Kalmar talks about conducting on new KBPS show

Starting this Sunday at 5 pm, Carlos Kalmar, Oregon Symphony's music director, will talk about conducting on a new radio show at KBPS (89.9 FM).

From the press release:

"Kalmar, who began studying at the Vienna Academy of Music at age 15, will draw from his life’s work to examine and discuss both the art and science of conducting a modern symphony orchestra.

After an initial episode that explores the birth of the “star conductor” late in the 19th century, each succeeding show will focus on one individual conductor among the pantheon of 20th-century greats, mixing anecdotes with historical stories and comments."

Today's Birthdays

August Everding (1928-1999)
Colin Tilney (1933)
Odaline de la Martinez (1949)

and

Jan Vermeer (1632-1675)

CD Review: In Mulieribus Live

In Mulieribus just released their second CD on October 3rd, a compilation of live recordings spanning 4 years. I have written a review of it here at Suite101.

Jazz Baby recording makes it to the Grammys nomination list

A big congratulations to Doug Beavers and his Jazz Baby album, which has made it onto the list for the Grammy nominations in the Best Musical Album for Children category. This recording features the drumming wizardry of Steve Moretti, husband of former OSO concertmaster Amy Schwartz Moretti. I wrote about the album for Downbeat magazine last year. See this posting.

Click here to go to the Jazz Baby website or click here if you want higher-quality sound.

Today's Birthdays

Peter Warlock (1894-1930)
Stanley Sadie (1930-2005)
Frans Brüggen (1934)
Grace Slick (1939)
René Jacobs (1946)
James Judd (1949)
Shlomo Mintz (1957)

and

André Chénier (1762-1794)
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

NEA Arts Journalism Institute Fellowship

I'm one of 23 journalists who have been selected to attend the 2008 NEA Arts Journalism Institute at Columbia University in New York City. From November 8th to the 18th, I'll be attending lectures and concerts and doing some writing, which will be critiqued by faculty members of the institute.

I'm really salivating over the performances that we will attend, including

* Valery Gergiev conducts the Kirov Orchestra at Lincoln Center
* Metropolitan Opera production of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, directed by Robert Lepage
* Israel Philharmonic performs Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel
* Metropolitan Opera New York premiere of John Adams' Doctor Atomic
* Bernstein festival performance at Carnegie Hall featuring the New York Philharmonic conducted by incoming music director Alan Gilbert
* Jeremy Denk recital at Zankel Hall (Carnegie Hall)

Past fellows from Portland have been Grant Menzies, Angela Allen, Brett Campbell, and Stephen Marc Beaudoin.

Here's a link to the NEA press release about the institute. I'm really looking forward to this experience and learning more about classical music.

Today's Birthdays

Harold Darke (1888-1976)
Vivian Ellis (1904-1996)
Václav Neumann (1920-1995)
Jon Vickers (1926)
James Dillon (1950)

and

James Boswell (1740-1795)

Portland musical history at the Central Library - the Neah-Kah-Nie String Quartet

Dana Carlile, composer, local historian, and one of Portland's most eclectic individuals, will give an interesting lecture and visual documentary about the life and times of Portland violin virtuoso Susie Fennell Pipes and the story of the Neah-Kah-Nie String Quartet. This lecture surveys Portland chamber music in the first half of the 20th Century includes Susie Fennell Pipes' most significant colleagues including violinist and conductor Theodore Spiering, cellists Ferdinand Konrad and Michel Penha, violists Alexander Vdovin and Abraham Weiss and violinist Hubert Sorenson.

Where: Central Library
U.S. Bank Room

When: Sunday, November 2, 2008 3:30-5 p.m

Free!

The Library has posted this lecture here.

CD Baby carries a recording of the music written by Ferdinand Sorenson (father of Hubert Sorenson and grandfather of Dana Carlile) and a more complete description of the quartet. Click here for more information.

Today's Birthdays

Howard Hanson (1896-1981)
Dame Cleo Laine (1927)
Carl Davis (1936)
Howard Blake (1938)
Kenneth Montgomery (1943)
Naida Cole (1974)

and

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
Francis Bacon (1909-1992)

Montero takes requests and improvises with élan

Gabriela Montero has a new twist to the piano recital format. The Venezuelan-born virtuoso loves to take requests from the audience and then improves a piece based on the suggestion. So, Montero bantered with listeners and responded at the keyboard in her own unique way at the Newmark Theatre on Sunday afternoon in Portland as the second artist to appear this season in the series sponsored by Portland Piano International.

More akin to performing in a salon rather than a hushed recital hall, this all-improv concert (recital isn’t the right word) started with Montero, microphone in hand, explaining why he enjoys improvisation. She told us how she regularly performs 50 to 60 concerts a year (mostly in Europe) and that, while gratifying, the constant grind leaves her feeling a little like a well-trained monkey. At an extremely young age, she liked to improvise on the piano and found that improvisation is still a terrific way for her to find more meaning in music and achieve intimacy with the audience.

In order to prepare us for how her improvisations work, Montero read a poem by Pablo Neruda entitled “I like for you to be still,” and then turned to the keyboard and played a very pretty and lyrical piece that she made up on the spot.

Following a polite round of applause, Montero turned to her listeners and asked some one or more of us to sing a fairly well known tune, and she would then improvise. Someone declaimed “The Promenade theme from Pictures at an Exhibition.” Another person sang the phrase, which Montero repeated on the Steinway. After she composed herself for a moment, she started playing a delightful Haydnesque minuet. That put a smile on most people’s lips, and they responded to the piece with enthusiasm.

Next, someone demanded Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” and the tune emerged from the audience. After trying it out in several keys, Montero became quiet and then gave us a flowery Liszt-like fantasy. Somewhere along the way she changed everything to a Latin-salsa or tango – which was very playful and also earned a boisterous appreciation.

Montero then took a “Happy Birthday” suggestion and put a bouncy honky-tonk ragtime spin on it. Afterwards came the Shaker hymn tune, “Simple Gifts,” which was unfamiliar to her. Yet again, after trying it out in several keys and tempos, Montero took a brief moment of reflection and dived into a improvisation that began simply and gradually become more complex. I thought that I head a little bit of Mussorgsky-ness in it and a lot of charm.

For the next-to-the-last number, audience members abandoned singing anything at all and shouted out everything from “Greensleaves” to “God Bless America.” A loud voice rang out with “La Cocoracha,” Montero didn’t have to wait for anyone to sing a note. She gave us lively rendition of that Latin-American tune. She then ended the concert by reading Jorge Luis Borges’ “Instant,” a poem about living one’s life differently, and playing a final, heartfelt improvisation.

Montero’s performance was more in the line of what Mozart or Beethoven or Liszt could do. They could improvise at the drop of a tune in a bucket and that was not big deal to them. It’s unfortunate that so much of music-making in the classical world has lost this talent. Of course, organists, especially in Europe have kept the tradition of improvisation at the forefront of their artistry. It’s great to experience a pianist of Montero’s caliber reinvigorate improvisation. I have heard Robert Levin and Jeffrey Kahane improvise in concert. That kind of playing can do a world of good – especially in connecting with younger audiences. I hope that Montero can return to Portland some day soon to provide another round of impulsive music.

Today's Birthdays

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840)
Helmut Walcha (1907-1991)
Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997)
Dominick Argento (1927)
Håkan Hardenberger (1961)
Vanessa-Mae (1978)

and

Lee Krasner (1908-1994)
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Britt Festival report big losses

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival will report losses of $750,000 for this season. The Britt Festival has lost $500,000. KGW has a short notice about these figures here.

Also, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has also just announced that they are going to cut their 2009 budget by $1 million. Here's a link to the OSF press release regarding this matter.

Today's Birthdays

Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612)
Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)
György Pauk (1936)
Christine Brewer (1955)
Sakari Oramo (1965)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)
Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
Galina Vishnevskaya (1926)
Peter Lieberson (1946)
Diana Burrell (1948)
Colin Carr (1957)
Midori (1971)

and

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Impressive and gripping - Seattle Opera's Elektra leaves it all on the stage

Janice Baird (Elektra) and Irmgard Vilsmaier (Chrysothemis)
© Rozarii Lynch photo

Seattle Opera’s production of Richard Strauss’ “Elektra” is gripping, in-your-face, and very loud. From the opening curtain which split in half to the final Totentanz of Elektra as she celebrated the death of her mother and stepfather, the audience on Wednesday evening at McCaw Hall received nearly two hours of unrelenting, dark drama, and it was all outstanding.

Janice Baird, making her Seattle debut in the title role, completely embodied the half-crazed woman who was completely consumed by vengeance for the murder of her father, Agamemnon, King of Mycenae. Combining her very powerful and expressive soprano voice with committed acting, Baird’s Elektra commanded the stage, striking fear in the hearts of anyone she felt was against her. Baird hit all sorts of difficult pitches spot-on and with artistry, Baird’s singing was thrilling – even when she sang about slaughtering her mother and stepfather.

Equally talented and convincing was soprano Irmgard Vilsmaier as Elektra’s sister, Chrysothemis, who only wants to be rid of the family curse and live a normal life. It’s quite a feat to combine fearfulness and yet sing with passion and accuracy that can be easily heard above a 90-piece orchestra, but Vilsmaier has the chops and seemed to get stronger as the opera progressed

Mezzo-soprano Rosalind Plowright delivered a superb Klytämnestra, baring her conflicted personality like a wounded animal. Together with her lover Aegisth, Klytämnestra killed her then husband Agamemnon some years before the action of this opera began, and they took over the throne. Plowright’s Klytämnestra is so riddled with nightmares that she can barely walk and gives everyone the heebie jeebies after she removes her oversized, decadent crown to show how much hair she has lost. Yet, after she receives news of Orest’s death, she is reinvigorated and finds the will to live.

As Orest, the banished brother of Elecktra and Chrysothemis, Alfred Walker’s forceful baritone was solid as a rock. Richard Margison made a credible Aegisth, but the part is so short that it’s difficult to say anything more.

The four maids (Cynthia Jansen, Sarah Mattox, Melissa Parks, and Emily Clubb) and their overseer, Mary McLaughlin, helped to set the tone of the story with their mocking of Elektra. When the fifth maid, Eleanor Stallcop-Horrox, showed empathy for Elektra, the other maids turned against her, dunking her head in a bucket of water that they had used to clean the alter of the blood of people that Klytämnestra sacrificed in order to get rid of her demonic nightmares.

The Seattle Opera orchestra played outstandingly throughout. This symphonic opera and can almost stand alone on the concert stage. The brasses, strings, woodwinds, and percussion were masterfully led by Lawrence Renes, who conducts a lot in Europe and is getting more gigs in the US.

Wolfram Skalicki’s dark and bleak set, last used by Seattle Opera in 1996, was enhanced by the expert lighing of Marcus Doshi. The mixture of modern and ancient costuming also worked well. Impressive especially were Klytämnestra’s retinue of sycophants in their garish modern, red numbers.

At the very end of the opera, after the killing is over and Elektra dead, Orest shuts the doors on Chrysothemis, giving the impression that the family saga is still not over.

Remaining performances of “Elektra” take place on October, 25, 26, 29, 21, and November 1. Seattle Opera is offering a Halloween special: operagoers who arrive in costume for the Friday, October 31, performance of Elektra can receive one free ticket to the evening’s performance, with the purchase of a full-priced ticket.

Today's Birthdays

Ferdinand Hiller (1811-1885)
Conrad Leonard (1898-2003)
Tito Gobbi (1913-1984)
Luciano Berio (1925-2003)
George Crumb (1929)
Sofia Gubaidulina (1931)
Malcolm Bilson (1935)
Bill Wyman (1936)
Cheryl Studer (1955)

Today's Birthdays

Albert Lortzing (1801-1851)
Ned Rorem (1923)
Lawrence Foster (1941)
Toshio Hosokawa (1955)
"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959)
Brett Dean (1961)

Bach Cantata Choir Director Ralph Nelson talks about the Oregon Bach Festival

By Ralph Nelson

Artistic Director, Bach Cantata Choir

As you may know, I was able to spend almost three weeks at the Oregon Bach Festival this summer participating in what is known as the “Conducting Master Class.” This was an opportunity for me to learn from maestro Helmuth Rilling, professors Tom Davis (CalPoly) and Tim Sawyer (Northwestern, Minneapolis), and conductors such as Anton Armstrong (St. Olaf) and Nicholas McGegen (Philharmonia Baroque, Berkeley), as well as members of the orchestra and chorus. It was an amazing experience.

The main focus in our conducting classes was an examination of J.S Bach’s St. John Passion. We took it apart pretty much note for note and word for word over the course of 12 hours without Rilling, then another 20 hours with the maestro. We also worked on two Bach concerti and the Orchestral Suite in B Minor with Nicolas McGegen. The study of the St. John was particularly meaningful for me, since it was (and now really is) one of my favorite works – and a work that I thought I knew well. However, when Rilling began to show us all the symbols, motifs, etc. we quickly realized that what most of us knew about the work only touched the surface!

At times, I realized that I had so much to learn about Bach; but at other times, I was very proud of the work that we have done at the Cantata Choir, and that our “solutions” to various performance problems were right on the money. I chuckle at how many times I would look at a passage and say to myself – “you had better subdivide into 8 here” – only to hear Rilling say, “this is difficult, you must subdivide this place...”

I’d like to focus on some important things that I know many of you will be interested in:

1. Chorales: Rilling believes that the chorales were hymns sung by the people, and they should be sung in a very straightforward manner. Different dynamics are fine, but crescendos would have been too “fancy” for the congregation. Unlike some scholars, he firmly believes the chorales were sung by the congregation. I’m so proud that our Bach concerts featuring singing by the congregation.

2. Continuo: We had many sessions with the continuo players. In church cantatas, cello, bass, maybe bassoon, and positif organ are used. Harpsichord is not used in church cantatas, but it is used in chamber pieces. String Bass almost always doubles cello, even in recitatives, unless bassoon is used instead of cello – then bass doubles bassoon. OBF bass players all have extenders, because Bach apparently had a 5-string bass. Bassoon is used instead of cello if the movement has all double reeds (i.e. last year we had some 3 oboe pieces – bassoon would then be used, doubled by the string bass, with the positif organ). Bassoon and cello never play together (except in final chorales) unless Bach actually wrote distinct parts for them.

3. Recitatives: Rilling’s style right now (but not always the case in many of his recordings) is as follows: Recitatives are accompanied “secco” – meaning that the cello, bass, and organ hold the notes (or chords) for only 1 quarter-note, no matter what the actual value of note is in Bach’s score. This is done so that the congregation can hear the words better, especially in churches with significant ring-time. An interesting note is that all the cantatas written before Bach moved to Leipzig (1723) had recitatives that end with an arioso – but Leipzig cantatas have recitatives without ariosos.

4. Vibrato: The OBF chorus uses some vibrato – and frankly in my opinion it sometimes gets in the way. When that happens, the choir directors simply say “no vibrato” for this passage, and voila – the problem almost always goes away. The strings play with very little vibrato – and sometimes with none at all.

5. Phrasings: I was surprised by some things I heard. The chorus was asked to articulate (almost with “h’s” or tonguing), much more than I would have expected. This was really true on the “Sanctus” of the B Minor Mass. Many times words were totally split and even stopped in the middle – on the “Crucifixus” of the B Minor Mass, it was definitely, “Cru…Chi…fi-hix-hus”. I’m not sure I like it this way, but from time to time this year, I may experiment with tonguing or more articulation.

Obviously, Rilling’s methods are not total “gospel.” There are other great Bach specialists, including John Elliot Gardner, Joshua Ripkin, Ton Koopman, Masaaki Suzuki (and in the past decades Karl Richter and Nicolas Harnoncourt) that have different theories. But I think we can start with some of Rilling’s methods, because so much of what he does makes a lot of sense. For the most part, he is quite open to other methods, but he flatly dismisses the “OVPP” – one voice per part – movement, mainly because he felt Bach never did it that way, and his argument is quite convincing based on how many instrumental and choral parts we still have in existence. For example, in the St. John Passion there still exist 3 sets of Violin 1 parts – Rilling says, “now, why three sets? He must wanted 5 or 6 players, or he would not need these sets. He didn’t just go to Kinkos and make the parts. Remember that the Bach Family had to make these parts – Anna (Magdelena – Bach’s 2nd wife) and the girls ruled the paper, and that took hours; the boys copied the parts. What do think Anna would have said if she found out Sebastian had not used these parts? Trust me, he used three parts!”

NOTE: Both James Bash and I are singing in the BCC's inaugural concert of the '08-'09 season this Sunday, October 26, at 2pm at the Rose City Park Presbyterian Church on 44th and NE Sandy. Silent Auction begins at 130pm, and ends at 4pm after the concert.

LW

Today's Birthdays

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Sir Donald McIntyre (1934)
Elizabeth Connell (1946)

and

John Reed (1887-1920)
Doris Lessing (1919)

Review: Beta Collide - Uptown meets downtown

By Anarch Zigzagovich

Portland has of late been blessed with its sixth contemporary music group—Beta Collide—founded by Grammy Award-winning flutist Molly Barth (former member of Eighth Blackbird) and trumpeter Brian McWhorter (of the Meridian Arts Ensemble). Beta Collide, though currently based in Eugene, presented its Portland debut concert on Friday evening (17 October) at the atrium of the White Stag Building. Word is out that this talented ensemble is planning to do concerts on a regular basis in the Portland metro area.

To date the most prominent contemporary concert hall music ensembles in Portland have been Fear No Music and Third Angle. The eighteen-year old organization Seventh Species, which moved its base of operations from Eugene to Portland three years ago, has long been the only concert series of its kind in Oregon featuring music primarily by local and regional composers. Since 2006 composer Robert Priest has imported his Marzena series from Seattle, and has attracted a wide following of new music aficionados. Aside from Beta Collide, the other “new kid on the block” is Cascadia Composers, an official chapter of NACUSA (National Association of Composers USA, founded by Henry Hadley in 1933), which is scheduled to give its inaugural concert of chamber works by seven of the region’s most distinguished composers on March 13th, 2009 at the Old Church.

At this point in time, I cannot help but marvel that Portland (despite its cultural inferiority complex) has what might be considered a “vibrant” new music scene, though it still has a long ways to go before it can be on a par with cities like Boston or New York. This will only happen when the powers that be open their coffers to local rather than imported talent.

Friday’s Beta Collide concert had originally scheduled Luciano Berio’s Sequenza III for soprano (written for his wife, the inimitable Cathy Berberian) to be performed by baritone Nicholas Isherwood who, disappointingly, was taken ill with laryngitis. Isherwood was also scheduled to sing another work by the Hungarian György Kurtag, a composer who has risen to international prominence over the last twenty years and who studied composition with the same teachers as his student colleague and compatriot György Ligeti. Instead, we were treated to a tongue-in-cheek solo trumpet work by the American Robert Erickson entitled Kryl (named after the circus acrobat and cornet master Bohumir Kryl), which demonstrated a vast array of pyrotechnics, including glissandos insterspersed with hums, screams, and various fart-like sounds. Brian McWhorter played this piece with matchless verve and gusto. Another solo work was Eliot Carter’s Scrivo In Vento for flute, which had rapid alternations of high screechy, pointillistic figures and slow languishing moments, and was played with panache by the supremely gifted Molly Barth. The other solo pieces presented were Lutoslawski’s Sacher Variation (1975), expertly rendered by cellist Justin Kagan (who is a prominent fixture in many music venues throughout town) and a work for solo trumpet by the quirky composer Mark Applebaum of Stanford University.

While the solo works were rigorously precise in their notational directives to the performers (the notation in the Applebaum bears some resemblance to the ultra complex scores of his colleague at Stanford, Brian Ferneyhough), the three folios composed in the early 1950s by Earle Brown were either graphically or semi-graphically notated (i.e., with black rectangles of various sizes and/or multiple staves with waves, etc.) and thus required ultroneous improvisatory gestures from the performers. Occasionally I noted that the musicians did not actually have their eyes on the scores while performing the music represented thereby, which made me wonder if they had “memorized” the rectangles, waves and squiggles (?). Notwithstanding, they pulled off the folios with wit and aplomb. One element that lent distinction to this concert was that extremes of anally precise notated works on the one hand were presented side by side with representations of a sort of blasé indeterminacy on the other: Uptown meets downtown. The concert was divided into four segments, the first three of which consisted of the aleatoric pieces seamlessly segued into the more academically severe solos. At one point this reviewer lost track of what piece was being played—which didn’t seem to matter.

The repertoire presented, all in all, had very little meat on the bone, and while I can’t fault the performers for the conviction of their interpretations, I might suggest that if it is their intention to be “unconventional” or “cutting edge,” they might consider throwing in some less run-of-the-mill items. I, for one, would be delighted to hear more works by lesser known—albeit infinitely more talented—composers like Joseph Fennimore (who has yet to be “discovered”), the late Gottfried von Einem (the Austrian composer whose revival is long overdue and who is doubtless destined to attract a following on the scale of Korngold’s or Mahler’s in the near future), Tison Street (one of Boston’s notable talents), Henry Martin (perhaps the greatest contrapuntist alive today), Hsueh-Yung Shen (a Boulanger-trained eccentric who apparently does very little to advance his cause), or Noam Elkies (the Harvard mathematician who is the youngest person ever to have received tenure at that institution and who at the same time is one of its brightest musicians), to name a few, or even works by such luminaries as, say, Ligeti, Rochberg, Rzewski, Del Tredici, Schnittke, Tsontakis, or Currier. I remember hearing Del Tredici express to a symposium of younger composers at the Bloch festival some six years ago his observation that there is a pervasive indifference to harmony amongst the vast majority of today’s composers—a criticism that could aptly be applied to the works presented on Friday evening by Beta Collide.

Suffice it to say that I did not come to this concert expecting to be served Wienerschnitzel and Schnapps. The serving was more akin to a plate of cilantro garnished with nettles. More schmaltz sil vous plait!