Impressive Bruckner 7th fills Arlene Schnitzer with waves of sonic goodness

The symphonic works of Anton Bruckner are played all too rarely in Portland. To the best of my knowledge only the Bruckner Seventh has been performed in the last 30 years. But based on what I heard on Saturday evening, November 17, at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, the Oregon Symphony is an excellent Bruckner band. Under the baton of guest conductor Alexander Soddy, the orchestra gave an incisive, brilliant, and emotionally rewarding performance of the Seventh.

The orchestra undertook the hour-long piece with breath-taking alacrity, scaling its monumental heights and descending into the depths as if they were nothing at all. Under the baton of Soddy, who is primarily known for his work as an opera conductor, the music began in an unhurried fashion with the massive architecture of sound unfolding in a natural, organic way. Soddy kept the tension under wraps so that the music didn’t reach its climax until the very end – which is a very difficult thing to do because of the massive build up and release of sound that occurs so often in the piece.

The four Wagner tubas, rented from San Francisco Opera, were played magnificently – with extra kudos to Joseph Berger whose playing bloomed and filled the hall in the second movement. Several exposed passages by flutist Martha Long were also performed outstandingly. The strings were also exceptional and held their own against the volleys from the brass section. If only there were 20 more string players to create an even more emphatic and demonstrative impression!

Ingrid Fliter, the Argentinian pianist and the winner of the 2006 Gilmore Artist Award last performed with the orchestra in 2008, playing Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto. This time around, she performed Beethoven’s Piano No. 5, (aka “Emperor”) with the orchestra to a fairly full house. I was not impressed with the fact that she had not memorized the piece (using an electronic tablet for the score), because any kind of aid doesn’t allow the soloist to freely interpret music. She did play the louder sections very well, especially, the last spirited and jubilant final movement. But parts that involved softer sounds, such as in the second movement, could have been dreamier. Still, Filter connected well with the audience, which brought her and the conductor back to the stage three times.

Today's Birthdays

Carl Loewe (1796-1869)
Charles Valentin Alkan (1813-1888)
Sergei Liapunov (1859-1924)
Ludwig Thuille (1861-1907)
Ture Rangström (1884-1947)
Ray Henderson (1896-1970)
Klaus Huber (1924-2017)
Gunther Herbig (1931)
Walter Weller (1939-2015)
Radu Lupu (1945)
Semyon Bychkov (1952)

and

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
L(ucy) M(aud) Montgomery (1874-1942)
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Jacques Barzun (1907-2012)
David Mamet (1947)

Today's Birthdays

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)
Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967)
John Brecknock (1937-2017)
Chuck Mangione (1940)
Louise Winter (1959)

and

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888)
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007)

Today's Birthdays

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)
Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838)
Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894)
Pamela Harrison (1915-1990)
Berry Gordy Jr. (1929)
Randy Newman (1943)
Diedre Murray (1951)

and

John Bunyan (1628-1688)
William Blake (1757-1827)
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
Stefan Zweig (1881-1942)
Nancy Mitford (1904-1973)
Rita Mae Brown (1944)
Alan Lightman (1948)

Today's Birthdays

Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602-1678)
Anton Stamitz (1750-1798 or 1809)
Franz Krommer (1759-1831)
Sir Julian Benedict (1804-1885)
Viktor Ewald (1860-1935)
Charles Koechlin (1867-1950)
Leon Barzin (1900-1999)
Walter Klien (1928-1991)
Helmut Lachenmann (1935)
Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970)
David Felder (1953)
Victoria Mullova (1959)
Hilary Hahn (1979)

and

Anders Celsius (1701-1744)
Charles Beard (1874–1948)
James Agee (1909-1955)
Marilyn Hacker (1942)
Bill Nye (1955)

Today's Birthdays

Earl Wild (1915-2010)
Eugene Istomin (1925-2003)
Alan Stout (1932-2018)
John Sanders (1933-2003)
Craig Sheppard (1947)
Vivian Tierney (1957)
Spencer Topel (1979)

and

Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994)
Charles Schulz (1922-2000)
Marilynne Robinson (1943)

Today's Birthdays

Franz Gruber (1785-1863)
Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991)
Virgil Thomson (1896-1989)
Paul Desmond (1924-1977)
Sir John Drummond (1934-2006)
Jean-Claude Malgoire (1940)
Håkan Hagegård (1945)
Yvonne Kenny (1950)
Gilles Cachemaille (1951)

and

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)
Helen Hooven Santmyer (1895-1986)
Lewis Thomas (1913-1993)
Murray Schisgal (1926) Shelagh Delaney (1938-2011)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1934, conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler's article "The Hindemith Case" defending Hindemith's music appears in several German newspapers. A response attacking both Hindemith and Furtwängler appears in the Nazi newspaper "Der Angriff" on November 28. Furtwängler resigns all his official German posts on December 4 and leaves Berlin for several months. On December 6 Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels denounces Hindemith as an "atonal noisemaker" during a speech at the Berlin Sport Palace.

Today's Birthdays

Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
Willie ("The Lion") Smith (1897-1973)
Norman Walker (1907-1963)
Erik Bergman (1911-2006)
Emma Lou Diemer (1927)
Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)
Maria Chiara (1939)
Chinary Ung (1942)
Tod Machover (1953)
Jouni Kaipainen (1956)
Edgar Meyer (1960)
Angelika Kirchschlager (1965)

and

Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677)
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
Margaret Anderson (1886-1973)
Nuruddin Farah (1945)
Arundhati Roy (1961)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1850, the legendary soprano Adelina Patti makes her operatic debut at age 16 in New York City, singing in Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor."

Romanian soprano superb in Portland Opera's "La Traviata"

Photo by Cory Weaver/Portland Opera

By opening its 2018-2109 season with “La Traviata” on Friday, November 2, Portland Opera has decided to return to its base with a grand opera at the Keller Auditorium in the late fall. For the past three years, the company has experimented with a season that extended from late spring through summer with mixed success, doing two works at the Keller and two at the Newmark Theatre. Apparently, the company figured out that the experiment worked alright, but was not convincing. So, it has readjusted its schedule once again with a big fall performance (“La Traviata”) followed by March performances at the Newmark of the popular new opera, “As One,” and summer performances at the Keller (“The Barber of Seville”), the Newmark (“La Finta Giardiniera”) and the intimate Hampton Opera Center (“In the Penal Colony”).

“La Traviata” has an evergreen status with Portland Opera, because it has mounted six productions (1968, 1975, 1982, 1993, 2001, 2008) in the past with reliable success. It’s a star vehicle for Verdi sopranos, and Romanian Aurelia Florian fulfilled that requirement with an outstanding performance of the Violetta Valéry, the consumptive courtesan with a heart of gold.

This production featured huge painted backdrops, designed by Ecole Sormani and provided by the Stivanello Costume Company, that set each scene in the style of upper-class salons of 19th Century France. The traditional costumes were designed by Christine A. Richardson. Directed by Elise Sandell, this “La Traviata” was a fairly standard affair, except for the big soirees, which offered a dash of inclusiveness with a bearded male chorister in a ball gown and at least one female colleague dressed in a man’s suit.

The opening party scene had splash with Alfredo (Jonathan Boyd) coming out of the gate singing strongly and Violetta (Florian) responding with an equally vigorous voice. She grabbed a bottle of bubbly and kicked off her shoes, which lightened up things a bit, but the two didn’t have much chemistry as onstage lovers. A couple of off-stage noises interrupted things a bit at beginning of Act 2, but that was quickly forgotten when Violetta capitulated to the demands of Germont (Weston Hurt) to drop the affair with his son. Hurt’s resolute and lovely baritone was one of the highlights of the evening. The scene in which Violetta rejected Alfredo in favor of Baron Douphol (Daniel Mobbs), causing Alfredo to erupt and throw his winnings was forcefully compelling. In the final act, Florian wonderfully conveyed the pathos of Violetta’s sickness and her last breath while proclaiming her eternal love for Alfredo. The two lovers finally connected convincingly and created the feeling of warmth and tragedy as the curtain came down.

Conductor Christopher Larkin guided the music with great sensitivity, and the orchestra sounded excellent. The chorus, prepared by Nicholas Fox, was in top form. The audience was on its feet during the curtain calls, showering the most applause and cheers on Florian.

Today's Birthdays

Pierre Du Mage (1674-1751)
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)
André Caplet (1878-1925)
Guy Reginald Bolton (1884-1979)
Jerry Bock (1928-2010)
Vigen Derderian (1929-2003)
Krzysztof Penderecki (1933)
Ludovico Einaudi (1955)
Thomas Zehetmair (1961)
Nicolas Bacri (1961)
Ed Harsh (1962)

and

Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897-1999)
Paul Celan (1920-1950)
Jennifer Michael Hecht (1965)

and from the Writer's Almanac:

On this day in 1889, the first jukebox was unveiled in a saloon in San Francisco. It was invented by Louis Glass, who had earlier worked as a telegraph operator for Western Union and then co-founded the Pacific Phonographic Company. He was fascinated by the phonograph technology and saw a market for charging people to listen to them, since phonographs were still too expensive to buy for your own home. He installed the machine in the Palais Royal saloon simply because he knew the owner and it was close to his house, so he didn’t have to carry the machine very far.

The word “jukebox” wasn’t invented until the 1920s. Glass called his machine the “nickel-in-the-slot phonograph,” since you had to pay a nickel to hear a song play. In today’s money, a nickel was about $1.27 at the time. The first machine had four different stethoscopes attached to it that functioned as headphones. Each pair of headphones had to be activated by putting in a nickel, and then several people could listen to the same song at once. There were towels left by each listening device so people could wipe them off after using. As part of his agreement with the saloonkeepers, at the end of each song, the machine told the listener to “go over to the bar and buy a drink.”

His phonograph was a huge hit and, at a conference in Chicago, Glass told his competitors that his first 15 machines brought in over $4,000 in six months. This led to other manufacturers making their own machines. Shortly after, Thomas Edison designed a phonograph people could buy for their homes, which also cut into the market. Glass’s invention eventually made the player piano obsolete, and competitors updated the jukebox with new technologies from record players to CDs. Now there is such a thing as a digital jukebox, but they never really caught on, since they come with the size and expense of a regular jukebox, without any of the charm of flipping through the records and watching the moving parts of the machine.

Today's Birthdays

St. Cecilia
Frantisek Benda(1709-1786)
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-1784)
Conradin Kreutzer (1780-1849)
Edgard Varèse (1883-1965)
Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981)
Joaquin Rodrigo (1901-1999)
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Gunther Schuller (1925-2015)
Jimmy Knepper (1927-2003)
Hans Zender (1936)
Kent Nagano (1951)
Stephen Hough (1961)
Sumi Jo (1962)

and

George Eliot (1819-1880)
André Gide (1869-1951)

And from The Writer's Almanac:

It’s the feast day of Saint Cecilia, who was the patron saint of musicians because she sang to God as she died a martyr’s death. She was born to a noble family in Rome near the end of the second century A.D.

It wasn’t really until the 1400s that people really began to celebrate her widely as the patron saint of music. Then, in the 1500s, people in Normandy held a large musical festival to honor her, and the trend made its way to England in the next century. Henry Purcell composed celebratory odes to honor her, and the painter Raphael created a piece called “The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia.” Chaucer wrote about her in the Second Nonnes Tale, and Handel composed a score for a famous ode to her that John Dryden had written.

Today, Saint Cecilia is often commemorated in paintings and on stained glass windows as sitting at an organ.

Today's Birthdays

Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909)
Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)
Coleman Hawkins (1904-1969)
Bernard Lagacé (1930)
Malcolm Williamson (1931-2003)
James DePreist (1936-2013)
Idil Biret (1941)
Vinson Cole (1950)
Kyle Gann (1955)
Stewart Wallace (1960)
Björk (1965)

and

Voltare (1694-1778)
Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944)
Mary Johnston (1870-1936)
René Magritte (1898-1967)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991)
Marilyn French (1929-2009)
Tina Howe (1937)

Today's Birthdays

Daniel Gregory Mason (1873-1953)
René Kolo (1937)
Gary Karr (1941)
Meredith Monk (1942)
Phillip Kent Bimstein (1947)
Barbara Hendricks (1948)

and

Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014)
Maya Plisetskaya (1925-2015)
R.W. Apple Jr. (1934-2006)
Don DeLillo, (1936)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1805, Beethoven's opera "Fidelio" (1st version, with the "Leonore" Overture No. 2) was premiered in Vienna at the Theater an der Wien.

Today's Birthdays

Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (1663-1712)
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859-1935)
Jean‑Yves Daniel‑Lesur (1908-2002)
Géza Anda (1921-1976)
Maralin Niska (1926-2010)
David Lloyd-Jones (1934)
Agnes Baltsa (1944)
Ross Bauer (1951)

and

Allen Tate (1899-1979)
Sharon Olds (1942)

and from The Writer's Almanac:

On this date in 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was four and a half months after the devastating battle, and it was a foggy, cold morning. Lincoln arrived about 10 a.m. Around noon, the sun came out as the crowds gathered on a hill overlooking the battlefield. A military band played, a local preacher offered a long prayer, and the headlining orator, Edward Everett, spoke for more than two hours. Everett described the Battle of Gettysburg in great detail, and he brought the audience to tears more than once. When Everett finished, Lincoln spoke.

Now considered one of the greatest speeches in American history, the Gettysburg Address ran for just over two minutes, fewer than 300 words, and only 10 sentences. It was so brief, in fact, that many of the 15,000 people that attended the ceremony didn't even realize that the president had spoken, because a photographer setting up his camera had momentarily distracted them. The next day, Everett told Lincoln, "I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."

There are several versions of the speech, and five different manuscript copies; they're all slightly different, so there's some argument about which is the "authentic" version. Lincoln gave copies to both of his private secretaries, and the other three versions were re-written by the president some time after he made the speech. The Bliss Copy, named for Colonel Alexander Bliss, is the only copy that was signed and dated by Lincoln, and it's generally accepted as the official version for that reason.

Today's Birthdays

Jean‑Baptiste Loeillet (1680-1730)
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911)
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941)
Amelita Galli‑Curci (1882-1963)
Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985)
Lillian Fuchs (1901-1995)
Compay Segundo (1907-2003)
Johnny Mercer (1909-1976)
Don Cherry (1936-1995)
Heinrich Schiff (1951)
Bernard d'Ascoli (1958)

and

Louis Daguerre (1787-1851)
Asa Gray (1810-1888)
W.S (William Schwenck) Gilbert (1836-1911)
George Gallup (1901-1984)
Margaret Atwood (1939)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1928, Mickey Mouse debuts in "Steamboat Willie," in New York. This was the first animated cartoon with synchronized pre-recorded sound effects and music -- the latter provided by organist and composer Carl Stalling of Kansas City. Stalling would later provide memorial music for many classic Warner Brothers cartoons.

Today's Birthdays

Ernest Lough (1911-2000)
Hershy Kay (1919-1981)
Leonid Kogan (1924-1982)
Sir Charles Mackerras (1925-2010)
David Amram (1930)
Gene Clark (1941-1991)
Philip Picket (1950)
Philip Grange (1956)

and

Shelby Foote (1916-2006)

Today's Birthdays

Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831)
Alfred Hill (1869-1960)
W. C. Handy (1873-1958)
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
Burnet Tuthill (1888-1982)
Lawrence Tibbett (1896-1960)
Earl Wild (1915-2010)
David Wilson-Johnson (1950)
Donald Runnicles (1954)

and

George S. Kaufman (1889-1961)
José Saramago (1922-2010)
Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)
Andrea Barrett (1954)

Bach Cantata Choir to perorm at Leipzig Bach Festival in June of 2020

The Leipzig Bach Festival has invited Portland's own Bach Cantata Choir to perform at the internationally renown festival in June of 2020. Here is the news via Facebook from the choir's artistic director, Ralph Nelson:

Last summer, the Bach Cantata Choir (of which I am the artistic director/conductor) traveled to Germany and sang in two of Bach’s great churches in Leipzig. We have been invited back to Leipzig to sing as part of the Leipzig Bach Festival in 2020 – a festival that occurs annually each June, and draws Bach enthusiasts from around the world. The theme of the Leipzig Bach Festival in 2020 will be “Bach – We Are Family,” and will feature 17 invited choirs from 5 continents around the world. The Bach Cantata is extremely honored to be one of four choirs to represent the United States – the other three are the Bethlehem PA Bach Choir (America’s first Bach choir), Trinity Wall Street (New York City) and Emmanuel Music (Boston). We will be singing three cantatas (#38, #115, and #180) in St. Nicholas Church (pictured here -- one of Bach’s two great churches in Leipzig) on June 16, 2020. We have a concert coming up this weekend on Sunday, November 18 at 2pm at Rose City Park Presbyterian Church (NE 44th and Sandy in Portland, Oregon). Admission is free – doors open at 1:30pm. See www.bachcantatachoir.org for more details.

PS: I sing in the choir and am really looking forward to a return to Leipzig in 2020!

Today's Birthdays

Sir William Herschel (1738-1822)
Annunzio Paolo Mantovani (1905-1980)
Petula Clark (1932)
Peter Dickinson (1934)
Daniel Barenboim (1942)
Pierre Jalbert (1967)

and

Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946)
Franklin Pierce Adams (1881-1960)
Georgia O'Keefe (1887-1986)
Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1926, the first broadcast of a music program took place on the NBC radio network, featuring the New York Symphony conducted by Walter Damrosch, the New York Oratorio Society, and the Goldman Band, with vocal soloists Mary Garden and Tito Ruffo, and pianist Harold Bauer.

Toiday's Birthdays

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837)
Fanny Hensel (1805-1847)
Rev. John Curwen (1816-1880)
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Leonie Rysanek (1926-1998)
Jorge Bolet (1914-1990)
Narciso Yepes (1927-1997)
Robert Lurtsema (1931-2000)
Peter Katin (1930-2015)
Ellis Marsalis (1934)
William Averitt (1948)

and

Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002)
William Steig (1907-2003)

Today's Birthdays

Jan Zach (1699-1773)
Louis Lefébure-Wély (1817-1870)
Brinley Richards (1817-1885)
George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931)
Marguerite Long (1874-1966)
Joonas Kokkoken (1921-1996)
Lothar Zagrosek (1942)
Martin Bresnick (1946)

and

St. Augustine (354-430)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
George V. Higgins (1939-1999)
Eamon Grennan (1941)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1937, the first "official" radio broadcast by the NBC Symphony Orchestra took place with Pierre Monteux conducting. Arthur Rodzinski had conducted a "dress rehearsal" broadcast on Nov. 2, 1937. Arturo Toscanini's debut broadcast with the NBC Symphony would occur on Christmas Day, 1937

Zhgenti shows brilliant pianism in concert with Vancouver Symphony

Dmitri Zhgenti made the most of his appearance with the Vancouver Symphony, delivering a riveting performance of Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto. This was Zhgenti’s second time with the orchestra. Two years ago, he made a smashing debut with Prokofiev’s First Piano Concerto. This time around, he enthralled the near-capacity audience at Skyview Concert Hall on Saturday afternoon (November 3) with all too rarely heard piano concerto by the great Armenian composer.

Zhgenti showed complete command of the piece right away, articulating arpeggios with precision and feeling, leaning into some notes to bring out the emotion of the music, and playing with plenty of power to be heard over the full-sized orchestra, which was under the baton of music director Salvador Brotons.

His expressed the first big cadenza with elegance, creating a slightly mysterious mood. After the orchestra rejoined him, he executed passages that seemed to leap about wildly – augmented by a fast filigree of notes.

In another extended cadenza, Zhgenti’s sound emerged out of the depths, followed by a rhapsodic theme that raced high and low on the keyboard. He executed crunchy chords a series of complex sounds, which separated into another speed-braking segment that was very exciting. Zhgenti wonderfully brought out the pensive qualities at the beginning of the second movement. He expressed the big stentorian themes and incisively ran the tables on a massive run that seemed to use all of the keys. The accompaniment of the wiggly-high-pitched flexatone and the ruminating bass clarinet created an oddly appealing vibe with the piano and orchestra.

The third movement with its very fast tempo was handled with panache by Zhgenti and wrapped up the piece with a grand enthusiasm that brought the audience to its feet.

For an encore, Zhengti replayed some of his parts from the concerto, demonstrating how the dissonance and some of the sadness in the music reflected the anguish of the Armenian people, which the composer was well-aware of. After contrasting a passage that he felt was more playful with another that was very serious, he told us that he felt the composer was trying to convey that children should pay attention to what their parents.

With his outstanding performance, Zhgenti is carving out a name for himself as one of the premiere pianists in the area. It would be great to hear him again, perhaps with a little Mozart or something in a completely different style.

After intermission, the orchestra launched into Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 (“Scottish”) with Brotons impressively conducting it from memory. Some flight intonation problems in the violins and a bobble or two from the French horns were minor quibbles in this very spirited performance. Dynamic contrast and good tempos made the piece very enjoyable with the Scottish-dance theme in the second movement a highlight. The clarinet duet in the third movement and the celebratory ending in the fourth, led by the horns, rounded off the piece joyously.

The “Roman Carnival Overture,” which began the concert, needed a quicker tempo to convey its festive atmosphere. Alan Juza’s English horn solo was a highlight with its melancholic and dreamy quality. But the joyful passages were sluggish. A little more zip would have given the piece more uplift.

Today's Birthdays

Alexander Borodin (1833-1887
Jean Papineau-Couture (1916-2000)
Michael Langdon (1920-1991)
Lucia Popp (1939-1993)
Neil Young (1945)

and

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
Michael Ende (1929-1995)
Tracy Kidder (1945)
Katherine Weber (1955)

From the New Music Box:

On November 12, 1925, cornetist Louis Armstrong made the first recordings with a group under his own name for Okeh Records in Chicago, Illinois. The group, called Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, recorded his original compositions, "Gut Bucket Blues" and "Yes! I'm In The Barrel" (Okeh 8261) as well as "My Heart" composed by his wife Lil Hardin who was the pianist in the band. (The flipside of the 78rpm record on which the latter was issued, Okeh 8320, was "Armstrong's composition "Cornet Chop Suey" recorded three months later on February 26, 1926.) Armstrong's Hot Five and subsequent Hot Seven recordings are widely considered to be the earliest masterpieces of recorded jazz.

Today's Birthdays

Bernhard Romberg (1767-1841)
Frederick Stock (1872-1942)
Ernest Ansermet (1883-1969)
Jan Simons (1925-2006)
Arthur Cunningham (1928-1997)
Vernon Handley (1930-2008)
Harry Bramma (1936)
Jennifer Bate (1944)
Fang Man (1977)

and

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012)
Mary Gaitskill (1955)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1898, shortly after it was finished, the painting “Nevermore” by Gaugin is purchased by the English composer Frederick Delius. The painting was inspired by Poe’s famous poem and is now in the collection of London’s Cortland Gallery.

Today's Birthdays

Martin Luther (1483-1546)
François Couperin (1668-1733)
John Phillips Marquand (1873-1949)
Ennio Morricone (1928)
Graham Clark (1941)
Sir Tim Rice (1944)

Andreas Scholl (1967)
and

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774)
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805)
Vachel Lindsey (1879-1931)
John Phillips Marquand (1893-1960)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1900, Russian pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch makes his Carnegie Hall debut in New York City during his first American tour. In 1909 he married contralto Clara Clemens, the daughter of the American writer Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain.

Review of Oregon Symphony's Petrushka concert in Classical Voice North America magazine

My review of last weekend's Oregon Symphony concert that featured Stravinsky's Petrushka and the puppet wizardry of Doug Fitch has been published in the Classical Voice North America here.  I hope that you enjoy reading it.

Today's Birthdays

Burrill Phillips (1907-1988)
Pierrette Alarie (1921-2011)
Piero Cappuccilli (1929-2005)
Ivan Moravec (1930-2015)
William Thomas McKinley (1938-2015)
Thomas Quasthoff (1959)
Bryn Terfel (1965)

and

Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883)
Hugh Leonard (1926-2009)
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Today's Birthdays

Friedrich Witt (1770-1836)
Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953
Lamberto Gardelli (1915-1938)
Jerome Hines (1921-2003)
Richard Stoker (1938)
Simon Standage (1941)
Judith Zaimont (1945)
Tadaaki Otaka (1947)
Elizabeth Gale (1948)
Bonnie Raitt (1949)
Ana Vidović (1980)

and

Dorothy Day (1897-1980)
Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)
Raja Rao (1908-2006)
Kazuo Ishiguro (1954)

Today's Birthdays

Ferenc (Franz) Erkel (1810-1893)
Efrem Kurtz (1900-1995)
William Alwyn (1905-1985)
Al Hirt (1922-1999)
Dame Joan Sutherland (1926-2010)
Dame Gwyneth Jones (1937)
Joni Mitchell (1943)
Judith Forst (1943)
Christina Viola Oorebeek (1944)

and

Marie Curie (1867-1934)
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
Benny Andersen (1929-2018)
Stephen Greenblatt (1943)

Today's Birthdays

Adolphe Sax (1814-1894)
John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)
Don Lusher (1923-2006)
James Bowman (1941)
Arturo Sandoval (1949)
Daniele Gatti (1961)

and

Robert Musil (1880-1942)
Harold Ross (1892-1951)
Ann Porter (1911-2011)
James Jones (1921-1977)
Michael Cunningham (1952)

From The Writer's Almanac:

It’s the birthday of the March King, John Philip Sousa, born in Washington, D.C. (1854). His father was a U.S. Marine Band trombonist, and he signed John up as an apprentice to the band after the boy tried to run away from home to join the circus. By the time he was 13 years old, Sousa could play violin, piano, flute, cornet, baritone, trombone, and was a pretty good singer too. At 26, he was leading the Marine Band and writing the first of his 136 marches, including “Semper Fidelis,” which became the official march of the Corps, and “The Washington Post March.” In addition to those marches, he wrote nearly a dozen light operas, and as many waltzes too; and he wrote three novels. But he’s best known for “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Today's Birthdays

Hans Sachs (1494-1576)
Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961)
Walter Gieselking (1895-1956)
Claus Adam (1917-1983)
György Cziffra (1921-1994)
Nicholas Maw (1935-2009)
Anthony Rolfe Johnson (1940-2010)
Art Garfunkel (1941)
Gram Parsons (1946-1973)

and

Ida M. Tarbell (1867-1944)
Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918)
Thomas Flanagan (1923-2002)
Sam Shephard (1943)
Vandana Shiva (1952)
Diana Abu-Jabar (1960)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1955, Karl Böhm conducts a performance of Beethoven's "Fidelio" at the gala re-opening of Vienna Opera House (damaged by Allied bombs on March 12, 1945). During the rebuilding of the Opera House, performances had continued in two nearby Viennese halls: the Theatre and der Wien and the Volksoper.

Today's Birthdays

Carl Tausig (1841-1871)
Arnold Cooke (1906-2005)
Elgar Howarth (1935)
Joan Rodgers (1956)
Elena Kats-Chernin (1957)
Daron Hagen (1961)

and

Will Rogers (1879-1935)
C. K. Williams (1936-2015)
Charles Frazier (1950)

Oregon Symphony and Kahane ricochet through Norman's "Split"

Although pianist Jeffrey Kahane has been a regular guest artist with the Oregon Symphony, his appearance with the orchestra on Saturday (October 27th) at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall was a special occasion because of “Split,” a piano concerto that was written for him by the LA-based composer Andrew Norman. Kahane premiered the piece with the New York Philharmonic in 2015. This time around with the Oregon Symphony under the baton of Carlos Kalmar, Kahane played the revised version.

Yet, since there is no recording of the piece available commercially, it was difficult to know how much of the piece was revised. I checked out the interview that was posted online, and Norman mentioned that he added an additional piano part that was perhaps meant as an alter ego to the music that Kahane played. Norman also said that he did extensive revisions to the piece but they were not elaborated.

In any case, “Split” had a lot of snap, crackle, and pop with fragmentary passages for the soloist and the orchestra moving in various directions – sometimes like a ricocheting pinball. Crouched over the keyboard, Kahane would pounce on some notes, accenting the percussive sound of the piano. At other times, he played rhapsodic lines that reminded me of Liszt. But as soon as I thought the piece would settle in one direction, a sharp snap from the percussion battery would signal a change, causing Kahane and the orchestra to scramble in a new direction. Sometimes Kahane responded with a nervous jangle of sounds and then seem to lose track (intentionally) until only a few solitary notes dwindled away. Blatts and splats from the brass augmented choppy passages. Some segments had whispery high, ethereal tones that evaporated. Kahane and the woodwinds would bubble things up with a random quality. Lyrical snatches came and went from all corners.

Because of its scattershot style, “Split” might be Norman’s take on the multitasking we live in. Whatever the case, he was on hand to take a bow from an audience that was genuinely appreciative.

The big and familiar piece on the program was Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, which received a superb performance from the opening blast of the Fate motif to the furiously triumphant finale,. The ensemble cooked up a full-bodied Russian stew with a terrific dark, soulful sound. Some phrases in the pizzicato-ing second movement needed to diminuendo more, but the all-in-all the playing expressed an outstanding combination of precision and emotion, resulting in a standing-ovation from the audience. Kudos all around… especially to the woodwinds and timpanist Jonathan Greeney.

The concert opened with “Three Dance Episodes” from Bernstein’s “On the Town,” a musical that depicts three sailors on 24-leave in New York City during WWII. The terrific orchestration of the concert suite captures the adventurous spirit of the trio and their encounters.

The first interlude (“The Great Lover”) featured a loose-limbed and jaunty theme that was augmented by interruptions from jokey woodwinds and flashes of brass. The second (“Lonely Town”) was imbued with, subdued clarinets, a smoky trumpet sound from Jeffrey Work, moody strings, and swaggering brass. The third (“Times Square”) alternated between blustery clarinet riffs by Mark Dubac, a saunter into a saucy night club, and the hectic pulse of people, vehicles, lights, tall buildings, and all.

Preview of Vancouver Symphony concert in The Columbian

The Columbian newspaper published my preview of this weekend's Vancouver Symphony concert. It includes an interview with pianist Dmitri Zhgenti, who will play Khachaturian's Piano Concert. You can read it online here.

Today's Birthdays

Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654)
Vincenzio Bellini (1801-1835)
Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990)

and

Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571)
William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901)
Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879-1962)
Walker Evans (1903-1975)
Terrence McNally (1939)
Martin Cruz Smith (1942)
Joe Queenan (1950)

Today's Birthdays

Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer (1692-1766)
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-1799)
Count Andrey Razumovsky (1752-1836)
John Foulds (1880-1939)
Luchino Visconti (1906-1976)
Douglas Lilburn (1915-2001)
Harold Farberman (1929)
Guiseppe Sinopoli (1946-2001)
Jeremy Menuhin (1951)
Marie McLaughlin (1954)
Paul Moravec (1957)

and

George Boole (1815-1864)
C.K. Williams (1936-2015)
Thomas Mallon (1951)

Today's Birthdays

Roger Quilter (1877-1953)
Eugen Jochum (1902-1987)
Bruno Bjelinski (1909-1992)
Victoria de Los Angeles (1923-2005)
William Mathias (1934-1992)
Lyle Lovett (1957)

and

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
Grantland Rice (1880-1954)
A. R. Gurney (1930-2017)
Edward Said (1935-2003)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1830, Chopin’s friends in Warsaw throw a festival “bon voyage” dinner for the composer-pianist on the eve of his departure for Paris. As it turned out, he would never return to his native land.