May 31, 2006
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Many thanks to The New Yorker's Alex Ross for the mention today in The Rest is Noise, the smartest, funnest, hippest music blog in town.

"Mozart and Rachmaninoff swap trade secrets over martinis before sailing off into the Balinese sunset together," writes Joshua Kosman in the San Franciso Chronicle, describing Poulenc's Piano Concerto in D Minor (as performed this week by Katia and Marielle Labèque with the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas.) Ok -- this I need to hear. Urgently.

Down to the Kennedy Center this afternoon to interview Leonard Slatkin for a story on the Mahler 8th, which he's conducting with the National Symphony Orchestra next week. Charming, candid, and hyper-articulate, he churned out an endless chain of quotes while I sat back and loafed. A journalist's dream. More next week.

And, because Leila's 12th birthday is coming up, here's that old charmer Jean-Pierre Rampal, with birds:

May 30, 2006
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Piffaro is an engaging Renaissance troupe based in Philadelphia, and last Wednesday -- laden with a small truckload of shawms, sackbuts, lutes, dulcians, bagpipes, krumhorns, recorders and so on -- they somehow made it down to the National Gallery of Art and, frankly, blew the place away.  This was one of the most refreshing concerts the NGA’s put on this year -- due partly to Piffaro’s complete lack of pointy-headedness, partly to the straightforward charm of 16th Century instrumental music, and partly just to the wildly colorful sounds that these instruments emit.  Who can resist the woody bleating of a flock of recorders, or the raucous cry of the angry shawm?  Not me.

So with ears all perked up, Piffaro embarked on a sometimes raucous, sometimes ethereal tour through Renaissance Europe.  Guillaume Dufay was there in two elegant pieces for shawms,  slide trumpet and sackbut (an early form of the trombone – but you knew that already), as was Jacob Obrecht in some impossibly delicate songs for lute, harp and recorders.  The German Georg Foster contributed a vibrant, unbuttoned work for krumhorns, and the Frenchman Thoinot Arbeau kicked in an “Official Bransle” (pronounced “brawl”), a country dance that lutenist Grant Herreid summed up nicely as “high-falutin’ composed polyphony.”

There were a dozen more works on the program, including several Spanish works for harp – played on a full-sized Renaissance instrument that was one of the most beautiful objects you could ever hope to see – and despite an obstreperous bagpipe or two, the playing was relentlessly virtuosic, and the music surprising and always satisfying. We need more of this in our ears, and in fact should be getting some in June, when the Washington Early Music Festival launches. Can’t wait.  

May 29, 2006
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Here's an ultra-cool, slightly subversive video of the amazing Stomp percussion ensemble, pulling mind-bending music out of everyday objects -- from blenders to aerosol cans to a set of stereo toothbrushes -- as they explore an invaded apartment.  Check out Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers as soon as humanly possible.

Nice piece on the dumbing-down of film music by Scott Eyman in The Palm Beach Post.  Even studio execs are getting concerned:  "I'm so sick of music where there's nothing to it," says George Feltenstein, a Warner Bros. vice president. "What we're hearing represents a continuing cultural wearing away of the arts in society in general. This is a culture where Andrew Lloyd Webber is taken seriously as a composer, so it shouldn't be any surprise that we're gradually losing musical theater or good film scores."

Aside from being Memorial Day, today's also the anniversary of the infamous 1913 premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, with its screaming fistfights at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees.  Kevin Elyot had an interesting piece in The Guardian in March suggesting that much of the uproar may have been deliberately arranged  by Serge Diaghilev.  Whether he did or not, there's no denying Elyot's slightly mangled metaphor that the premiere "kickstarted the 20th Century, sending shock waves down its cultural spine."  

May 29, 2006
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The Washington Post:   The Washington National Opera closed out its three-week run of Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito” on Saturday night at the Kennedy Center, replacing Tatiana Pavlovskaya (in the cheerfully evil role of Vitellia) with young up-and-comer Cristina Nassif. It was an inspired choice: Nassif’s a gifted soprano, with a powerful and expressive voice and a stage presence that can only be described as electric.


Marina DomashenkoAnd that’s all for the good, since the plot of “Clemenza” needs all the juice it can get. While the music is sublime – some of the most beautiful in any of Mozart’s operas – the goody-goody characters have all the dramatic depth of cottage cheese. But Nassif, with her flashing eyes and floating hair, conjured up a convincingly nasty would-be empress -- even if she did have to display a good side in the end.

The supple, detailed performance was conducted by Steven Gathman (sitting in ably for Heinz Fricke), and there was fine singing in every corner. But a special bouquet goes to the stunning Russian mezzo Marina Domashenko (in the breeches role of the love-stupid Sesto), whose creamy, elegant voice and flawless command were riveting throughout the evening.
 

May 28, 2006
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Allan Kozinn makes a good case in The New York Times that reports of classical music's demise have been greatly exaggerated. The old patterns are changing, that's all: With small new companies putting out recordings, internet deep-catalog shops making nearly everything available, strong sales on iTunes, a surge of interest in early music and new music, and the boomer generation's adventurous ears, this could be shaping to be the best of times,  says Kozinn.  "The nightly offerings in classical music are immensely more plentiful and varied now than during the supposed golden age," he writes. "The wonder isn't that audiences fluctuate from night to night or that empty seats can be spotted. It's that so much competition can be sustained in a field usually portrayed as moribund."

The inventive, imaginative Oakland Opera Theater is staging Anthony Davis' "X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X," which hasn't been performed since its 1986 premiere at the New York City Opera.  Sam Hurwitt has an interview with Davis in the San Francisco Chronicle, and discusses the expected controversy over the performance.  "I mean, I didn't do Martin Luther King's story, I did Malcolm X's story," Davis says. "And it's unabashedly heroic."

May 27, 2006
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The blogger?Hmm ... Lang Lang now allegedly has a blog, called Found in Translation.  A sample entry: "After the performance, waiting for my autographs was a huge line that extended all the way outside the door. A little girl asked me for the towel I used. I said to her, “It’s on the piano. You can take it.” Actually, my towel is always snatched by some quick-acting fans after every performance, leaving me no chance to get it by myself."  Talk about sweating the details. This is too good to be real ... isn't it?

Shirley Apthorp in the Financial Times has a short but interesting piece on Masaaki Suzuki and the rise of early music performance in Japan.  “There’s nothing strange about playing Bach in Japan," says Suzuki. "For Japanese musicians, Bach’s music is absolutely fundamental. Bach is Bach." Suzuki's performance here in March with the Bach Collegium Japan at the Library of Congress was nothing less than spectacular.

In The Washington Post today, Tim Page's poignant interview with the very Russian Yuri Temirkanov, back with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for the first time since October:  on Shostakovich, his beloved St. Petersburg, and the messy appointment of Marin Alsop as music director of the BSO.

The Guardian's Stephen Moss interviews rival opera directors -- and siblings -- David and Christopher Alden.  The latter has few kind words for the American music scene; "In America art is only important as entertainment, and the kind of stuff that I do often tries to push beyond that," he modestly sniffs -- admitting that his career in the US is "pretty well over." No kidding.

And in tearjerker opera news from Wales,  Barney the homeless mongrel has landed a role in a touring Ukranian National Opera production of La Boheme.

May 25, 2006
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The Washington Post:  Their name sounds more Monty Python than Monteverdi, but the Suspicious Cheese Lords -- a Washington-based men’s a cappella group that specializes in music from the Renaissance – is one very serious ensemble.  In a genuinely beautiful performance at The Church of the Epiphany on Tuesday, the Lords showed that they could deliver not only thoughtful interpretations, but rapturous music-making as well.


Giovanni PalestrinaThat was clear from the opening notes of Palestrina’s 1584 motet, “Sicut cervus”, given a performance so weightless and transparent it practically turned to light. Two dreamlike songs by the 16th-Century child prodigy Vittoria Aleotti were equally luminous, though a challenging work by Francesco Landini -- full of pungent harmonies and intriguing rhythms -- came off just a bit ragged.  But the final two Renaissance works on the program  (including a finely-detailed 8-voice lament by Nicolas Gombert) layered wave upon wave of precisely calibrated, exceptionally moving song.

While they were clearly right at home in the 16th Century, the Lords also easily negotiated works from our own newly-born millennium, including several compositions from the group’s members – all of which (perhaps unsurprisingly) resonated with a certain Renaissance flavor. Despite some fine ideas, Gordon Geise’s “A Rose Beheld the Sun” felt vague and unsure of itself, but Gary Winans Jr.’s “…les cedres et chaque petite fleur…” was much more satisfying, with a distinctive musical imagination and firm compositional control. George Cervantes’ Blessing of Saint Francis, meanwhile -- with its faint but wonderful undertones of Brian Wilson -- was a real delight to the ears.

Oh, and the group’s name? It’s a playful translation of  “Suscipe quaeso Domine”, the title of a motet by Thomas Tallis -- more sedately known as “Take, I ask Lord.”