In Praise of Purgatory

Last week we played, among other things, the Adagio from Mahler's unfinished 10th symphony. For health reasons Pierre Boulez had to withdraw from two weeks of conducting, passing the baton onto Cristain Macelaru and Asher Fisch. Another notable piece on offer was the Bartók Divertimento for String Orchestra, which has had a notable history in our orchestra, particularly for the bass section, but about which I can write absolutely nothing.

Although my fondness for Mahler's music has gone up and down over the years, the 10th symphony has always been a favorite. As a youngster in the early 1970s, I had the good fortune to be part of what I think was at the time a very rare early performance of the performing version by Deryck Cooke. The mystique behind the piece captivated me - Mahler's supposed obsession with death, the poignant funeral procession for the New York fireman which passed below his hotel window. The sensationalism behind that performance also made a lasting impression. All sorts of die-hard Mahlerites flew into town to hear a rare performance. Moments before the concert, a mysterious gentleman pressed one of Mahler's batons into the hand of the conductor, insisting he use it for the concert.

The whole controversy about whether or not any of the existing the performing versions of 10th symphony  should be performed or not never affected me. Strangely, the 10th symphony was the first piece by Mahler I ever heard. When I went back to listen to some of his other music, particularly the early stuff, I was kind of bewildered and disappointed. Without getting into a debate about whether the 10th is really Mahler or not, I can certainly recommend the Adagio 1st movement. And then there is the other movement Mahler finished (mostly) before his death, the odd little movement entitled Purgatorio. At about 4 minutes, I'm pretty sure its the shortest symphonic movement Mahler ever wrote - I always seem to like the shortest pieces by composers otherwise dedicated to gargantuanism. This tiny movement which sits in the center of Mahler's symmetrical structure for the 10th symphony - Adagio, Scherzo, Purgatorio, Scherzo, Adagio - has always been a favorite of mine. Perhaps it has something to do with the prominent role of the double basses. I remember being completely flummoxed by the bass part as a 13 year-old. At the very end of Purgatorio, after a harp glissando that is like Beelzebub himself appearing out of cloud of smoke, it is the basses who usher the listener to the inferno.

For those unfamiliar with the performing version of the 10th symphony, there is a fine performance by the Concertgebouw on YouTube - just search for Mahler 10/Concertgebouw. (Purgatorio begins at about 36:45) There is an interesting article about the piece, here.

Thanks to all who offered condolences, either in person or electronically.

B.B.B.B.B.B.B

Bass Blog Back Better than Before!

Homer: ...the extra 'B' is for BYOBB.

Bart: What's that extra B for?

Homer: It's a typo.

Sorry for the long sabbatical. In truth, I've been waiting for three people to ask in person about the blog before resuming. It only took six months...

There are certain professions where having an eighty-two-year-old fill in for a seventy-one-year-old doesn't raise a bushy eyebrow. The United States Senate comes to mind, along with the chairman's seat at some exclusive private clubs, the College of Cardinals, and if something which happens once every 600 years or so makes for a trend, perhaps one day even the Papacy itself. And then of course, there is Conducting. The {redacted}SO saw itself in just such a position last month, when due to some health issues our music director withdrew from two weeks of concerts here, along with a three week tour to Asia. Edo de Waart stepped in for the local performances. Osmo Vänskä filled in on very short notice for two concerts in Taipei, with the bulk of the tour falling to the ever-sprightly Loren Maazel.

On a thirteen hour flight to Asia there is a lot of time to ponder questions like, 'do orchestras carry any kind of cancellation insurance?' or 'why don't we have an assistant conductor?' neither of which I can answer. When I joined the orchestra twenty-some years ago, there were two assistants, which seemed like one too many. Now we have zero, which seems like one too few. AC can be a thankless job, but possibly a useful person to have on hand from time to time when the MD is unable to go on.

Whether an on-call assistant, or somebody rung up at random out of the phone book, the replacement maestro often suffers a fate similar to that of the substitute teacher, only the spit-wads and paper airplanes are of the symbolic, musicological variety. As such, Vänskä had an unenviable task, stepping onto the podium in Taipei at the last second, with not much rehearsal time. By the end of the second performance, his position had not become significantly more enviable.

Loren Maazel has long impressed me as the Hannibal Lecter of conductors - a veneer of erudition and utmost gentility overlies something I want to know nothing about - the uncanny precision of his gestures brings to mind something clinical, the steel gears and levers of an overdeveloped intellect conjure up something vaguely Mephistophelean. He led us through some highly idiosyncratic performances of the Mozart Jupiter, Beethoven Eroica, Mendelssohn Italian, and Brahms second symphonies. I knew we were in for something 'old school' when I took a look at the part provided for the Brahms. An imprint I had never seen before (a terrible combined cello/bass part with some horrendous page turns, BTW) that bore the stamps "Leopold Stokowski" and "Copyright valid throughout the British Empire." But since it is rude to feed the hand that bites me, I have to admit Maazel was probably the perfect maestro for the job. He was able to step in on a moment's notice and, with almost no rehearsal time, put a very unique personal stamp on those concerts. Even if they weren't everyone's cup of tea, they were certainly interesting performances. The excessively slow tempos gave time to investigate many of the musical nooks and crannies that usually speed by, unnoticed - sort of like getting stuck in a traffic jam on a familiar stretch of roadway; you see the deli, the auto parts store, the little garden you never noticed before. It does get annoying after a while though. The best part of the experience had to be watching the maestro, with no time to stop and deliver an acerbic observation or three, forced to simply keep beating time, making do with scowls alone.

The tour provided an opportunity to see some interesting concert halls - some for the first time, and some old familiar nemeses. Taipei's National Theater, Concert Hall, and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall form an enormous megalithic monument to the Cultural-industrial complex, where the human-as-ant scale of the structures ensures audiences are sufficiently cowed before receiving state-approved cultural enlightenment. The Forbidden City exterior, which gives way to a Dorothy Chandler Pavillion-esque interior was somewhat jarring, but that might have been a product of the jet-lag.

China is fairly mad with new construction these days - skyscrapers, bullet trains, concert halls. We played at a new hall in Shanghai, although the one we played at last time didn't seem that old. Tianjin also had a gleaming new concert palace, which I walked to from the Hotel, about a mile away. The bus was just pulling out of the hotel, making a tortured left turn across four lanes of gridlocked traffic when I set off on foot. The concert hall sits beside what is either a vast frozen pond, or a snow covered plaza, I couldn't tell which in the dark, and so for safety's sake, took the long way round. Still, when I arrived at the hall after about 30 minutes on foot, a slightly concerned stagehand greeted me. "Where's the [darn] bus?!" I was the first orchestra member to arrive. I'm sort of keeping a mental scorecard about the worst concert halls for a musician arriving alone, on foot. Vast, sterile, windswept plazas, with nowhere fort a footsore musician to sit down for a moment's rest don't do much for me.

Of course, the mother of all of these monuments to Big Art has to be Beijing's "Egg." The place has the requisite vast plaza AND a moat. Read here about my experiences trying to break into the "Egg" last time we toured China.

Pressed for time, and to be honest, growing weary of the whole charade, I decided not to try and crack the "Egg" from the outside this time around. However, after the concert, feeling a temporary rush of optimism, a green exit sign beckoned and I made off down a hallway with the intention of finding an exit and walking back to the hotel. There is a story about a conductor getting so hopelessly lost inside the "Egg" during the intermission of an opera, they had to start the next act without him, something the architect should probably receive a commendation for. I hadn't put much credence in that story until after ten minutes of following exit signs down a maze of hallways, I found myself stumbling around in the dark among props backstage at an opera performance in progress. Retracing my steps (by following the exits signs) I arrived backstage at the concert hall in time to board the bus. The "Egg" had beaten me again.

The sightseeing highlight of the tour had to be the brief visit to the Demilitarized Zone, and a look across the Joint Security Area into North Korea. After twenty-odd years in an orchestra, I've developed an unhealthy fascination with hermetically sealed organizations that somehow persist in the face of common sense.

In Memoriam

Joan Hovnanian 1957-2013

While on tour, I received the unfortunate news my older sister had passed away. A talented violinist and pianist, Joan was also responsible for my taking up the double bass. When it came time to choose an instrument, a large white plastic Sousaphone on display at the local band store caught my eye. My parents were aghast and sought to steer me toward something more 'classical'. My big sister took me aside and informed me that if 'bigness' was all that mattered, I could play a much larger version of the violin, making everyone happy.

Joan was something of a musical mentor, and with an infinite amount of patience, my accompanist for many years. She had a difficult, troubled life, and didn't fulfill the potential that seemed so much greater than my own when we were both young. Then again, so-called 'success' and 'failure' each carry their own measure of suffering. I am grateful for the things my sister taught me about music, and for her perceptive, skewering sense of humor, which always helped me endure the unendurable.

Ravinia Week 5

Stop the Planets - I Want to Get Off

The comedian Jerry Seinfeld once did a bit where he wondered what aliens landing on earth would make of dogs and their owners. Seeing members of one species following those of another, picking up their poop and carrying it around in a little bag, which would the aliens consider to be the masters?

The thought crossed my mind the other day while playing The Planets with a click track syncing the live orchestra to a film. While both dog and owner are at least living creatures, the subservience of something alive to something not alive is problematic, at least when considering that the 'live-ness' of the music is supposed to be one of ts most compelling features.

Strangely, the most 'real' imagery from the Planets film was shot by the robots sent to Mars a few years back, actual photographs taken by real cameras as opposed to digital animations. Whether in service of our curiosity or merely our vanity, those machines nevertheless operated at the behest of humankind. With technology at our disposal capable of sending a robot to another planet with enough artificial intelligence to roam around for months taking pictures and doing experiments, I am certain it would be possible to arrange somehow that moving images, digitally created and mechanically reproduced could be made to follow a live performance of The Planets. Technology in the service of, if not humanity, at least art. Making a hundred or so highly skilled performers slaves to a click track in order to sync to a film left us holding the bag, so to speak.

The one more or less normal concert of the week took place on Thursday evening – the Holst, which was paired with the Grieg piano concerto took place on Tuesday – when Gianandrea Noseda lead an all Rachmaninov program. Noseda is an upbeat sort of fellow, although not cloyingly so, and almost in spite of myself I have come to enjoy working with him. It didn't take much to make this a high point in an otherwise lowly week.

After two 'classical' concerts in a row, you could pretty much guess what was in store for Sunday at 5 PM. If a pitcher throws two strikes in a row, right down the middle, you can bet good money the third will be way outside, or in the dirt.

Ann Hampton Calloway has a great voice and probably deserves to have her own show. The same could be said for the orchestra, I suppose. It seems as if the critics are finally noticing that a large, late-romantic sized orchestra, a jazz combo, and the great American songbook don't necessarily go together. Sometimes when 'pop' acts get onstage with us, their slick showbiz antics cause a few eyes to roll. The Sunday show was in no danger of eliciting that sort of reaction as it dipped below even a minimal level of professionalism.

Ravinia Week 4

programming, old school!

A concert featuring an overture, symphony, concerto and virtuoso showpiece, nary a Broadway show-tune in earshot, Teutonic death worship given the week off, sweltering heat, swarming gnats, cannons – this week had it all.

Program A

BARBER Overture to The School for Scandal

SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 70

INTERMISSION

BARBER Violin Concerto, Op. 14

RAVEL Tzigane

(Joshua Bell, violin)

Program B

BERLIOZ Three Pieces from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 17

INTERMISSION

VERDI Overture to Giovanna d'Arco

DVOŘÁK Slavonic Dance No. 2, Op. 72

MENDELSSOHN The Hebrides Overture, Op. 26, “Fingal's Cave”

ROSSINI Overture to William Tell

Program C

TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36

INTERMISSION

TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23

TCHAIKOVSKY 1812, Overture solonelle, Op. 49

The brief flashback I had in in the middle of program B took me back to circa 1993. That is until I realized we were playing on a Thursday night and the Pavilion was nearly half empty. The gnats buzzing their way into every exposed orifice might have helped sour my mood on an otherwise enjoyable evening – finally the kind of lighthearted concert one would ideally imagine for a summer audience. Only the lack of an audience seemed to contradict the argument that poor programming leads to sub par attendance. Even the brutal heat wave had dissipated enough to where the temperature could be classified as pleasantly sweltering. If you can't fill seats with Rossini, Verdi, Mendelssohn, Dvorak and Berlioz on as cool an evening as we are likely to see any time soon, then perhaps classical music is doomed after all. Or else there is something horribly wrong somewhere.

To get a job in an orchestra a bass player has to master the Beethoven 5^th symphony. It shows up on every audition. I'm sure each instrument has some piece from the repertoire that serves a similar function, but the Beethoven 5^th is pretty good because it is also well known to the layperson. So to pass the audition, typically a player has to go up against fifty, one hundred, two hundred others, play the Beethoven 5th, plus a bunch of other, often more difficult things, and somehow come out at the head of the pack. Brutal as it is, the process assures a certain level of quality on stage. I wonder what would happen if the folks selling tickets to concerts went through a similar procedure – get handed a typical program and released onto the streets for half an hour. Anyone who can't sell tickets to the Beethoven 5^th is out of the running.

All of the above does not take into account what happened at the Sunday concert, which I can only imagine was overflowing – an all Tchaikovsky concert with cannons is sort of the twinkle-twinkle of of concert programs. Anyhow, a bit of strategery in choosing my concerts off had me sitting this one out. Canons (or ballistics of any type) are on my growing list of things that trigger an almost uncontainable urge to take a night off. I think I have already mentioned some of them – Galas, Benefits, Festive concerts, etc. Leafing through my notes, I identified a few things I've endured over the years which, having dealt with at least once, I feel perfectly comfortable with trying to avoid in the future. Many of these items are perfectly fine and acceptable in and of themselves. It is only their inclusion in a 'classical music' concert that sends me scurrying for the leave request form. So, count me out of any concert featuring:

fireworks

tap dancers

puppets (shadow, marionette, sock, etc.)

alp-horns

ophicleides

animals (trained or feral)

bagpipes

musicologists or historians

trombones

Orcs

Jingling Johnnies

magicians

mentalists

conductors in costumes

smoke

bubbles

dirndl wearing zither players

(zithers)

(dirndls)

flags

confetti

bunting of any kind

mimes

scaffolding

balloons

powdered wigs

ice skaters

former music directors (living)

Ravinia Week 03

The week that wasn't

There were two concerts scheduled this week and, as luck would have it, I ended up off both nights.

Having Wednesday night off was not by choice. The Weill and Schrecker program called for a very small orchestra. As I have mentioned before, any concert with 'Gala', 'Special', 'Festive', or other superlative attached immediately goes to the top of my wish list for days off. All of the speechifying, bowing, hugging, and whatnot gives me the willies, so Saturday had a big 'X' through it in my calendar. I suffered a brief pang of regret, looking at the program order and noticing the concert ended with 'Ravel', fearing I might miss out on another extraordinary overtime bonanza until it became apparent 'Ravel' referred to Daphnis and not Bolero. Also, Conlon has much better clock management skills than Eschenbach.