight of seventeen ballerinas arranged in a unique diagonal formation, arms extended at the same unique angle, seemingly shading their eyes against the light. “Serenade” must have the single greatest opening tableaux in the entire ballet repertory.
Until “Serenade”, the only Balanchine work Josh had seen was “The Four Temperaments”. Exactly a year ago, we had attended a performance of New York City Ballet over Presidents’ Day Weekend 2007. As I wrote back on February 26, 2007, Josh did not like “The Four Temperaments”. At the time, I also wrote that I thought that Josh would learn to love Balanchine over time.
I think that time arrived Saturday night, when Josh saw “Serenade”. Josh gasped when the curtain rose, and I don’t think he breathed, even once, until the curtain came down. Josh said that “Serenade” was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“Serenade” was Balanchine’s first ballet in America; “Mozartiana”, from almost fifty years later, was one of his last, and his very last major work.
Saturday night was the third time I had seen “Mozartiana”. I have never grown to love “Mozartiana” as I love “Serenade”. For me, “Mozartiana” lacks the emotional resonance and the sheer dance interest of “Serenade”. It strikes me as reticent, almost tentative, and not a major statement from the master (Balanchine was recovering from a serious illness when he created “Mozartiana”; he was to die less than two years later). Of course, I never saw Suzanne Farrell dance “Mozartiana”, and it is possible that the ballet cannot work without Farrell’s unique magical gifts. (Dance writers have noted that “Mozartiana” was Balanchine’s most deeply affecting gift to Farrell.) It is also possible that I merely need to keep seeing “Mozartiana” until I grow to love it.
“Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” is one of the grandest, most complex and most majestic of all Balanchine creations. Commentators have often asserted that the ballet was Balanchine’s personal tribute to the glory and grandeur of Imperial Russia.
Whether or not that assertion is true, “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” is a work of extraordinary richness and depth, with enough choreographic interest for a hundred stagings of “Swan Lake”. “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” is a work so great that, like the Hammerklavier Sonata, it may be well-nigh unperformanable. Just as the Beethoven work requires unimaginable intellectual depth coupled with the most demanding keyboard power and control, surely beyond the talents of mere mortals, so does “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” challenge the limits of mere human beings. It is possible that dancers will never be able to do the work justice.
However, “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” always creates an overwhelming impact in the theater, no matter how poorly it is danced, because it is such a great ballet, expertly constructed, melding moment-by-moment genius with a genius for the entirety of the whole. On Saturday night, I was in awe of the ballet all over again, just as I had been the first time I experienced it.
Josh and I found it interesting to compare, once again, the two primary theaters—as opposed to concert halls—at Lincoln Center. It is interesting, perhaps jarring, that one building is so good and one building is so bad.
Wallace Harrison’s Metropolitan Opera House is one of the great architectural horrors of the world, a vulgar, showy display of New York nouveau riche tendencies at their worst.
Although it opened in 1966, the Metropolitan Opera is a pure 1950’s building—owing to the long planning and construction schedules, all opera houses are instantly dated by ten years on the day they open—and it reeks of the fantasies of a schoolgirl. The Metropolitan Opera House would be perfect as the setting for a Ross Hunter production of a Lana Turner movie: the building is straight out of “Imitation Of Life”, and actually appears to have been decorated by the set designer for that ridiculous late-1950’s cornball weeper. Is there a more fake-ostentatious 20th-Century building anywhere?
I have always found the interiors of the Metropolitan Opera House to be especially appalling, if not offensive. Over-the-top red-and-gilded interiors have no place in a public building in a nation with a representative form of government.
Unlike me, Josh simply laughs at everything at the Metropolitan Opera. He finds the whole building to be hysterical more than offensive. The raising of the light fixtures as the lights go down, for instance, gives Josh a terminal case of the giggles.
Happily, the acoustics of the auditorium of the Metropolitan Opera are exceptional, the house’s one saving grace.
The acoustics are the worst feature of Philip Johnson’s New York State Theater, although this shortcoming cannot be attributed to Johnson himself. Erected as a dance theater, the New York State Theater had its original acoustics designed, intentionally, to muffle the sounds of footsteps on stage.
Otherwise, the auditorium itself is one of the 20th Century’s great theaters. It is handsome, even elegant, and yet simple and restrained, with clean lines and minimal decoration. Every time I visit the New York State Theater, I am impressed anew at Johnson’s work. It is a timeless theater auditorium.
The auditorium of the New York State Theater is modeled, in part, after the 1955 auditorium of the Hamburg State Opera, the first major new opera house to be built in Germany after the war and another timeless theater auditorium.
The New York State Theater shares with the Hamburg Opera the clean lines and clean angles that are themselves the distinguishing decorative features. Like Hamburg, the New York State Theater also eliminates theater aisles on the main floor—in both houses, audience members flood in from all sides, not down one or two central aisles originating at the rears of the auditoriums. In both theaters, it is amazing how quickly the auditoriums fill and empty.
We did nothing at all on Sunday. We stayed in all day, and ate lots of food, and played with my nephew.
He understands virtually everything everyone says now. Nothing puzzles him any more.
He also has become a virtual little chatterbox, talking to us nonstop as we play with him.
Now, when he is done playing with his toys, he puts them away himself. Of course, this is no big thing, because it simply involves putting his toys back in the toy box in the living room. Nevertheless, he has been taught to do this since Christmas.
He also enjoys storybooks now, much more than just a few months ago, especially storybooks with bright pictures of animals. He can easily sit through an entire children’s story now, which was not necessarily true as recently as Christmas. Like all children, he has his own particular favorites, which he likes to enjoy over and over and over.
He’s a very good eater. He gets a full breakfast every day now—cereal and fruit are no longer enough for him. He gets scrambled eggs and potatoes and toast for breakfast now, in addition to his cereal and fruit. He’s perfectly capable of feeding himself now, although he often uses his hands instead of a spoon or a fork.
He also watches now to make sure that others are not receiving foods he is not given, too. Other than tomatoes, which he does not like, he expects to be served the same foods everyone else eats. If he sees other foods on the table, he will always ask why he has not been given some, too. Generally, his mother will tell him that he will not like the other foods, and invariably she is proven right. When he asks, she will give him a small sample of such food, like cauliflower, and he will try it and make a face and spit it out. He is very funny.
This weekend my mother made all sorts of things he especially likes. She made her homemade chicken noodle soup, which is one of his favorites. She also made her homemade tomato cream soup, which he loves. She baked a pork loin, and she made creamed chicken and dumplings, two of his favorite meat dishes. She made tapioca, his favorite pudding. She also baked a seven-layer chocolate cake on Sunday afternoon. My nephew had gone berserk over this cake when my mother made one for Josh’s birthday last November, so she made one again on Sunday.
On Monday morning, we all went out to take a long walk, and we had lunch out. On Monday afternoon, we stayed in, and had an early dinner before we had to head for the airport.
As always, the weekend ended too soon.
Easter comes early this year, happily, so it will not be long before we get to see everyone again. We are looking forward to that. This year will be the first year my nephew is old enough to enjoy an Easter egg hunt. That should be lots of fun.
We got in late Thursday night, too late to have a normal dinner at a normal time, so we had a light supper of omelets, and went to bed not long after.
We stayed in Friday during the day, except for a couple of walks. All of us took a walk Friday morning after breakfast—even my nephew took a walk with us, although his Dad carried him most of that time—and my brothers and Josh and I took a second walk Friday afternoon while my nephew was taking his nap. Otherwise, we spent all day Friday playing with my nephew.
On Friday night, we went to see “August: Osage County”. All of us attended the play except my older brother, who has no interest at all in theater. He happily stayed home with my nephew that night.
We sort of enjoyed the play, not because it was any good, which it most certainly was not, but because it was sort of entertaining. “August: Osage County” is, fundamentally, nothing more than a Carol Burnett comedy skit about a dysfunctional family—but a comedy skit that goes terribly awry, turning incredibly nasty if not absolutely vicious a few minutes into the first act. There was an undeniable fascination in watching members of a seedy and sordid family go after each other tooth and nail, tearing at old wounds and opening new ones. However, the play itself is a formulaic commercial vehicle, created not by a genuine dramatist but by a purveyor of pre-packaged synthetic materials.
The author, Tracy Letts, has obviously spent a lifetime parked in front of his television set. Every single dramatic device, every single character, every single situation, every single line, derived purely from the swamp of present-day television. Indeed, Friday night’s audience instinctively recognized this, reacting to the play as if it were watching the tube at home. The audience chattered during the play, and laughed at inappropriate times and at inappropriate lines, and even interjected jeers and cheers when characters in the play were in discomfort or received a comeuppance.
A patina of seriousness hangs over “August: Osage County” because, lathered into this unpleasant and distasteful vat of television writing, playwright Letts has liberally inserted vast chunks of the family dramas of Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge, Edward Albee, Neil Simon, Paul Zindel and Sam Shepard. It is all startlingly derivative, dismaying in its lack of originality.
Ironically, these deficiencies happen to be the play’s saving grace. Because it is so derivative and so unoriginal, and because it is so heavily-beholden to television, the play is easily laughed off. If the play were more powerful and more true, and the characters more believable, it would be disturbing. As it is, it is just a contemporary commercial vehicle, very much of its time, an entertainment that theatergoers may happily forget as soon as they exit the theater door.
“August: Osage County” has been a modest commercial success during its limited Broadway run. Since it opened in November, it has played to between 50 and 70 per cent capacity, depending upon the week. It is scheduled to close in April.
On Saturday afternoon, we had four tickets for Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” at the Metropolitan Opera. Josh and I wanted to go, and so did my mother. However, we had trouble getting anyone else to use the fourth ticket. My father decided he would rather stay home and play with his grandson. My sister-in-law decided that she did not want to go—she was still soured, she said, by “August: Osage County” from the previous evening.
Josh and I and my mother were preparing to head out by ourselves, intending to give our fourth ticket to an opera-goer looking for a ticket outside the opera house, when my middle brother decided at the last minute that he would accompany us. I’m glad he did. He enjoyed the performance very much.
I like “Manon Lescaut”—I have always liked “Manon Lescaut”—and I enjoyed the performance, although it was hardly one for the ages.
The Met’s production of “Manon Lescaut” is from 1980. It is a realistic production, clunky and not handsome in the least. I had not seen it before, although my mother had seen the production many years ago. For this revival, the Met should have retired its own “Manon Lescaut” production and borrowed Bologna’s production.
Singing Manon was Karita Mattila. This was the fifth time I had heard Mattila. I first heard her in 2003, singing “Salome” at the Paris Opera. In 2005, I heard her sing Amelia in “Un Ballo In Maschera” at Covent Garden. Exactly a year ago, I heard her sing “Jenufa” at the Met. Last April, I heard her give a recital in Saint Paul.
Mattila does not have an Italianate voice, and Puccini’s music does not come naturally to her. She does not know how to shape the phrases convincingly, and she does not know how to take advantage of the emotional swells written into the vocal line. It was a game try for a singer with a white voice, but Manon is definitely not Mattila’s role.
Mattila creates a striking and compelling stage figure, but as an actress she simply goes through the motions. She is strictly a by-the-numbers stage actress. There was no depth to her Salome, Amelia or Jenufa, and there was no depth to her Manon, either, despite the fact that she was trying very, very hard. In fact, I thought that Mattila was trying TOO hard, to the point of discomfort. Her Manon did not convince me for one moment, and much of what she did onstage was simply irritating.
The success of a Puccini performance always rests with the orchestra and conductor, and Saturday’s performance would not have worked, even if a great Puccini singer like Renata Scotto in her prime had inhabited the name part, and this was because the orchestral score was so poorly handled.
For some reason, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra can no longer play Puccini. The orchestra simply cannot summon the right sound for Puccini. Puccini requires, above all, an orchestral sound of great opulence and radiance, even glamour. A luxurious orchestral fabric, streaked with melancholy, must be on hand, with transparent strings, ravishing and dark-colored winds, and golden-toned brass, weaving Puccini’s orchestral lines into sounds and moods that create nothing so much as unending rapture.
Antonio Pappano must have the aural image for Puccini in his brain, because Pappano can elicit the Puccini sound from practically any orchestra he conducts. Pappano’s Puccini in London is a miracle, the most miraculous I have ever heard. Daniele Gatti also can summon the Puccini sound at will.
However, no other conductor today is able to create the right sound for Puccini, not even the three leading Italian conductors of our day. Claudio Abbado finds Puccini’s music to be treacle, and he never performs it. Riccardo Muti DOES perform Puccini, albeit infrequently, but Muti is a rigid Puccini conductor, looking mainly for moments of power and brilliance in the scores, at the expense of tenderness and expression. The end result: Muti’s Puccini is brittle. Riccardo Chailly’s Puccini is a “work in progress”, mostly convincing, but Chailly is not an innate Puccini conductor like Pappano.
The sound James Levine summoned from the Met orchestra was a Richard Strauss sound. It was too plushly-upholstered for Puccini, heavy and thick when it should have been translucent, glowing and luminous. The strings lacked lightness and transparency and color, the winds lacked character and piquancy and bewitching timbres, and the brass . . .well, the brass sound would have been apt for a performance of Ein Heldenleben, perhaps.
Levine’s conducting was also inflexible, as it always is in Puccini. Puccini requires a firm pulse that can be stretched and contracted endlessly without ever losing the basic thread. Levine cannot do this, and he has never been able to do this. Levine’s Puccini is inelastic and aimless, always either too slow or too fast, and incapable of maintaining and carrying the grand emotional arcs of Puccini’s music. There is no ecstasy in Levine’s Puccini, no melancholy, no tension, no momentum, and no emotional payoff. Levine should remove Puccini from his repertory. Levine’s Puccini is no better today than it was in the early 1980’s, when EMI abruptly cancelled a prospective Levine Puccini series once the first unhappy results were captured on tape.
After the “Manon Lescaut” matinee, my brother took my mother home, while Josh and I remained in the area around Lincoln Center, since we had tickets for Saturday night’s performance of New York City Ballet. We killed time between the opera performance and the ballet performance by walking around the Lincoln Center area and getting coffee and a sandwich.
The New York City Ballet program we attended was devoted to three George Balanchine ballets. Specifically, the company presented three Balanchine ballets all choreographed to the music of Tchaikovsky.
My mother and my sister-in-law did not want to attend this performance because, over Memorial Day Weekend last year, they had attended a New York City Ballet performance featuring two of the same three works Josh and I saw Saturday night: “Mozartiana” and “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2”.
Back on May 29, 2007, I had written at some length about my mother’s and my sister-in-law’s visit to New York City Ballet over Memorial Day Weekend. As I wrote that day, my mother and my sister-in-law had attended the Sunday matinee performance of May 27. At the time, I knew they had enjoyed the performance very much, but I was unaware that Robert Gottlieb, America’s best active writer on dance (I believe Arlene Croce considers herself to be retired, mostly), was soon to describe that very same performance in The New York Observer as “a nearly perfect afternoon at City Ballet, certainly the best all-round program I’ve seen in years”.
Saturday night’s program was “Serenade”, “Mozartiana” and “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2”. It may or may not have been one of the best New York City Ballet performances in years, but it was definitely a great night in the theater.
I love Balanchine. For me, ballet IS Balanchine. I can hardly watch the work of any other choreographer without observing how inferior the choreography is to Balanchine. Sometimes, I actually wonder if I even like ballet—it often strikes me that I like Balanchine in particular very much, but that I like ballet in general very little.
I could watch “Serenade” every night, I sometimes think. It is one of Balanchine’s most fascinating works. It is full of event, of mystery, of emotion, of drama, of wonder. It is one of a handful of the greatest ballets ever created.
Josh loved “Serenade” from the moment the curtain rose on the breathtaking sight of seventeen ballerinas arranged in a unique diagonal formation, arms extended at the same unique angle, seemingly shading their eyes against the light. “Serenade” must have the single greatest opening tableaux in the entire ballet repertory.
Until “Serenade”, the only Balanchine work Josh had seen was “The Four Temperaments”. Exactly a year ago, we had attended a performance of New York City Ballet over Presidents’ Day Weekend 2007. As I wrote back on February 26, 2007, Josh did not like “The Four Temperaments”. At the time, I also wrote that I thought that Josh would learn to love Balanchine over time.
I think that time arrived Saturday night, when Josh saw “Serenade”. Josh gasped when the curtain rose, and I don’t think he breathed, even once, until the curtain came down. Josh said that “Serenade” was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“Serenade” was Balanchine’s first ballet in America; “Mozartiana”, from almost fifty years later, was one of his last, and his very last major work.
Saturday night was the third time I had seen “Mozartiana”. I have never grown to love “Mozartiana” as I love “Serenade”. For me, “Mozartiana” lacks the emotional resonance and the sheer dance interest of “Serenade”. It strikes me as reticent, almost tentative, and not a major statement from the master (Balanchine was recovering from a serious illness when he created “Mozartiana”; he was to die less than two years later). Of course, I never saw Suzanne Farrell dance “Mozartiana”, and it is possible that the ballet cannot work without Farrell’s unique magical gifts. (Dance writers have noted that “Mozartiana” was Balanchine’s most deeply affecting gift to Farrell.) It is also possible that I merely need to keep seeing “Mozartiana” until I grow to love it.
“Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” is one of the grandest, most complex and most majestic of all Balanchine creations. Commentators have often asserted that the ballet was Balanchine’s personal tribute to the glory and grandeur of Imperial Russia.
Whether or not that assertion is true, “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” is a work of extraordinary richness and depth, with enough choreographic interest for a hundred stagings of “Swan Lake”. “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” is a work so great that, like the Hammerklavier Sonata, it may be well-nigh unperformanable. Just as the Beethoven work requires unimaginable intellectual depth coupled with the most demanding keyboard power and control, surely beyond the talents of mere mortals, so does “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” challenge the limits of mere human beings. It is possible that dancers will never be able to do the work justice.
However, “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2” always creates an overwhelming impact in the theater, no matter how poorly it is danced, because it is such a great ballet, expertly constructed, melding moment-by-moment genius with a genius for the entirety of the whole. On Saturday night, I was in awe of the ballet all over again, just as I had been the first time I experienced it.
Josh and I found it interesting to compare, once again, the two primary theaters—as opposed to concert halls—at Lincoln Center. It is interesting, perhaps jarring, that one building is so good and one building is so bad.
Wallace Harrison’s Metropolitan Opera House is one of the great architectural horrors of the world, a vulgar, showy display of New York nouveau riche tendencies at their worst.
Although it opened in 1966, the Metropolitan Opera is a pure 1950’s building—owing to the long planning and construction schedules, all opera houses are instantly dated by ten years on the day they open—and it reeks of the fantasies of a schoolgirl. The Metropolitan Opera House would be perfect as the setting for a Ross Hunter production of a Lana Turner movie: the building is straight out of “Imitation Of Life”, and actually appears to have been decorated by the set designer for that ridiculous late-1950’s cornball weeper. Is there a more fake-ostentatious 20th-Century building anywhere?
I have always found the interiors of the Metropolitan Opera House to be especially appalling, if not offensive. Over-the-top red-and-gilded interiors have no place in a public building in a nation with a representative form of government.
Unlike me, Josh simply laughs at everything at the Metropolitan Opera. He finds the whole building to be hysterical more than offensive. The raising of the light fixtures as the lights go down, for instance, gives Josh a terminal case of the giggles.
Happily, the acoustics of the auditorium of the Metropolitan Opera are exceptional, the house’s one saving grace.
The acoustics are the worst feature of Philip Johnson’s New York State Theater, although this shortcoming cannot be attributed to Johnson himself. Erected as a dance theater, the New York State Theater had its original acoustics designed, intentionally, to muffle the sounds of footsteps on stage.
Otherwise, the auditorium itself is one of the 20th Century’s great theaters. It is handsome, even elegant, and yet simple and restrained, with clean lines and minimal decoration. Every time I visit the New York State Theater, I am impressed anew at Johnson’s work. It is a timeless theater auditorium.
The auditorium of the New York State Theater is modeled, in part, after the 1955 auditorium of the Hamburg State Opera, the first major new opera house to be built in Germany after the war and another timeless theater auditorium.
The New York State Theater shares with the Hamburg Opera the clean lines and clean angles that are themselves the distinguishing decorative features. Like Hamburg, the New York State Theater also eliminates theater aisles on the main floor—in both houses, audience members flood in from all sides, not down one or two central aisles originating at the rears of the auditoriums. In both theaters, it is amazing how quickly the auditoriums fill and empty.
We did nothing at all on Sunday. We stayed in all day, and ate lots of food, and played with my nephew.
He understands virtually everything everyone says now. Nothing puzzles him any more.
He also has become a virtual little chatterbox, talking to us nonstop as we play with him.
Now, when he is done playing with his toys, he puts them away himself. Of course, this is no big thing, because it simply involves putting his toys back in the toy box in the living room. Nevertheless, he has been taught to do this since Christmas.
He also enjoys storybooks now, much more than just a few months ago, especially storybooks with bright pictures of animals. He can easily sit through an entire children’s story now, which was not necessarily true as recently as Christmas. Like all children, he has his own particular favorites, which he likes to enjoy over and over and over.
He’s a very good eater. He gets a full breakfast every day now—cereal and fruit are no longer enough for him. He gets scrambled eggs and potatoes and toast for breakfast now, in addition to his cereal and fruit. He’s perfectly capable of feeding himself now, although he often uses his hands instead of a spoon or a fork.
He also watches now to make sure that others are not receiving foods he is not given, too. Other than tomatoes, which he does not like, he expects to be served the same foods everyone else eats. If he sees other foods on the table, he will always ask why he has not been given some, too. Generally, his mother will tell him that he will not like the other foods, and invariably she is proven right. When he asks, she will give him a small sample of such food, like cauliflower, and he will try it and make a face and spit it out. He is very funny.
This weekend my mother made all sorts of things he especially likes. She made her homemade chicken noodle soup, which is one of his favorites. She also made her homemade tomato cream soup, which he loves. She baked a pork loin, and she made creamed chicken and dumplings, two of his favorite meat dishes. She made tapioca, his favorite pudding. She also baked a seven-layer chocolate cake on Sunday afternoon. My nephew had gone berserk over this cake when my mother made one for Josh’s birthday last November, so she made one again on Sunday.
On Monday morning, we all went out to take a long walk, and we had lunch out. On Monday afternoon, we stayed in, and had an early dinner before we had to head for the airport.
As always, the weekend ended too soon.
Easter comes early this year, happily, so it will not be long before we get to see everyone again. We are looking forward to that. This year will be the first year my nephew is old enough to enjoy an Easter egg hunt. That should be lots of fun.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Anticipation
Tomorrow afternoon, after work, we will all go away for the long holiday weekend.
We will be visiting my older brother and his family. My brother from Denver will be joining us, too.
We are sneaking an extra day so that we will have four full days to visit: late Thursday night; all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday; and most of Monday.
It should be fun.
My nephew will be asleep when we arrive tomorrow night, but he knows that we are coming, and he is very excited. We’ll see him Friday morning, first thing, when he wakes up at 7:30 a.m. My middle brother and Josh and I will be up very early Friday morning, waiting for him.
We’re already getting excited.
We will be visiting my older brother and his family. My brother from Denver will be joining us, too.
We are sneaking an extra day so that we will have four full days to visit: late Thursday night; all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday; and most of Monday.
It should be fun.
My nephew will be asleep when we arrive tomorrow night, but he knows that we are coming, and he is very excited. We’ll see him Friday morning, first thing, when he wakes up at 7:30 a.m. My middle brother and Josh and I will be up very early Friday morning, waiting for him.
We’re already getting excited.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Reserves
Joshua and I had a nice weekend.
Saturday was our big day, as we attended a basketball game Saturday afternoon and a recital Saturday night.
Josh and I took my Dad to the Minnesota/Iowa game Saturday afternoon, and it was good to see the Gophers win one at home after three consecutive home losses, all of which we attended. We were starting to think that we were jinxing the Golden Gophers with our presence in Williams Arena.
Saturday night, Josh and I took my Mom and Dad to Saint Paul to hear a recital by Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk.
The recital was sort of disappointing. I have never been very impressed with Joshua Bell, and this is probably because he is a throwback to the early-20th-Century style of violin playing: his style of play is very romantic and, to my taste, a bit schmaltzy. He also “emotes” to an extreme degree, making all sorts of facial gestures and facial contortions to demonstrate to audience members that he is “feeling” the music. I find these facial gestures and contortions off-putting, if not irritating, especially since the emotions he is telegraphing to the audience are not necessarily duplicated in his playing, which often is simply not very interesting.
The program was an odd one. The recital began with Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill” Sonata. Violinists must love to play this piece, but it is not a very gratifying piece of music for audiences.
Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1 ended the first half of the recital, and it was in this work that Bell’s overtly-romantic approach most negated the composer. There was too little bite in the playing, too little sarcasm, too little point, too little fire, too little resignation, to make the work come alive. In fact, in Bell’s hands the sonata did not even sound like Prokofiev—it sounded like a strange melding of Cesar Franck and Serge Rachmaninoff.
The second half of the recital began with Dvorak’s Four Romantic Pieces For Violin And Piano, and this was probably the most successful item on the program, because it was best suited to Bell’s style of playing. These are charming pieces, but not necessarily great pieces, and I thought that Bell was OK—but he would have been even more successful had he demonstrated some “toughness” in his playing to go along with the all-purpose “dreaminess” he has patented and which he is so fond of displaying at every opportunity.
The concert ended with Saint-Saens Sonata No. 1 For Violin And Piano. This is a brilliant piece, and Bell played it very, very well. However, there was no Gallic flavor to the performance, and for this shortcoming much of the blame must be shared with the pianist, Jeremy Denk, whose part is equally important in this work. Denk’s playing in the Saint-Saens was Germanic, lacking grace, lightness, elegance and flair, and it sounded out of place.
Denk is an odd pianist. He is really not much of a virtuoso, at least not in the sense of a Kissin or a Pletnev, and he is really not much of a “serious” pianist, either, although that is how he cultivates his public image. Neither fish nor fowl, he has, understandably, had trouble building a career, especially outside the United States, and he will probably end up teaching at a university.
A little more than three months ago, we had all attended a recital by Jonathan Biss, another American pianist who lacks the highest degree of virtuosity and who also is not destined to become a “serious” pianist.
Since the emergence of Stephen Kovacevich and Murray Perahia in the early 1970’s, no American pianist of note has appeared on the international scene. Why is America not producing pianists of the highest quality? Joshua attempted to answer this question on his blog on October 28. I have no thoughts on the matter.
My father does have thoughts on the matter. Simply put, he says that American music instructors, for whatever reason, are able to identify students with talent but are unable to identify which talented students possess great reserves of intellect and personality, the two qualities without which no pianist can sustain a major long-term career.
Today, my parents’ dog demonstrated great reserves of intellect and personality. All afternoon and evening, he had four adult human beings waiting on him hand and foot, constantly playing with him and giving him lots of attention and affection—and a nonstop assortment of treats. He played us all like the great virtuoso he is. We were mere tools in his paws.
He’s good!
Alas, next weekend, the dog will be without us, because we are going to New York to spend the long weekend with my older brother and his family. The dog will be staying with a friend from church during our absence, and we will miss him very much while we are gone. However, he will be very well cared for by a very generous and gracious lady who loves him very much. Since she lives alone, she values his companionship a few times a year—and he is a very, very good companion.
It works out well for both of them.
Saturday was our big day, as we attended a basketball game Saturday afternoon and a recital Saturday night.
Josh and I took my Dad to the Minnesota/Iowa game Saturday afternoon, and it was good to see the Gophers win one at home after three consecutive home losses, all of which we attended. We were starting to think that we were jinxing the Golden Gophers with our presence in Williams Arena.
Saturday night, Josh and I took my Mom and Dad to Saint Paul to hear a recital by Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk.
The recital was sort of disappointing. I have never been very impressed with Joshua Bell, and this is probably because he is a throwback to the early-20th-Century style of violin playing: his style of play is very romantic and, to my taste, a bit schmaltzy. He also “emotes” to an extreme degree, making all sorts of facial gestures and facial contortions to demonstrate to audience members that he is “feeling” the music. I find these facial gestures and contortions off-putting, if not irritating, especially since the emotions he is telegraphing to the audience are not necessarily duplicated in his playing, which often is simply not very interesting.
The program was an odd one. The recital began with Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill” Sonata. Violinists must love to play this piece, but it is not a very gratifying piece of music for audiences.
Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No. 1 ended the first half of the recital, and it was in this work that Bell’s overtly-romantic approach most negated the composer. There was too little bite in the playing, too little sarcasm, too little point, too little fire, too little resignation, to make the work come alive. In fact, in Bell’s hands the sonata did not even sound like Prokofiev—it sounded like a strange melding of Cesar Franck and Serge Rachmaninoff.
The second half of the recital began with Dvorak’s Four Romantic Pieces For Violin And Piano, and this was probably the most successful item on the program, because it was best suited to Bell’s style of playing. These are charming pieces, but not necessarily great pieces, and I thought that Bell was OK—but he would have been even more successful had he demonstrated some “toughness” in his playing to go along with the all-purpose “dreaminess” he has patented and which he is so fond of displaying at every opportunity.
The concert ended with Saint-Saens Sonata No. 1 For Violin And Piano. This is a brilliant piece, and Bell played it very, very well. However, there was no Gallic flavor to the performance, and for this shortcoming much of the blame must be shared with the pianist, Jeremy Denk, whose part is equally important in this work. Denk’s playing in the Saint-Saens was Germanic, lacking grace, lightness, elegance and flair, and it sounded out of place.
Denk is an odd pianist. He is really not much of a virtuoso, at least not in the sense of a Kissin or a Pletnev, and he is really not much of a “serious” pianist, either, although that is how he cultivates his public image. Neither fish nor fowl, he has, understandably, had trouble building a career, especially outside the United States, and he will probably end up teaching at a university.
A little more than three months ago, we had all attended a recital by Jonathan Biss, another American pianist who lacks the highest degree of virtuosity and who also is not destined to become a “serious” pianist.
Since the emergence of Stephen Kovacevich and Murray Perahia in the early 1970’s, no American pianist of note has appeared on the international scene. Why is America not producing pianists of the highest quality? Joshua attempted to answer this question on his blog on October 28. I have no thoughts on the matter.
My father does have thoughts on the matter. Simply put, he says that American music instructors, for whatever reason, are able to identify students with talent but are unable to identify which talented students possess great reserves of intellect and personality, the two qualities without which no pianist can sustain a major long-term career.
Today, my parents’ dog demonstrated great reserves of intellect and personality. All afternoon and evening, he had four adult human beings waiting on him hand and foot, constantly playing with him and giving him lots of attention and affection—and a nonstop assortment of treats. He played us all like the great virtuoso he is. We were mere tools in his paws.
He’s good!
Alas, next weekend, the dog will be without us, because we are going to New York to spend the long weekend with my older brother and his family. The dog will be staying with a friend from church during our absence, and we will miss him very much while we are gone. However, he will be very well cared for by a very generous and gracious lady who loves him very much. Since she lives alone, she values his companionship a few times a year—and he is a very, very good companion.
It works out well for both of them.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
A Crossword Puzzle Of Musical Gestures
Yesterday Joshua and I drove all the way into downtown Minneapolis to work, taking my father to work as well.
In the very late afternoon, my mother drove downtown, too, and we all had an early dinner downtown. Afterward, we proceeded to the State Theater to attend a performance of Stephen Sondheim’s musical, “Sweeney Todd”.
The State Theater is one of the grand old buildings in Minneapolis, and Joshua had never visited it before.
The architect was J.E.O. Pridmore, a noted architect from Chicago, who designed many theaters in his home city. The State Theater opened in 1921, and its original construction cost $1 million, an enormous sum at the time. At the time of its opening, the State Theater was the most technologically advanced—and elaborate—theater in the United States.
The theater featured the first air-conditioning system in Minneapolis. Pumps, pipes and vents delivered cool air from an artesian well 840 feet underground, keeping the temperature in the theater auditorium a constant 72 degrees.
The auditorium still is decorated with its six original chandeliers, along with its original murals and statues. The proscenium spans the full width of the auditorium, curving to a height 100 feet above the stage floor. The auditorium seats 2150 patrons.
The State Theater is a magnificent venue today, but the building did not enjoy a happy history for much of its life.
Erected for stage shows and concerts, the State Theater was turned into a movie palace in 1925. It remained a movie theater through 1958. It long featured the largest movie screen west of the Mississippi River.
The theater closed in 1958, and the building remained ill-used until 1978, when a local church bought the building and used the crumbling auditorium for worship services.
The City Of Minneapolis acquired the building in early 1989 and spent $9 million restoring the theater to its original splendor. The theater reopened in late 1991, and today it is used primarily for touring Broadway productions.
The State Theater is a fun period building to explore, and Josh liked it very much.
“Sweeney Todd”, on the other hand, was not quite such a success.
The production we saw is the National Touring Company production of the 2005 Broadway staging, directed by John Doyle. This is the stripped-down production that uses only ten actors, all of whom are required to play musical instruments onstage.
In 2004, my middle brother and I almost attended a performance of this stripped-down “Sweeney Todd” in London, where this production originated before it transferred to New York. However, my brother and I elected to see Michael Frayn’s “Democracy” that night instead.
Last night I found this John Doyle production to be unsuccessful. Requiring actors to play musical instruments onstage was a gimmick, and nothing more. It detracted from the performances of the actors, and offered an unsatisfactory musical accompaniment to boot.
It also took the audience’s attention away from the story. While audience members were marveling that an actor could play a trumpet or a tuba, however badly, they were not paying attention to the heart of the show.
That the gimmick did not destroy the show does not signify that the gimmick was successful. I suppose it would be possible to stage “Sweeney Todd” on stilts and not destroy the show, or perform it in clown costumes and not destroy the show, or pretend that the onstage characters are blind and not destroy the show. However, is this the standard to be applied? That a gimmick does not destroy a show does not mean that the gimmick remains anything other than a gimmick.
The pared-down nature of the show was further hampered by setting the action in an asylum for the insane, a most tired and unilluminating device, as well as poor costuming—“this pudding has no theme”—and performances that simply were not strong enough to carry the weight of the material.
Head and shoulders above everyone else on stage was Judy Kaye, a natural stage actor and a strong singer. Simply put, she stole the show. However, she portrayed Mrs. Lovett as a Jewish mother, which was a gross miscalculation, and surely not what the role requires. She wrung lots of laughs from the material, and camped it up no end, but her portrayal of Mrs. Lovett involved a wholesale re-tooling of the role into a burlesque stunt. It was a bizarre portrayal, and fatally unbalanced the show.
Josh and I had never seen a live production of “Sweeney Todd” until last night. For the last month and more, Josh and I had been talking about going to see the movie version of “Sweeney Todd”, but we had not had time to make it to a screening. Now, having seen a stage version, we no longer want to see the film version.
My parents saw “Sweeney Todd” on Broadway during its original run. In fact, they thought the show so intriguing that they went to see it twice, on successive nights. They fully recognized the merits of the show on the first viewing, but they also contend, to this day, that the original production would have been very grim indeed had it not been for the presence of Angela Lansbury, who completely stole the show as Mrs. Lovett.
The role of Mrs. Lovett is the best role in the show, beautifully written and beautifully composed (for a singer with a limited range). My parents insist that Angela Lansbury was a miracle, finding all the laughs but never devolving into caricature, creating a Mrs. Lovett who was witty, charming and warm, selfish, cunning and frightening, all at the same time. Perhaps it is inevitable that Mrs. Lovett steals the show in any production of “Sweeney Todd”.
“Sweeney Todd” is probably Sondheim’s most enduring show. It features a strong and fascinating story, numerous characters that come fully to life, and a supremely well-shaped plot and book.
The musical score, however, is not Sondheim’s finest, despite the fact that it is his only through-composed score. “Sweeney Todd” lacks the musical richness and musical imagination of “Pacific Overtures”, Sondheim’s most original and wondrous score. Although every possible musical device is borrowed from the genre of opera—and “Sweeney Todd” is, above all, a work of operatic technique and operatic scope, epic in scale—“Sweeney Todd” lacks the musical richness and musical conviction and musical depth and musical character and sheer musical invention that define even the weakest efforts in the genre. “Sweeney Todd” is a masterpiece of operatic construction, but a masterpiece in which the quality of the musical invention itself is paltry if not paper-thin. It is a score curiously short on substance. The score has always struck me as Benjamin Britten diluted with water, an effect only heightened when shorn of its original orchestrations, as in the current production.
Many of the numbers are, melodically, entirely feeble. Pirelli’s song, Mrs. Lovett’s parlor songs and ditties, the comic numbers involving Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett: all these numbers perform their dramatic functions beautifully, but all lack musical distinction and musical interest. The concertante numbers are especially disappointing, primarily because Sondheim had demonstrated a distinct mastery of concertante writing in “A Little Night Music”. Moreover, the music has no depth of feeling, which ultimately relegates “Sweeny Todd” eternally to the world of entertainment, not art—and this is so even though the work is very, very artfully crafted.
Every time I hear the score to “Sweeney Todd”, I always regret that another, better composer did not compose the score. Sondheim, even at his very best, never surmounts the hurdle of second-rate, and most of the time he operates on a level substantially below that standard.
As a wordsmith, Sondheim is a genius. As a composer, he is a polymath, a composer of pastiche, capable of writing acid-tinged romanticism, faux-chic inanities dripping with faux-chic sophistication, Broadway showstoppers and eleven o’clock numbers, all whipped into an unpleasant and cynical brew, a crossword puzzle of musical gestures, composed without soul.
Ultimately, it all amounts to very little.
In the very late afternoon, my mother drove downtown, too, and we all had an early dinner downtown. Afterward, we proceeded to the State Theater to attend a performance of Stephen Sondheim’s musical, “Sweeney Todd”.
The State Theater is one of the grand old buildings in Minneapolis, and Joshua had never visited it before.
The architect was J.E.O. Pridmore, a noted architect from Chicago, who designed many theaters in his home city. The State Theater opened in 1921, and its original construction cost $1 million, an enormous sum at the time. At the time of its opening, the State Theater was the most technologically advanced—and elaborate—theater in the United States.
The theater featured the first air-conditioning system in Minneapolis. Pumps, pipes and vents delivered cool air from an artesian well 840 feet underground, keeping the temperature in the theater auditorium a constant 72 degrees.
The auditorium still is decorated with its six original chandeliers, along with its original murals and statues. The proscenium spans the full width of the auditorium, curving to a height 100 feet above the stage floor. The auditorium seats 2150 patrons.
The State Theater is a magnificent venue today, but the building did not enjoy a happy history for much of its life.
Erected for stage shows and concerts, the State Theater was turned into a movie palace in 1925. It remained a movie theater through 1958. It long featured the largest movie screen west of the Mississippi River.
The theater closed in 1958, and the building remained ill-used until 1978, when a local church bought the building and used the crumbling auditorium for worship services.
The City Of Minneapolis acquired the building in early 1989 and spent $9 million restoring the theater to its original splendor. The theater reopened in late 1991, and today it is used primarily for touring Broadway productions.
The State Theater is a fun period building to explore, and Josh liked it very much.
“Sweeney Todd”, on the other hand, was not quite such a success.
The production we saw is the National Touring Company production of the 2005 Broadway staging, directed by John Doyle. This is the stripped-down production that uses only ten actors, all of whom are required to play musical instruments onstage.
In 2004, my middle brother and I almost attended a performance of this stripped-down “Sweeney Todd” in London, where this production originated before it transferred to New York. However, my brother and I elected to see Michael Frayn’s “Democracy” that night instead.
Last night I found this John Doyle production to be unsuccessful. Requiring actors to play musical instruments onstage was a gimmick, and nothing more. It detracted from the performances of the actors, and offered an unsatisfactory musical accompaniment to boot.
It also took the audience’s attention away from the story. While audience members were marveling that an actor could play a trumpet or a tuba, however badly, they were not paying attention to the heart of the show.
That the gimmick did not destroy the show does not signify that the gimmick was successful. I suppose it would be possible to stage “Sweeney Todd” on stilts and not destroy the show, or perform it in clown costumes and not destroy the show, or pretend that the onstage characters are blind and not destroy the show. However, is this the standard to be applied? That a gimmick does not destroy a show does not mean that the gimmick remains anything other than a gimmick.
The pared-down nature of the show was further hampered by setting the action in an asylum for the insane, a most tired and unilluminating device, as well as poor costuming—“this pudding has no theme”—and performances that simply were not strong enough to carry the weight of the material.
Head and shoulders above everyone else on stage was Judy Kaye, a natural stage actor and a strong singer. Simply put, she stole the show. However, she portrayed Mrs. Lovett as a Jewish mother, which was a gross miscalculation, and surely not what the role requires. She wrung lots of laughs from the material, and camped it up no end, but her portrayal of Mrs. Lovett involved a wholesale re-tooling of the role into a burlesque stunt. It was a bizarre portrayal, and fatally unbalanced the show.
Josh and I had never seen a live production of “Sweeney Todd” until last night. For the last month and more, Josh and I had been talking about going to see the movie version of “Sweeney Todd”, but we had not had time to make it to a screening. Now, having seen a stage version, we no longer want to see the film version.
My parents saw “Sweeney Todd” on Broadway during its original run. In fact, they thought the show so intriguing that they went to see it twice, on successive nights. They fully recognized the merits of the show on the first viewing, but they also contend, to this day, that the original production would have been very grim indeed had it not been for the presence of Angela Lansbury, who completely stole the show as Mrs. Lovett.
The role of Mrs. Lovett is the best role in the show, beautifully written and beautifully composed (for a singer with a limited range). My parents insist that Angela Lansbury was a miracle, finding all the laughs but never devolving into caricature, creating a Mrs. Lovett who was witty, charming and warm, selfish, cunning and frightening, all at the same time. Perhaps it is inevitable that Mrs. Lovett steals the show in any production of “Sweeney Todd”.
“Sweeney Todd” is probably Sondheim’s most enduring show. It features a strong and fascinating story, numerous characters that come fully to life, and a supremely well-shaped plot and book.
The musical score, however, is not Sondheim’s finest, despite the fact that it is his only through-composed score. “Sweeney Todd” lacks the musical richness and musical imagination of “Pacific Overtures”, Sondheim’s most original and wondrous score. Although every possible musical device is borrowed from the genre of opera—and “Sweeney Todd” is, above all, a work of operatic technique and operatic scope, epic in scale—“Sweeney Todd” lacks the musical richness and musical conviction and musical depth and musical character and sheer musical invention that define even the weakest efforts in the genre. “Sweeney Todd” is a masterpiece of operatic construction, but a masterpiece in which the quality of the musical invention itself is paltry if not paper-thin. It is a score curiously short on substance. The score has always struck me as Benjamin Britten diluted with water, an effect only heightened when shorn of its original orchestrations, as in the current production.
Many of the numbers are, melodically, entirely feeble. Pirelli’s song, Mrs. Lovett’s parlor songs and ditties, the comic numbers involving Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett: all these numbers perform their dramatic functions beautifully, but all lack musical distinction and musical interest. The concertante numbers are especially disappointing, primarily because Sondheim had demonstrated a distinct mastery of concertante writing in “A Little Night Music”. Moreover, the music has no depth of feeling, which ultimately relegates “Sweeny Todd” eternally to the world of entertainment, not art—and this is so even though the work is very, very artfully crafted.
Every time I hear the score to “Sweeney Todd”, I always regret that another, better composer did not compose the score. Sondheim, even at his very best, never surmounts the hurdle of second-rate, and most of the time he operates on a level substantially below that standard.
As a wordsmith, Sondheim is a genius. As a composer, he is a polymath, a composer of pastiche, capable of writing acid-tinged romanticism, faux-chic inanities dripping with faux-chic sophistication, Broadway showstoppers and eleven o’clock numbers, all whipped into an unpleasant and cynical brew, a crossword puzzle of musical gestures, composed without soul.
Ultimately, it all amounts to very little.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Another Long Downward Slide
Joshua and I got a lot of rest this weekend, which was good, because both of us have been trying to throw a mild bug that made us queasy most of last week, sapping our strength.
We went to bed at 8:00 p.m. Friday night, and slept for twelve hours. We stayed home all day Saturday, not leaving the apartment even once.
We slept in on Sunday morning, and skipped church. My parents came over to our apartment Sunday morning right after church and we gave them a quick sandwich, after which my Mom headed for home while Josh and I took my Dad to the Minnesota/Wisconsin game. The game had an early start, and we barely made tip-off.
We should have stayed home. The Badgers blew out the Golden Gophers from the opening minutes, and gave Tubby Smith what must be his worst loss as head coach of the Minnesota program. Minnesota gave Indiana and Michigan State all those teams could handle on the Gophers’ home floor, but Minnesota could do nothing against Wisconsin. The game was frustrating, and dispiriting. After a 12-3 start to the season, Minnesota has now lost four of its last five games. The Big Ten is tough, and Minnesota always seems to tire and to lose focus and to wither during the course of the conference season, always ending the conference season on a long downward slide. This year is holding true to form, and fans here were hoping that Tubby Smith would break that long-term pattern.
After the game, Josh and I took my Dad home, and we stayed at my parents’ house for the rest of the afternoon and evening. My mother gave us a good dinner, and we didn’t do very much other than relax and keep the dog amused. It was another restful day, and Josh and I needed it.
Both Josh and I have very busy weeks planned at work this coming week.
It is that time of year.
We went to bed at 8:00 p.m. Friday night, and slept for twelve hours. We stayed home all day Saturday, not leaving the apartment even once.
We slept in on Sunday morning, and skipped church. My parents came over to our apartment Sunday morning right after church and we gave them a quick sandwich, after which my Mom headed for home while Josh and I took my Dad to the Minnesota/Wisconsin game. The game had an early start, and we barely made tip-off.
We should have stayed home. The Badgers blew out the Golden Gophers from the opening minutes, and gave Tubby Smith what must be his worst loss as head coach of the Minnesota program. Minnesota gave Indiana and Michigan State all those teams could handle on the Gophers’ home floor, but Minnesota could do nothing against Wisconsin. The game was frustrating, and dispiriting. After a 12-3 start to the season, Minnesota has now lost four of its last five games. The Big Ten is tough, and Minnesota always seems to tire and to lose focus and to wither during the course of the conference season, always ending the conference season on a long downward slide. This year is holding true to form, and fans here were hoping that Tubby Smith would break that long-term pattern.
After the game, Josh and I took my Dad home, and we stayed at my parents’ house for the rest of the afternoon and evening. My mother gave us a good dinner, and we didn’t do very much other than relax and keep the dog amused. It was another restful day, and Josh and I needed it.
Both Josh and I have very busy weeks planned at work this coming week.
It is that time of year.
