To Raise My Cup Artfully

Through black magick or some such other voodoo the Boston Conservatory got a number of tickets to last Thursday's opening of the BSO, one of which I promptly scooped up. This seemed more exciting than normally getting free tickets since I had always been led to believe that Opening Night of a major orchestra was Sort Of A Thing. I haven't had much interaction with the Society portion of the classical music scene, and while I'm a great fan of pretension I was wondering whether I was getting in over my head. Would someone be wearing opera glasses, or a solid gold pince-nez? Is the the sort of crowd who hires people like me to read the New Yorker for them? Sadly, if such shenanigans were going on I missed them. My accomplices had to filthy their hands with employment until but short half-hour before the show. We weren't, however, too late to miss some rediculous appetizers and order wine far too close to show time. (Wine tip: Do not pound a shiraz.)

But the program was all Ravel! I was worried about getting punked and having to sit through Eine Kleine Nachtmusik again. On paper it seems a little unexpected to dedicate a whole night to Maurice, he's not quite one of the safety composers that usually get the nod for these sort of events. Furthermore, since his signature is building gigantic dissonance to resolve them in oblique ways I wasn't sure if the joke would stay funny. Turns out the program was goddamn brillant. It helped that his bouncy Iberiesques (Alaborada, Piano Concerto) were interspersed with more lush and contemplative works, but unless you've been spending time with them in the woods it is a hell of a welcome back for the BSO. It would not be inaccurate to refer to their string sound as full.

Like many of the BSO shows, my impression is more of the program than the performance since I'm familiar with depressingly little orchestral rep. It feels like I've been talking about Ravel at lot lately, but since my music history sections place me simultaneously in the Middle Ages, early classical Vienna, and turn-of-the-century Paris I feel like I've spoken of damn near anything recently. In the interest of mentioning however, when pianist Yves-Paul Thibaudet, who was a monster on the Piano Concerto, came back for bows he was wearing a red velvet smoking jacket that calmly and succinctly stated "Look at my outfit. I am a pimp." You don't get away with that shit if you phone it a performance. I want that jacket.

Big Jimmy Stands Up for the Sforzandos

Tonight will be the first Thursday in a month that I won't be attending a BSO concert. (For free at least, a gentleman friend of mine is coming in for the weekend and we might go student rush.) They were good concerts both, clearly, and the Globe would do a better job of summarizing them for journalistic consumption. I will go the more bloggy route.

Both programs featured an even-numbered Beethoven symphony, oft numerologically maligned in the same manner as odd-numbered Star Trek movies. (Although one could have their opinions about Nemesis...) With such a historic bias, I'll admit that my lacking knowledge of classical symphonic works tended to skip over them. This is part of the continuing saga of my backwards musical education, I knew that Wagner wasn't down with the Eighth before I ever even heard it. The Sixth on the other hand, clearly is wuss music.

Two weeks ago was Sir Colin Davis pairing the sixth symphonies of Vaughan Williams and Ludwig van. Before I really delved into his works I often dismissed Vaughan Williams as being wuss music himself, but his sixth symphony is as close to a metal beatdown as I've ever heard traditional forces get. Beethoven's Sixth is wuss music, but after the VW it was goddamn necessary. Although the salient theme of the program fell short of revolutionary, both symphonies also played with the four movement expectation. VW had four proper movements but they were all attacca as most future minimalist onslaughts would be, but for all the smack that Beethoven 6 recieves the storm interlude is actually fiendishly clever. The program notes (written by one Jan Swafford) write off the storm as not a separate movement, retaining the four movement form and hence why I call it a interlude. I'll believe anything that man says. This subtle, or not since it might be the most bombastic Ludwig van gets, bridge is something I've totally missed when listening on CDs.

As an aside, the only recordings I have of the Beethoven symphonies is Claudio Abbado's set with Berlin from 2000. This set hits it like the Count rather than frog & dog style, so the even symphonies are placed after the more exhausting odd ones on each CD. I tend to zone out.

Last week was I my first time seeing Big Jimmy conduct, but I wasn't really sitting close enough to be able to analyze and hypothesize. Except for when he got out of his chair during the Coriolan overture. It was the penultimate concert of his Beethoven/Schoenberg throwdown, but it seemed like the program really built around Schoenberg's chilling Erwartung. As I said earlier, I have my issues with atonal song so the prospect of a one-act operatic monologue wasn't particularly appetizing. Entirely the opposite, the lack of musical memory in either direction allowed Schoenberg to employ a sort of mega-eXtreme madrigalism.

The various Beethoven was pretty good, but the audience reaction made me start to think that maybe classical music is dying. The average listener is told before going to the concert hall that they're suppose to adore Beethoven, and they are even reminded upon actually entering Symphony Hall. The BSO audience doles out encores like candy anyway, but the two callbacks after the overture were totally unneccessary. It's an overture guys, get back to the rock! The reaction following the Schoenberg was expectedly cooler, but the audience after the corresponding Beethoven scene and aria was totally rediculous. Deborah Voight clearly laid it out for the Schoenberg, "Ah! perfido" seemed a little airy and melodramatic after such a tour de force. But the people will do what they are told.

One of my friends here in Boston wrote a paper on the Eighth, and his recommendation combined with the previous week's solid case for the Sixth led me to actually look forward (!) to his oft-skipped symphony. It's a fun piece, and just as people know they are suppose to like Beethoven, they know that they don't want their Beethoven fun. The epic hallmark of great composers is the manipulation of expectation, and the defining moment (for me anyway) was a quick rainstorm of triplets in the second movement. All I wanted was a quick burst like that again, he gives us a fourth movement that is nothing but. What a jerk, no wonder everyone likes him.

A Tale of Two Orchestras

 I've mentioned both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project here before, but I attended concerts by both in the span of three days and couldn't help but notice the occasional contrast and comparison.

The BSO concert I attended was featured Mozart and Haydn, a program which probably wouldn't have attracted me if not the promise of discounted tickets and my recent enrollment in a seminar on Haydn. The discounted tickets ended up not materializing, but providence struck when a scalper was berated by the box office for being too close and she surrendered her tickets to us rather than continue her business outside. What's with scalpers in Boston standing so close to the ticket window?

Clearly the mission of BMOP doesn't allow for a real analogue program, but the concert was as nostaglic as BMOP really allows themselves to get. All the composers have some connection to the Boston area (this can usually be narrowed further to an NEC connection, but I digress...) and have worked with BMOP before, but the program included two world premieres.

The suprising thing is that for both of these concerts I struggled with how I should be listening. I feel that most of this had to with the fact that I didn't really have a program to fiddle with and distract me, during the BSO concert I had pinkeye and couldn't read it (I could barely see the musicians) and the BMOP concert I simply didn't get one. In addition to actually listening to the music more, I noticed some really whacky things about the audience itself.

As a precursor, I dressed up to go to the BSO. Not a suit, I sort of half-assed it but definitely paid attention to what I looked like. Not a moment's thought of it going to BMOP. Accordingly, there were a lot of bluehairs at the BSO, perhaps the Mozart reminds them of their youth. The BMOP crowd was noticeably younger (albeit smaller), part of this is expected since an NEC prof and recent alum were soloists, but there was an extremely unexpected population spike.

Children.

I saw five or six kids with their parents at the BMOP show. I don't know if you could manage that at most concerts that don't have Peter and The Wolf on the dockets, and this was rather uncompromising modern music. Perhaps it was the more relaxed atmosphere of the BMOP show as opposed to the rigid structure of Symphony Hall? Greg Sandow has been ballyhooing the death of the classical music environment for some time, maybe I'll tell him about this and see how he responds.

BSOMFG

Further adventures in embarassing autobiography: I've never been to a big boy orchestra concert. Sure I've seen the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra, and been friends with members of the Oshkosh Symphony Orchestra. However, the BSO is unavoidable an upgrade, no offense to members of the previous two ensembles. Thusly I'll attempt to step into far deeper waters than I've attempted before and actually review last night's concert. We'll see how that goes.

Autobiography point #2: My (second) roommate of my (first) senior year of undergrad had a tempting collection of classical music at the precise time I decided that I couldn't continue knowing nothing but guitar composers. I was given a brief guided tour before ransacking it when he wasn't in the room and one of the highlights was Ralph Vaughan-Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, the opening piece of the concert. I can't imagine a better introduction to a super-pro string section, especially one as tight and lush as Boston's. Any attempt to describe my reaction will probably be read as pithy hipsterati, so I won't try. The liner notes ruminated on Vaughan-Williams's use of a modal theme as a way to escape chromatic harmony while avoiding sappy Neo-Romanticism. It's a popular way to get out of sticky harmonic problems. (Ralph didn't get to hear his influence, he died the year before the album came out.) Also notably is that both this and the last revelatory song I geeked over are both based around the Phrygian mode. I have an affinity perhaps?

The rest of the program, Shostakovich's Cello Concerto #1 and selections from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, were new to me. Yes yes, boo away. It's much harder to review the performance of unfamiliar pieces, maybe they're supposed to sound like that? However, not to make it sound as though I'm making up problems to sound smart, but after the lush Fantasia it seemed like the strings had difficulty finding their teeth for the Shostakovich. Not to detract anything, it didn't sound bad as much as the string section has a distinct character and the extreme gear shift didn't play to its strengths. The opening of the second movement, a floating chord that falls apart into the grinding dissonance without losing its timbre, found the strings back at full power and it was sheer (appropriate) bloodlust from then out.

The soloist, Lynn Harrell, was unstoppable. He played with the rhythm of the triple stop stabs to give them the feel of a drag triplet, but the aforementioned tentativeness of the string section didn't let that play out to its full effect. The cadenza was stunning and the glock duet preceeding it were stunning, with (Mr.?) Harrell pulling out the pianissimo notes that in a good hall, as Symphony Hall is, sound like they're coming from behind you!

I know that I haven't said anything about the Prokofiev, but I'm a rookie at this you must realize. Well, it didn't have any narration. I'm looking forward to doing this again. While writing this post I remember most of the shrapnel I've meant to talk about the past few days, so expect another one soon.