Now Serving...WAR!

2011 began with something of a bang – the Beyond the Score program devoted to Prokofiev Symphony no. 5. Although I have mixed feelings about the BTS shows, I'm happy any time one of them features music less than a century old. We've got to drag our audience (and probably a number of musicians) kicking and screaming into the 20th century before the next one ends.

It came as something of a letdown that the pro Stalin heckler did not make an appearance. I mean the fellow who took extreme umbrage at the Shostakovitch 4 presentation and yelled “Long Live the Third International!”among other things. I suppose he is on some sort of 'do not fly list' at our concert hall, unless of course he is being detained, incommunicado, in the secret warren of interrogation cells beneath the stage. But the disposition of such a rare commodity as an ardent Stalinist in this day an age merits careful consideration. They might consider writing him into the show next time we do another one of the Soviet area masterpieces.

As I am sure to have mentioned previously, it is hard to get an accurate idea of the BTS show from the stage while sitting in the dark, fending off sleep, stealing glances at the screen, and trying to keep one's place in the cues. We have little number displays, like at your local bakery, telling us which number is coming up next. It may seem obvious that the cues run in numerical order, but if you have three or four off in a row, the possibility of miscounting is very real. That said, it was difficult to follow the narrative thread of the presentation. Germany seemed to invade the Soviet Union three different times during the show, then Peter and the Wolf got involved somehow. However, in the end, the audience was justifiably appreciative, Socialist Realism (at least temporarily) won the day while, routed from its entrenched position, Liebestod, turned tail and fled the concert hall.

Now, where was I...

[an additional apology is in order here: the first attempt to post this had the second paragraph inexplicably deleted: I guess I'm a bit rusty after all. So if the old bass blog seemed to make even less sense than usual, that is the excuse...]

No excuses, but a number of reasons kept me away from the blog. Skipping a few months has left me with a nice backlog of anecdotes to draw on during the lean weeks that are surely coming. The member of the orchestra who brought up the option of breaking my thumbs if I didn't start writing again made the decision easy.

Leave it to one of my favorites to provide material to write about. Pierre Boulez seems to have rigorously pared down the art of conducting to its barest essentials – a flick of the wrist here, a curt nod there. Pithy remarks to the orchestra often combine the didactic with the hilarious in masterful fashion. “That was, in fact, horrible...” I believe I heard him say recently – the sort of thing that gets you chuckling until you realize maybe you're supposed to be indignant. When he is in town, I'm always watching pretty closely for signs of hidden or underlying meanings, like someone from the ancient world might have watched the flight of birds, or examined sheep entrails in an attempt to fathom the divine order of the world.

The other day, unhappy about how we had executed some tempo change in the Glagolitic Mass, the Maestro showed what at first glance seemed to be uncharacteristic exasperation. “Did I really conduct so badly?” he asked, rhetorically, showing us again the simple wave of the wrist sufficient to wrench an orchestra out of Moderato and into Presto.

The rest of the rehearsal had me puzzling over that one. I wondered if having thrown a a wild pitch, a major league hurler had ever called his catcher to mound and asked, “Did I really throw the ball over there!?” pointing to the dugout. Strange how with conducting, the basic rules of cause and effect seem less than straightforward. In the minds of the public, to be sure, they are turned completely on their heads most of the time. Leave it to Boulez to challenge a bit of received knowledge in creative fashion.

panem et circenses

My apologies for not writing sooner. I felt the need to get at least a couple of the season opening extravaganzas under my belt first.

We have often started seasons with a tour of one sort or another. The itinerary – Wheaton, Pilsen, Millennium Park – did not take us to the Czech Republic and back. I wonder what the folks at Wheaton College thought about a bunch of gringos showing up to play a concert of Mexican/Spanish favorites {along with Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streich} to honor the appointment of their new president. Then again, I've brought guacamole to many a backyard barbeque without giving it a second thought, and I'm about as Mexican as Richard Strauss. We repeated the same program in Pilsen the following day (September, 16 – Mexican Independence Day) with the sensible omission of the Spanish El sombrero de tres picos. For those out of town folks who might be wondering, Pilsen is formerly Czech, currently largely Mexican-American neighborhood in our city.


All of this served as a warmup to the grand “Free Concert for [insert orchestra/city name here]” in Millennium Park. I admit to a somewhat (OK, hopelessly) jaded attitude that makes me cringe any time I notice the words gala, festive, celebratory, special, or other superlatives attached to a concert. Usually I'm hoping for little more than to escape from one of these events without humiliation or a profound feeling of degradation.

Much to my relief, the “Free Concert...” and its attendant drumbeat of publicity seemed to do a good job of building up the hype surrounding the orchestra and its new music director without becoming an embarrassment. The advance PR blitz had 'the man on the street' aware something was happening to our normally marginal organization. Muti seems to have pretty good instincts when it comes to dealing with the public. The program

Verdi Overture to La forza del destino
Liszt Les préludes
Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet
Respighi Pines of Rome

seemed to be right in the wheelhouse of mass taste in what a 'classical music' concert ought to be. I found myself sitting on stage during the concert imagining our orchestra doing this type of performance a number of years ago, perhaps offering Elliot Carter's latest commission, followed by some lengthy, static scenes from Parsifal; or else a 'celebrity' would have been engaged, with the orchestra relegated to playing backup. All in all, it was very nice not finding ourselves on the wrong end of a fumbled opportunity for good PR.

Muti made an interesting choice for his first subscription concerts – Berlioz, Symphony Fantastique paired with its sequel, Lélio, together billed as The Berlioz (uh, oh) Spectacular. Our previous music director (forgot his name already) put on the Mozart/DaPonte operas in his first season. The change of music director is something that probably doesn't happen nearly often enough, so nobody has much basis to compare one transition to another. But it seems as if the position wasn't already similar to running a three ring circus, a new maestro feels the need to make a statement of authority, like the lion tamer who shows the audience (and, probably more importantly for his health, the lions) he can bring not one, but six! ferocious beasts to heel all at once, or the strongman, who lifts not only the barbell with one arm, but the bathing beauty with the other. Although more modest in scale than an opera, Lélio employs a large orchestra, chorus, vocal soloists, narrator, and includes directions for stage and lighting effects. In fact, it seems more of a Spectacle than a piece of concert music – over an hour in length, I think the orchestra plays less than half the time.

The 19th century Italian physician Giovanni Morelli developed a system for correctly attributing the works of master painters. To put it briefly, his method concentrated on supposedly minor details in a painting – hands or ears of background figures – things things the painter had thrown off more spontaneously and which forgers would less likely reproduce faithfully. The notion that minor details and spontaneous gestures might hold important clues to identity were of interest to criminologists. The great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes (the creation of another physician) uses Morellian attention to minor details to arrive at his often startling deductions. Morelli's method also interested Freud, who saw analysis of the minor details of his subjects' thoughts and actions as a window into the unconscious.

All of this is in response to the frequent questions I've fielded about Muti recently, most of which seem to be something similar to “So, Muti, what's he like?” questions probably best answered by each in their own way. For me, the grand gestures and spectacle are most interesting as collections of details rather than as statements outlining a new approach or a different artistic vision. In fact, the musical spectacle seems the perfect milieu in which to make these sorts of observations, when the maestro's authority and control are stretched somewhat thinner than normal. Perhaps the hidden subtext of spectacle is really self-revelation after all.

The 23.8% solution

Many thanks to those who came to the Gunnelpumpers CD release show. Also, many thanks to those who wrote heartfelt comments about the Ravinia Festival. For those who haven't given up on it entirely, I would encourage you to make your feelings known to someone higher up in the organization (which is just about anybody but me, honestly). Hopefully the opinions of past, present, and possibly future ticket buyers might carry some weight.

My apologies for the dearth of posts this summer. I really couldn't bring myself to do what might be taken as the moral equivalent of strolling through a hospital ward and making snarky comments about the patients: “Geez dude, you're looking a little pale there.” However, since today (Saturday, July 31) is my last at the festival this summer (the Operas next week and the Musical the following use small orchestras) I struggled mightily, trying to come up with some sort of closing remarks to put the whole thing in perspective. Last night I woke in a cold sweat (the best sort of sweat, really) and hurried to my computer to check a few things and make a couple calculations. If my numbers are off, blame it on a lack of sleep.

Here are some Festival Fun Facts:

Percentage of our concerts this summer featuring Patti LuPone: 23.8 (5 of 21)
[A caveat is in order here: I have not looked closely at the rosters for the Mozart Operas next week. I'm assuming them to be LuPone free, but who knows....] I've got nothing against Patti LuPone, in fact, she's great, but that seems excessive.

Number of concerts without a soloist: 0

Number of concerts on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday: 13 (including two matinees, see below)
All {name redacted} concerts used to be on weekends. Now when somebody asks me when we're playing next week I can only shrug, “Tuesday?”

Number of concerts lead by our music director: 12

Number of concerts on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday lead by our music director: 4 (including the two matinees)
The Saturday and Sunday Mozart Opera concerts are at 1 PM in order to make way for the Temptations/The Four Tops, and the BoDeans. I wonder if one lawn ticket covers both shows each day, or if truncheon wielding, Segway riding security guards will clear the park of classical music buffs after the Opera is over.

Number of concerts canceled: 1.
The Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy show died as a result of our contractual limit on the number of 'Pops' concerts we can play in a summer.

Number of disappointed FanBoys slinking back to parents' basements: unknown.

After the cancellation of the video game music show, we were interested to see an extra rehearsal for the Sondheim: 80 show (with Patti LuPone!) pop up on the schedule. This could only be described as a 'punitive' rehearsal – sticking in an extra service where none was needed, bringing the scheduled rehearsal time for the 90 minute Gala performance to seven and a half hours. (The 3-hour long Operas the following week each get eight and a half hours of rehearsal, BTW.) The poor fellow on hand to conduct the Sondheim show found himself looking down the barrel of a pretty testy orchestra at the first rehearsal. After the break he came out and hastily announced a 'deal' had been struck, canceling the punitive rehearsal. I once struck a similar deal with dubious character on a darkened street: I agreed to give him my wallet and he agreed not to beat me. Sometimes you have to cast something aside just to save your skin.

the nth wave

Gunnelpumpers CD release show

Tuesday July 20, 8 PM
Martyrs'

(3855 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago IL tel. 773 404 9494)

The Gunnelpumpers will perform this week to celebrate the release of our first CD, the nth wave. The CD is available on iTunes and CD Baby. A few videos of us in performance are also available on YouTube. I believe we have Facebook and Myspace pages as well, although I'm not really in touch with the social networking thing.