I don't know how I have missed her

I am listening to Helene Grimaud for the first time.



It has bothered me that all the pianists I admire--Serkin, Pollini, Argerich, Ashkenazy, Richter, Brendal, Gould, Perahia, Schiff --are all either, well, older than I am or dead. Helen Grimaud changes that.

I don't know how I have missed her

I am listening to Helene Grimaud for the first time.

http://youtu.be/g3Uzi0Vndbo

It has bothered me that all the pianists I admire--Serkin, Pollini, Argerich, Ashkenazy, Richter, Brendal, Gould, Perahia, Schiff --are all either, well, order than I am or dead. Helen Grimaud changes that.

Karajan

I have the same problem with Karajan as a musician that many others do: he thought all rough edges need to be sanded down to something smooth. But damn his Berlin Philharmonic was great.

Pollini as a young man

Playing the Emperor with Abbado in 1967.  Best left hand in the east, west, or anywhere else.

Hardest Symphony to Start?

For the first time in some time, I put the Carlos Kleiber recording of Beethoven's 5th on the turntable thing morning; while listening, I was reminded of a Georg Solti comment about how difficult it is to start the symphony (I tried finding a direct quote, but to no avail).

If one looks at the score, one can see why:

Three problems.  The piece is very fast (Allegro con brio); the piece starts off the beat; and it is easy to turn those straight eighth-notes (or quavers, as they say in England) into triplets.  It would help to beat a silent measure before beginning, but I am sure that is not a cool thing for a professional conductor to do.

Why Einstein was wrong about being wrong

Why Einstein was wrong about being wrong

h/t Mark Thoma. The piece is a lot of fun.

Favorite Symphonies not composed by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms or Mahler

Schubert 9
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique
Bruckner 7
Mendelssohn 3
Tchaikovsky 1
Shostakovich 10
Haydn 98
Haydn 104
Prokofiev 1
Sibelius 5

Mozart C-minor Fantasy, K 475

I have been playing the piece since I was about 15, and it never ceases to amaze me.  It is not just that it is chromatic, it also shifts keys violently and seemlessly.  Sometimes, when people don't know Mozart very well, they will say that he is "pretty," but not as "profound" or "modern" as Bach and Beethoven.  The K475 all by itself refutes the point.

What makes an orchestra great

I was thinking about this while listening to Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic do Brahms 4th yesterday afternoon.  It was overall a thrilling performance--the first two movements were as good as anything I have heard, and third was great, and my only problem with the 4th was that I thought Dudamel's tempo was a little slow and he overplayed the contrasts a wee bit (of course, that is just a question of taste).

The playing, however, was awesome.  So why makes an orchestra great?  The following thoughts occur to me:

(1) They are completely in tune.

(2) They are precise and yet they also swing.  The LA Phil did the Mozart Haffner Symphony earlier this year, and the strings sounded as if they were one instrument.  Yesterday, when they played the great second subject of the first movement of the Brahms, they made it sound like a big, German Tango.  The pulse never wavered, but there was great flexibility.

(3) They are powerful and yet transparent: they can get loud without being ugly, and every individual voice remains clear.

(4) They can play a great variety of styles.  The Brahms 4 was very German yesterday, but when they did the famous Hungarian Dance 5 as an encore, it was pure Warner Brothers.

(5) Fine soloists.  I have been a fan of Michelle Zukovsky, the LA Phil's principal clarenet, since I came across an album called Philharmonic Solo when I was in college (which was the late 1970s).  I remember hearing her clarinet solo in the Beethoven 6 with Giulini when the LA Phil came to Boston many years ago, and she was terrific in the Brahms yesterday.  David Buck, the new principal flutist, made the haunting flute solo in the 4th movement (bars 97-104), well haunting.    First oboe Ariana Ghez produces consistently breathtaking sounds as well.

(6) The ability to be heterogeneous and homogeneous.  Sometimes, when one instrument takes over a melodic line from another, one likes to hear them meld: for the clarinet to sound just a little like the oboe; for the strings to sound a little like the winds.  Karajan's Berlin Philharmonic was miraculous at this, but Karajan liked that patricular characteristic a bit too much, so the orchestra sometimes sounded a little bit like how my mother-in-law's Cadillac would ride--it was just too cushy.  Part of the LA Phil's flexibility is that is is capable of producing Karajanesque smoothness, but can also make instruments stand out for what they are.

(7)  That they seem to care.  Unlike any other major league orchestra I have seen, the member of the LA Phil never look bored to me.  But maybe that is just me.

Orchestra Seating.

For many years, my favorite Beethoven 9 set was the Karajan set from the early 1960s.  While it has some moments of Karajan slickness, and I don't like the 6th at all, the playing in general is so magnificent that I have gotten a great deal of pleasure from it over the years.

That set has been displaced by Haitink's recent LSO 9.  I like Haitink's interpretations better, and the playing is, to me, as good as the BPO's in the 60s.  But as I was listening to the set, a question occurred to me.

One thing that is quite noticible is the placement of the violins: the first violins are on the left, and the second on the right.  Violas are left center and cellos are right center.   Apparently, this was also the seating arrangement Toscanini used more than 60 years ago.  In between, orchestras were usually seated from high strings to low as one moved from left to right.  As it happens, I like the spatial arrangement used by Haitink now, and it leads me to be curious about what leads to changes in tradations about seating arrangements.

I saw Roger Waters do The Wall Last Night.

It reminded me of two lines from Love and Death.

Sonja: Oh don't, Boris, please. Sex without love is an empty experience.
Boris: Yes, but as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.

Ten Songs about America's Ten Largest Cities

(1) Sidewalks of New York
(2) I Love LA
(3) Mrs. O'Leary's Cow
(4) Space Oddity
(5) By the time I get to Phoenix
(6) Streets of Philadelphia
(7) The Ballad of Davy Crockett
(8) San Diego Serenade
(9) The Devil lives in Dallas
(10) Do you know the way to San Jose?

Great Program from Midori Last Night.

She put together a wonderful group of pieces: Mozart, Bartok, Bach, Crumb and Szymanowski.  It was all very  good, but the Bach was really special: her ability to keep multiple lines going makes it sound like multiple fiddlers are playing. 

Then again, sometimes I think Bach should never be programmed against other composers (even young Mozart), because he was just so much better than anyone else.

Orchestra Rankings are Silly

As part of our general obsession with rankings, one from time-to-time sees rankings of orchestras.  Gramophone produced one a few years back, and it produced considerable discussion and consternation.  When I talk with fellow lovers of symphonic music, they often will wonder aloud about whether the "Big 5" is still the Big 5.

When I visit cities away from home, if the local orchestra is playing, I try to take in a concert.  What is striking to me is how really, really good so many orchestras are: within the last year I have heard tremendous concerts here in LA and in Amsterdam, but also in Atlanta and Minneapolis (The Minnesotans played the best  Nachtmusik I from Mahler's 7th that I have ever heard).

Even smaller cities have good orchestras, if not quite at the level as larger cities.  This is not surprising: there is a lot of great musical talent out there (a friend from a city of about 200,000 reports that his orchestra's principal horn player was runner-up for the job in Chicago).  John DeMain did a marvelous job building a fine orchestra in Madison. The Pasadena Symphony is good.

So instead of worrying which orchestras are better than others, perhaps we should just enjoy the ones we have.  But by all means, rag on conductors: the bad ones can make even great orchestras sound dull.

A nice performance of my favorite piece of schmaltz

Listen to Callithumpian Consort if you can

It is a Boston based musical troupe led by Steve Drury, from whom I took music lessons in college.  Tonight they had a concert at Paine Hall featuring six young compoers: Trevor Baca, Josiah Oberholtzer, Ian Power, Sivan Cohen-Elias, Sabrina Schroeder and Anne Cleare.

The players themselves, Jessi Rosinski, Rane Moore, Jeff Means, Gabriela Diaz, and Ben Schwartz, were lively, giving the audience an excellent sense of pulse in thorny pieces.  The playing was very tight, which is particularly impressive given how difficult much of the music was to play.  Jessi and Rane got sounds out of their instruments that I had never heard before, particularly in the Cleare piece.

I particularly like the Cohen-Elias piece, called Air Pressure.  It reminded me a bit of Berio (from me this is a compliment).

Evenings like this also explain that while I have been trying to turn my back on Harvard because of its various misdeeds, I don't think I will ever be able to do so.

The great thing about Mahler's 6th

The first movement pushes sonata-allegro form about as far as it can go.  And it is a wonder.  Favorite records: Bernstein (CBS), Solti, Haitink.  Years ago I heard Maazel, of all people, do a live performance with Cleveland that knocked my socks off.

Schumann's 4th Symphony

For my entire life, Schumann's 4th was my least favorite of his symphonies.  I found it bland and repetitive.  I then heard Dudamel and the LA Phil play it a few weeks ago at Disney Hall, and it was a revelation.  The recapitulation of the opening theme in the second movement, which had in the past struck me as redundant, now seemed ingenious to me, as it made complete structural sense in a symphony that is as fantastic as any I have heard.  The Dude had the orchestra positively swinging in the last two movements, and the soloists were delightful.  Principal oboe Ariana Ghenz was especially good.

My sudden obsession with Schumann 4 led me to this wonderful video of Karajan rehearsing the piece.  I am not always crazy about HvK's interpretation of music, but here he shows he really knows what he wants, and how to communicate it (BTW, much to my surprise, Karajan's Haydn was magic.  More about this later).

Tonight I begin a music blog

I ceased being a serious musician 30 years ago, but I never ceased loving music.  As a teenager, I took advanced music theory classes at Interlochen and played the piano there.  I played piano in college, and played in a trio that performed the Brahms Horn Trio, and played Ives, Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin.  My teacher was Steve Drury.

It has been years since I practiced as I should, but I still like playing show tunes for my daughters (and others!) to sing to.

I write this because I enjoy writing about music, which continues to move me.  I think there is a bit of a hole in music criticism.  Some critics worry too much about the sound of their stereo.  While some gear is  better than others, an obsession with equipment tends to undermine musical enjoyment.  No reproduction equipment will ever match the real thing, so it is silly to spend six figures in a futile quest.  One is far better off spending a few thousand on a system and then using the remaining money to buy tickets to real live concerts.

Other critics are just too snarky--I suspect many of them never seriously played an instrument.  What musicians do is hard, and it takes enormous courage to go out on a stage and play music. given that even the best players are rarely flawless (Maurizio Pollini may be the exception).