Showing posts with label romantic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label romantic. Show all posts

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Martin Stadtfeld: Inspired Runtime Indirection

Martin Stadtfeld, Wiesbaden Kurhaus, 19-JUL-2012
T   he Busoni transcription is] absorbed in itself, moving round itself, decidedly turned away from the world... brooding; Beethoven-ish.”
  — Hugo Riemann.

A   lthough Bach set verses from Luther’s ‘Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland’ nine times, many of the same Advent themes run through all the settings. Subtle nuances and theological allusions point to various verses of the chorale text, and the cantatas remain a starting point for the interpretation of the organ works.”
  — Anne Leahy, in Zager, p. 95.

M artin Stadtfeld’s performance of Mendelssohn’s Klavierkonzert Nr. 1 g-Moll op. 25 with Sir Neville Marriner and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields at the Rheingau Festival was exceptional—a young man’s composition, performed with a young person’s sensibilities and energy. It simply sang!

B ut Stadtfeld’s 4’30” encore (Ferruccio Busoni’s transcription of J.S. Bach’s BWV 659 ‘Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland’) revealed a maturity and grasp of life’s setbacks and aporias: it was teleological, driving purposefully toward its goal(s) with pragmatism and propensity toward acceptance, yet with an open-heartedness/open-mindedness that still has room for hope.

S tadtfeld’s left-hand is quiet... ‘reticent’, as recommended in the performance notes in the original Breitkopf & Härtel edition of Busoni... enabling his melodic right-hand to have the terse prominence it requires. The tenuto and agogic accenting in the right-hand, in turn, conveys motives that are… pregnant.

T he expectancy was such that Stadtfeld impressed us that he himself was discovering things as he went, even though he has performed this prelude many, many times in the past... ‘sehr ausdrucksvoll mit vollem Anschlag.’ Many notes—the touch he applied to them—were, to me, like variable values in a software module that were resolved and bound at Stadtfeld’s pre-concert preparation—at ‘compile-time,’ so to say. But there were equally many that are only resolved on a moment-by-moment basis during performance (runtime). The balance between these lent a tremendous liveliness and interest and vibrancy to the performance of this beautiful Busoni transcription.

I t is, for me, analogous to the difference in software between a layered design with subroutines and an object-oriented design with event-handler methods. The terseness of the left-hand is such that Stadtfeld expresses not a human resoluteness but instead a process in Nature, something that is immutable, like mortality; not at all deterministic, but inevitable in the sense that human wishes and intentions cannot change the outcome.

I n software engineering terms, the Busoni-Bach left-hand module is a ‘wrapper’ and encapsulates the right-hand module. The left-hand ‘service’ owns a set of ‘objects’ with ‘handlers’ that share the same state. State is possible to preserve across invocations as the figures recur over the 3 pages of this transcription. It lends nicely to cooperation through message passing communication. Stadtfeld’s multiple levels of runtime indirection... reveal the extent and fate of our wishing and desiring.

E ach object has three parts: a component implementation, an export interface, and an import interface. Export and import can be modeled with runtime constructs specifically designed for component wrapping and interface adaptation, such as interception techniques for runtime resolution. The trills, for example, amount to handshake interfaces between right-hand and left-hand parts.

L iabilities of interpretations that entail generous amounts of runtime indirection include (1) variation-point management [adding and binding variants at a late moment in time implies extra work for managing and implementing variation points] and (2) predictability [a large amount of variability makes it virtually impossible to test all combinations during rehearsal]. But the merits of ‘romantic,’ liberal runtime indirection include danger, surprise, and excitement of the sort we were thrilled by on hearing Stadtfeld’s inspired performance of this Busoni-Bach ‘Nun komm’ Zugabe. A tiny encore that emotionally surpassed the gifts of the excellent, larger concerto that preceded it. Bravo!

Feruccio BusoniIndirection
M   athematics is the heart and soul of music … Without question the bar, the rhythm, the proportion of the parts of a musical work and so on must all be measured … Notes and other signs are only tools in music, the heart and soul is the good proportion of melody and harmony. It is ridiculous to say that mathematics is not the heart and soul of music.”
  — Johann Mattheson, 1743, ‘Neu eröffnete musikalische Bibliothek’ 2:54.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, April 23, 2012

Sex, Lies, and Music: Schumann’s Poet-Lover Alter-Ego

Dichterliebe, Op. 48, No. 1
D  ichterliebe’, the title chosen or accepted by Schumann for his choice of Heine’s texts, involves a double-meaning. Schumann the composer-poet found in the poems evidence that their protagonist is a poet-composer: one who is inspired by bird-song (No. 1), one whose sighs become nightingales (No. 2), one who inspires the lily to sing (No. 5), one who dreams magical fairy-music (No. 15), and one who finally buries all his songs at sea (No. 16). That persona, originally Heine’s surrogate [was embraced by Schumann as his own surrogate]... For the purposes of the poems, Heine spoke through the role of the unhappy Dichter; for the purposes of the songs, Schumann transformed that figure into a Dichter of his own.”
  — Edward T. Cone, ‘Poet’s love or composer’s love?’, in Steven Paul Scher, Chapter 10.
T he relation between Schumann and poetry is pretty revealing,” said pianist and long-time chamber music presenter Cynthia Siebert at a recent dinner party. “It is? How is it revealing and what is it that’s revealed?” I wondered. The conversation proceeded off in other directions. But my curiosity was piqued! Challenge accepted!

M usic theorist/pianist/composer Edward Cone wrote 20 years ago that Robert Schumann’s Dichter (poet) is dramatically different from Heinrich Heine’s Dichter. According to Cone, Schumann’s Dichter chooses music as the primary means of expression while words are secondary.

B ut the music depends on the other. The piano is inseparable from the vocal melody and the words. The piano persists in completing the voice’s unfinished cadences in No. 2, with the prolongation of each B. Every B, relinquished by the voice, resounds briefly before it resolves to A. The same prolongation-resolution motif appears also in No. 3.

N o. 4 has piano doubling the voice, and the two parts alternately imitate each other—a kind of counterpoint that might either suggest the complete co-dependent behavior of both, or the deliberate independence of each from the other. The rhetorical reversals [“He went to the country; to the town went she.”] are chiasmic: miniature embodiments of musical absorption of two-into-one where the two quasi-orgasmic experiences paradoxically highlight the separateness of the two at the peak of their union.

N o. 7 has voice and piano extensively doubling each other throughout—a kind of lovemaking or lovers’ dance. The voice is “on top” or leads through most of the song, but the piano is the one whose outburst at the climax has the voice in an inner or lower position.

M  ost subtle in the ‘interpenetration’ of voice and accompaniment is the very first song of the cycle, which sets the tone for all that follows. The doubling is delicately heterophonic—as when the voice, but not the piano, anticipates the resolution of a suspension; or when the piano, but not the voice, remains suspended; or when the voice, after inserting an appoggiatura, resolves a suspension. The effect is the kind of blurring that might result if the piano could pedal the vocal line, treating the voice as a strand of the piano texture [and subduing it, see m.4, image above].”
  —  Edward T. Cone, ‘Poet’s love or composer’s love?’, in Steven Paul Scher, Chapter 10.
I  look up the date and see that Dichterliebe, Op. 48, was composed in 1840, when Schumann was 30 years old, the year he and Clara at long last became married, against her father’s will. Susan Youens and others see nothing too subtle about the motivations and construction of Dichterliebe:

T  he persona sings of his tears and sighs transforming themselves into [sprouting, turgid] floral offerings and love’s nightingales in ‘Aus meinen Tränen spriessen’; he sings in hectic, [pumping] alliterative excess of ‘die Kleine, die Feine, die Reine, die Eine’ in ‘Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne’; and finds that he cannot trust the beloved’s words of love in ‘Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’.’ In ‘Ich will meine Seele tauchen,’ the persona longs to submerge his soul in the lily’s chalice. That this is a sublimation of sexual imagery is evident in the post-coital sobbing in the piano at the end.”
  — Susan Youens, Carnegie Hall program notes, 2010.
T here are 14 excellent essays on music-text relationships in the multi-author volume edited by Steven Paul Scher (link below), including several that address music-text manifestations in Schumann’s compositions. Juicy bedtime reading!
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Morgenstern Trio: Ravel, the Amateur Mathematician

Morgenstern Trio
P  antoum poetical form—where each subsequent line changes function to become an antecedent line in the next stanza. Ravel’s music shows a love of the musical equivalent of this, playing on in-built ambiguities between antecedent and consequent to build up large-scale forms and at the same time hold our attention by letting the ambiguities surprise us.”
  — Roy Howat, 1993.
T he Morgenstern Trio (Catherine Klipfel, piano; Stefan Hempel, violin; Emanuel Wehse, cello) have a uniquely intense, incisive style, as was abundantly demonstrated in their performance of Debussy, Mozart, and Brahms in a Music Alliance Series program Friday evening.

T he trio also have a characteristic, wry sense of humor, as befits the eponymous Christian Morgenstern, a German poet who was born in 1871 and died of TB in 1914.

T he Trio’s whole performance was superb—fresh; exciting; technically flawless—no surprise, given the many prizes they have received in competitions.

B ut even their encore—the second movement of Ravel’s piano trio, entitled ‘Pantoum’—delivered more, more than one routinely expects from an ‘encore’. The piano opens with the edgy, intense first theme, and the strings respond in double octaves. The short scherzo and trio ‘A-B-A’ structure makes for a perfect encore-length morsel. But there are ironies and meta-meanings in this piece. The repetitions and surface-level structures of the piece are not as straight-forward as they seem. The structure is like a ‘spell’ cast by a witch in a folktale. The rhetoric is one not of declamation but enchantment.

R avel wrote the trio theme in a completely different metre (4/2) from the scherzo (3/4), and the two time signatures co-exist—a kind of metrical dissonance that adds a lot of drama to an otherwise ‘dèpouiller’ (‘pared-down’, to the level of a children’s fairytale) narrative.

T he ‘piano-against-strings’, ‘4/2 vs. 3/4’ meter switches with the 4/2 that is initially in the piano part later swapped as the strings go from 3/4 to 4/2 and the piano returns to 3/4. The “competing meters” metrical dissonance persists for a long, long stretch: 168 quarter notes at 192 bpm, almost a whole minute’s worth.

Lehmer SieveT he ornaments are ‘reflexive’, as if they are compulsory, happenstantial features of how the music lays under the physical hand for each instrument, and as contrasted with a fully-deliberated, polished, composerly gesture.

T he reflexive, organic sounds wash over us, and we develop a suspicion of ambient, non-human order; a sense of diabolical, out-of-control natural forces at-work; a mix of awe and wonder and foreboding.

T he tension between the different meters—the different time percepts—inducing us to switch between an ‘ensemble algorithmic level’ and an ‘individual voice level’ depending on what is more significant or more commanding of our attention—is the primary reason why this ‘Pantoum’ movement is so exciting, I believe. In the languid section between numbers 11 and 15 in the score, the trio “sound grains” are large, and the listener attends to the ensemble sound and its algorithmic metrical structure.

B ut in the emphatic pizzicato passages, our attention is absorbed in the motion of the individual string parts, and we suspend attending to the algorithmic interactions associated with the metrical dissonance.

T he metrical dissonance persists and “lurks”, though. It is still within our awareness—and we feel apprehensive about the finiteness of our attention and the risks that might come true on account of shifting our attention away from the metrical dissonance “ensemble” features and onto the individual parts, much as a child hearing a fairytale experiences apprehension as her attention is absorbed by some new story development but the wolf is without doubt still in those woods and nightfall is not long off.
O  ne may say that the number of functions is extremely small whereas the number of characters is extremely large. This explains the two-fold quality of a folktale—its amazing multiformity, picturesqueness, and color... and, on the other hand, its no-less-striking uniformity—its repetition.”
  — Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, p. 20.
I t captivates us—it fully absorbs us, this fairytale-like pantun of Ravel’s—all the way to its ending flourish. We are spell-bound, returned to a primitive state of wonder, feeling much like we felt as children listening to thrilling stories—ones we had never heard before—told to us by belovèd grandparent or parent. You don’t get this entrancing music experience from recordings—not really. You need to attend a “live” performance, like the especially fine one given by Morgenstern Trio Friday night!
L  ass die Moleküle rasen,
was sie auch zusammenknobeln!
lass das Tüfteln, lass das Hobeln,
heilig halte die Ekstasen.

[Let race the molecules,
tossing together what compounds they may!
Let the random tinkering continue; let the atoms’ planes and dihedral angles,
Keep holy the ecstasy.]”
  — Christian Morgenstern, Lass die Moleküle rasen.
[Lehmer Sieve, 1932, solving Diophantine equations] Lehmer Sieve
D  iophantine Pantoum where A=7, B=3

1Lehmer sieve’s ribbon o’er Diophantine field;
2White paper slides to the tune of rods’ switches.
3Sieve sings congruences, linear aria concealed,
4Seeks solutions to be found in theory which, as

2White paper slides to the tune of rods’ switches,
5Ribbon infers nineteen B minus eight A equals one.
4Seeks solutions to be found in theory which, as
6A father’s age AB is one less than twice BA the son,

5Ribbon infers nineteen B minus eight A equals one.
7Polynomial conjecture, in Fermat’s margin centuries’ toil!
6A father’s age AB is one less than twice BA the son
8Yields seventy-three and thirty-seven, algebraically closed foil.

7Polynomial conjecture, in Fermat’s margin centuries’ toil!
3Sieve sings congruences, linear aria concealed,
8Yields seventy-three and thirty-seven, algebraically closed foil—
1Lehmer sieve’s ribbon o’er Diophantine field.”

  — DSM.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Higher-Order Geometry: Murray Perahia and Chopin’s Polonaises

Murray Perahia
M   usically, the most important consequence of the geometry is the following: since a nearly-even N-note chord occupies the same cross-section of the [metric] space as its transposition by 12/N semitones, such chords can be linked by particularly efficient voice-leading. Thus, nearly-even two-note chords are very close to their six-semitone transpositions; nearly-even three-note chords are very close to their 4- and 8-semitone transpositions; nearly-even 4-note chords are very close to their 3-, 6-, and 9-semitone transpositions and so on.”
  — Dmitri Tymoczko, Geometry of Music, p. 97.
M y enjoyment of last night’s excellent concert by Murray Perahia was enhanced by paying special attention to the intervals and root-motions of the chords—especially in the Chopin pieces on the program.

A nd, while Dmitri Tymoczko’s ‘Geometry of Music’ has in the year since the book was published reaped some objections and a certain notoriety (David Headlam and Rob Schneiderman (AMS), among other commenters), I do feel that considering the quantitative and statistical properties of a musical work can help some of us to understand the work better, be moved more deeply by it, and, possibly, learn how we ourselves might compose music more successfully, or measure and figure out how something we have composed compares, for better or worse, to other beautiful and effective compositions.

Chopin, Polonaises, Op. 26, No. 1
F rom the score of the Polonaise Op. 26 No. 1 in C-sharp minor that Perahia performed last night, I transcribed a number of the intervals contained in the 138-bar, 414-beat-long piece. Like Tymoczko and others, I used a root-motion log-frequency representation of intervals in my array, so that distances of notes N-semitones apart are uniform in any octave. I then utilized the ‘phom’ package in the R system to examine the distribution of those intervals in topological S3 space. This relies on theory set forth by Gunnar Carlsson and coworkers at Stanford, on persistent homology. I had occasion to collaborate with Gunnar about 5 years ago on analysis of critical-care ICU timeseries data. Persistent homology computes topological invariants of filtered sequences of simplicial complexes, constructed from my transcribed Chopin Polonaise interval dataset. The relevance of this to music theoretic analysis is that conventional topological invariants are unsuitable for characterizing the geometry of music since they are simultaneously too sensitive, and too weak. They are too “weak” because of their homotopy invariance, such that the underlying harmonic/intervallic structure can be stretched in any way (as long as it is not ripped) without changing its homology groups.

R pkg ‘phom’L ots of additional empirical work would be needed, to accurately and adequately characterize just this one Chopin Polonaise, so beautiful and evocative as performed by Perahia. I leave that to the card-carrying music theorists. But, unlike Professor Headlam and others, I do think that such effort would be rewarded. As an amateur musician, I have no academic career in music theory to advance, no tenure review to worry about, no political axes to grind in my analysis and writing—posting this tiny, speculative blogpost as I am here, and pointing interested readers to a new open-source R package that might aid others’ endeavors.

I n summary, it is simply a deeply pleasurable thing for me, to roll up my own sleeves and bring novel empirical tools and concepts to bear and see what I can learn. And, having corresponded in years past with Dmitri Tymoczko several times by email, I truly believe that his aims and aspirations are as wholesome as this as well, not so cynical or bombastic as Schneiderman and others allege. For some of us, loving something magical like this Chopin music [or, alternatively, loving someone] means, among other things, persistently and deeply wanting and striving to comprehend it [or them], by numerical quantitative means as well as by subjective, qualitative means, that’s all.

B y the way, Gunnar Carlsson’s papers are very readable, if you care to visit the links to them below...
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Higher-Order Virtuosity: Richard Goode and Chopin’s Ballade No. 3

Chopin, Ballade No. 3, Op. 47
I  n everything Chopin wrote, no matter how complex and virtuosic, that powerful simplicity is there at the core. Although he wrote some very difficult and impressive stuff, the ultimate effect of his music, I feel, should never really be to ‘impress’. But that’s exactly what the pianists we usually hear are striving to do: impress the contest judges, the critics, the public. The world we classical performers live in gives us very little room not to play big ‘show’ pieces, or make everything we play into one... Chopin’s third ballade suffers particularly from this problem. The ballades are all difficult, but No. 3 is the easiest of them—sort of like the shortest Himalaya. It seems as though all the star performers I’ve heard end up trying to make it as hard as the others, plowing through it with virtuosic flare, and thus trivializing it. [And how wonderful it is when, instead, someone like Richard Goode plays this piece with selfless transparency. –DSM]”
  — Paul Cantrell blog, In the Hands, 02-MAR-2005..
M y favorite part of Richard Goode’s performance last night in Kansas City [a program that included Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin] was the Chopin Ballad No. 3, Op. 47. This 9-minute piece is maybe the strangest of Chopin’s four ballades, on account of its unrelenting optimism. Goode’s expressive dexterity handles the staggering complexity with seeming ease and imparts a vigor suffused with warmth... perfect for this sweet, cheerful work.

G entle A-flat 6/8-meter dolce, evoking donkeys Chopin observed in the hills of Majorca? Donkeys with jobs, but happy jobs that they enjoyed doing.

T  he technique [of musical gesture] is perhaps a musical version of what is referred to as a ‘suture’ in film theory: placing the camera in such a way that it functions as the eye of the protagonist of the film, thereby drawing us, as unwitting spectators, to become the subject of the film ourselves, since we share the same visual field and same [Majorcan] point of view.”
  —  Patrick McCreless, in Almén & Pearsall, p. 13.
W hat a narrative trajectory! What storytelling! Social media of 1841! Our minds engage, imagination runs free, and we ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ this peripatetic, vacationing Chopin voice from the beginning to the end. The feeling is physical, not just emotional; it coheres—for Goode, and for us in the audience—throughout the piece, all the way to the satisfying, happy ending. For example, the motion from C (mm. 230, 232) down to the E-flat (mm. 231, 233) suggests the subsequent plunges to the low A-flat at the end. Energy flows! We “feel” the path that we are on, anticipate things along the way, anticipate them accurately. And this experience of uncanny accuracy is part of what is pleasant and thrilling for us: in material that is this complex and unpredictable, we don’t usually experience ourselves as being so graceful or right as this. We love being unexpectedly better than we are!

U ltimately, our minds and bodies gladly go everywhere Chopin’s and Goode’s narrative aims to take us. Theirs is a higher-order virtuosity that doesn’t strive to impress. It strives only to reveal what’s True, to tell this true story. But it’s not just ‘telling’, not just a musical ‘text’. The human body is involved—fingers, arms, flesh, nerves, mortal gifts, physical mass. The higher-order virtuosity inhabiting the body averts its gaze and embodies Laws of Physics in action—beauty incarnate; a kind of transcendence—something for which we surely hadn’t planned on our Friday night out, and something for which we feel thrilled and grateful. Bravo!

Chopin, Ballade No. 3, Op. 47
V  iewed as a sign, ‘formative repetition’ refers to what is repeated: it is usually a marker of segmentation, a grammatical feature. When a figure is repeated more than once, the attention begins to be attracted by the repetition itself; instead of focusing on the repeated material only, we focus on the act of repetition as an activity signifier per se and seek a symbolic interpretation of it. It is then a sign, not of segmentation or grammar, but of connotative meaning. It evokes extra-musical associations of... emphatically [re-]emphasized speech, dancing, laughing, etc.”
  — Raymond Monelle, p. 88, quoting Lidov.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Object-oriented operator-overloading in Fauré’s Fantaisie for Flute and Piano Op. 79?

Faure, Op. 79
B   y overloading standard operators on a class, you can exploit the intuition of the users of that class. This lets users program in the language of the problem domain rather than in the language of the machine.”
  — Marshall Cline, ParaShift C++ FAQ.
A ttended James Galway’s recital the other evening. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

G alway is not subtle. His technical virtuosity, charismatic personality, and emphatic, extroverted playing style are incomparable.

B ut, beyond that, his performance of Fauré’s Fantaisie for Flute and Piano, Op. 79, led me to notice “key-undefining” and “-redefining” elements that strike me as similar to “operator overloading” in compiler design, or, more specifically, to runtime “polymorphisms” in parallel computing and cloud computing, where multiple processes that are interacting with each other concurrently implement more than one version of an operator, and the different operator instantiations have different semantics.

L ook at the score snippet above! In the Andantino movement we have middle-register F-natural (Ddim) against piano’s E in the LH. Other dissonant passages involving the flute object/process communicating with the piano object/process. Finale’s chord-analysis plug-in labels this as Ddim9 (third inversion), then Bdim. Your brain is like a master process that is executing and integrating multiple parallel child processes. If the scope of your brain’s attention encompasses all of the pitches in m. 17 in Op. 79, say, then it receives a hexachord back from the flute object class and the piano object class—an E major triad invasively intermingled with an F major triad... triads that are a dissonant semitone apart... a sort of exotic suspension.

I t is like operator overloading in C++, C#, Scala, Python, Ruby, R, and other languages.

T he interval of the fifth serves as a melodic frame for flute class execution and piano class execution in each of the ‘mélodie’s’ sections, its space gradually rising and becoming more chromatic—making the timbre brighter and the emphasis stronger or more individualistic or ‘recitational’. Melodic motion expands both registrally and chromatically. This is not so much subjectivity/ambiguity or vagueness/tentativeness that are aspects of impressionism, so much as it is concurrent, deliberate polymorphism of operators implemented by different object classes!

T he Allegro movement has rampant elisions of phrase completions, such that cadences are implicit and there is implied emphasis on what is omitted. That’s another feature in Op. 79 that, to me, presages parallel and cloud-based computing... Eager quitting by the Map-Reduce master process when ‘reducer’ jobs have by now yielded enough to enable the master process to abort the rest of them and proceed to the next task.

Faure, Op. 79G abriel Urbain Fauré was, shall we say, an erstwhile compiler engineer who lived, oh, about 100 years “before his time”.

F or your interest, some Op. 79 videos on YouTube are here, and here, and here, and here, and here. In them you will see that the “object polymorphisms” in Op. 79 are not necessarily evident unless the flute playing is as strong as Galway’s.




Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

With You in Mind: Some Romantic-Period ‘Directed’, Uncommissioned Chamber Works

Lesser, Ushioda, Schepkin
W   e should get used to the idea that tones have lives of their own, more independent of the artist’s pen in their vitality than one would dare to believe.”
  —  Heinrich Schenker, 1906.
E njoyed New England Conservatory faculty members’ first ‘First Monday’ concert of the season last night…
  • Dvořák: Terzetto in C major, Op. 74, B.148 ... Miriam Fried, Lucy Chapman, violins; Paul Biss, viola
  • Arensky: Trio ... Masuko Ushioda, violin; Laurence Lesser, cello; Sergey Schepkin, piano
  • Brahms: Quintet in G Major, Op. 111 ... Borromeo String Quartet; Kim Kashkashian, viola
T he Terzetto—with the two upper-register voices and the alto voice (viola)—is an interesting texture that leaves us wondering what the tenor/baritone voice (cello) would do had a part been written. Why did Dvořák choose this unusual orchestration—“string quartet minus one”? Well, said Laurence Lesser in his pre-concert remarks, it was because Dvořák wished to honor a violinist friend and the friend’s violin teacher, both of whom lived in the same boarding house where Dvořák himself lived at the time. Simple. Good enough reason as any!

B esides this Terzetto, there is Dvořák’s String Trio in B-flat, Op. 75a, Kodály’s Szerenád for 2 violins and viola, Op. 12, Sergei Taneyev’s Trio, Op. 21, and Frank Bridge’s Rhapsody Trio, H.176. Probably there are more, but I am traveling and not close to a conservatory library to do a decent job of looking them up. In any case, the literature in this space is not large. This repertoire for 2 violins plus viola is not performed nearly as much as it should be. (And, for that matter, the diversity-enhancing decision to compose for non-standard ensembles is not taken nearly as often as it should be either.)

T he viola’s role as an ‘outer’ (bass) voice in the Terzetto sheds light on differences (compared to violin) in viola bow-arm technic: not some violin-style (with hand, wrist, and arm predominantly above the level of the bowstick), the hand and forearm are lower and the upper arm doesn’t move so much. I sat up close, on one side of Jordan Hall to the right of center-stage, far enough to the right where Biss’s movements were not obscured by the music stand. The viola fingering in the Terzetto also presents more than the usual range of challenges, it seems to me. It was wonderful to be able to observe his technic, see his decisions, hear the results.

T he Arensky trio, written in memory of cellist Karl Davydov, was really good. Unusual timbres and textures… the Adagio (Elegia) third movement … the strings’ mutes on throughout. The ‘accessory’ thematic elements to a memorial piece lend depth and verisimilitude—a sort of ‘I remember when’. Ushioda’s touching remembrances, answered by Lesser’s (Davydov’s) inspired and atmospheric replies, modulated by Schepkin’s brilliant and sensitive arbitration/counsel. These are dramatic meditations on the death of a beloved person and, like all elegies, are poetical—with language and cadence governed by impulses of memory. The elegy form tolls departure and loss, irrevocable going-going-goneness… rapturously, ecstatically... often with more of a pastoral or more serene or idealized or sanitized aspect than the person remembered may have had in real life… which is okay and as it should be. We were touched; we are touched; we will continue to be touched.

T he Brahms piece is not elegiac except for the Adagio. It’s instead optimistic and lighthearted, but it is memoristic nonetheless, inspired by Brahms’s walks in the Vienna Prater. By rights, it’s a viola quintet, full of rich alto sonorities. The first movement, Allegro non troppo ma con brio, is in 9/8. Opens with a cello solo in G major, transitions to G minor, with excursions through various other keys before returning to G major. The second movement, the Adagio, begins with a viola solo. The main theme goes through a sort of ‘versioning’ or software refactoring—reimplementing it on different ‘platforms’ and architectures—pondering and recasting the material and, through each refactoring, discovering new dimensions in it and reaching different conclusions. The third movement, Un poco Allegretto, a cheerful minuet and trio form in 3/4, ends with a short coda. And the fourth movement, Vivace ma non troppo presto, is tremendously buoyant and vivacious. Brahms’s pen—and tones—and the Borromeos plus Ms. Kashkashian—had more vitality than one dares to believe…





Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Richard Goode’s Emergent Chopin

Richard Goode
I    have a hard time with music I can’t hear and construe tonally. I suppose it’s a habit of ear.”
  —  Richard Goode, interview with Cheryl North, 2002.
R ichard Goode performed in Rockport today…
  • Schumann: Kinderszenen, Op. 16
  • Schumann: Kreisleriana, Op. 16
  • Chopin: Nocturne in E-flat No. 2, Op. 55
  • Chopin: Scherzo No. 3 in c-sharp minor, Op. 39
  • Chopin: Waltz in A-flat No.3, Op. 64
  • Chopin: Waltz in C-sharp minor No. 2, Op. 64
  • Chopin: Waltz in F Major No. 3, Op. 34
  • Chopin: Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major, Op. 47
T he performance reminds me that the delicacy of Chopin involves not only the delicacy of touch but also delicateness of the mind. The Scherzo Op. 39, especially, illustrates this. The C# minor tonality is latent, deferred for a long time, 24 bars or so, depending on how you interpret some of the bars. This was composed during one of the periods when Chopin’s tuberculosis was exacerbated—a time when we naturally imagine his uncertainty about his health and what would come next was also exacerbated.

T   uberculosis was never confirmed, and the Chopin autopsy report has never been found. Both cystic fibrosis and alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency are possible differential diagnoses that can explain his symptoms.”
  —  Ulf Kongsgaard, University Hospital, Oslo, 2011.
T he tension abates a bit when the original pattern is overcome by C# sonorities that are more persuasive both metrically/cadentially and tonally. The stable major harmonies that began the composition are transformed into contrapuntal chords, ones that evoke passing tones—naturals, flats, double-sharps—on the path toward a less-complex C#. The meaning of what’s gone before gradually emerges as the complexity recedes. The essayist’s/composer’s/performer’s ideas are not expounded so much as they’re ‘discovered’. (The Op. 39 Chopin descending D-flat major ‘sparkle’ figures in the upper register presage Ray Lynch’s celestial electronica by more than 100 years.)

I n other words, these ‘character pieces’ reveal the composer-as-discoverer or composer-as-kluger/tinkerer/experimenter, and stand in stark contrast to the usual notion of composer-as-omniscient-designer/architect.

G oode gazed out the windows at various moments during the Schumann, looking at the large waves crashing outside on the rocks. How could this scene not influence his next move? How could the liveliness of the waves not have an impact on the ‘Sehr lebhaft’! How could the excitement of the wheeling gulls not impart something extra to the ‘Sehr aufgeregt’!

O ne or two attendees asked whether the screen could be drawn, to darken the hall and “Could you please put a spotlight on Mr. Goode’s face?” David Deveau, MIT Senior Lecturer and founder and Artistic Director of Rockport Music, replied after the intermission that, no, no changes would be made: the lighting and the open view of the sea were precisely as Mr. Goode had requested. Goode finds the late afternoon light of the Atlantic stretching off to the northeast a fine and rewarding view to contemplate while performing these particular works.

I n summary, it was a performance that was intensely enjoyable, warmly recommended, with even more of the spontaneity and essayistic qualities for which Goode is so well known. Perfect for this complex, chilly, drizzly Sunday in October. The F-minor Chopin waltz and Bach’s Sarabande from the B-flat partita were Goode’s parting encore gifts to us all. We went away satisfied and grateful.

T he new Shalin Liu Performance Hall is very nice, by the way—acoustically as well as visually. The irregularities of the dry-laid stone walls on the main floor are enough to prevent any notable resonances or dead zones. And the multi-glazed windows and reception hall on the third floor provide excellent acoustic isolation. There was a 25-knot breeze blowing outside and 1-meter chop in Sandy Bay, none of which was audible inside the Shalin Liu hall. Delightful.

P .S.—Cystic fibrosis was only recognized as such in the 1930s [Andersen D. Cystic fibrosis. Am J Dis Child 1938;56:344-99] and alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency was only discovered some 30 years after that. So the fact that Chopin’s death was attributed to “tuberculosis” is not surprising, given the minimal medical knowledge at the time.

Shalin Liu Performance Center
I   have a photo of Richard Goode in my office. I have known Richard for 25, no, 30 years. When my son was small, he asked ‘Dad, is that picture Beethoven?’ And I laughed and replied, ‘No, but almost. As good as if it were Beethoven. He plays almost as if he were Beethoven.’ ”
  —  David Deveau, pre-concert remarks.
Rockport Music



Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)