Ok, hear me out. Really.

Bach, though probably not as known to Beethoven as he was to the later romantics (it took Mendelssohn to officially “rediscover” the great baroque master), it is the kind of thing he would have liked—and frankly, for yr blogger here, it is the kind of thing I was in the mood to hear.

So away I went on Harnoncourt’s newest recording of Bach cantatas—specifically Nos. 140, 61, and 29, available on the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi imprint. Oddly enough, the cantatas of Bach can raise some controversy—he had to write a lot of them in his day (it was his job) and many think they can be a little slapdash. I’ve even heard Peter Schickele (a.k.a. P.D.Q. Bach) say that he and many others would trade the entirety of Bach’s cantata oeuvre for another six Brandenberg Concertos. I disagree.

Take the rather elegant opening of No. 140, “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme.” To me, this music is as gorgeously wrought, as persuasively elegant, as anything found in the passions of Matthew or John, as any Magnificat or B-Minor Mass. (And movie fans, take note: Wes Anderson, no musical slouch, used this piece as the grand promenade music for Mr. Zissou in The Life Aquatic, a favorite movie of yr blogger.)

I have to confess, I skipped to an entirely different piece next, Cantata 61, especially to the soprano aria “Öffne dich, mein ganzes Herze.” I did this for two very excellent reasons: one, I love this piece, a kind of three-part shuffle for soprano, organ, and cello; but—and stronger—the second reason is that I’ve had for years a deep and abiding crush on Christine Schäfer. When she was Lulu in the Met’s production of, well, Lulu, I saw all four shows. She’s really wonderful, like “come-over-here-and-listen-to-this wonderful.” I was happy to see that she was on the record, and now I’ve been listing to this aria of hers on repeat as I type. I also love the more forthright and slightly lusher aria (both in her reading and in the actual piece) “Gedank an uns mit deiner Liebe” from Cantata 29.

I’ll make more mention of this two-disc set in future posts, no doubt. Not least because it is one of those records that “makes a point,” pitting an earlier recording against a new recording with the same (or similar) forces. We’ll get into that next time.

Meantime, do celebrate LVB’s birthday in some musical manner. Of course, later tonight I’ll be listening to my favorite piece of the great composer’s (the Missa Solemnis if you must know), but in the meantime, Bach’s “music for use” done up in such sumptuous finery will do me nicely by way of preparation.

Happy Beethovenmas.

 Music, like perfume, can be a straight shunt into the
nervous system, a slamming retour of things past, a quick connecting point to
otherwise lost time.  On music, one can
alight on one’s past in the most general and yet most specifically atavistic
way.

In pondering what to write: trying to hear, in my minds ear,
some pieces within the vast Sony catalogue that do this for me: two spring to
mind.  The days before the official
kickoff of the holiday season are always ruminative for me (not just me, I know
that) wherein past and present get co-mingled in one’s s

Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium.  I am in my late teens, studying
conducting, and this piece is on the concert. 
I’ve prepared (with dreams of having to take over at the last minute, a
la the featured and storied conductor-composer) down to the microbeat, hauling
my tattered score all over Southern California.  But until the first rehearsal, the only
orchestra I’ve heard is in my own mind, waving my arms about madly, cueing
imaginary entrances of a perfect ensemble (though they still need plenty of
guidance from me, Il Maestro).  And so the first rehearsal comes, the
orchestra tunes, the soloist (one Stephanie Chase, who is talented and
beautiful and with whom I became deeply, distantly smitten) steps to the podium
and my teacher strikes up the band.  It
was like seeing an actual elephant after years of merely reading about them and
viewing footage: sublime, striking, earth-opening, nascent, phantasmagoric.  I had never been so close to an orchestra
before.  Forever changed, really. 

It is Thanksgiving, somewhere in the early 90s, and I am
home.  I am smitten—an opera directing class I’m taking has
introduced me to what was (then) the weirdest and most wonderful thing I’d
seen: GianCarlo Menotti’s The
Medium.  The score is tattered, the
tape (made off the LP—this was an age ago, wasn’t it) spins endlessly in the
tape deck of my car, but since I’m feeling fluent in it I look to this
composer’s other shows.  One of them (his
most famous one, but I don’t know that yet) is called Amahl and the Night Visitors.  I
know it a little, having sung some of it in my chorus, but that time, driving
the two and a half hours from school to home—always a long distance to
traverse—this seminal recording of Menotti’s most famous piece was entirely
new, devoid of any Yuletide meanings, and just plain and simple a gorgeous
piece of music.  Still is.

But Donahue had a better idea.

But that film was never to be made, as the director looked to the stage. Apparently he felt “…Maria’s story would be an idea vehicle for his friend Mary Martin.” She was certainly credentialed, garnering raves for starring roles in Peter Pan, South Pacific and Annie Get Your Gun. (This was 1958, what we’ve since come to know as Broadway’s “Golden Age,” understandably.) Eventually a team of writers was engaged (team? Was this going to morph into a film after all?), Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, and when the songs that were extant in the repertoire of the singing Von Trapps fell a little short, Mary Martin had the idea of looking to her friends—composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein—for an original score. Of course this duo of Broadway royalty felt inadequate: the family famously sung the work of Brahms, Schubert, and hymns, could they compete? But they relented, and on November 16, 1959, the show opened at the Lunt-Fontaine Theatre to record-breaking advance sales. Half a century later, we’re still listening, still loving, still interested in all aspects of this show.

It’s just one of those pieces that you have to strain to imagine someone actually writing, it so belongs to the world. It’s there, to stay, part of almost all the childhoods in the Western World. And try a trip to Salzburg someday without thinking about it (or hearing about it, and if you really want to feel like a tourist, take the Sound of Music tour and spin your way through those hills, those hills alive with…).

Of course the music—with Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel (not to mention the astounding Patricia Neway)—is there, wonderful, one of those scores that seems like it’s just been here forever, hard to imagine someone actually composing it. And for fans of the show, the booklet tells the fascinating story of its conception (yes, and it does get as far as the movie, for those who wonder. Did you know that Audrey Hepburn, Doris Day, and Grace Kelly were also considered for the part?). I also love the extras—who doesn’t love hidden gems—like the Viennese cast singing “Edelweiss” or a track with Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett from Carnegie Hall, not to mention “Sok Dig Till Bergen” which is of course “Climb Every Mountain” in Swedish.

So happy Birthday to The Sound of Music, no longer simply going on sixteen but a whole lot wiser, immortal, cherished. As long as those hills remain alive, you’ll still belong.

Purchase it here.

Now I think this is, start to finish, one of the best shows written for Broadway. There’s all manner of references contained within it—from the music of Nino Rota (Fellini’s composer) to Mozart to Sondheim-like Broadway elegance. I am of course a sucker for the same two songs everyone loves: “The Bells of St. Sebastian” and “Unusual Way.” But this is not to sleight the gripping, artist-woe piece of genuine agita “I Can’t Make this Movie.” We who toil, who try to make, who are trying to oversee our own private worlds of beauty, who among us cannot relate to this one—especially coming, as it does, after a reprise of “Not Since Charlie Chaplin.” Huge, overwhelming, a little garish—how appropriate for a depiction of Fellini!

Some other spectacular things to be found on this disc: “My Husband Makes Movies,” the entire Casanova sequence (which allows Yeston to ape the Mozart of Don Giovanni with vim and crisp brio, hysterical) and the of-necessity sweep-the-studio-floor extras in the form of the composer’s 4-track demos of “The German’s at the Spa” and “The Grand Canal” (which feature Yeston himself singing many parts, a contrivance his own family dubbed the “Maury Tabernacle Choir”) and “Unusual Way.”

I will write more, because I just plain love this show!

Purchase Nine Here.

It lives up to the academic hype of its spectacularly erudite liner notes with its sheer musicality—but this is not one of those “period instrument” recordings which, in aiming to do everything “right” does everything wrong, treating Bach as a sacred text and arguing, unmusically, for the unimpeachably of their own scholarly point of view. No, not at all, this is in fact a perfect little cobbling of music culled from many Bach pieces into a disc (or concert) that makes excellent sense as a whole. Yes it’s historically fascinating, for those who want to delve deep (Nicholas Anderson’s liner notes get even woollier, in the best way), but as far as some gorgeous music for the contemplation of the divine (or whatever) it’s an excellent record.

Daniel Taylor is a rare talent: not only is he a glorious countertenor (oh that unearthly sound, it gets me every time, so rare, so out-of-the-range-of-human-conception, so oddly sexy) but also a fine conductor, leading here his own group, the Theatre of Early Music. This is not a vanity recital for a singer to strut their stuff—though he’s got stuff to strut (don’t take my word for it, listen to the second track, the haunting “Erbarme dich, mein Gott” from the St. Matthew Passion, or the minor-key jaunt of the surprising closing track, “Bereite dich, Zion” from the Christmas Oratorio)—but a program that is a conceived whole. There are the arias, but there are also instrumental sinfonias, choral motets (which feature the ToEM’s choir to great effect) and duets. Without a scrap of preening, an astounding singer/conductor/belle-lettrist/musical thinker offers a complete—and deeply musical—package. Homage to he who is arguably the greatest composer ever designed to titillate and instill reverie, done, no doubt, to the imagined approval of the composer himself. He’s not here to comment (darn it all, because I have a few questions…) but I suspect he’d be pleased.

Purchase Daniel Taylor: The Voice Of Bach

So I’ve been really obsessed with listening to Rudolf Serkin’s Essential (like I said blogs ago, I never really went in for best-of’s, being something of a snob, but now I’m convinced they are not only useful and instructive but actually small works of beauty on their own when done properly, giving an overview on a particular interpreter or composer in a nice, teacherly way) so I decided by way of compare and contrast to check out Murray Perahia’s new Beethoven CD and its quite the excellent companion to Serkin.

To say these two monumental artists occupy twin poles of a certain kind of aesthetic would be too convenient. But where Serkin is a tiny bit removed (like, say, a Boulez), in that “letting the music speak for itself” mode, Perahia seems to relish in emotional extremes. Mind you, honestly, I don’t favor one approach over the other—we who love this music are in need of both; I need, say, Toscanini’s Beethoven symphonies in order to better understand Furtwangler’s, relish in Essa-Pekka Salonen’s recording of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in order that I might understand Bernstein’s, and so on—but it is nice to sit down with this level of spring and play, albeit never histrionic spring and play.

The famous Allegretto from the E Major Sonata is an excellent example. Perahia makes this into a near-phantasmagoria of sound. He’s never over the top, but the menace—the minor key that opens the piece—is always just beneath the surface. This does not contradict, but rather in his quiet emotional way he speaks volumes (or, rather, speaks Beethoven’s volumes like any great actor reciting Shakespeare). So the little major key trio is a verdant oasis in the middle of the quiet, lurking torpor, and then the big major key finale seems all the brighter for it.

And wow, you should hear his Bach partitas, more on that to come. But someone I know, desiring some relaxing music, grabbed this record from atop the ever-looming stack and to their (gorgeous) discomfort found them to be full of blood and guts, recordings that were small miracles of power and focus, of rapt intensity and yes even overwhelming passion. Not what she was looking for in the way of “chill out” music, but so much the better.

Like I said, more on that later.

Purchase Murray Perahia Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Purchase The Essential Rudolf Serkin

Glenn Gould gets a rap for singing on his recordings, which he does (and it can certainly annoy: when I listen with headphones I sometimes think someone is calling from another room) but here’s something I never knew before listening to this so many times: Rudolf Serkin sings too! Who knew? Seems like the ever-eccentric Gould might not be the only one who simply cannot help himself. Don’t believe me, listen to the gruff grumbling on this track (and many of the others, especially the beginning of the Allegretto and Trio from the same work) not to mention some near grunting on the final movement—though who can blame him, it is fiendishly difficult (and his tempo is rollicking and open-throttled).

Now when I listen to the piece as a whole, I smile—for real!—at Serkin’s overall conception, at least as I understand it. Take the first movement slow and get slower, a true moonfall; take the second movement and make it near-dull (though never without a quiet behind-the-scenes verve and wry wit) so as to allow the pure virtuoso fireworks of the final to seem all-the-more rapid-fire. Now that is pure instrumental interpretive drama. You can almost hear him laughing as he thinks, like he’s going to lull you into a state of complicity out of which he will break you in the most violent way. Shocking. And what’s more, his push-pull crimping of the final movement (sometimes just when you think he’s going to stop the momentum he kicks it up a notch or three) makes the tension all the more unbearable.

For me, what’s always fascinated about this piece is that, though written in what many might consider Beethoven’s middle period (that of the Fifth Symphony, the Razumovsky Quartets, and his lone opera) there’s much forward-looking here. If you believe the too simple notion that his early period was a sloughing off of the (excellent) influence of Haydn and Mozart while his late was a near-apocalyptic futureshocking reckoning with the “to come,” his middle remained the period of surefooted formal mastery. Yet to me the over-played and therefore easily written-off “Moonlight Sonata” looks more forward and back than anything, delving deep in the first movement (a slow first movement was quite a novel thing for a sonata, slow movements being reserved largely for second movements) and pushing the envelope with the last, the second movement is almost a wary tip-of-the-hat to his formal masters. Almost as if this sonata says (at least how Serkin would have it): “Come in, I’m in a strange mood. Oh no, now that I’ve eaten I feel just fine. And now, let me tell you something incredible that you will never believe because its just so weird.”

Purchase Rudolf Serkin Plays Beethoven here.

The first recording I had of this featured Midori, that always-young spitfire violinist with the blistering technique and soulful sound (aided and abetted by none other than Claudo Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic). And all right, I’ll confess to you, reader, since we’re such close friends, the countless hours I spent waving my arms to this recording, Mollard conducting baton aptly held in right hand, offering cues to invisible musicians in all the great orchestras of the world, vivid dreams of maestro fame in repetitive action there in my Santa Barbara apartment one hot summer in the early 90s.

So happy is me when I put on my copy of The Essential Midori and the first movement of this (to me, as to everyone) historic recording is excerpted and remains excellent, with Midori a vivid soloist against the well-paced Berliners. She just squeezes so much tone out of her tiny instrument (I am not sure how old she was when she made this recording, but I do seem to remember that she might have been too small for a full-sized instrument). And, as it should, together soloist and conductor build to a dazzling climax—as they should, this being one of the greatest high-decibal cries du couer in the entire orchestral repertoire—at around 6.35 into the track. (Let us not discuss the hawk-like swoop with which I led my mental Philharmonic through this moment in those heady times, but I can only be glad all of that happened pre-YouTube.) Splendid.

Now I know, from writing a whole book about this composer (who I’ve always thought of as just one of the oddest—meaning best—composers ever, more a precursor to Benjamin Britten than Sibelius; I mean, just the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Faries” alone is enough to qualify him) that poor Piotr was undergoing a calamitous marital collapse when he wrote this piece, considering suicide (he was gay, not remotely something one was in pre-Revolution Russia) and in a white heat produced this aching piece. I am not one who usually goes in for these kind of rhapsodic tales where great heartbreak = great love, but here, in the sheer emotional effulgence of this movement alone, we hear a soul rising and falling with the ebb and wane of his own despair. And what’s so weird here is that this exact despair comes in, of all things, D major. Brilliant. And weird. But the best kind of weird.

There’s more to the disc, of course—dazzling Paganini caprices, the second movement of the second violin concerto by Bartok, not to mention Bach, Beethoven, Kresiler. But get it for the Tchaikovsky alone because it’s just plain thrilling.

Purchase The Essential Midori here.

Not sure, but I do know that I just think he’s got the most distinctive sound on the scene, a very personal (and often imitated) form of minimalism. Broad harmonies, swirling figures, thumping and grinding rhythms, on-a-dime shifts that always tickle. Where the Bee Dances (the only piece written for Ms. Dickson’s instrument on the record; the other two works are her excellent arrangements of string pieces) is no exception. In its lone musical panel, sixteen plus minutes of solid motion, the work, which feels like one big evolving coda (and I mean that as a compliment) glides to a series of climaxes, none of which is officially reached, leaving more being wanted. When you are listening to the roller-coaster of the final moments, it is hard to remember that the piece emerged from a kind of primordial ease at the very beginning—plangent long-tones from the sax over lost-sounding drifty harmonies in the piano. This of course is immediately eradicated by snaky figures, piano thumps, all with Dickson leading the way, culminating in four big brass chords that, according to the composer, are the root of the whole piece—and wow, this can really be heard, the work just unfolds in the shadow of these chords in an evanescent way. At just over three minutes in, when the strings begin to swirl, from there to the end (some thirteen minutes later) just feels like a rush of euphoria, almost too lovely to handle, too much, overwhelming, swirling, embarrassingly emotional. Those four chords just keep growing and growing, enlarging, gaining on you, enveloping. So when it comes to the ending—or the non—ending really, because it just plain stops—the momentum has become a kind of intimate inertia, with the solo saxophone serving less as a proper concerto soloist but more like a singer in a moment of pure arioso revelation in an opera. This is the big moment.

OK, now I’m blushing because I just gushed. But I do love this piece, a lot, and I have to say Amy Dickson really has a handle on it (aided seriously by Mikel Toms and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), adding all kinds of “singerly” nuance to her tone, which is somehow musky and bright at the same time. And she plays as a willing partner to Nyman rather than as a “soloist” and all the vanity that can entail.

Bottom line: just get yourself this record.

Next time, more on the other pieces (which I also love—but I’ve also always loved them both in their prior incarnations).

Purchase Amy Dickson plays Glass, Tavener & Nyman

Joshua Bell At Home With Friends

Yes, it’s finally out, superstar violinist Josh Bell’s new record, At Home With Friends which includes “duets” with some of his pals—and when you are a major world-over music star, your friends are some heavy hitters. Apparently Bell is known for having “musicales” in his Manhattan living room, and this record is the result. He’s gone outside the comfort zone of the classical music community (with a few notable exceptions, including a composer who’s been a century dead) and made an interesting record.

Being a long-standing fan of Sting (the soundtrack of my own childhood was pretty much that of his severing from the Police and going solo) I jumped immediately to “Come Again,” and was very happy to have done so because I loved it. Sting’s voice has matured in a very special way, and aptly suits renaissance music such as this song by John Dowland, and they make fascinating pre-continuo partners. Equally sensitive is the reading, with Josh Groban, of some of Morricone’s score for Cinema Paradiso (and who doesn’t love that music).

And speaking of people impossible not to love: Kristin Chenoweth! What they’ve done, I think, is fascinating, a rather gothic reading of that standard of standards, “My Funny Valentine.” But if you were listening to the track without liner notes, you’d not know it was this song until about three minutes in—does anyone except me remember the opening? And of course, Ms. Chenoweth can really sing and knows her way around a studio. It’s lovely.

I’m new to Regina Spektor, who I think is wonderful and weird and wonderfully weird (akin to Bjork) and writes penetrating, profound pieces; “Left Hand Song” is no exception. Her songs often have involved, complicated and rather present string parts, so having Bell playing along, acting as a kind of shadow voice, makes perfect sense and works well.

To me, though, the most thrilling duet is the on he did with Sergei Rachmaninoff. It is an odd thing to type, and the results border on sepulchral, but through the (complete miracle) of the Zenph re-performance, Bell is able to play with a computerized approximation of the great composer-pianist in a kind of real time. You can feel the ghostly (and smiling) presence of a vanished genius, and through this marvel they make for great duetting partners.

More on this one later, no doubt…

Purchase At Home With Friends

www.JoshuaBell.com