jwilzewske: classical

Showing posts with label classical. Show all posts

Monday, March 14, 2011

Robert Levin: Meta-Mozart and Mozart’s Own Experimentalism/Eclecticism

M olding the ‘clay’, getting your fingers ‘wet’: discovering how Mozart thought, how he might have written things, how he went about doing what he did. This is inevitably humbling—this improvising cadenzas and whole movements that are missing from his works. But it also enables you to more accurately perform and understand the parts that are not missing; to have a better sense that there are [performance] ‘options’ from which to choose.”
— Robert Levin, pianist.

I s it ‘creation’ or is it imitation? Honestly, it is both!

Mozart – Prelude and Fugue in C, K. 394 (4.0 min; 3.5 min)
Mozart – “Adagio variee” K3 Anh. 206a = K6 Anh. A 65 (1.5 min for each of 4)
Mozart – Suite “In the style of Handel”, K. 399 [Sarabande completed by R. Levin] (3.5 min; 3.5 min; 2.2 min; 4.3 min; 3.5 min)
Mozart – Piano Sonata No. 15 in F, K. 533/494 (26.5 min)

W hat you hear in this Adagio, K. Anh. A65, are two parts, A and B, composed by Mozart. And for each of these, I have deconstructed them, stripped them down, and created versions, A’ and B’, removing the decorations… to show what might have been.”
— Robert Levin, pianist.

I n Levin’s improvised material in last evening’s MainlyMozart program in San Diego we get a sense of genuine authenticity in terms of motivic elements, harmonic progressions, modulations, durations that each chord/key prevails until a change is introduced, and so on. Really convincing and wonderful. You don’t necessarily have to have comprehensive (or even ‘adequate’) explanations for the formal structure of Mozart’s music to produce new compositions (or, as Levin is famous for doing, completions of Mozart’s unfinished ones) that have tremendous verisimilitude.

T here is a lot of latitude for interpretation in these pieces—including Levin’s slow, dilated accounts of the first two movements of Sonata in F, K. 533. For example, Schiff, Eschenbach, Uchida, and others turn in Allegro times ranging between 7 min and 9 min, compared to Levin’s 11 min for the Allegro last night. Others’ performances of the Andante range between about 6 min and 10 min, with Levin’s account close to 9 min. And the Rondo Allegretto of this Sonata is, in others’ hands, incredibly varied, ranging from as short as 6 min to 8 min or more; Levin’s tendency toward hyper-masculine emphasis leads him to 6 min 20 seconds with a flourish.

I ’m studying—we all should be studying, like students learning a new language. People study French, German, Italian, Chinese… eventually they become fluent speakers, if they work hard at it. Well, why not think of Mozart as a language, one that must be learned, in a conversational way? I am studying Mozart! I’m just trying to improve my diction—trying to get my ‘accent’ better.”
— Robert Levin, pianist.

L evin’s remarks remind me of David Cope, composer and professor at UC Santa Cruz, who 20+ years ago created Emmy, a LISP-based software application that produced scores in the style of classical composers. Some time ago Cope decided to sunset Emmy. It has been superceded by a new package, called Emily Howell, another in his suite of computer models of musical creativity.

L iterary theorist Frederic Jameson considers the ‘effacement’ of a personal style and its replacement by ‘pastiche’—not parody as in Bruce Adolphe’s comedic and educational routines but the borrowing and recoding of historical idioms, adopting jargon popularized by others, and repurposing ornaments and decorations that previously held different meanings—as fundamental elements of post-modernism. It is a “celebration of surfaces, which denies the hermeneutics of depth” (Jameson, pp. 64-5.) It’s like speech in a dead language, but speech that is devoid of parody’s ulterior, satiric motives. [Satie and Debussy co-opted and experimented with other styles and did pastiches. Nyman’s book covers some of this history of ‘experimental’ music.]

L evin marveled aloud about the brevity of the fragments that were his starting-materials… conjured the notion of Mozart as a dilettante... abandoning a Gigue in 5 bars; the Sarabande that Levin completed, abandoned by Mozart in 4 bars, just the merest sketch now extant; Mozart becoming very quickly disinterested in the art of fugue, having been goaded into attempting it by his wife.

B ut these idiosyncrasies and peccadillos of Mozart’s become in Levin’s hands a wonderful asset—they serve as a pretext for better understanding the man and the music, or, as many have noted, reviving the art of improvisation and honoring ‘freshness’ and novelty in classical music performance.

W hat has happened in the last generation or so is that objects—musical scores—have become ‘sacred’. People focus far too much on adhering literally to the notes that are written on the page. It is far better, I believe, to have a sense of responsibility to create something new in performing each work—it needs always to be ‘dangerous’.”
— Robert Levin, pianist.

R obert Levin studied piano with Louis Martin in New York City, and composition there with Stefan Wolpe. He was invited to study with Nadia Boulanger at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, and in Paris while still a teenager. He studied composition with Leon Kirchner, and piano with Clifford Curzon, Robert and Jean Casadesus, and Alice Gaultier-Léon. He was appointed head of music theory at the Curtis Institute in 1968, on the recommendation of Rudolf Serkin. Levin’s highly praised Mozart fortepiano concerto series, with Christopher Hogwood and The Academy of Ancient Music, was released in 1994 on the L’oiseau-Lyre label. Levin has been commended especially for his improvised cadenzas, a once-popular performance practice that some have credited him with restoring to tradition. His version of Mozart’s Requiem was premiered in 1991 in Stuttgart at the European Music Festival, conducted by Helmuth Rilling. Since 1993, Levin has been a professor at Harvard, where he serves as a Dwight P. Robinson Jr. Professor of Music Performance & Analysis and Professor of the Humanities.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Airbags and Hegemony: Esoteric Classical Accordion, Novel Repertoire

DSM: Not everyone’s aware that such a thing as classical accordion music even exists. The repertoire consists largely of folk music and pieces adapted from organ music, as well as some contributions by modern composers. But all musical instruments carry lots of nuanced meaning. How they’re built, how we position our bodies to play them, what motions and gestures their design permits us to use in performance, what historical and current expectations have been established by artists who perform on each instrument, the particular qualities of the literature that’s been written for each instrument, and many other anthropological details—all of these contribute to each instrument’s social ‘standing’ and its going-forward expressive scope. Accordion’s no different!

CMT: I agree. Any instrument is itself a powerful ‘physical signifier’, apart from the music that the instrument’s used to perform. But there’s no reason why accordion should be so maligned or neglected as a vehicle for classical music and new music anymore. Through exceptional performances of classical and new music on accordion, we can hear and learn new aesthetic implications of the music itself, things that we would otherwise have missed with conventional orchestrations on ‘normal’ chamber music instruments. It may be interpretively radical or exotic in some cases—these accordion arrangements. And, in other cases, the instrument’s not a good match to the demands of the music. But I find there’s often tremendous new meaning to be discovered, not just novelty. Take the new Mikko Luoma disc, for example.

The works here, played by Mikko Luoma, are challenging to the ear and mind. The contrast between the complex, intricate writing and the clichéd polka and cafe sound so ingrained in our ears is fascinating. After some dedicated listening, one hears an organ, woodwinds, even violin harmonics.”
— Daniel Wakin, review of Mikko Luoma, Virtuoso Accordion (Bridge Records), NY Times, 24-JUN-2007.

DSM: Mikko Luoma’s a senior lecturer at Turku Music Academy in Finland, and has lectured and given master classes at the Juilliard School, Columbia University, the Hochschule für Musik in Lübeck and the Musik Akademie Franz Liszt in Weimar. Salvatore Sciarrino’s Vagabonde Blu is an atmospheric piece emphasizing the accordion’s ‘stradella-bass’—pre-set major, minor, seventh and diminished chords in the instrument’s left manual. And Vladimir Zubitsky’s Carpathian Suite is perhaps the most traditional music on this disc, embodying the sounds of Ukranian folklore and folk instruments.

CMT: Teodoro Anzellotti, performing Luciano Berio’s Sequenza XIII, is as remarkable as Luoma, I think. And remember American accordionist Daniel Barski’s landmark Free-Reed Odyssey, which demonstrated a remarkable emotional honesty. And the amazing Norwegian, Frode Haltli! His repertoire includes Berio’s Sequenza XIII, Kalevi Aho (Sonate no. 2, Black Birds), Håkon Berge (Girlander), Adriana Höldzky (Miserere), Magnus Lindberg (Jeux d'anches), Per Nørgård (Toccata), Iannis Xenakis (Khoai), and transcriptions of Bach, Grieg, Scarlatti, Mozart, Satie, Shostakovich. He also has a new CD out with Mats Eilertsen on double bass and Torbjørn Dyrud on organ, Short Stories, released a month ago. This atmospheric album was recorded by Audun Strype at Kampen church and Eidsvoll church in Norway — it evokes a dark and contemplative mood. Fantastisk! Here is a 2004 photo of Frode with Joe Macerollo in Toronto at the Glenn Gould Studio. Frode performed Maja Ratkje’s ‘Concerto for Accordion’ and much more (photo courtesy of Linda Rogers, Univ Toronto). Frode’s musicianship is phenomenal . . .

Frode Haltli and Joe Macerollo, Toronto, 2004, performance of Maja Ratkje’s ‘Concerto for Accordion’ (photo courtesy of Linda Rogers, Univ Toronto)

DSM: Accordions, of course, come in many different styles—and the varieties of expressive truth that they’re capable of are really diverse. Most people are aware there are rock, classical, western, jazz and folk-style guitars but don’t realize there are at least as many types of accordions. Just like the guitar, there are accordions built for different styles of music, with and a variety of temperaments/tuning schemes. Three of the most popular sounds are musette, dry tuned, and chambered. ‘Musette’ is the over-the-top, cinematic or cheesy, continental sound that’s so familiar, achieved by de-tuning two or more sets of reeds at the same pitch. The amount of de-tuning affects the sweetness or aggressiveness of the timbre and the expressive meaning of ‘musette’-style sound. ‘Musette’ characterizes many styles of music, of course. Most often described as French cafe sound, it’s used today with various tunings by cajun/zydeco and polka ensembles and wild Yan Tiersen soundtrack music. ‘Dry-tuned’ is the bright sound of the accordion that’s achieved by the reed blocks being tuned in octaves. This style of sound is often heard with an accordion playing tango and other Latin music. ‘Chambered’ is that mellow sound of the accordion often preferred by jazz accordionists. This sound is achieved by engineering the reed blocks in chambers, which adds tonal warmth. This construction is more expensive and is often used by classical and jazz artists. ‘Dry tuning’ is also used in classical.

CMT: I think many people are unaware that accordion as an instrument dates to the 18th century. The literature from the Classical era is scanty, but there’s no reason to think that accordion is an ‘aberration’ or an inherently inappropriate instrument for chamber music. You’re just needing to find an appropriate repertoire, and appropriate venues where the performance of it can be reasonably balanced with the other instruments’ parts. ‘Essentialism’ and doctrinaire ‘anti-essentialism’ both affect the non-canonical instruments in classical music—much as anti-essentialism in the academy has been noted in Art in general. Accordion isn’t the only ‘victim’ of this. The confusion of traditional aesthetics was imputed to the assumption that the Arts share a common essence, which, once discovered by the aesthetician or musicologist, could serve as an absolute standard for aesthetic judgment. Well, both are terribly confining—as Arthur Danto and others have written for a long time! These new performances and compositions/arrangements should make people reconsider their assumptions, about classical accordion. In fact, the experience may unhinge the listener sufficiently to unseat other prejudices at the same time!

DSM: Accordion is a significant area of interest among women musicians: Ulrike Dangendorf, Lydie Auvray, Chava Alberstein, Cathrin Pfeifer, Joan Sommers at UMKC, and others. There is clearly a ‘radical’ quality to these women’s playing . . . Do you think accordion is symbolically congenial to ‘feminist’ interpretations?

CMT: The range of recordings and performances makes me begin to think so! Have you heard Finnish accordionist Maria Kalaniemi, who has explored many musical facets of the instrument, ranging from classical to folk to new music? Polish accordionist Lidia Kaminska’s chamber music, concerto and solo performances have also dramatically expanded the expressive range of the accordion as an instrument of classical music. So, with the quality of chambered free-reed instrument construction today, the quality of new compositions/arrangements for solo accordion or accordion as a voice in chamber ensembles, and the quality of classical musicianship on the instrument these days—it’s clear how ureasonable it is to harbor prejudices against the instrument any longer!

T he exceptionally large dynamic and tonal spectrum of the accordion, its virtuoso potential arising from the way the manuals are constructed, its harmonic and polyphonic scope and characteristics of bellows handling, compared to the bowing of a string instrument, make this now an utterly fascinating instrument for me.”
— Magnus Lindberg, composer.