Saturday, June 02, 2012
Friday, June 01, 2012
Kempff And Furtwängler
Wilhelm Kempff and Wilhelm Furtwängler at the piano.
The two often played four-handed together. They especially loved to play four-handed Schubert.
From their visages, my guess is that the photograph was taken circa 1947-1949.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Speaking Of Fifth-Tier Pianists . . .
As long as I am on the topic of fifth-tier pianists, I submit a query: why would a professional pianist, albeit a fifth-tier pianist, publish on his website a photograph such as the one below? The photograph positively screams, “I am not a serious artist.”
The man in the photograph, an Israeli, is known, if he is known at all, not for his musical talent but for the men who have passed through his life.
For four or five years, the man was associated with oddball Danish/Israeli violinist Nikolaj Znaider, ten years his junior, until that association was abruptly terminated in 2003 or thereabouts.
More recently, the man has been associated with oddball New York architect Charles Renfro, who at least is more or less the pianist’s age.
The question remains: what goes through a person’s mind—a 47-year-old person’s mind, I might stress—when he decides to publish such a foolish photograph of himself? (And there are many, many more such foolish photographs on this man's website.)
One cannot imagine Maurizio Pollini doing such a thing.
The man in the photograph, an Israeli, is known, if he is known at all, not for his musical talent but for the men who have passed through his life.
For four or five years, the man was associated with oddball Danish/Israeli violinist Nikolaj Znaider, ten years his junior, until that association was abruptly terminated in 2003 or thereabouts.
More recently, the man has been associated with oddball New York architect Charles Renfro, who at least is more or less the pianist’s age.
The question remains: what goes through a person’s mind—a 47-year-old person’s mind, I might stress—when he decides to publish such a foolish photograph of himself? (And there are many, many more such foolish photographs on this man's website.)
One cannot imagine Maurizio Pollini doing such a thing.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
A Mozart Conductor
On Saturday night, Joshua and I took Josh’s sister to Saint Paul for a concert by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Conductor Hans Graf led the ensemble in a program centered upon the music of Mozart.
Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 was the Mozart work on the first half of the program. Guest soloist was pianist Jeffrey Kahane.
I have never understood why Kahane has been able to sustain a career, minor though it is. As a pianist, he has nothing to offer beyond garden-variety keyboard skills and journeyman musicianship. I am amazed he gets engagements.
On Saturday night, Kahane’s Mozart was terminally dull. I don’t know how Graf, an accomplished Mozart conductor, managed to get through the performance without grimacing.
Kahane brought no style and no personality to the Mozart, and he brought no depth of musicianship. Kahane simply played the notes—and not especially cleanly—while countless opportunities for rhythmic and harmonic exploration passed him by. Kahane’s performance was no better than a student performance.
Exactly one week earlier, we had heard Yevgeny Sudbin play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 with the Minnesota Orchestra. Sudbin’s Mozart had been unsuccessful, too, but at least Sudbin’s performance had been the work of an artist in possession of a sparkling technique and a genuine keyboard touch. Moreover, Sudbin had displayed, in fleeting moments, a mind willing to seek out the content of one of Mozart’s most miraculous works. Where Sudbin had been frustrating and unsatisfactory, Kahane was . . . a blank, an artist with nothing to bring to the table.
After intermission, the orchestra played Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. Within minutes, memories of the lackluster Kahane were banished.
The performance was excellent, admirable in every way. It was one of the finest performances of a Mozart symphony I have ever heard.
Graf did nothing unusual. He did not adopt odd tempi or ever-changing tempi. He did not play around with inner voices. He did not endeavor to layer Romantic expression onto a Classical work. He did not attempt to import fury and bite from the original-instrument movement.
And yet the performance was bracing, even startling. The entire performance, I kept asking myself, in wonder, “Why is this performance so good?”
The answer, I believe, lies in one simple fact: Graf is a Mozart conductor. Graf has been conducting Mozart his entire life, and he understands Mozart’s Classical poise and he understands the ever-shifting emotional undercurrents that flow beneath Mozart’s immaculate surface.
Graf may be the finest living Mozart conductor, the Josef Krips or Karl Böhm of our age. I can think of no other living person that conducts Mozart at so high a level. I would earnestly like to hear Graf in the Mozart operas.
I last heard Graf more than five years ago, when he led the Houston Symphony in its home hall. I heard a program (Dukas-Debussy-Dvorak) probably not ideal for Graf, and I was unsure what to make of him that evening.
I am still unsure what to make of Graf, but he clearly is an exceptional Mozart conductor.
Graf will end his tenure in Houston at the conclusion of the 2012-2013 season. Graf’s years in Houston have not attracted much attention outside the state of Texas. It is possible that Graf has never received his due in the United States.
Graf is one of three Austrians currently in charge of major American orchestras. As a Classicist, Graf is superior to the other two, Pittsburgh’s Manfred Honeck and Cleveland’s Franz Welser-Möst. Whether Graf’s strengths are as strong in Romantic repertory or colorful nationalistic repertory or 20th-Century repertory, I do not know.
Saturday night’s concert began with a performance of Edgar Varèse’s “Octandre”, a seven-minute neo-Stravinsky work for eight instruments written in 1923.
The second half of the concert began with a performance of Varèse’s four-minute composition for solo flute, “Density 21.5”, written in 1936.
Lip service to what once passed for modernism was paid.
Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 was the Mozart work on the first half of the program. Guest soloist was pianist Jeffrey Kahane.
I have never understood why Kahane has been able to sustain a career, minor though it is. As a pianist, he has nothing to offer beyond garden-variety keyboard skills and journeyman musicianship. I am amazed he gets engagements.
On Saturday night, Kahane’s Mozart was terminally dull. I don’t know how Graf, an accomplished Mozart conductor, managed to get through the performance without grimacing.
Kahane brought no style and no personality to the Mozart, and he brought no depth of musicianship. Kahane simply played the notes—and not especially cleanly—while countless opportunities for rhythmic and harmonic exploration passed him by. Kahane’s performance was no better than a student performance.
Exactly one week earlier, we had heard Yevgeny Sudbin play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 with the Minnesota Orchestra. Sudbin’s Mozart had been unsuccessful, too, but at least Sudbin’s performance had been the work of an artist in possession of a sparkling technique and a genuine keyboard touch. Moreover, Sudbin had displayed, in fleeting moments, a mind willing to seek out the content of one of Mozart’s most miraculous works. Where Sudbin had been frustrating and unsatisfactory, Kahane was . . . a blank, an artist with nothing to bring to the table.
After intermission, the orchestra played Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. Within minutes, memories of the lackluster Kahane were banished.
The performance was excellent, admirable in every way. It was one of the finest performances of a Mozart symphony I have ever heard.
Graf did nothing unusual. He did not adopt odd tempi or ever-changing tempi. He did not play around with inner voices. He did not endeavor to layer Romantic expression onto a Classical work. He did not attempt to import fury and bite from the original-instrument movement.
And yet the performance was bracing, even startling. The entire performance, I kept asking myself, in wonder, “Why is this performance so good?”
The answer, I believe, lies in one simple fact: Graf is a Mozart conductor. Graf has been conducting Mozart his entire life, and he understands Mozart’s Classical poise and he understands the ever-shifting emotional undercurrents that flow beneath Mozart’s immaculate surface.
Graf may be the finest living Mozart conductor, the Josef Krips or Karl Böhm of our age. I can think of no other living person that conducts Mozart at so high a level. I would earnestly like to hear Graf in the Mozart operas.
I last heard Graf more than five years ago, when he led the Houston Symphony in its home hall. I heard a program (Dukas-Debussy-Dvorak) probably not ideal for Graf, and I was unsure what to make of him that evening.
I am still unsure what to make of Graf, but he clearly is an exceptional Mozart conductor.
Graf will end his tenure in Houston at the conclusion of the 2012-2013 season. Graf’s years in Houston have not attracted much attention outside the state of Texas. It is possible that Graf has never received his due in the United States.
Graf is one of three Austrians currently in charge of major American orchestras. As a Classicist, Graf is superior to the other two, Pittsburgh’s Manfred Honeck and Cleveland’s Franz Welser-Möst. Whether Graf’s strengths are as strong in Romantic repertory or colorful nationalistic repertory or 20th-Century repertory, I do not know.
Saturday night’s concert began with a performance of Edgar Varèse’s “Octandre”, a seven-minute neo-Stravinsky work for eight instruments written in 1923.
The second half of the concert began with a performance of Varèse’s four-minute composition for solo flute, “Density 21.5”, written in 1936.
Lip service to what once passed for modernism was paid.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
“Not So Much A Dwelling Place As A Battlefield”
The front exterior of Carlyle’s House, Chelsea, London.
Thomas Carlyle lived in the house from 1834 until his death in 1881.
In 1853, Carlyle added a light-filled study on the fourth floor. It was in this room that he wrote his massive six-volume biography of Frederick The Great and pondered the great questions of the day.
The study is the most interesting and most beautiful room in the house. It was intended to provide Carlyle with a quiet, peaceful, isolated space in which to contemplate and write.
The study was soundproofed insofar as possible, since Carlyle intensely disliked the strolling organ grinders that plagued the streets of London during the 19th Century. The soundproofing was not entirely successful.
Much has been written about Carlyle’s life. His marriage has attracted particular scrutiny.
In many respects, the relationship was entirely successful. However, there were significant tensions within the marriage not addressed and resolved for the duration of the union. Neither Carlyle nor his wife was a figure particularly easy to like.
Samuel Butler wrote: “It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another, and so make only two people miserable and not four.”
Angles In America
“Angels In America” is a second-rate play written by a second-rate playwright who happens to be gay, and because he has written a play about being gay, and about AIDS, no one—and I mean no one—is going to call “Angels In America” the overwrought, coarse, posturing, formulaic mess that it is.
Lee Siegel, writing in The New Republic in 2003
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I, for one, would be happy to call both play and playwright second-rate—except neither play nor playwright rises to that level.
Lee Siegel, writing in The New Republic in 2003
________________________________________________
I, for one, would be happy to call both play and playwright second-rate—except neither play nor playwright rises to that level.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Coast Scene With The Rape Of Europa
Claude Gellée (“Claude Lorrain”) (1604/1605-1682)
Coast Scene With The Rape Of Europa
1667
The Royal Collection, London
Oil On Canvas
53 13/16 Inches By 40 5/8 Inches
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This painting is the artist’s fifth and final—and finest—version of the subject.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Sibelius, Again
The Sibelius onslaught in the Twin Cities continues.
Osmo Vanska will conclude his ninth season as Music Director of the Minnesota Orchestra next month, and his constant programming of the music of Jean Sibelius has not yet been halted.
I had assumed that Vanska would begin to de-emphasize Sibelius after two or three seasons here, but such has never happened. Sibelius remains the cornerstone of Vanska’s Minneapolis repertory.
Vanska is a fine Sibelius conductor, but he is not a great one—and it becomes tiresome to read, week after week, of Vanska’s greatness in the music of his countryman, a perpetual theme of local newspaper writers.
Vanska is too fierce and too interventionist in Sibelius, just as he is too fierce and too interventionist in everything. Vanska heightens emotion to extreme, he over-emphasizes detail, and he loses the long line. Vanska’s Sibelius is Sibelius on steroids.
I have missed six of Vanska’s nine seasons in Minneapolis, having lived three of those seasons in Washington and three of those seasons in Boston. However, my poor parents have had to endure all nine Vanska seasons—and I think they have had their fill, for now, of Vanska in Sibelius.
I thought Vanska would have moved on to other 20th-Century Finnish composers by now, composers such as Einar Englund, Joonas Kokkonen, Einojuhani Rautavaara and Aulis Sallinen, all of whom would, I believe, go over well here. However, Vanska has ignored those fine composers entirely, choosing to program instead the vastly inferior Kalevi Aho, whose work Vanska has championed in Minneapolis. At least we are being spared the energizer bunny, Magnus Lindberg, whose music has a very frantic surface but is content-free.
Last evening, Joshua and I took Josh’s sister to Orchestra Hall to hear Vanska lead the Minnesota Orchestra. The centerpiece of the program was, of course, Sibelius. Last night, it was the Symphony No. 1.
The Sibelius First is a fully-mature symphony, even though the composer was to evolve significantly over the following two decades. It is a grand, noble work, with beautiful themes worked out with great mastery.
Last night’s performance unquestionably was at a very high level, but Vanska refused to allow the music to speak for itself. He played with dynamics to excess, sought out inner voices to emphasize, and altered tempi in ways that made no sense. A single pulse must be maintained within each movement, no matter the rubato, yet Vanska was all over the place in the first and fourth movements. Because of the conductor’s minute-by-minute approach to the score, the symphony lost its cumulative power. The performance was nothing more than a succession of surface effects—many of which were undeniably powerful while they were occurring.
The first half of last night’s program was devoted to Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 (“Classical”) and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24.
The Prokofiev was played straight, and was unobjectionable. The orchestra’s ensemble was not as clean as it should have been in the first and fourth movements. I suspect the Prokofiev had been shortchanged in rehearsal.
I disliked the Mozart.
The guest soloist was Yevgeny Sudbin, a Russian pianist who shares a record label with Vanska—and who, consequently, appears in Minneapolis too often.
Almost a year ago, Josh and I heard Sudbin play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Minnesota Orchestra. I did not know what to make of Sudbin after that concert.
Having heard Sudbin in Mozart last night, I still do not know what to make of him. Sudbin is, without doubt, a capable instrumentalist, but he has demonstrated nothing special—and no personality whatsoever—the two times I have heard him. I doubt that the music of Beethoven and Mozart shows Sudbin to best advantage. He probably should be playing flashy Russian repertory at present.
Josh’s sister enjoyed the concert.
That was very important to us, as we had had no wish to provide her with activities she would not enjoy.
Osmo Vanska will conclude his ninth season as Music Director of the Minnesota Orchestra next month, and his constant programming of the music of Jean Sibelius has not yet been halted.
I had assumed that Vanska would begin to de-emphasize Sibelius after two or three seasons here, but such has never happened. Sibelius remains the cornerstone of Vanska’s Minneapolis repertory.
Vanska is a fine Sibelius conductor, but he is not a great one—and it becomes tiresome to read, week after week, of Vanska’s greatness in the music of his countryman, a perpetual theme of local newspaper writers.
Vanska is too fierce and too interventionist in Sibelius, just as he is too fierce and too interventionist in everything. Vanska heightens emotion to extreme, he over-emphasizes detail, and he loses the long line. Vanska’s Sibelius is Sibelius on steroids.
I have missed six of Vanska’s nine seasons in Minneapolis, having lived three of those seasons in Washington and three of those seasons in Boston. However, my poor parents have had to endure all nine Vanska seasons—and I think they have had their fill, for now, of Vanska in Sibelius.
I thought Vanska would have moved on to other 20th-Century Finnish composers by now, composers such as Einar Englund, Joonas Kokkonen, Einojuhani Rautavaara and Aulis Sallinen, all of whom would, I believe, go over well here. However, Vanska has ignored those fine composers entirely, choosing to program instead the vastly inferior Kalevi Aho, whose work Vanska has championed in Minneapolis. At least we are being spared the energizer bunny, Magnus Lindberg, whose music has a very frantic surface but is content-free.
Last evening, Joshua and I took Josh’s sister to Orchestra Hall to hear Vanska lead the Minnesota Orchestra. The centerpiece of the program was, of course, Sibelius. Last night, it was the Symphony No. 1.
The Sibelius First is a fully-mature symphony, even though the composer was to evolve significantly over the following two decades. It is a grand, noble work, with beautiful themes worked out with great mastery.
Last night’s performance unquestionably was at a very high level, but Vanska refused to allow the music to speak for itself. He played with dynamics to excess, sought out inner voices to emphasize, and altered tempi in ways that made no sense. A single pulse must be maintained within each movement, no matter the rubato, yet Vanska was all over the place in the first and fourth movements. Because of the conductor’s minute-by-minute approach to the score, the symphony lost its cumulative power. The performance was nothing more than a succession of surface effects—many of which were undeniably powerful while they were occurring.
The first half of last night’s program was devoted to Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 (“Classical”) and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24.
The Prokofiev was played straight, and was unobjectionable. The orchestra’s ensemble was not as clean as it should have been in the first and fourth movements. I suspect the Prokofiev had been shortchanged in rehearsal.
I disliked the Mozart.
The guest soloist was Yevgeny Sudbin, a Russian pianist who shares a record label with Vanska—and who, consequently, appears in Minneapolis too often.
Almost a year ago, Josh and I heard Sudbin play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Minnesota Orchestra. I did not know what to make of Sudbin after that concert.
Having heard Sudbin in Mozart last night, I still do not know what to make of him. Sudbin is, without doubt, a capable instrumentalist, but he has demonstrated nothing special—and no personality whatsoever—the two times I have heard him. I doubt that the music of Beethoven and Mozart shows Sudbin to best advantage. He probably should be playing flashy Russian repertory at present.
Josh’s sister enjoyed the concert.
That was very important to us, as we had had no wish to provide her with activities she would not enjoy.
Blowhard, Bumpkin, Slut, Wimp
The blowhard, the bumpkin, the slut and the wimp: birdbrains all, characters in Donald Margulies’s “Time Stands Still”, as played at The Guthrie Theater.
Margulies is also a birdbrain, so at least he was writing about what he knows.
