Berkeley's Hillside Club is the home of an imaginatively-programmed concert series that mixes jazz, world, classical, and other musical styles.
This month's concerts include The Four Bags, who might be called a chamber-jazz group, on January 26, and, on January 31, the pianist Sontraud Speidel. I'm likely to get to the latter concert. Speidel's program includes works by Robert Schumann, Clara Wieck Schumann (the virtuoso pianist and great love of Schumann's life), and Johannes Brahms. The latter is represented by his rarely-heard Opus 1 piano sonata, Schumann by Kreisleriana and Kinderszenen, and Clara Schumann by Quatre pièces fugitives.
All concerts are $15 ($10 for Hillside Club members). The Hillside Club is located at 2286 Cedar Street in Berkeley; phone (510) 845-1350 for more information about the concert series or check the concert web site.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Friday, January 19, 2007
If you're in NYC....
I received an extremely interesting press release a few weeks ago. If you're in NYC, you might want to check this out:
January 25-27, 2007, “Decasia Live at Angel Orensanz” will mark just the third time in five years that audiences will have the opportunity to experience this work as it was originally conceived by its makers: a live site-specific multimedia performance with a full size orchestra.
"Decasia" came about when The Europaischer Musikmonat (European Music Month) commissioned composer Michael Gordon to write a symphony to be performed by the 55-piece Basel Sinfonietta and to be staged by Ridge Theater. At the 2001 premiere performance, the Basel Sinfonietta stood on a triangular pyramid 3 tiers high, completely surrounding the audience within. Bill Morrison's acclaimed film was created as part of this original production using Michael Gordon's music as its soundtrack. In 2002, Cantaloupe Music released a cd of live recordings of these performances.
A remarkable piece of experimental cinema and new classical music, "Decasia" has reached an audience that is unprecedented by a work of its kind. Two months after the Basel performances, "Decasia" premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, and quickly developed an ardent cult following. In December 2002, the film premiered on the Sundance Channel and the New York Times Magazine ran a feature by Lawrence Weschler in which he described watching it for the first time: “I found myself completely absorbed, transfixed, dumbstruck, a pillow of air lodged in my stilled open mouth, which I don’t think I thereupon managed to close for the next seventy minutes."
J. Hoberman of the Village Voice listed “Decasia” as one of his ten favorite films of 2003, calling it “that rare thing: a movie with avant-garde and universal appeal, inspiring trembling and gratitude.” The film ultimately became the subject of five more New York Times articles, in which it was described as “a cult classic” and “a landmark opus.” The Philadelphia Inquirer said: “If a great, innovative film has been made in the last few years, this is it."
But nothing approximates the sheer power of the live environmental performance. “Decasia Live” was remounted in the original site-specific format again at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2004. New Yorker music critic Alex Ross described the 2004 St. Ann’s performances as:
“The darkest, grandest noise of the musical season so far—the fanfare to an angry American autumn—was Michael Gordon’s film symphony “Decasia,” as played by fifty-five furiously committed students from the Manhattan School of Music, at St. Ann’s Warehouse, in Brooklyn. The performance took place back in September, but the experience is still burned in my mind…Gordon’s score weds the hypnotic aura of minimalism to the detuned snarl of highbrow punk. It packs a punch on CD, but it needs a live performance to unveil all its power…Even as “Decasia” celebrates raw sound, it summons an atmosphere of dread. Too many of its images resemble Cold War footage of structures vaporizing in nuclear tests. Why, then, are you left with a visceral thrill? Perhaps it’s the joy of surviving what looks and sounds like the end of the world.”
Now in January, audiences will have the opportunity to see this remarkable piece of art live with music performed by The Manhattan School of Music's Contemporary Ensemble, TACTUS, at the Angel Orensanz Center on the Lower East Side. Originally designed as a synagogue in 1840 by Berlin architect Alexander Seltzer and inspired by the cathedral of Cologne and the German romantic movement of Heinrich Heine and Beethoven, the Angel Orensanz Center has become a beacon of education and culture in the city of New York. The marriage of this piece and this performance space will be an event not to be missed and not to be forgotten.
January 25, 26, & 27 at 7:00pm and 9:30pm nightly.
Angel Orensanz Center for the Arts, 172 Norfolk St., New York.
Tickets $25 advance, available through TheaterMania.com
Decasia info
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Woof.
That one syllable about sums up my initial reaction to Tan Dun's The First Emperor, but, really, I do need to provide an expanded review, so you'll understand how I reached that conclusion. In the end, I think it's possible that the piece can be salvaged, but it will take an awful lot of hard work.
First, the good.
The broadcast medium, high-definition TV, works very, very well. The picture is big, bright, clear. Brian Large's direction was good, much better than I'd expected based on Met telecasts he's done. I'd like more distance shots than he uses, because sometimes it's important to see both the singer and on-stage reactions to what is being sung. I sometimes felt I was missing a reaction that would be interesting or relevant to the plot.
On the other hand, imaginative camera placement allowed some angles you'd never see in the opera house. One camera must have been in the prompter's box (or equivalent). There were occasional shots showing part of the house and part of the stage.
The broadcast also sounded good, less compressed than the radio broadcasts and with no sense that the microphones were too close. It's also true that the sound was more like a recording than like a live opera performance. You could sometimes hear the voices and orchestra resounding through the hall, but the blend and balances were nothing like what you'd hear if you were sitting in the theater.
I liked the intermission features, which were film-and-TV appropriate, not glosses on the radio features. Not that it wouldn't have been amusing to stick a camera in List Hall and watch the quiz contestants embarrass themselves, and, really, Sills should have shut up about getting Domingo alone in his dressing room and locking his wife out. Hasn't she heard the rumors about him?? I wondered, briefly, if the interview were really live, but the David Beckham reference scotched that thought. The little documentary on the making of The First Emperor was also entertaining; I love rehearsals and technical details, and it was definitely fun to see the singers going a bit nuts trying to wrap their vocal cords around the music.
The cast was super; I have nothing bad to say about any of them. They all sang and acted well. Elizabeth Futral made the Princess's music sound..... uh...nothing could make that music sound easy, but she sang it about as naturally as it could be sung. Paul Groves sounded vocally strained the last couple of times I heard him in S.F.; not here, where he sounded great. Poor Suzanne Mentzer had almost nothing to do, and was fine in what she had. (I have plenty to say about the reasons that perhaps she was given so little to do.)
I loved Michelle DeYoung's Shaman and Wu Hsing-Kuo's marvelous Ying-Yang Master, though I found the two characters a bit cryptic. Both functioned more as choruses or commentators than as participants in the plot - but they also got some of the best music in the piece, because....well, see below.
Hao Jiang Tian is a much better singer than I had thought based on radio broadcasts. Domingo sang well and had clearly worked hard to learn the music (the broadcast was sensitive enough that the prompter was audible a couple of times feeding him lines - so maybe he could have worked a little harder). I wish his diction had been better, but then, if you hand a Spanish tenor a barely-singable English text by two native speakers of Chinese, perhaps the results won't be ideal.
The piece certainly looks great, in a spare-no-expense way. Gorgeous costumes, interesting sets, imaginative staging, the placement of some of the musicians on the stage (and their involvement in the plot) - all excellent. As usual, the Met orchestra played like fiends, and it was fun to see them acting as the chorus in one interlude. It was obvious both from shots of the pit and from how well the parts held together that Tan Dun is a terrific conductor.
Now, about the music, a severely mixed bag.
Every reviewer has commented on the split personality of The First Emperor. Some of the music is brilliant and arresting, and that would be all of the music that sounds distinctly Chinese. The opening scene is a stunner, hieratic and incantatory, the Ying-Yang Master dancing about the stage and the Shaman declaiming. It all changes about ten measures or so before Domingo's first entrance; with a score in front of me, I could show you the exact phrase.
And that's when things deteriorate. What follows is fake Italian opera. No, really, worse than that: it sounds like bad imitation Andrew Lloyd-Webber. So bad that I laughed out loud a couple of times. SO BAD, so sickly-sweet, so smarmy.
Tan Dun occasionally quotes from or refers to other operas. A friend reports having heard both Madama Butterfly and, weirdly enough, Peter Grimes. I was shocked to hear a near-direct quotation from Turandot in the last big crowd scene. It wasn't the first time I expected Birgit Nilsson to appear in garish makeup and a four-foot-high headdress, but, as we all know, Puccini did it better. I don't know what Tan Dun was thinking, wandering so far from his obvious strengths into such serious lapses of taste.
I heard some weaknesses even in those sections written from strength, mainly in the pacing. Some of the problems stem from weaknesses in the libretto, but there are also sections - including that opening scene - when the music simply goes on for too long, and it feels like the opera grinds to a halt. My internal alarm clock went BOING! two minutes from the end of the opening; in the second act, the opera sounds as if it ends twice in the ten minutes before the music finally stops.
I suspect those problems can be fixed pretty easily. But I don't know what exactly can be done about the libretto short of a total rewrite. The novelist Ha Jin and the composer himself concocted the libretto together. Both are native speakers of Chinese; neither has written a libretto, a stage play, or poetry. Whether they would be capable of writing a convincing dramatic work in a Chinese style, I don't know, but what they've come up with is an unsingable hybrid. It's neither fish nor fowl, torn structurally and musically between Chinese and Italian styles. The text is simply a horror. It's not poetic; it's difficult to sing; the English is poorly set.
I imagine they were in a difficult position, given that the customer was the Metropolitan Opera: maybe they wanted to write something in a style that would be recognizable by an audience steeped in Western opera. But the Met audience has welcomed quite a few operas in the last twenty years in various modern musical and performance styles; it's not quite as conservative as it's usually portrayed to be.
I wish the issues in the libretto were limited to the difficulties of singing it. But the pacing is poor and the characters' behavior is, to say the least, opaque and unmotivated.
The plotting is terrible, and I don't mean in that convoluted way that, say Il Trovatore is badly plotted. In Trovatore, at least the characters' emotional motivations and personalities are discernable. In The First Emperor, no such luck. Among other things, we're asked to believe that the Princess is a pure and innocent virgin when she's given music and texts that belong with a knowing woman of the world - say, the Marschallin in "Rosenkavalier." The best explanation we get of why the Emperor wants a new Chinese anthem is "Loud music makes us weak." What?? This is especially hard to swallow in an opera where the Western-style music is pap and the Chinese-style music fresh and imaginative. But all sorts of horrible things happen because of his desire for a new anthem - and the anthem he gets, in the end, is musical CRAP.
Then there's the treatment of the female characters. We have the mother of the Princess, who gets hardly any music, and who seems weirdly uninvolved with her young daughter's life and fate. We have the Princess, who is allowed to work her wiles on Jianli to persuade him to write the new anthem, but who after exercising them to the fullest - and regaining the power to walk! why did nobody tell me that sex could heal the crippled?? - is punished for her success, because good girls who are engaged to powerful generals don't have sex with other men! We have the Shaman, who apparently doesn't have very strong powers, since she doesn't provide an accurate description in the last scene of what happened to the Princess and the General. Did the librettists think they had to do that with the Shaman to justify the appearance of the ghosts of the Princess and General??
To its credit, the Met put an enormous amount of time and money into The First Emperor. I wish someone had eyeballed the libretto during its formative period and told the authors the truth about it, considering that it took one hearing for me (and every other reviewer) to spot the problems with it. But who would have done that? The commission was issued during the Volpe years, when the Met wasn't exactly getting what I'd call consistent artistic direction. I'm willing to bet that Peter Gelb will exercise a little more control over future commissions.
Can this opera be saved? Well, maybe. Justin Davidson reports about the opera and has some interesting ideas about how it got where it is and how to fix it.
If I were in charge of that project, here's what I'd do:
Minor postscript: How I wish I'd called this posting "Ha-shi-WOOF" after the Shaman's chanting in the ghost scene. And by the way, does anyone know what "Ha-shi-woo" means? If anything?
First, the good.
The broadcast medium, high-definition TV, works very, very well. The picture is big, bright, clear. Brian Large's direction was good, much better than I'd expected based on Met telecasts he's done. I'd like more distance shots than he uses, because sometimes it's important to see both the singer and on-stage reactions to what is being sung. I sometimes felt I was missing a reaction that would be interesting or relevant to the plot.
On the other hand, imaginative camera placement allowed some angles you'd never see in the opera house. One camera must have been in the prompter's box (or equivalent). There were occasional shots showing part of the house and part of the stage.
The broadcast also sounded good, less compressed than the radio broadcasts and with no sense that the microphones were too close. It's also true that the sound was more like a recording than like a live opera performance. You could sometimes hear the voices and orchestra resounding through the hall, but the blend and balances were nothing like what you'd hear if you were sitting in the theater.
I liked the intermission features, which were film-and-TV appropriate, not glosses on the radio features. Not that it wouldn't have been amusing to stick a camera in List Hall and watch the quiz contestants embarrass themselves, and, really, Sills should have shut up about getting Domingo alone in his dressing room and locking his wife out. Hasn't she heard the rumors about him?? I wondered, briefly, if the interview were really live, but the David Beckham reference scotched that thought. The little documentary on the making of The First Emperor was also entertaining; I love rehearsals and technical details, and it was definitely fun to see the singers going a bit nuts trying to wrap their vocal cords around the music.
The cast was super; I have nothing bad to say about any of them. They all sang and acted well. Elizabeth Futral made the Princess's music sound..... uh...nothing could make that music sound easy, but she sang it about as naturally as it could be sung. Paul Groves sounded vocally strained the last couple of times I heard him in S.F.; not here, where he sounded great. Poor Suzanne Mentzer had almost nothing to do, and was fine in what she had. (I have plenty to say about the reasons that perhaps she was given so little to do.)
I loved Michelle DeYoung's Shaman and Wu Hsing-Kuo's marvelous Ying-Yang Master, though I found the two characters a bit cryptic. Both functioned more as choruses or commentators than as participants in the plot - but they also got some of the best music in the piece, because....well, see below.
Hao Jiang Tian is a much better singer than I had thought based on radio broadcasts. Domingo sang well and had clearly worked hard to learn the music (the broadcast was sensitive enough that the prompter was audible a couple of times feeding him lines - so maybe he could have worked a little harder). I wish his diction had been better, but then, if you hand a Spanish tenor a barely-singable English text by two native speakers of Chinese, perhaps the results won't be ideal.
The piece certainly looks great, in a spare-no-expense way. Gorgeous costumes, interesting sets, imaginative staging, the placement of some of the musicians on the stage (and their involvement in the plot) - all excellent. As usual, the Met orchestra played like fiends, and it was fun to see them acting as the chorus in one interlude. It was obvious both from shots of the pit and from how well the parts held together that Tan Dun is a terrific conductor.
Now, about the music, a severely mixed bag.
Every reviewer has commented on the split personality of The First Emperor. Some of the music is brilliant and arresting, and that would be all of the music that sounds distinctly Chinese. The opening scene is a stunner, hieratic and incantatory, the Ying-Yang Master dancing about the stage and the Shaman declaiming. It all changes about ten measures or so before Domingo's first entrance; with a score in front of me, I could show you the exact phrase.
And that's when things deteriorate. What follows is fake Italian opera. No, really, worse than that: it sounds like bad imitation Andrew Lloyd-Webber. So bad that I laughed out loud a couple of times. SO BAD, so sickly-sweet, so smarmy.
Tan Dun occasionally quotes from or refers to other operas. A friend reports having heard both Madama Butterfly and, weirdly enough, Peter Grimes. I was shocked to hear a near-direct quotation from Turandot in the last big crowd scene. It wasn't the first time I expected Birgit Nilsson to appear in garish makeup and a four-foot-high headdress, but, as we all know, Puccini did it better. I don't know what Tan Dun was thinking, wandering so far from his obvious strengths into such serious lapses of taste.
I heard some weaknesses even in those sections written from strength, mainly in the pacing. Some of the problems stem from weaknesses in the libretto, but there are also sections - including that opening scene - when the music simply goes on for too long, and it feels like the opera grinds to a halt. My internal alarm clock went BOING! two minutes from the end of the opening; in the second act, the opera sounds as if it ends twice in the ten minutes before the music finally stops.
I suspect those problems can be fixed pretty easily. But I don't know what exactly can be done about the libretto short of a total rewrite. The novelist Ha Jin and the composer himself concocted the libretto together. Both are native speakers of Chinese; neither has written a libretto, a stage play, or poetry. Whether they would be capable of writing a convincing dramatic work in a Chinese style, I don't know, but what they've come up with is an unsingable hybrid. It's neither fish nor fowl, torn structurally and musically between Chinese and Italian styles. The text is simply a horror. It's not poetic; it's difficult to sing; the English is poorly set.
I imagine they were in a difficult position, given that the customer was the Metropolitan Opera: maybe they wanted to write something in a style that would be recognizable by an audience steeped in Western opera. But the Met audience has welcomed quite a few operas in the last twenty years in various modern musical and performance styles; it's not quite as conservative as it's usually portrayed to be.
I wish the issues in the libretto were limited to the difficulties of singing it. But the pacing is poor and the characters' behavior is, to say the least, opaque and unmotivated.
The plotting is terrible, and I don't mean in that convoluted way that, say Il Trovatore is badly plotted. In Trovatore, at least the characters' emotional motivations and personalities are discernable. In The First Emperor, no such luck. Among other things, we're asked to believe that the Princess is a pure and innocent virgin when she's given music and texts that belong with a knowing woman of the world - say, the Marschallin in "Rosenkavalier." The best explanation we get of why the Emperor wants a new Chinese anthem is "Loud music makes us weak." What?? This is especially hard to swallow in an opera where the Western-style music is pap and the Chinese-style music fresh and imaginative. But all sorts of horrible things happen because of his desire for a new anthem - and the anthem he gets, in the end, is musical CRAP.
Then there's the treatment of the female characters. We have the mother of the Princess, who gets hardly any music, and who seems weirdly uninvolved with her young daughter's life and fate. We have the Princess, who is allowed to work her wiles on Jianli to persuade him to write the new anthem, but who after exercising them to the fullest - and regaining the power to walk! why did nobody tell me that sex could heal the crippled?? - is punished for her success, because good girls who are engaged to powerful generals don't have sex with other men! We have the Shaman, who apparently doesn't have very strong powers, since she doesn't provide an accurate description in the last scene of what happened to the Princess and the General. Did the librettists think they had to do that with the Shaman to justify the appearance of the ghosts of the Princess and General??
To its credit, the Met put an enormous amount of time and money into The First Emperor. I wish someone had eyeballed the libretto during its formative period and told the authors the truth about it, considering that it took one hearing for me (and every other reviewer) to spot the problems with it. But who would have done that? The commission was issued during the Volpe years, when the Met wasn't exactly getting what I'd call consistent artistic direction. I'm willing to bet that Peter Gelb will exercise a little more control over future commissions.
Can this opera be saved? Well, maybe. Justin Davidson reports about the opera and has some interesting ideas about how it got where it is and how to fix it.
If I were in charge of that project, here's what I'd do:
- Get Mark Adamo or someone of equal theatrical flair and musical experience to rewrite the libretto. (Read the synopsis here to get a sense of the issues.)
- Throw out all the fake Puccini and replace it with new music in the Chinese style.
- Do something about the female characters.
- Do something about the overall plot. (See bullet point 1 above.)
Minor postscript: How I wish I'd called this posting "Ha-shi-WOOF" after the Shaman's chanting in the ghost scene. And by the way, does anyone know what "Ha-shi-woo" means? If anything?
Friday, January 12, 2007
Migration
I've just migrated to the new version of Blogger. I am about to try to customize my template, meaning the look of Iron Tongue of Midnight is going to change wildly over the next couple of days. To start with, the first thing that will happen is that all of my customizations will go away. Sigh....
[Okay, I've gotten some of the changes made. Not sure if I will be able to split the page to add another column, though! Plus, just what colors was I using....?]
[Next question: I cannot bear that the post titles are now links. UGLY! Whose idea was it, anyway??]
[Okay, I've gotten some of the changes made. Not sure if I will be able to split the page to add another column, though! Plus, just what colors was I using....?]
[Next question: I cannot bear that the post titles are now links. UGLY! Whose idea was it, anyway??]
The First Emperor
Tomorrow's the HD broadcast of The First Emperor. I am debating whether to go or not. On one hand, it's a turkey the reviews have all been negative. On the other, $18 is a lot cheaper than flying to NYC to see it.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Dream Come True
San Francisco Opera names Nicola Luisotti music director designate. He'll succeed Donald Runnicles in the 2009-10 season.
I jumped up and down a lot when he conducted Forza here during the 2005-06 season. I'm so glad about this decision.
I jumped up and down a lot when he conducted Forza here during the 2005-06 season. I'm so glad about this decision.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
What a year it was.
For me personally, that is. Stressful, but good.
So many changes:
Amidst all of this, I am grateful for so many things: my wonderful partner Donna, our home (except for the expensive month of bathroom renovations....); for Janet, Matt, and Alice, for Debbie, Eric, Max, and Tiana; for everybody else at Server Team Tea Time; for many friends on the Well who helped keep me sane; for my many blog buddies.
So many changes:
- Left Laurel Jujitsu. Obviously I haven't got the new dojo up and running, but 2007 is very close.
- Donna got her doctorate.
- I unexpectedly changed jobs.
- I sang in three different choruses, the unifying theme being conductor Paul Flight (who needs a home page of his own).
- My mom moved to Oakland earlier this month.
Amidst all of this, I am grateful for so many things: my wonderful partner Donna, our home (except for the expensive month of bathroom renovations....); for Janet, Matt, and Alice, for Debbie, Eric, Max, and Tiana; for everybody else at Server Team Tea Time; for many friends on the Well who helped keep me sane; for my many blog buddies.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Technical assistance, anyone?
I was starting to get comment spam, so I disabled Haloscan comments, which turned out to completely disable commenting. I restored Blogger commenting with help from a friend who took a look at the code for a blog where commenting was still enabled.
The question now is whether I can somehow import existing Haloscan comments into Blogger, or whether I need to re-enable Haloscan commenting (oy). Any ideas?
Thanks in advance....
Update: Haloscan comments cannot be imported into Blogger, nor can any other externally-stored comments.
The question now is whether I can somehow import existing Haloscan comments into Blogger, or whether I need to re-enable Haloscan commenting (oy). Any ideas?
Thanks in advance....
Update: Haloscan comments cannot be imported into Blogger, nor can any other externally-stored comments.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Tomassini on The First Emperor
A few paragraphs into his review of Tan Dun's The First Emperor, Anthony Tomassini of the Times says this:
To start with, why on earth is he guessing? He has enough pull to phone the Times and ask who is buying the tickets to The First Emperor. (For that matter, I could call the Met press office and they'd tell me.) That kind of information would be both interesting and useful to anyone interested in the future of opera and classical music in general.
Second, I think it's a dumb guess. Maybe he's spending too much time with the famously conservative Met audience, but in my experience, it's the people who've been around for a while and are sick of endless iterations of Boheme, Aida, and Don Giovanni who want something, anything, new. I really don't think St. Francois and Doctor Atomic were sold out primarily to neophytes.
Third, if a significant percentage of sales are to opera newbies - or to people who love or care about new music in general - that's great! An expanding audience is a good thing!
My guess is that a large number of the ticket-holders are opera neophytes attracted by the novelty of this project and hoping for a grand theatrical experience.I missed that on my first pass through the review; a friend called it to my attention. I think it's one of the stupider things I've read recently, especially coming from the chief music critic of the Times.
To start with, why on earth is he guessing? He has enough pull to phone the Times and ask who is buying the tickets to The First Emperor. (For that matter, I could call the Met press office and they'd tell me.) That kind of information would be both interesting and useful to anyone interested in the future of opera and classical music in general.
Second, I think it's a dumb guess. Maybe he's spending too much time with the famously conservative Met audience, but in my experience, it's the people who've been around for a while and are sick of endless iterations of Boheme, Aida, and Don Giovanni who want something, anything, new. I really don't think St. Francois and Doctor Atomic were sold out primarily to neophytes.
Third, if a significant percentage of sales are to opera newbies - or to people who love or care about new music in general - that's great! An expanding audience is a good thing!
Sunday, December 24, 2006
About Marston
I don't recall whether I have ever discussed Marston Records here. It's Ward Marston's own record label.
Ward is a legendary guy in the world of old recordings - he is a genius at transferring old recordings (pre-1950, generally) to CD. Actually, Ward's first transfers may have been from 78 to LP, but whatever. He does a lot of work for Naxos and VAI; he was responsible for many of the best sets on the now-defunct Romophone label. He is also a genius at FINDING rare recordings and persuading the owners to allow him to release them.
The third area where he's a genius is in figuring out a sustainable model for his own record label. The recording industry is a mess; unlike most people, I blame DVDs, not piracy, but who knows.
Marston Records works on a subscription basis. At the end of every year, Ward announces what he plans to produce in the coming year; if enough people sign up to buy a particular set, it goes through. If a particular set is sold out, arrangements have been made for on-demand production by a third-party company, so you can always get a set you missed. There are also Preferred Customers, meaning Marston Records has your credit card number and sends you EVERYTHING. If you don't want everything, you can be a Piano or Vocal Preferred Customer.
I've been a Preferred Customer for a few years. I'm not equally interested in every release, but I'll take them all, because it's so important to support Ward's work. And there are way, way more hits than misses, in my book: Litvinne, Supervia, Bolet, Vezzani, Gadski, Levy, and on and on and on.
If you're interested in historic recordings, especially acoustic-era vocal recordings, check out Marston Records. And please read the previous posting on this blog.
Ward is a legendary guy in the world of old recordings - he is a genius at transferring old recordings (pre-1950, generally) to CD. Actually, Ward's first transfers may have been from 78 to LP, but whatever. He does a lot of work for Naxos and VAI; he was responsible for many of the best sets on the now-defunct Romophone label. He is also a genius at FINDING rare recordings and persuading the owners to allow him to release them.
The third area where he's a genius is in figuring out a sustainable model for his own record label. The recording industry is a mess; unlike most people, I blame DVDs, not piracy, but who knows.
Marston Records works on a subscription basis. At the end of every year, Ward announces what he plans to produce in the coming year; if enough people sign up to buy a particular set, it goes through. If a particular set is sold out, arrangements have been made for on-demand production by a third-party company, so you can always get a set you missed. There are also Preferred Customers, meaning Marston Records has your credit card number and sends you EVERYTHING. If you don't want everything, you can be a Piano or Vocal Preferred Customer.
I've been a Preferred Customer for a few years. I'm not equally interested in every release, but I'll take them all, because it's so important to support Ward's work. And there are way, way more hits than misses, in my book: Litvinne, Supervia, Bolet, Vezzani, Gadski, Levy, and on and on and on.
If you're interested in historic recordings, especially acoustic-era vocal recordings, check out Marston Records. And please read the previous posting on this blog.
Mysterious Marston
What on earth could this, found in the end-of-year email from Marston Records, be?
Either it's material recorded off the air, or they're private recordings made by someone rich or famous enough to persuade important musicians to perform or record privately. No bets here; there were lots of important musicians featured on broadcasts during the 20s and 30s, and some of them could certainly count as great finds. The Chicago Opera broadcast during the late 1920s, for example....but I bet that would not be the "greatest" find.Our Mystery Release
For the past ten years, Marston has produced a few releases that will be remembered for their historical importance: The Edison Trials: Voice Audition Cylinders 1912-1913; In Their Own Voices: The U.S. Presidential Elections of 1908 and 1912; and The Edison Legacy, which, is to be released early in 2007.
Our May release may be the most important “find” in the history of recording. It is also an anomaly for Marston. First, we are asking you to order this on faith. For a number of reasons, we can’t give a full description, not the least reason being it is of sufficient importance that a full-fledge press campaign is warranted, and we don’t want to spoil the impact of an announcement in our newsletter. Second, it is a multi-disciplinary CD that includes voice, piano, violin, and chamber music. (Because of the multi-disciplinary nature of the compilation, only our All Preferred Customers are scheduled to receive this issue automatically so PLEASE sign up to receive your copy, including our Vocal and Piano Preferred Customers.) Finally, these recordings were made by an individual and not a record company! We guess this may be our best seller ever and we are announcing this as part of our 2007 Season because we want to make sure that you have first crack at one of the relatively few copies that will be pressed.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Uh-oh.
Jonathan Wellsung and Maury D'Annato both walked out of The First Emperor after one act.
"Maybe it got better," I thought to myself last night.
Apparently not: Manuela Holterhoff got out the knives for her review. I especially like this:
And JSU at An Unamplified Voice was unimpressed as well.
(I admit that I have to quibble with this because, after all, Wagner got away with it:
Update: Tony Tomassini doesn't like it either. And neither did Alex.
"Maybe it got better," I thought to myself last night.
Apparently not: Manuela Holterhoff got out the knives for her review. I especially like this:
Domingo delivered his wan lines with a furrowed brow, burnished tone and increasingly concerned glances at the prompt box. I don't know how he learned as much of the role as he did between evening shows conducting Puccini's ``La Boheme.''
And JSU at An Unamplified Voice was unimpressed as well.
(I admit that I have to quibble with this because, after all, Wagner got away with it:
A lawyer who represents himself, it is said, has a fool for a client. The same ought to be said for the composer who writes his own libretto.Maybe JSU doesn't like Wagner. If not, I point to Mark Adamo and his superb libretto and music for Lysistrata.)
Update: Tony Tomassini doesn't like it either. And neither did Alex.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Score one for Holland.
I'm known not to be much of a fan of Bernard Holland, but this review is a winner all around. Tip of the hat, also, to the author of that headline, without which I probably would have ignored the review.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
LHL on Bridge
Bridge Records is re-releasing a recording of LHL singing John Harbison's Due Libri dei Mottetti di Montale. $14.99 in the U.S. and Canada, and there's more Harbison on the disk.
(They've also got releases of electronic compositions by Paul Lansky and violin music of Biber in December.)
(They've also got releases of electronic compositions by Paul Lansky and violin music of Biber in December.)
Friday, December 08, 2006
Housing Slump's Effects (not off topic)
The company that supports the Met broadcasts, Toll Brothers, reports an earnings slump. A big earnings slump.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Two Great Shows
Art shows, in this case.
Esther Nisenthal Krinitz survived the Holocaust in Poland, as a teenager, through her own courage and determination, and brought her younger sister to safety as well. She met her husband in the late 1940s in Belgium, married him, and came to the U.S., where she worked as a seamstress and dressmaker. In old age, she told her story in a beautiful and heartbreaking series of fabric pictures. You can see this remarkable show at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley.
Meanwhile, in the deep south in a hamlet called Gee's Bend, African-American quilters developed their own distinctive style. A magnificent collection of these quilts has been on tour for some time and will be on exhibit at the De Young Museum until December 31. If you think the quilts look good on line, just wait until you see them in person.
Esther Nisenthal Krinitz survived the Holocaust in Poland, as a teenager, through her own courage and determination, and brought her younger sister to safety as well. She met her husband in the late 1940s in Belgium, married him, and came to the U.S., where she worked as a seamstress and dressmaker. In old age, she told her story in a beautiful and heartbreaking series of fabric pictures. You can see this remarkable show at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley.
Meanwhile, in the deep south in a hamlet called Gee's Bend, African-American quilters developed their own distinctive style. A magnificent collection of these quilts has been on tour for some time and will be on exhibit at the De Young Museum until December 31. If you think the quilts look good on line, just wait until you see them in person.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
More bad news.
This is a companion-piece, of sorts, to the bad news discussed by ACD last week.
The Times reports that EMI has been approached by a potential buyer.
EMI holds one of the world's great catalogues of recorded notational music - not that they have necessarily always been good stewards of it - and how likely is it that new owners, especially if consisting of a couple of American investment banks, would take good care of that catalogue?
The Times reports that EMI has been approached by a potential buyer.
EMI holds one of the world's great catalogues of recorded notational music - not that they have necessarily always been good stewards of it - and how likely is it that new owners, especially if consisting of a couple of American investment banks, would take good care of that catalogue?
Sunday, November 26, 2006
The Met On Screen
Several Metropolitan Opera productions are going to be broadcast over the next few months to movie theaters around the country. In the Bay Area, that means the Regal Hacienda Crossing in Dublin: this is about a 25 minute drive for me and is very close to where I used to work. From San Francisco, alas, I assume it is a much longer drive. On the other hand, admission is $18, and unless you're traveling to NYC, well....let's just say, I'm springing for a few of the telecasts. They are:
- The Magic Flute, a short version of Julie Taymoor's production, on December 30
- I Puritani, January 6
- The First Emperor, Tan Dun's new opera, starring Placido Domingo, on January 13
- Eugene Onegin, February 24
- The Barber of Seville, March 24
- Il Trittico, April 28
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Pinchgut Opera
I got some entertaining email the other day from the intrepid Ken Nielsen, who tells me that he and his wife had "accidentally" set up an opera company. This would be Pinchgut Opera of Sydney, Australia. They're currently working on their fifth production, Idomeneo, and they're blogging the rehearsal process. Take a look! Lots of excellent photos and discussion of what goes into putting on opera - fascinating stuff, all.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Bums thrown out.
My political leanings are not a secret; I spent a couple of years compiling reasons to vote George Bush out of office, after all. You can imagine how I'm feeling today; the sparkling wine at friends' around 11:15 last night could not have tasted better.
We have the Democrats taking back the house and, it looks like, evening up the Senate. Hello, Speaker of the House Pelosi; good-bye, Senators Rick Santorum, Mike DeWine, Conrad Burns, and Lincoln Chafee*. This morning, Donald Rumsfeld resigns. I only wish he'd done it long ago when his incompetence first became obvious.
I love the smell of Schadenfreude in the morning, don't you?
* Chafee is one of the few remaining moderate Republicans, along with Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe; as such, I'm half-sorry to see him go, since he is one of the last vestigates of principle in the party. Still, it's not like they did much to hold back the politicization of everything in the last few years.
We have the Democrats taking back the house and, it looks like, evening up the Senate. Hello, Speaker of the House Pelosi; good-bye, Senators Rick Santorum, Mike DeWine, Conrad Burns, and Lincoln Chafee*. This morning, Donald Rumsfeld resigns. I only wish he'd done it long ago when his incompetence first became obvious.
I love the smell of Schadenfreude in the morning, don't you?
* Chafee is one of the few remaining moderate Republicans, along with Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe; as such, I'm half-sorry to see him go, since he is one of the last vestigates of principle in the party. Still, it's not like they did much to hold back the politicization of everything in the last few years.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
What Steve Said.
I'm off to do my civic duty momentarily. Go vote!
And before you do so, read the New York Times on the subject of ballot initiatives. Yes, yes, yes!
And before you do so, read the New York Times on the subject of ballot initiatives. Yes, yes, yes!
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Volti: Baltic Traditions Now
A couple of weeks ago in SFCV, I wrote a Listening Ahead recommendation for Volti's program of music from countries bordering the Baltic Sea. I went to the first performance last night, at St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco (one of my favorite venues for both singing and listening).
In a word: stunning. There are just a few pieces on the program, by Arvo Pärt, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Pekka Kostianen, Olli Kortekangas, Veljo Tormis, and Per Nørgård. These works are all dense, chewy, and extremely beautiful, with texts from sources such as the Kalavela and from 20th century literature (Rilke, Lorca, Lawrence).
I loved the singing - what a great collection of musicians and voices, and what a performance they gave. Great music, great programming, great conducting. Composer Veljo Tormis himself was present; after his piece was performed, he hugged Robert Geary and kissed the soprano soloist's hand. It was a wonderful piece - so were they all. I would happily have heard the whole program through again.
And I might, because it's being given twice more. You should go!
Sunday, Nov. 5, 4:00 p.m., St. Mark's, Berkeley, 2300 Bancroft Way (Note: FOUR, not four-thirty; I goofed in my original posting.)
Wednesday, Nov. 8, 7:30 p.m., Acalanes H.S., Lafayette, 1200 Pleasant Hill Road.
In a word: stunning. There are just a few pieces on the program, by Arvo Pärt, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Pekka Kostianen, Olli Kortekangas, Veljo Tormis, and Per Nørgård. These works are all dense, chewy, and extremely beautiful, with texts from sources such as the Kalavela and from 20th century literature (Rilke, Lorca, Lawrence).
I loved the singing - what a great collection of musicians and voices, and what a performance they gave. Great music, great programming, great conducting. Composer Veljo Tormis himself was present; after his piece was performed, he hugged Robert Geary and kissed the soprano soloist's hand. It was a wonderful piece - so were they all. I would happily have heard the whole program through again.
And I might, because it's being given twice more. You should go!
Sunday, Nov. 5, 4:00 p.m., St. Mark's, Berkeley, 2300 Bancroft Way (Note: FOUR, not four-thirty; I goofed in my original posting.)
Wednesday, Nov. 8, 7:30 p.m., Acalanes H.S., Lafayette, 1200 Pleasant Hill Road.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Matthew Guerrieri and a note about the blogroll
I've added the charminginly-named Soho the Dog, where composer/pianist/conductor Matthew Guerrieri is blogging rather entertainingly. (It was the posting about multi-fingered pianists that got me over there, via, um, Mr. Noise, I think.)
About that blogroll. It seems unlikely that anyone can keep up with either reading or linking to all of the many worthwhile classical music blogs out there. I know I'm missing a ton of good opera blogs, and I hesitate to even try to keep up. And if you look at everyone else's blogrolls, you'll see that we don't overlap. So I suggest cruising every blogroll you can, because there are soooo many goood music blogs, and so little time.
About that blogroll. It seems unlikely that anyone can keep up with either reading or linking to all of the many worthwhile classical music blogs out there. I know I'm missing a ton of good opera blogs, and I hesitate to even try to keep up. And if you look at everyone else's blogrolls, you'll see that we don't overlap. So I suggest cruising every blogroll you can, because there are soooo many goood music blogs, and so little time.
Kenneth Woods
I'm (finally) linking to conductor Kenneth Woods, whose blog, a view from the podium, will give you a fantastic look inside the world of conducting. He writes insightfully about the organizational, musical, and technical issues conductors deal with; give him a look!
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