Berio's Sinfonia Will Make Your Little Girl Cry
[largely composed on steno pad during late-night Metro North ride on Thursday]
Usually when you end up sitting at the orchestra a couple of seats away from a small child, your first thought is "uh oh," since you never know how they're going to act. Do they know it's really noisy if they whisper? Can they keep from kicking the seat in front of them? I was extra-nervous about this at the NY Philharmonic on Thursday night, regarding a mother and her six- or seven-year-old daughter, who were sitting just to my left. The situation suggested that the mother didn't quite know what she was getting into, considering the program consisted of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia and the Brahms Fourth Symphony.
I think I heard the mother pointing out to her daughter someone onstage who had invited them; if that was indeed the case, it was a remarkable lapse in judgment for a musician. Berio's Sinfonia is generally regarded as a masterpiece of tonally unchained late 1960s postmodernism, but it is not generally regarded as child-friendly. Musically speaking, you might say it sounds like what would happen inside your head if you dropped acid while attending a French linguistics symposium. (And that's before it gets weird.) The Brahms Fourth Symphony, for its part, is generally regarded as 45 minutes long.
I don't want to sound snide; I was in a good mood, and I wasn't bitter that there was a little girl in my row. While the orchestra tuned up she was pointing out to her mother how neat the harp looked, and why does the back part of the harp bend up like that, and how much she liked the violins. And actually, I was interested to hear what she was whispering to her mother as the music started; this started with a completely baffled "What are they doing?" after about a minute, followed a little later by "What are they saying?" and then a distinctly grumpy "I can't understand what they're singing."
Oh, but then it got sad. The third movement (again, where it gets weird) really freaked her out, and she whispered to her mother in clear agitation that "This is really scary"; and then she started to cry quietly after a few minutes. And then she was crying pretty openly by about the time the first tenor was going on about the name of Mayakovsky hanging on the clean air. I don't know if you've ever been at a concert where a seven-year-old girl is crying miserably, but this thing happens to you where a pro-social response kicks in, strongly, and you start to really ardently wish that you could make things better for the little girl, make it so she stops crying; but you can't stop the orchestra, can't make the young old suddenly or slow down the pace of Berio, and that's pretty much that. Keep going, going on . . .
The little girl settled down in the fourth movement, and by the time the fifth movement got chattery she could manage a small-voiced "What language are they singing in?" to her mother, who whispered back "French," not that that quite explains it. I was happy to see that after intermission the little girl was animated and bubbly again; I'd feared permanent scarring. (Oh, but will she ever enjoy atonal orchestra music again?) And she reacted to Brahms 4 exactly the way a normal, well-balanced seven-year-old would be expected to: by sitting quietly and looking like she was never going to get to have fun again, ever.
Musically, Sinfonia came off really well, though the busier parts were muddy. (I'm sure that this is largely because of Avery Fisher Hall, once again; the instrumental blend in the Brahms was awful. I was sitting in the orchestra level on a student ticket, thinking maybe the voices would be clearer down there. I don't know if that was really the case.) Lorin Maazel does pretty well with modernist repertoire, from what I've heard him conduct, and he had a good clear read here. The first and second movements, especially, were vibrant and logical and well colored; it's also great to hear this live (rather than on CD) to get a better sense of the vocalists, mikes and all. (Oh, but at the end of the third movement, where the tenor thanks the conductor with "Thank you, Mr. Boulez" [for example] or "Thank you, Mr. Eötvös"? We just got "Thank you, Maestro." What the hell? Will Maazel not deign to have anyone call him the way that, say, a butler would?)
Brahms was periodically really exciting (good third movement, excellent beginning of the second movement) but bogged down in indifference with some frequency (notably the first several minutes of the piece) and, in the final passacaglia, suffered a badly suited and overly stylized balletic lilt that Maazel put into it. (Geez, and did the middle of the last movement ever start to slouch along, too.) I hope their Brahms Festival Brahms last year was better than their Berio Festival Brahms this year. Sinfonia, incidentally, was commissioned by the NY Phil back in 1968 but hadn't been performed by them for two decades before this week.
Man, that poor little girl. I hope she doesn't have nightmares.
Usually when you end up sitting at the orchestra a couple of seats away from a small child, your first thought is "uh oh," since you never know how they're going to act. Do they know it's really noisy if they whisper? Can they keep from kicking the seat in front of them? I was extra-nervous about this at the NY Philharmonic on Thursday night, regarding a mother and her six- or seven-year-old daughter, who were sitting just to my left. The situation suggested that the mother didn't quite know what she was getting into, considering the program consisted of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia and the Brahms Fourth Symphony.
I think I heard the mother pointing out to her daughter someone onstage who had invited them; if that was indeed the case, it was a remarkable lapse in judgment for a musician. Berio's Sinfonia is generally regarded as a masterpiece of tonally unchained late 1960s postmodernism, but it is not generally regarded as child-friendly. Musically speaking, you might say it sounds like what would happen inside your head if you dropped acid while attending a French linguistics symposium. (And that's before it gets weird.) The Brahms Fourth Symphony, for its part, is generally regarded as 45 minutes long.
I don't want to sound snide; I was in a good mood, and I wasn't bitter that there was a little girl in my row. While the orchestra tuned up she was pointing out to her mother how neat the harp looked, and why does the back part of the harp bend up like that, and how much she liked the violins. And actually, I was interested to hear what she was whispering to her mother as the music started; this started with a completely baffled "What are they doing?" after about a minute, followed a little later by "What are they saying?" and then a distinctly grumpy "I can't understand what they're singing."
Oh, but then it got sad. The third movement (again, where it gets weird) really freaked her out, and she whispered to her mother in clear agitation that "This is really scary"; and then she started to cry quietly after a few minutes. And then she was crying pretty openly by about the time the first tenor was going on about the name of Mayakovsky hanging on the clean air. I don't know if you've ever been at a concert where a seven-year-old girl is crying miserably, but this thing happens to you where a pro-social response kicks in, strongly, and you start to really ardently wish that you could make things better for the little girl, make it so she stops crying; but you can't stop the orchestra, can't make the young old suddenly or slow down the pace of Berio, and that's pretty much that. Keep going, going on . . .
The little girl settled down in the fourth movement, and by the time the fifth movement got chattery she could manage a small-voiced "What language are they singing in?" to her mother, who whispered back "French," not that that quite explains it. I was happy to see that after intermission the little girl was animated and bubbly again; I'd feared permanent scarring. (Oh, but will she ever enjoy atonal orchestra music again?) And she reacted to Brahms 4 exactly the way a normal, well-balanced seven-year-old would be expected to: by sitting quietly and looking like she was never going to get to have fun again, ever.
Musically, Sinfonia came off really well, though the busier parts were muddy. (I'm sure that this is largely because of Avery Fisher Hall, once again; the instrumental blend in the Brahms was awful. I was sitting in the orchestra level on a student ticket, thinking maybe the voices would be clearer down there. I don't know if that was really the case.) Lorin Maazel does pretty well with modernist repertoire, from what I've heard him conduct, and he had a good clear read here. The first and second movements, especially, were vibrant and logical and well colored; it's also great to hear this live (rather than on CD) to get a better sense of the vocalists, mikes and all. (Oh, but at the end of the third movement, where the tenor thanks the conductor with "Thank you, Mr. Boulez" [for example] or "Thank you, Mr. Eötvös"? We just got "Thank you, Maestro." What the hell? Will Maazel not deign to have anyone call him the way that, say, a butler would?)
Brahms was periodically really exciting (good third movement, excellent beginning of the second movement) but bogged down in indifference with some frequency (notably the first several minutes of the piece) and, in the final passacaglia, suffered a badly suited and overly stylized balletic lilt that Maazel put into it. (Geez, and did the middle of the last movement ever start to slouch along, too.) I hope their Brahms Festival Brahms last year was better than their Berio Festival Brahms this year. Sinfonia, incidentally, was commissioned by the NY Phil back in 1968 but hadn't been performed by them for two decades before this week.
Man, that poor little girl. I hope she doesn't have nightmares.
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