Despite my silence after last weekend's burst, I've not been idle these past few days; far from it, in fact. The sheer intensity of the week's workload precluded posting for a bit. Really, can you imagine interviewing Mark Adamo, the Emerson Quartet's Philip Setzer and Celtic Frost's Thomas Gabriel Fischer and Martin Eric Ain within a span of about 48 hours? My life may well be charmed, but it's not without its challenges.
Tuesday night brought the second installment of the New York Philharmonic's "Hear & Now" interview-concerts, the first of which I wrote up a while back. The second event, devoted to John Harbison and his new Milosz Songs, proved altogether more sober and informative than had the earlier Corigliano affair. Steven Stucky was an excellent interogator, if in this case perhaps an occasionally fawning one. Nevertheless, he more than earned his paycheck simply by calling attention to a deliciously spidery figure for bassoons that accompanies the couplet, "I think of you, old women, silently fingering past days / of your lives like the beads of your rosaries." I missed that detail the first time, and generally admired this chiseled, iridescent score still more the second time around. Justin Davidson's typically penetrating review of the event is here.
Noticing all the microphones on stage, I can only hope that Milosz Songs is being considered for the new series of American premiere recordings on the New World label announced at the season press conference a few weeks ago. The first volume in that series, due in May, will include two earlier premieres recorded live during the 2003-04 season, Stephen Hartke's Symphony No. 3 and Augusta Read Thomas's Gathering Paradise, as well as a repeat of Jacob Druckman's Summer Lightning captured during the same season.
Wednesday night, I saw a preview of The Music Teacher, a drama-cum-opera by playwright Wallace Shawn with music by his brother, Allen Shawn. A potentially hot topic on paper, the play deals with the reminiscences of a music instructor and his former star pupil as they think back upon the opera they created together, as well as the sexual overtones and overtures that riled their relationship. Scenes from the opera itself, performed at the heart of the 105-minute, no intermission show, playfully send up genre conventions. Allen Shawn's music is attractive enough, and the teacher's long, meandering narratives invariably conjured Wallace Shawn's speaking voice; still, ultimately, I thought the show fell short of its seemingly explosive potential. (One thing I did very much admire, however, was the opera's Greek chorus of female students seemingly physically cast along the lines of the principals of Sex and the City -- two blondes, a brunette and a redhead. That impression didn't occur to any of my TONY colleague companions, so maybe it was just me.)
That's it for me, until the opening of Mazeppa at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night. It's not like there's nothing of interest happening this weekend, but the University of Richmond went on spring break today, which means that my better half, Dr. LP, comes home tomorrow morning -- a far more attractive prospect than the Mitteleuropean heavy-lifting the Vienna Philharmonic is offering at Carnegie Hall this weekend (sorry, Vilaine Fille!) or the mixed bag of Tchaikovsky that the Russian National Orchestra is presenting at Avery Fisher Hall.
But before I briefly disappear once again, I'd like to draw to your attention a few random delights...
+ Peter Cherches, a New York poet and jazz aficionado whose acquaintance I made via the jazz bulletin board Speakeasy, is also the most remarkable foodie with whom I've ever had the pleasure to actually break bread. That's why I'm delighted to report that Pete has launched a food-and-travel blog, Word of Mouth, which I am duly tattooing on the "Elsewhere" blogroll, somewhere in the vicinity of my virtual right wrist. While their respective styles are completely different, listening to Pete talk about food can be like reading Vilaine Fille's prose on the voice -- their qualities of perception and description bring their subjects to life in all their sensual glory. Yum! Dig in.
+ The invaluable Smithsonian Folkways label launches a new series of 10 CD/DVD releases with a trio of sets that I've been practically unable to stop spinning during the past few days. Funded by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the Music of Central Asia series offers technically superlative recordings of musics that may well have been lost to time and political circumstance, from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
Like most of that last country's traditional master musicians, rubâb player Homayun Sakhi now lives elsewhere: specifically California. His performances of two long devotional ragas on the third volume of the series underscore the influence of Indian classical music in Afghanistan, yet you wouldn't likely mistake one for the other despite the burbling tabla accompaniment. Continuing backward, the second volume presents the Academy of Maqâm illustrating the poetic Shashmaqâm tradition of the Tajiks and Uzbeks with gorgeous, elaborate settings of verse by Sufi mystic Hafiz. My favorite of the three, though, is the first volume, by Kyrgyz ensemble Tengir-Too. This is mountain music from the far side of the globe, and a completely enthralling experience I rashly wager will be among my personal Top Ten for 2006. (If it's not, this will have been a phenomenal year indeed.) I haven't watched any of the DVDs yet; I'm saving those to savor with the Doc, who's halfway through her first semester of teaching a world-music survey.
All three of these initial sets are due for release on March 14. One day later, all three of these artists and ensembles will open their first American tour at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. You'll find them there again the following night. And you'll find me in the audience when the three acts hit Columbia University's Miller Theatre on March 21. All three acts proceed to Texas A&M University, then Tengir-Too moves peels off to hit Albuquerque, NM, and Oxford, OH. You can find the complete itinerary here.
+ What a fabulous thing it was to pull the April issue of The Gramophone out of its plain yellow wrapper and see the brilliant Pacifica Quartet on the cover. I'm genuinely surprised and delighted that this bright young group, who so rocked my world with their November 2002 traversal of Elliott Carter's five quartets at the Miller Theatre, merits cover status despite not being major-label celebrities. (Then again, apart from the Emersons, what quartet is?) The occasion was a lengthy article on the current state of the string quartet; I was sorry to see the Maggini Quartet, the Flux Quartet and Ethel omitted, but the range covered -- which includes the Kronos, Takács and Belcea, among others -- is impressive indeed.
The article is good reading, although I was slightly bothered by a couple of obvious glitches. Perhaps a photo caption that rendered George Crumb's Black Angels a Kronos commission -- as opposed to the piece that inspired David Harrington to form the group -- fell outside the purview of editorial oversight. (That does happen, believe me.) But to refer to Roger Tapping as the Takács violist seems more than a bit slack, since Geraldine Walther has been gigging with the group since fall 2005, and she's in the photo that appears only a few inches below the cited line.
+ Poking around to garner links for the above item, I discovered that the Kronos Quartet is now posting unreleased recordings on its MySpace page. That's so hot.
+ If you're a New Yorker who, like me, missed the much-reported premiere of Peter Lieberson's Neruda Songs by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in November, there's one more chance coming up next week. The piece is on the BSO's program for their March 9 concert at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark; what's more, the complement this time is in my opinion far juicier. Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel still opens the program. But after the break, instead of Mahler's Symphony No. 4, we'll be treated to Elliott Carter's glittering Three Illusions -- reprised from the BSO's epochal all-American bill at Carnegie Hall last October -- and Beethoven's "apotheosis of the dance," the Symphony No. 7. All this plus NJPAC's comfy space and gorgeous acoustic... trust me, I snagged my tickets months ago, and even arranged to get off work early on my worst night of the week to make this 7:30pm curtain. Despite James Levine's recent onstage injury, the BSO reports that he will indeed be conducting this performance.
+ Finally -- and this is no joke -- if you happen to know how to contact director Sonja Frisell, be a kind soul and drop a line to her 78-year-old uncle, who can be reached via his sig in a comment attached to one of my previous posts.
Playlist:
Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10 and 15 - WDR Sinfonieorchester / Rudolf Barshai (Brilliant Classics)
Dmitri Shostakovich - String Quartets Nos. 3, 8 and 9 - Emerson String Quartet (Deutsche Grammophon)
Hellhammer - Apocalyptic Raids 1990 A.D. (Noise)
Celtic Frost - Morbid Tales (Noise/Sanctuary) and Live at the Hammerstein Odeon 3.3.89 (Strand V.C.I. videotape)
Tengir-Too - Mountain Music of Kyrgyzstan (Smithsonian Folkways)
Academy of Maqâm - Invisible Face of the Beloved: Classical Music of the Tajiks and Uzbeks (Smithsonian Folkways)
Homayun Sakhi - The Art of the Afghan Rubâb (Smithsonian Folkways)
Tony Malaby - Adobe (Free Lance)
Arnold Schoenberg - The Piano Works - Maurizio Pollini (Deutsche Grammophon)
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