When it comes to music, Easter’s got Christmas licked. (Readers will be reminded that The Messiah is two-thirds an Easter piece.) As heard on WQXR‘s somewhat exhausting Bach marathon, the most interesting pieces are based on dramatic texts about blood and sacrifice, more than cantatas about love and heavenly reward.
For while the Easter season does not have a ‘Joy to the World’ equivalent, it has the far more complex Stabat Mater and the theatrical passions of St. John and St. Matthew. Continue reading →
Or rather, Sunday night. I’m thrilled to be reviewing Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles…Ensemble ACJW with Robert Spano, my first concert in many months. In this excerpt, Appel Interstellaire, Messiaen turns the horn into a galactic transmitter, exploiting the wiggly yelps you can make by pressing the valves down halfway.
I seem to be on a Barber kick, but is there ever a time of year when Summer Music isn’t in season? Here it is with the score and the estimable ensemble Wien-Berlin.
Borne of my countless hours spent filling out profiles for the Cultural Data Project for grant applications, I was curious if the investment had other benefits. The good folks at the arts research blog Createquity paired me with the fearless Talia Gibas, and we set to work exploring if and how the CDP has made lives better for the non-profits it intends to serve. Our results are published here.
William Bennett, principal oboe of the San Francisco Symphony, died today. Washington McClain, gifted Baroque oboist and wonderful person, died yesterday. Are the heavenly choirs hiring an orchestra?
I barely knew Wash, but he is unforgettable. A friendly presence at many early music workshops I’ve attended, he could make you feel respected and welcome with just a nod in your direction. I somehow knew to call him Wash before I had even met him. He is the perfect example of how warmth and generosity of spirit make for warm and generous musicianship.
I can’t find any compelling clips of Wash, but here is the SFF playing the Brahms Nänie, recorded in 1989 with Herbert Blomstedt conducting. Surely it was Bennett playing the opening oboe solo. Translation is below. The Schiller poem recounts three examples of immortals who could not save their beloveds. “Even the beautiful must die,” it begins….
As practicing humanists, whose wedding featured a reading from Walter de la Mare and marital advice from Papageno, we need to do something with our Sunday mornings. But instead of trundling off to church, waiting online for brunch, or prostrate worshipping of the mattress, we will just sit and listen to music. It helps to have an accommodating baby. We’ll post weekly selections here.
Samuel Barber’s Knoxville Summer of 1915 has been on my mind recently. A haunting tune, set to James Agee’s perfect poem, the orchestration is so inventive and somehow intimate. It makes me want to play the horn again, and the bassoon, and the bass drum. It has been recorded many times, but I fell in love with it with Leontyne Price and the composer conducting:
Anna Bass, left, and Monica Bill Barnes in “Luster.” Photo: Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
“I’m so proud that you’ve made your dreams come true!” My BFF told me after last month’s concert. I had to pause. True, the review was the warmest one we’ve had so far, and I was very happy with how the production turned out, and grateful to share the stage with kind, talented, and adventuresome folks. But is this what I dreamed about?
My infant dreams did involve performing – or more specifically, wearing a red dress and hearing everyone clap for me and feeling like everyone loved me. But little did I know that in order to perform, you first spend countless hours hashing out a schedule, pinching pennies over props, agonizing over a press release, and antagonizing your web designer. You have likely spent the day of the show schlepping costumes and set up and downstairs, you debate between a power bar and pizza for dinner, then wished that you had skipped it all together to sing some more or slather on more makeup. The time spent onstage is a happy consequence of all the work, but not by any means the first point of focus.
Of course, all these nuisances melt into the proscenium lights. As a stage-struck kid I could never have guessed that the appeal of performing lies in its visceral qualities: the physical delight of performing with people you trust (like driving a Porsche), communicating wordlessly, and defining the atmosphere in the room with your body.
I saw a dance performance last week that speaks to this paradox. Continue reading →
As practicing humanists, whose wedding featured a reading from 
