Summertime Sphere-Sounds
My college friend Dan is on the East Coast this week (a musicology conference and a need for library research brought him to NYC) so yesterday I hopped on the Metro North and we caught the American Symphony Orchestra for one of Leon Botstein's typically cerebral programs, linking a handful of obscure twentieth-century works with a common intellectual theme: here, spatial exploration. So lots of atmospheric clouds of harmony and unusual instrumental layouts to be had. The program notes are well worth reading, if any of this music interests you.
Toru Takemitsu's "Cassiopeia," from '71, is a rarely performed percussion concerto, with a huge kit. The soloist, Jonathan Haas, gleefully described during the following set change how he'd brought a gigantic timpani he'd made from an 18th-century swiss cheese press (if I caught that correctly) he obtained in Colorado; so that was up there on stage, in front of kind of a little framework hut hung with various blocks and cymbals. The program note pointed out that it's a very early percussion concerto, and the solo writing comes off as unrefined, lacking a narrative thread -- this can undo a percussion concerto pretty easily even today. The orchestra writing is attractive, particularly in its quieter pools-of-color moments; it's luscious for the early-70s avant garde but a bit gray by Takemitsu's later standard. The piece foreshadows Takemitsu's percussion ensemble concerto "From Me Flows What You Call Time," from 1990, which I heard the Yale Percussion Group play about a year ago and which more successfully sustains an atmosphere.
I'm more than sympathetic to Andrzej Panufnik's music, and I'm thrilled to have finally heard a symphony of his performed live, but his "Sinfonia di Sfere" (1975) doesn't really bring the goods. Panufnik, in his best work, balanced austerity and human spirit in a wonderful, distinctive way; the Sinfonia di Sfere has some of that, but there's not nearly enough dramatic foundation to hold up a half hour of episodic music here. Highlights embedded within the symphony include a concertante piano tossing off brittle shards of Messiaen-style licks; three drummers, positioned around the stage, providing circulating counterpoint; and five brass players, at stage front, offering some usually quiet solo lines, although these sometimes "stuck" and sometimes didn't (though they were all played brilliantly, especially by the trumpeter). This was actually the U.S. premiere of the piece, and I don't believe it'll ever travel widely. There are actually two recordings of it available on CD right now, although if you want to reach for the good stuff I'd suggest starting with his two most overtly spiritual symphonies, the Sinfonia Sacra ('63) and the Sinfonia Votiva ('81–'84).
Rued Langgaard's "Music of the Spheres" is a legitimately bizarre magnum opus, a half-hour experimental work from 1919 that encompasses, at different times, some daringly static mystical harmonies (often layered into a shimmering or seething curtain of noise), Beethovenian pastoralia, ostinatos topped with tuneful stuff in different keys, a brief and sumptuous soprano solo sung from the second balcony, a half-minute of dissonant organ music blasting through a thick haze of sound, and a chorus obsessively repeating the words "Kyrie Eleison" on a deliberately inexpressive scrap of melody. The spellbinding climax layers orchestra and chorus into a twenty-second-long, impenetrably dense anti-chord; there follows a short silence and then a hackneyed romantic upward sweep from the harp, which is also up on the balcony. Langgaard, who pitched his camp on the wrong side of the tracks from the early-twentieth-century Danish classical music establishment (Carl Nielsen, sole proprietor), has not been much performed in either the past or present. The performance was a fine one, especially for something so ambitious; I wished for a little more TLC around the impressionistic parts of the piece, but it was ear-opening in any case.
Ligeti's "Apparitions" and "Atmospheres" need less commentary, although I'll say I like the second a lot better than the first, particularly the mesmerizing chordal light show at the beginning. Early Ligeti makes me want to hear late Ligeti: he hadn't shed the avant-garde grayness yet.
Botstein has a commanding artistic presence when he talks from the stage (not extensively; mostly, again, to help kill the time it took to change the set from Takemitsu to Panufnik). But he made the point he was sticking up for modernist repertoire that's fallen out of fashion, and he described briefly what each piece offered, and he thanked the audience, humorously but truly, for coming to hear it on what was a beautiful day. It's refreshing to hear a voice speaking with authority about what the artistic agenda is for an orchestra concert.
Toru Takemitsu's "Cassiopeia," from '71, is a rarely performed percussion concerto, with a huge kit. The soloist, Jonathan Haas, gleefully described during the following set change how he'd brought a gigantic timpani he'd made from an 18th-century swiss cheese press (if I caught that correctly) he obtained in Colorado; so that was up there on stage, in front of kind of a little framework hut hung with various blocks and cymbals. The program note pointed out that it's a very early percussion concerto, and the solo writing comes off as unrefined, lacking a narrative thread -- this can undo a percussion concerto pretty easily even today. The orchestra writing is attractive, particularly in its quieter pools-of-color moments; it's luscious for the early-70s avant garde but a bit gray by Takemitsu's later standard. The piece foreshadows Takemitsu's percussion ensemble concerto "From Me Flows What You Call Time," from 1990, which I heard the Yale Percussion Group play about a year ago and which more successfully sustains an atmosphere.
I'm more than sympathetic to Andrzej Panufnik's music, and I'm thrilled to have finally heard a symphony of his performed live, but his "Sinfonia di Sfere" (1975) doesn't really bring the goods. Panufnik, in his best work, balanced austerity and human spirit in a wonderful, distinctive way; the Sinfonia di Sfere has some of that, but there's not nearly enough dramatic foundation to hold up a half hour of episodic music here. Highlights embedded within the symphony include a concertante piano tossing off brittle shards of Messiaen-style licks; three drummers, positioned around the stage, providing circulating counterpoint; and five brass players, at stage front, offering some usually quiet solo lines, although these sometimes "stuck" and sometimes didn't (though they were all played brilliantly, especially by the trumpeter). This was actually the U.S. premiere of the piece, and I don't believe it'll ever travel widely. There are actually two recordings of it available on CD right now, although if you want to reach for the good stuff I'd suggest starting with his two most overtly spiritual symphonies, the Sinfonia Sacra ('63) and the Sinfonia Votiva ('81–'84).
Rued Langgaard's "Music of the Spheres" is a legitimately bizarre magnum opus, a half-hour experimental work from 1919 that encompasses, at different times, some daringly static mystical harmonies (often layered into a shimmering or seething curtain of noise), Beethovenian pastoralia, ostinatos topped with tuneful stuff in different keys, a brief and sumptuous soprano solo sung from the second balcony, a half-minute of dissonant organ music blasting through a thick haze of sound, and a chorus obsessively repeating the words "Kyrie Eleison" on a deliberately inexpressive scrap of melody. The spellbinding climax layers orchestra and chorus into a twenty-second-long, impenetrably dense anti-chord; there follows a short silence and then a hackneyed romantic upward sweep from the harp, which is also up on the balcony. Langgaard, who pitched his camp on the wrong side of the tracks from the early-twentieth-century Danish classical music establishment (Carl Nielsen, sole proprietor), has not been much performed in either the past or present. The performance was a fine one, especially for something so ambitious; I wished for a little more TLC around the impressionistic parts of the piece, but it was ear-opening in any case.
Ligeti's "Apparitions" and "Atmospheres" need less commentary, although I'll say I like the second a lot better than the first, particularly the mesmerizing chordal light show at the beginning. Early Ligeti makes me want to hear late Ligeti: he hadn't shed the avant-garde grayness yet.
Botstein has a commanding artistic presence when he talks from the stage (not extensively; mostly, again, to help kill the time it took to change the set from Takemitsu to Panufnik). But he made the point he was sticking up for modernist repertoire that's fallen out of fashion, and he described briefly what each piece offered, and he thanked the audience, humorously but truly, for coming to hear it on what was a beautiful day. It's refreshing to hear a voice speaking with authority about what the artistic agenda is for an orchestra concert.
3 Comments:
I know what you mean about early Ligeti making you want to listen to late Ligeti - though, actually, for me even his later modernist-period stuff is good listening. There isn't a recording currently being pressed of La Grand Macabre, but there's a piece that at first (back when I was maybe a Freshman in college) seemed way too much of an avant-garde grab-bag that has really grown on me in recent years (this may be, though, because I don't actually listen to it all that often).
Hey, Jack, Tan and I were there too! My sister was in the chorus. Who knew? It was definitely off the beaten path musically for me, but fun.
Oh neat! Wish I'd known you were there -- I would have asked you how married life was treating you.
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