On Friday evening, my parents, my middle brother, and Joshua and I went to Theater In The Round, where we caught a performance of Tennessee Williams’s “Summer And Smoke”.
The production was flawless. I cannot imagine a finer production of the play. “Summer And Smoke” may have been the best production I have ever seen at Theater In The Round.
The symbolism in “Summer And Smoke” is too obvious, the reversals of fortunes of the two lead characters too pat, and the subsidiary characters more archetypes than flesh-and-blood creatures. There is also much overwriting in the play.
The play nonetheless works—if not seen too often—and we enjoyed the performance very much. The production played it straight, and did not attempt to impose a “fresh” interpretative reading onto the play.
Last season had not been a distinguished one for Theater In The Round. My recollection is that everything we saw at Theater In The Round last season was disappointing in one way or another.
It was a welcome sight Friday night, witnessing a first-class production at Theater In The Round.
_________________________________________________
On Sunday afternoon, at a violin/piano recital Josh and I attended with my parents, we overheard an unpleasant and unattractive matronly woman sharply upbraid a young man and young woman who had been discussing the very same production of “Summer And Smoke” that we had attended on Friday evening, and which the young man and young woman apparently had attended the previous night.
The young man and young woman, talking about how much they had enjoyed the production, were interrupted by the unpleasant and unattractive matronly woman, clearly a stranger to them.
The unpleasant and unattractive matronly woman proceeded curtly to inform the young man and young woman that they did not have a right to comment positively about Theater In The Round’s production of “Summer And Smoke” unless they had seen Laila Robins, Amanda Plummer, Rosamund Pike and Blythe Danner appear in the role of Alma. “Then, and only then, are you qualified to have an opinion on the production you saw—which was NOT very good, take it from me, someone who HAS seen worthwhile productions of the play—several, in fact.” During her edict, the unpleasant and unattractive matronly woman mispronounced both the first and last names of Laila Robins as well as the first name of Miss Pike, which the unpleasant and unattractive matronly woman somehow turned into “Rosamundo”.
The young man and young woman did not have an opportunity to address the unpleasant and unattractive matronly woman—whose last name is the same as a city in Ohio, and whose family fortune was earned in retailing and dry goods, and who tries to throw her weight around the Twin Cities whenever possible—because my father came to the rescue of the young man and young woman.
My father, without more, simply leaned forward in his seat—very briefly and very subtly—so that the unpleasant and unattractive matronly woman could see him. As soon as she noticed my father, the unpleasant and unattractive matronly woman, seeing that she was outranked, immediately turned away—and shortly thereafter she rose and left the building, taking her paid companion with her.
I hope she was not ill.
The recital missed by the unpleasant and unattractive matronly woman was a good one. The violinist was Baiba Skride, and the pianist was Lauma Skride, sister of the violinist.
The program was excellent.
The first half: Schubert’s Sonata In D Major, D. 384; Bartok’s Rhapsody No. 2; and Five Hungarian Dances by Brahms in the Joachim arrangement.
The second half: Szymanowski’s Mythes; and Ravel’s Tzigane.
The recital was uncommonly satisfying because the violinist played very simply; she was NOT trying to impress, NOT trying to dazzle, NOT trying to demonstrate virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake, NOT trying to overdo things, NOT trying to put on a Barnum And Bailey show. The result was that she offered one of the finest violin recitals I have ever heard, with playing that was concentrated yet relaxed, brilliant yet congenial, pointed yet understated.
Skride’s playing is somewhat reticent, attractively so, which appears to match her personality. She is not a super-virtuoso as was Maxim Vengerov prior to his injury, and she is not an intellect-based violinist as is the current German crew, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Christian Tetzlaff and Frank Peter Zimmermann. Skride does not do the big gesture, in which Joshua Bell is prone to indulge, and she does not go in for hokey physical dramatics, the province of more second-rate violinists than I could name, starting with Nikolaj Znaider.
Skride’s playing, nonetheless, is quite affecting, much more affecting than the playing of Julia Fischer or Arabella Steinbacher, two Skride Central European peers I predict Skride will outlast. Everything Skride played on Sunday afternoon was at a very high level of musicianship, understanding and accomplishment.
We had heard Skride once before. Four years ago, we had heard her play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra.
That performance had been faceless and unmemorable. In hindsight, I wonder whether the problem had been a mismatch of artists: Skride is a very subtle musician, whereas her conductor that night, Osmo Vanksa, is a very unsubtle musician.
Sunday afternoon’s performance was on a much higher level than Skride’s 2008 Mendelssohn performance.
That said, I do not wish to over-praise. Skride was probably wise to have avoided sonatas by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, probably not quite up her alley at present. The Ravel, measured and careful, operated at the outer capacity of her technique; at a quicker tempo, it surely would have veered out of control. And matters were helped for me by the fact that, the Bartok aside, I am particularly fond of every single work that Skride programmed.
Since 2008, Skride has changed instruments. Skride now plays a Stradivarius, on loan from Gidon Kremer.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
“Good Clothes Open All Doors”
The ridiculous costuming devised for the male dancer in William Forsythe’s “Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux”, danced last week by New York City Ballet in Minneapolis, made it hard for us to stifle giggles.
Whatever one was to call the male dancer’s outfit, it looked like nothing so much as a cheerleader’s skirt.
George Balanchine was always extremely particular about how his dancers were dressed and presented. During the Balanchine era, NYCB was the finest-dressed ballet company on the planet.
I don’t think Balanchine would have allowed this costume to make it onto the stage.
No Progress, No Journey, No Destination, No Arrival
On Wednesday evening, my parents, my sister-in-law, and Joshua and I went downtown to attend a performance of New York City Ballet, visiting Minneapolis for the first time since 1984.
In 2011, for domestic touring purposes, New York City Ballet created New York City Ballet Moves, an endeavor by which the company sends out to cities large and small a less-than-whole contingent of dancers and musicians, all for the purpose of familiarizing persons outside New York with NYCB’s incomparable repertory and dancers. Major, large-scale works from the gigantic NYCB repertory cannot be accommodated by New York City Ballet Moves, but important smaller-scale works that are amenable to touring are part of the package—and NYCB sends a representative repertory as well as a representative sampling of dancers to NYCB Moves venues (among “name” dancers appearing in Minneapolis were Robert Fairchild, Sterling Hyltin, Maria Kowroski and Tiler Peck).
Christopher Wheeldon’s “Polyphonia” was the first work on the NYCB program.
Created in 2001 for NYCB, and set to piano music of György Ligeti, “Polyphonia” is considered by many to be Wheeldon’s finest ballet. The ballet has traveled around the world in the eleven years since its premiere, been danced by countless companies, and is now viewed as the quintessential “abstract” Wheeldon ballet.
Whether there is anything original in “Polyphonia” is another matter. Set for eight dancers, “Polyphonia” is for all practical purposes a George Balanchine leotard ballet, drawing its inspiration from Balanchine’s spare late-1950s/early-1960s works set to thorny Stravinsky scores written after Arnold Schoenberg’s death. (Stravinsky abandoned Neo-Classicism and adopted Second Viennese School practices once Schoenberg was gone from the scene, and Alban Berg and Anton Webern safely in their graves.)
I enjoyed “Polyphonia” immensely—I enjoyed it more than any other work on Wednesday night’s program—but “Polyphonia” cannot be discussed without throwing out the word “derivative” left and right. There was nothing about “Polyphonia” that was NOT derivative, from its music to its costuming to its lighting to its construction to its steps.
My father’s assessment, offered once the curtain fell: “Tough choice: I can’t decide whether it was more watered-down Agon or watered-down Episodes. I suppose I must declare the matter a draw.”
However one apportions its source material between “Agon” and “Episodes”, “Polyphonia” received a splendid performance from NYCB dancers. NYCB is a company that can dance rings around any other company, and its virtuosity was in full flower Wednesday night.
After “Polyphonia” came the only Balanchine work of the night, “Duo Concertant”, which Josh and I had seen for the first time in January 2011. One of the lasting legacies of NYCB’s 1972 Stravinsky Festival, held one year after the composer’s death, “Duo Concertant” is a two-dancer ballet in which the dancers—famously—spend almost as much time listening to Duo Concertant, a composition for violin and piano written in 1931 and premiered in 1932, as dancing to it.
After the Balanchine, the rest of the evening was downhill—and precipitously so.
The low point was William Forsythe’s “Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux”, set to electronic music by Thom Willems, a Dutch composer (born 1955) whose music is an unthreatening, pastel version of the music of Louis Andriessen, Willems’s primary composition teacher.
In 1992, Forsythe created a five-dancer ballet for NYCB titled “Herman Schmerman”. The following year, Forsythe added a pas de deux to “Herman Schmerman”—and, in 1999, he withdrew the ballet entirely except for its belated add-on, the pas de deux, now widely-performed as a standalone work in its own right.
When he withdrew the ballet, Forsythe should have withdrawn the pas de deux as well—it looks as if it had been created for the Grand Ole Opry, and was intended to be part of some ancient Minnie Pearl cornball comedy skit—although the Minneapolis audience appeared to be fascinated by the piece, primarily because the male dancer, for reasons unknown, was costumed in a shiny gold cheerleader’s skirt.
Peter Martins’s “Zakouski” was next. Zakouski is the Russian word for hors d'oeuvres, and “Zakouski” is a pas de deux set to four short pieces of Russian music, one each by Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.
In many ways, “Zakouski” was sort of cute. It was sort of entertaining, and sort of charming, and even sort of Russian (although I could have done with less thigh-slapping). “Zakouski” was also, however, completely synthetic—and Las Vegas through and through. It must have been the sort of thing performed in upscale nightclubs in the 1940s.
Last on Wednesday evening’s program was Martins’s “Hallelujah Junction”, set to music of John Adams.
Like all Martins ballets, “Hallelujah Junction” was empty. The ballet’s saving grace, if there was one, was that it was energetic—and an eager display of energy is always preferable to a vacuum. The energy of “Hallelujah Junction” probably accounts for its current semi-popularity, although no sane person could possibly believe that “Hallelujah Junction” will be danced fifty years from now.
Martins created “Hallelujah Junction” in 2001 for the Royal Danish Ballet; the ballet was first presented by NYCB the following year. A black-and-white leotard ballet, it calls for eleven dancers, all of whom get a vigorous workout during its many gyrations.
One of the problems with “Hallelujah Junction” is its weak score. Adams is a composer of “designer music”, music created to provide a pleasant but vapid background. There is nothing challenging in Adams’s music, nothing penetrating, nothing that stops the listener’s heartbeat, nothing that engages the listener’s brain, nothing that requires the listener’s full attention.
Adams’s music is, fundamentally, trivial—as Pierre Boulez has been thoughtful enough to point out over and over—and very much representative of our peculiar times. There is much spinning of wheels, and much exertion of energy—but no progress, no journey, no destination, no arrival. It’s facile, depth-free stuff, having more to do with popular entertainment than high art.
Fifty years from now, people will find it difficult to believe that Adams was once viewed, in some quarters, as an important composer. Just as we marvel today that Morton Gould was taken seriously as a composer in the 1940s and 1950s, persons two and three generations from now will ask themselves, “How could our grandparents have not seen through such piles of piffle?”
________________________________________________
Disappointing as was the NYCB Minneapolis program—and it was, most assuredly, disappointing—and unrewarding as was the company’s first visit to the Twin Cities in 28 years, we would not have missed NYCB for any reason. NYCB was the main event of the Twin Cities 2012-2013 dance season.
The Joffrey Ballet has yet to come, and we may attend performances by one or two modern dance troupes—but the Twin Cities dance season is, basically, over, at least for us. (The ballet company from Lausanne, Switzerland, has cancelled—for financial reasons—its scheduled visit to Minneapolis.)
Josh and I certainly regret having had to miss—owing to my having come down with influenza—three NYCB programs we had planned to catch in New York earlier this month.
We missed six Balanchine/Stravinsky ballets: “Momentum pro Gesualdo”; “Movements For Piano And Orchestra”; “Stravinsky Violin Concerto”; “Apollo”; “Agon”; and “Rubies”.
We also missed Balanchine’s “Symphony In C” and Wheeldon’s new ballet, “Carillons”, as well as a seldom-revived Jerome Robbins work, “Moves”.
That was to be our primary bout of ballet-going for the year.
And we had to miss out.
NYCB’s Minneapolis visit was not a satisfactory substitute for what we had planned to see in New York.
________________________________________________
Minneapolis is said to have the best modern-dance audience in the country outside New York.
Whether or not such reputation comports with truth, the claim is one of the platitudes of our day.
Minneapolis, on the other hand, does not have a serious ballet audience—and it certainly does not have a Balanchine audience. On Wednesday evening, “Duo Concertant” earned the most muted applause of the night, while the Forsythe and Martins ballets, nothing more than goop, received the most enthusiastic and sustained applause.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune did not even bother to review NYCB’s Minneapolis performances. The Saint Paul Pioneer-Press did publish a review—and the review was laughable, dismissing the Balanchine ballet in half a sentence (“feel[ing] of excessive formalism”, “didn’t feel as sharply focused”) while heaping praise on the Forsythe and Martins mud puddles.
If the Twin Cities were home to a major regional ballet company nurtured on Balanchine repertory, such embarrassments might be avoided.
However, in the Great Plains states, only Kansas City and Tulsa have managed to sustain major ballet companies for any reasonable period of time.
Elsewhere on The Great Plains, ballet companies have died out, or never taken root.
One would think that Chicago, Minneapolis and Saint Louis, three cities with sufficient populations and sufficient wealth, would be able easily to sustain Balanchine companies—but none of the three cities has ever proven itself hospitable to classical ballet.
What do Kansas City and Tulsa have that Chicago, Minneapolis and Saint Louis lack?
In 2011, for domestic touring purposes, New York City Ballet created New York City Ballet Moves, an endeavor by which the company sends out to cities large and small a less-than-whole contingent of dancers and musicians, all for the purpose of familiarizing persons outside New York with NYCB’s incomparable repertory and dancers. Major, large-scale works from the gigantic NYCB repertory cannot be accommodated by New York City Ballet Moves, but important smaller-scale works that are amenable to touring are part of the package—and NYCB sends a representative repertory as well as a representative sampling of dancers to NYCB Moves venues (among “name” dancers appearing in Minneapolis were Robert Fairchild, Sterling Hyltin, Maria Kowroski and Tiler Peck).
Christopher Wheeldon’s “Polyphonia” was the first work on the NYCB program.
Created in 2001 for NYCB, and set to piano music of György Ligeti, “Polyphonia” is considered by many to be Wheeldon’s finest ballet. The ballet has traveled around the world in the eleven years since its premiere, been danced by countless companies, and is now viewed as the quintessential “abstract” Wheeldon ballet.
Whether there is anything original in “Polyphonia” is another matter. Set for eight dancers, “Polyphonia” is for all practical purposes a George Balanchine leotard ballet, drawing its inspiration from Balanchine’s spare late-1950s/early-1960s works set to thorny Stravinsky scores written after Arnold Schoenberg’s death. (Stravinsky abandoned Neo-Classicism and adopted Second Viennese School practices once Schoenberg was gone from the scene, and Alban Berg and Anton Webern safely in their graves.)
I enjoyed “Polyphonia” immensely—I enjoyed it more than any other work on Wednesday night’s program—but “Polyphonia” cannot be discussed without throwing out the word “derivative” left and right. There was nothing about “Polyphonia” that was NOT derivative, from its music to its costuming to its lighting to its construction to its steps.
My father’s assessment, offered once the curtain fell: “Tough choice: I can’t decide whether it was more watered-down Agon or watered-down Episodes. I suppose I must declare the matter a draw.”
However one apportions its source material between “Agon” and “Episodes”, “Polyphonia” received a splendid performance from NYCB dancers. NYCB is a company that can dance rings around any other company, and its virtuosity was in full flower Wednesday night.
After “Polyphonia” came the only Balanchine work of the night, “Duo Concertant”, which Josh and I had seen for the first time in January 2011. One of the lasting legacies of NYCB’s 1972 Stravinsky Festival, held one year after the composer’s death, “Duo Concertant” is a two-dancer ballet in which the dancers—famously—spend almost as much time listening to Duo Concertant, a composition for violin and piano written in 1931 and premiered in 1932, as dancing to it.
After the Balanchine, the rest of the evening was downhill—and precipitously so.
The low point was William Forsythe’s “Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux”, set to electronic music by Thom Willems, a Dutch composer (born 1955) whose music is an unthreatening, pastel version of the music of Louis Andriessen, Willems’s primary composition teacher.
In 1992, Forsythe created a five-dancer ballet for NYCB titled “Herman Schmerman”. The following year, Forsythe added a pas de deux to “Herman Schmerman”—and, in 1999, he withdrew the ballet entirely except for its belated add-on, the pas de deux, now widely-performed as a standalone work in its own right.
When he withdrew the ballet, Forsythe should have withdrawn the pas de deux as well—it looks as if it had been created for the Grand Ole Opry, and was intended to be part of some ancient Minnie Pearl cornball comedy skit—although the Minneapolis audience appeared to be fascinated by the piece, primarily because the male dancer, for reasons unknown, was costumed in a shiny gold cheerleader’s skirt.
Peter Martins’s “Zakouski” was next. Zakouski is the Russian word for hors d'oeuvres, and “Zakouski” is a pas de deux set to four short pieces of Russian music, one each by Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.
In many ways, “Zakouski” was sort of cute. It was sort of entertaining, and sort of charming, and even sort of Russian (although I could have done with less thigh-slapping). “Zakouski” was also, however, completely synthetic—and Las Vegas through and through. It must have been the sort of thing performed in upscale nightclubs in the 1940s.
Last on Wednesday evening’s program was Martins’s “Hallelujah Junction”, set to music of John Adams.
Like all Martins ballets, “Hallelujah Junction” was empty. The ballet’s saving grace, if there was one, was that it was energetic—and an eager display of energy is always preferable to a vacuum. The energy of “Hallelujah Junction” probably accounts for its current semi-popularity, although no sane person could possibly believe that “Hallelujah Junction” will be danced fifty years from now.
Martins created “Hallelujah Junction” in 2001 for the Royal Danish Ballet; the ballet was first presented by NYCB the following year. A black-and-white leotard ballet, it calls for eleven dancers, all of whom get a vigorous workout during its many gyrations.
One of the problems with “Hallelujah Junction” is its weak score. Adams is a composer of “designer music”, music created to provide a pleasant but vapid background. There is nothing challenging in Adams’s music, nothing penetrating, nothing that stops the listener’s heartbeat, nothing that engages the listener’s brain, nothing that requires the listener’s full attention.
Adams’s music is, fundamentally, trivial—as Pierre Boulez has been thoughtful enough to point out over and over—and very much representative of our peculiar times. There is much spinning of wheels, and much exertion of energy—but no progress, no journey, no destination, no arrival. It’s facile, depth-free stuff, having more to do with popular entertainment than high art.
Fifty years from now, people will find it difficult to believe that Adams was once viewed, in some quarters, as an important composer. Just as we marvel today that Morton Gould was taken seriously as a composer in the 1940s and 1950s, persons two and three generations from now will ask themselves, “How could our grandparents have not seen through such piles of piffle?”
________________________________________________
Disappointing as was the NYCB Minneapolis program—and it was, most assuredly, disappointing—and unrewarding as was the company’s first visit to the Twin Cities in 28 years, we would not have missed NYCB for any reason. NYCB was the main event of the Twin Cities 2012-2013 dance season.
The Joffrey Ballet has yet to come, and we may attend performances by one or two modern dance troupes—but the Twin Cities dance season is, basically, over, at least for us. (The ballet company from Lausanne, Switzerland, has cancelled—for financial reasons—its scheduled visit to Minneapolis.)
Josh and I certainly regret having had to miss—owing to my having come down with influenza—three NYCB programs we had planned to catch in New York earlier this month.
We missed six Balanchine/Stravinsky ballets: “Momentum pro Gesualdo”; “Movements For Piano And Orchestra”; “Stravinsky Violin Concerto”; “Apollo”; “Agon”; and “Rubies”.
We also missed Balanchine’s “Symphony In C” and Wheeldon’s new ballet, “Carillons”, as well as a seldom-revived Jerome Robbins work, “Moves”.
That was to be our primary bout of ballet-going for the year.
And we had to miss out.
NYCB’s Minneapolis visit was not a satisfactory substitute for what we had planned to see in New York.
________________________________________________
Minneapolis is said to have the best modern-dance audience in the country outside New York.
Whether or not such reputation comports with truth, the claim is one of the platitudes of our day.
Minneapolis, on the other hand, does not have a serious ballet audience—and it certainly does not have a Balanchine audience. On Wednesday evening, “Duo Concertant” earned the most muted applause of the night, while the Forsythe and Martins ballets, nothing more than goop, received the most enthusiastic and sustained applause.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune did not even bother to review NYCB’s Minneapolis performances. The Saint Paul Pioneer-Press did publish a review—and the review was laughable, dismissing the Balanchine ballet in half a sentence (“feel[ing] of excessive formalism”, “didn’t feel as sharply focused”) while heaping praise on the Forsythe and Martins mud puddles.
If the Twin Cities were home to a major regional ballet company nurtured on Balanchine repertory, such embarrassments might be avoided.
However, in the Great Plains states, only Kansas City and Tulsa have managed to sustain major ballet companies for any reasonable period of time.
Elsewhere on The Great Plains, ballet companies have died out, or never taken root.
One would think that Chicago, Minneapolis and Saint Louis, three cities with sufficient populations and sufficient wealth, would be able easily to sustain Balanchine companies—but none of the three cities has ever proven itself hospitable to classical ballet.
What do Kansas City and Tulsa have that Chicago, Minneapolis and Saint Louis lack?
Saturday, October 27, 2012
USS Bunker Hill
346 Americans died as a result of the Kamikaze attacks, 43 went missing and 264 were injured.
Miraculously, the carrier remained afloat, but was no longer of use for the remainder of the war.
This photograph, one of the most famous and most dramatic taken during the war in the Pacific, has always amazed me. What kind of person would give thought to taking photographs amidst carnage while hundreds of men were in peril and in need of immediate assistance?
Friday, October 26, 2012
Between “Chart Of Anatomy” And “The Eccentricities Of A Nightingale”
“Summer And Smoke”, tonight at Theater In The Round.
“Summer And Smoke” is one of my favorite Tennessee Williams plays, although it may be coldly and dispassionately criticized without end.
I am also unaccountably fond of “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” and “Sweet Bird Of Youth”, neither of which stands up to intense examination.
Williams wrote but one genuine masterpiece, “A Streetcar Named Desire”—and “Streetcar” will surely render the playwright immortal. It is, I believe, the finest play ever written by an American, finer even than “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, as well as THE great post-war play, in any language.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Richly Contemplative
On Friday evening, my parents and Joshua and I went to The Cathedral Of Saint Paul to hear VocalEssence perform music of Mendelssohn and Bruckner.
VocalEssence used to be known as The Plymouth Music Series. The Plymouth Music Series was founded at Plymouth Congregational Church in 1969, and retained its original designation until nine or ten years ago, when it changed its name to VocalEssence. Philip Brunelle has been in charge of Plymouth Music Series/VocalEssence since inception.
Outside the Twin Cities, the organization is known for two notable opera recordings: a recording of Benjamin Britten’s “Paul Bunyan” for Virgin Classics, released in 1988; and a recording of Aaron Copland’s “The Tender Land” for the same label, released in 1990. Both recordings remain in print.
It has been years and years since we attended a VocalEssence event. In recent years, the organization has more or less fallen by the wayside, having largely abandoned classical music in favor of multiculturalism. The ensemble has become so irrelevant, I cannot recall the last time I heard anyone so much as mention a VocalEssence performance. I suspect the organization has seen much of its original audience walk away—and I predict that VocalEssence will not be around in another ten or twenty years.
It was the Bruckner Mass No. 2 and guest conductor Helmuth Rilling that attracted us to Friday night’s performance.
Like Haydn’s final mass, the “Harmoniemesse”, Bruckner’s second mass omits strings; it is scored for winds and brass only. Using an eight-part mixed chorus (necessary for the two-part canon utilizing eight-part counterpoint in the Sanctus) and dispensing with soloists, the Mass No. 2 is the shortest and most concentrated of the three Bruckner masses, lasting just under forty minutes in most performances.
The Mass No. 2 is also the most-performed of the Bruckner masses, heard with some frequency all over the world in both concert hall and cathedral. Many Bruckner scholars, the late Robert Simpson among them, have declared the Second to be the most profound and most sublime of Bruckner’s masses, what with its “slow, flowing counterpoint” and “long suspensions and clear harmony”. Myself, I have always admired the Second—it is a glorious work—yet I like the Third at least as much.
The Bruckner Mass No. 2 is familiar to music-lovers from the famous Eugen Jochum recording. Nonetheless, there have been another dozen studio recordings of the work issued by major labels using major artists. Noted conductors who have made commercial studio recordings of the work include Daniel Barenboim, Matthew Best, Marcus Creed, Wolfgang Gönnenwein, Simon Halsey, Philippe Herreweghe, Stephen Layton, Roger Norrington, Valeri Polyansky, Heinz Rögner, Zubin Mehta—and Rilling himself (who recorded the work twice, in 1966 and again in 1996).
In addition, there are countless “live” versions of Bruckner’s Mass No. 2 taken from performances in Europe, Japan and the U.S., including a version made in Saint Paul in 1970 as well as versions under Herbert Von Karajan (Salzburg 1975) and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (Saarbrucken 2002).
We enjoyed the performance immensely. The chorus was competent, and the orchestra was competent. Cathedral reverberation in no way detracted from the performance, although I would have preferred the clarity of concert-hall sound. It was a warm, richly-contemplative work we heard, performed in an apt and atmospheric venue. (Although the first performance of the Mass No. 2 had occurred out-of-doors, the composer knew that future performances would occur in liturgical settings.)
Prior to the Mass, VocalEssence offered four Bruckner motets and two Mendelssohn motets. They were as gravely beautiful as the music of the Mass itself.
It was a rewarding night in Saint Paul, the most enjoyable concert we have attended in some time.
We last heard Rilling four years ago, when he conducted the Minnesota Orchestra and Minnesota Chorale in choral music of Brahms. Rilling is fundamentally unimaginative, but he is fundamentally good—and good is sufficient in a live performance (whereas good, without more, does not count for much in recordings).
I wonder whether Friday evening was our last occasion to hear Rilling. He is now 79 years old, and looks to be frail. How many more times does he plan to cross the ocean, and how many more Twin Cities engagements does he plan to accept in future?
In April, VocalEssence will for the first time revive its 1988 production of “Paul Bunyan”, still remembered with affection in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. My parents did not attend any of the 1988 “Paul Bunyan” performances, so my parents have no recollections to call forth—but I have talked to others who caught one or more of those 1988 performances, and they recall “Paul Bunyan” as the most important project in the history of Plymouth Music Series/VocalEssence.
We may have to catch one of the “Paul Bunyan” performances.
VocalEssence used to be known as The Plymouth Music Series. The Plymouth Music Series was founded at Plymouth Congregational Church in 1969, and retained its original designation until nine or ten years ago, when it changed its name to VocalEssence. Philip Brunelle has been in charge of Plymouth Music Series/VocalEssence since inception.
Outside the Twin Cities, the organization is known for two notable opera recordings: a recording of Benjamin Britten’s “Paul Bunyan” for Virgin Classics, released in 1988; and a recording of Aaron Copland’s “The Tender Land” for the same label, released in 1990. Both recordings remain in print.
It has been years and years since we attended a VocalEssence event. In recent years, the organization has more or less fallen by the wayside, having largely abandoned classical music in favor of multiculturalism. The ensemble has become so irrelevant, I cannot recall the last time I heard anyone so much as mention a VocalEssence performance. I suspect the organization has seen much of its original audience walk away—and I predict that VocalEssence will not be around in another ten or twenty years.
It was the Bruckner Mass No. 2 and guest conductor Helmuth Rilling that attracted us to Friday night’s performance.
Like Haydn’s final mass, the “Harmoniemesse”, Bruckner’s second mass omits strings; it is scored for winds and brass only. Using an eight-part mixed chorus (necessary for the two-part canon utilizing eight-part counterpoint in the Sanctus) and dispensing with soloists, the Mass No. 2 is the shortest and most concentrated of the three Bruckner masses, lasting just under forty minutes in most performances.
The Mass No. 2 is also the most-performed of the Bruckner masses, heard with some frequency all over the world in both concert hall and cathedral. Many Bruckner scholars, the late Robert Simpson among them, have declared the Second to be the most profound and most sublime of Bruckner’s masses, what with its “slow, flowing counterpoint” and “long suspensions and clear harmony”. Myself, I have always admired the Second—it is a glorious work—yet I like the Third at least as much.
The Bruckner Mass No. 2 is familiar to music-lovers from the famous Eugen Jochum recording. Nonetheless, there have been another dozen studio recordings of the work issued by major labels using major artists. Noted conductors who have made commercial studio recordings of the work include Daniel Barenboim, Matthew Best, Marcus Creed, Wolfgang Gönnenwein, Simon Halsey, Philippe Herreweghe, Stephen Layton, Roger Norrington, Valeri Polyansky, Heinz Rögner, Zubin Mehta—and Rilling himself (who recorded the work twice, in 1966 and again in 1996).
In addition, there are countless “live” versions of Bruckner’s Mass No. 2 taken from performances in Europe, Japan and the U.S., including a version made in Saint Paul in 1970 as well as versions under Herbert Von Karajan (Salzburg 1975) and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (Saarbrucken 2002).
We enjoyed the performance immensely. The chorus was competent, and the orchestra was competent. Cathedral reverberation in no way detracted from the performance, although I would have preferred the clarity of concert-hall sound. It was a warm, richly-contemplative work we heard, performed in an apt and atmospheric venue. (Although the first performance of the Mass No. 2 had occurred out-of-doors, the composer knew that future performances would occur in liturgical settings.)
Prior to the Mass, VocalEssence offered four Bruckner motets and two Mendelssohn motets. They were as gravely beautiful as the music of the Mass itself.
It was a rewarding night in Saint Paul, the most enjoyable concert we have attended in some time.
We last heard Rilling four years ago, when he conducted the Minnesota Orchestra and Minnesota Chorale in choral music of Brahms. Rilling is fundamentally unimaginative, but he is fundamentally good—and good is sufficient in a live performance (whereas good, without more, does not count for much in recordings).
I wonder whether Friday evening was our last occasion to hear Rilling. He is now 79 years old, and looks to be frail. How many more times does he plan to cross the ocean, and how many more Twin Cities engagements does he plan to accept in future?
In April, VocalEssence will for the first time revive its 1988 production of “Paul Bunyan”, still remembered with affection in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. My parents did not attend any of the 1988 “Paul Bunyan” performances, so my parents have no recollections to call forth—but I have talked to others who caught one or more of those 1988 performances, and they recall “Paul Bunyan” as the most important project in the history of Plymouth Music Series/VocalEssence.
We may have to catch one of the “Paul Bunyan” performances.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
“The Well-Digger’s Daughter”
“The Well-Digger’s Daughter” initiated a short-term burst of movie-going for us.
We are not regular filmgoers.
“The War Of The Buttons”
On three of the last six Sundays, we have seen a French film at Edina Cinema.
My mother likes French cinema, but it is not often we see three films—of any nationality—in short succession.
