Won't Take My Eyes off the Ball Again
So I've fallen a bit behind with my concert blogging - I had a full weekend of concert-going, most of which was new music, and little down time to process it all, let alone process it all for mild consumption. And I will catch up - that much is certain, but I may end up working backwards (though since I'm writing this post without any pre-writing (to be sure, most of my posts are "written" - which to me means that I work on them before posting them or whatever (typos and occasional grammatical errors aside (and, God forbid, the occasional unclosed parenthetical)) and not typed out on-the-spot) who knows what exactly I’ll wind up bringing up, so it my concert round-up starting from back on Friday may well be quite achronological) chronologically.
So to start with the wandering back through the time-line of my Berlin concert-going between the 23rd and 27th of May, I shall first speak of the concert I attended last night: The Berlin Radio Symphony, conducted by young Kristjan Järvi, playing Tubin’ 4th Symphony and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. This isn’t necessarily a concert that I would always go to, but my friend Derek was in town (he was actually in town for almost the whole span of concerts about which I have yet to blog), and wanted to go, so I went along. I’d never heard anything of Tubin’s, so I guess was kind of interested on that front, and, you know, what the hell, it’s always good to hear a Rite of Spring, right? (Actually, one of the first classical music concerts I can remember being genuinely excited about in my life was the Pittsburgh Symphony performing RoS, back when I was in High School (Junior or Senior year) – right around the same time as a Shostakovich 10 that was also exciting (maybe Nate can remember the Shosty 10 – not the one that we saw when we were both in college (twice), but back when I was in High School and you were in college (I think I actually wrote about the Shosty 10 concert for my college entrance essay for the music schools I applied to)).)
Tubin’s 4th Symphony doesn’t make me want to immediately run out and hear more Tubin, but Derek insists that most of his music isn’t so tension-less, apparently this 4th Symphony is a phenomenon similar to R. Vaughn Williams’s 5th Symphony – some unnecessarily glorious, placid symphony sandwiched between other symphonies of starker character. Part of my discontent is also, of course, personal, in that I am an angry young man, so have no time, really, for such escapist music (like how I definitely wouldn’t bother going to see any Delius or Rimsky-Korsakov either (unless it was the Berliner Philharmoniker)). And part of my discontent lies with the conductor – Kristjan can probably be ranked, not only as the youngest Järvi, but perhaps as the “lesser Järvi.” The Tubin was played through with a very high gloss – the piece is built around a small number of thematic motives, and so when it was played through so superficially, the already tension-light music became tension-less. Not bad music though, and I’m sure plenty of the audience really liked it – it’s easy to listen to, and was played cleanly and briskly.
I am not the type of concert-goer who often complains about tempos. Sure, I notice things some times, but in general, I won’t comment to whoever I saw the concert with about tempo decisions. Generally speaking, I think they’re an easy thing to complain about, and I feel like it’s kind of cliché to mention them in a critical light. That being said, Järvi’s tempos through the Rite of Spring were totally wack (and, actually, I’m pretty sure that the last time I publicly talked about a conductor’s tempos was also a performance of Stravinsky – namely, Mariss Jansons’s rather bizarre take on Petrouschka with the Berliner Phil last summer). I think Rite of Spring falls resoundingly into the category (as does, apparently, our blog) of things that are “good for good reasons.” The reasons are numerous – I would (am (citing) (one of the major differences between English and German style, I’ve been noticing this summer, is the preference for my English to operate in a style laden with passive and conditional constructs, whereas German is much more direct much more of the time)) cite, for instance, the melodic paring of muted bass trumpet with English horn as a great example of the goodness of RoS. The kind of tempos designed for maximum contrast from movement-to-movement but totally ignore the proportions of a piece as a whole.
Thus the concert performance was exciting, in that the famous parts were all expertly swiftly played, ripshit loud, and the slow-but-also-famous parts were, like, slower and quieter than the loud fast parts. And the rest, well, it slunk along, waiting to get famous again. Järvi also almost lost the band on a couple of instances – which I think has as much to do with it (the piece as a whole) having an unnatural flow as his rubato-related decisions. So, maybe I’m just being overly nerdy/curmudgeonly/cliché, but it seems to bad that Järvi decided to force the excitement-issue rather than letting a piece that can absolutely speak for itself do so.
And this ignores Järvi’s conducting style. Derek assures me that the blog really does require a video component to properly capture my discussing various conductor’s styles (especially when I’m being deprecatory), so again. It actually reminds me of being a kid, when occasionally, in the context of Little League baseball or whatever, various kids (I probably did a bit myself as well) would try and imitate various Major Leaguers’ batting stances. But I think the ladies love it when you conduct with your hips.
At the same time, though, I’m reminded that it is good to go to concerts of famous musics, even if not necessarily performed by totally famous groups. I like engaging with these pieces of music – the GFGR stuff – whether or not an actual performance is good or not (sort of like, I suppose, the difference between, say, the DDR as actually existing socialism and Marxist theory (in that we can’t let the failure of actually existing socialism deter us from being socialists in the same way that we can’t let lousy performances of Stravinsky keep us from thinking about his music and pursuing concerts of it)).
So to start with the wandering back through the time-line of my Berlin concert-going between the 23rd and 27th of May, I shall first speak of the concert I attended last night: The Berlin Radio Symphony, conducted by young Kristjan Järvi, playing Tubin’ 4th Symphony and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. This isn’t necessarily a concert that I would always go to, but my friend Derek was in town (he was actually in town for almost the whole span of concerts about which I have yet to blog), and wanted to go, so I went along. I’d never heard anything of Tubin’s, so I guess was kind of interested on that front, and, you know, what the hell, it’s always good to hear a Rite of Spring, right? (Actually, one of the first classical music concerts I can remember being genuinely excited about in my life was the Pittsburgh Symphony performing RoS, back when I was in High School (Junior or Senior year) – right around the same time as a Shostakovich 10 that was also exciting (maybe Nate can remember the Shosty 10 – not the one that we saw when we were both in college (twice), but back when I was in High School and you were in college (I think I actually wrote about the Shosty 10 concert for my college entrance essay for the music schools I applied to)).)
Tubin’s 4th Symphony doesn’t make me want to immediately run out and hear more Tubin, but Derek insists that most of his music isn’t so tension-less, apparently this 4th Symphony is a phenomenon similar to R. Vaughn Williams’s 5th Symphony – some unnecessarily glorious, placid symphony sandwiched between other symphonies of starker character. Part of my discontent is also, of course, personal, in that I am an angry young man, so have no time, really, for such escapist music (like how I definitely wouldn’t bother going to see any Delius or Rimsky-Korsakov either (unless it was the Berliner Philharmoniker)). And part of my discontent lies with the conductor – Kristjan can probably be ranked, not only as the youngest Järvi, but perhaps as the “lesser Järvi.” The Tubin was played through with a very high gloss – the piece is built around a small number of thematic motives, and so when it was played through so superficially, the already tension-light music became tension-less. Not bad music though, and I’m sure plenty of the audience really liked it – it’s easy to listen to, and was played cleanly and briskly.
I am not the type of concert-goer who often complains about tempos. Sure, I notice things some times, but in general, I won’t comment to whoever I saw the concert with about tempo decisions. Generally speaking, I think they’re an easy thing to complain about, and I feel like it’s kind of cliché to mention them in a critical light. That being said, Järvi’s tempos through the Rite of Spring were totally wack (and, actually, I’m pretty sure that the last time I publicly talked about a conductor’s tempos was also a performance of Stravinsky – namely, Mariss Jansons’s rather bizarre take on Petrouschka with the Berliner Phil last summer). I think Rite of Spring falls resoundingly into the category (as does, apparently, our blog) of things that are “good for good reasons.” The reasons are numerous – I would (am (citing) (one of the major differences between English and German style, I’ve been noticing this summer, is the preference for my English to operate in a style laden with passive and conditional constructs, whereas German is much more direct much more of the time)) cite, for instance, the melodic paring of muted bass trumpet with English horn as a great example of the goodness of RoS. The kind of tempos designed for maximum contrast from movement-to-movement but totally ignore the proportions of a piece as a whole.
Thus the concert performance was exciting, in that the famous parts were all expertly swiftly played, ripshit loud, and the slow-but-also-famous parts were, like, slower and quieter than the loud fast parts. And the rest, well, it slunk along, waiting to get famous again. Järvi also almost lost the band on a couple of instances – which I think has as much to do with it (the piece as a whole) having an unnatural flow as his rubato-related decisions. So, maybe I’m just being overly nerdy/curmudgeonly/cliché, but it seems to bad that Järvi decided to force the excitement-issue rather than letting a piece that can absolutely speak for itself do so.
And this ignores Järvi’s conducting style. Derek assures me that the blog really does require a video component to properly capture my discussing various conductor’s styles (especially when I’m being deprecatory), so again. It actually reminds me of being a kid, when occasionally, in the context of Little League baseball or whatever, various kids (I probably did a bit myself as well) would try and imitate various Major Leaguers’ batting stances. But I think the ladies love it when you conduct with your hips.
At the same time, though, I’m reminded that it is good to go to concerts of famous musics, even if not necessarily performed by totally famous groups. I like engaging with these pieces of music – the GFGR stuff – whether or not an actual performance is good or not (sort of like, I suppose, the difference between, say, the DDR as actually existing socialism and Marxist theory (in that we can’t let the failure of actually existing socialism deter us from being socialists in the same way that we can’t let lousy performances of Stravinsky keep us from thinking about his music and pursuing concerts of it)).
1 Comments:
I do remember that Shostakovich 10th Pittsburgh Symphony concert, though I now mainly remember it awakening me to how much more engaging the orchestra sounded from Heinz Hall's lower balcony than from the bleachers -- I went to it twice, once with (I think) components of the family and once with a student group. I got kind of annoyed at my RA for describing it as "too Classical Thunder". Thomas Sanderling conducted, if memory serves, which I think gives you another East German connection.
I only know Kristjan Järvi's work from one or two recordings of John Adams stuff but he makes Adams sound to me like Adams probably sounds to you all the time, i.e. inconsequential and somewhat grating. Or maybe I just mean "too damn fast, like, all the time". I can never remember who the middle Järvi is (is he in Cincinnati or something?) but I like Neemi Järvi's recordings a lot; his take on Shostakovich's 10th (to circle back to the 10th) with the Scottish National Orchestra on Chandos is one of my favorite records ever, and don't ever let anyone tell you that Karajan's account of it with the Berlin Philharmonic (to circle back to Berlin) is preferable.
Based on your comments I am trying to imagine what K. Järvi looks like on the podium but just imagining him as a large nine-year-old doing a sort of lopsided Andre Dawson impersonation.
The difference between Stravinsky and Marxism is that Stravinsky has actually been demonstrated to work in a number of contexts, with hardly any millions of deaths at all.
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