Other Side of the Coin

Just in case you thought I never say anything about what I love, here is a (partial) list of what makes musical life rewarding, thrilling, challenging, irreplaceable (in no particular order):

I love to discover a new piece that surprises me, thrills me, moves me, engages me, tickles me and / or takes me on an enthralling musical trip.    I hope I never stop finding new operas, concerti, symphonies, quartets, vocal works, orchestral works, musicals, jazz tunes, pop tunes, and things that fit none of these categories.    And I love to share works I love with someone who hasn't heard them yet.   So if you're looking for suggestions...

I love to revisit a piece of music I have not heard in years to "rediscover" its pleasures.   If I hear it live, all the better.    I have so many recordings of so many wonderful compositions, I could do this every day and not repeat for a decade--easily, with some leftover.    But I'm including short pieces as well, in various musical forms other than "classical" including jazz, Broadway musicals, movie scores, and even some "pop" (though not any recent because the radio stations mostly play shit...unless it's "Country", which does have some talented people doing talented things, I just don't like it.)

I love to see a wonderful singing actors give performances that stay with you forever.    And again, I do not just mean classical performers, but certainly many of those, too.   Placido Domingo performing Idomeneo and Die Walkure, Deborah Polaski in Elektra, Renee Fleming singing La Traviata and Eugene Onegin (and others), Natalie Dessay in Ariadne auf Naxos and Lucia di Lammermoor (and others), Thomas Hampson in Das Lied von der Erde and Tannhauser, Victoria Clark in The Light in the Piazza, Christine Ebersole in Grey Gardens, Bernadette Peters in Gypsy and A Little Night Music, Leo Norbert Butz in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (yes, I know it was a light comedy, but he was priceless), etc. etc....really, a full list would be dull, so I'll stop now.

Seeing a stage production that is so right in (most) every detail as to be as close to perfect as you will get: Private Lives with Lindsay Duncan and Alan Rickman, Grey Gardens with Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson giving the performances of their lives, The Light in the Piazza with Victoria Clark and Kelli O'Hara, South Pacific also with O'Hara and Paulo Szot, Nine with Antonio Banderas (I didn't expect him to be great either but I was wrong) and Chita Rivera but everyone was memorable including Tony winner Jane Krakowski, at at the Met: Elektra, Moses und Aron, Lulu, From the House of the Dead, Eugene Onegin, War and Peace.  (I have been unlucky when it comes to the more "standard" rep: some poor performances or bad staging or weak conducting--or all of these, alas.  I have yet to see anything that did not have some elements that were at least good and quite often great, still...one of these days.)

A live performance by an instrumentalist that is seared in my memory (here are a few): Jorge Bolet in recital, B.B. King playing Lucille at an impromptu midnight jam session with Bobby "Blue" Bland, Gil Shaham playing the Brahms concerto like a matador slaying a bull, Emmanuel Ax in recital, Mose Allison becoming a musical madman while the audience expecting your "normal" jazz set just smiled blankly in his direction, Christopher Parkening playing exquisite miniatures, Javier Oviedo and Carla McElheny at Weill Hall (a true collaboration), and the greatest single performance of my life: to celebrate his 75th year on Earth, Mstislav Rostropovich playing a new work and Dvorak concerto.    (He is one of my favorite musicians who ever recorded and I was finally lucky enough to hear him "live" playing the Dvorak like no one else can.    I was not alone in my tears.) 

Videos of operas or shows that I was not lucky enough to see live but still "come through" as great events (not always true of performances on video as opposed to "films"): Hamlet with Derek Jacobi and Patrick Stewart, original company of Sunday in the Park With George, Cyrano de Bergerac also with Jacobi, Les Troyens in Paris for Berlioz' Bi-centennial, original company of Into the Woods (though I have a few quibbles about the show) original company of Passion, War and Peace also in Paris, Bernadette Peters in concert in London, Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake with the original cast (I did see it later after he revised it...which only lessened its impact), Peter Pears in Peter Grimes and Billy Budd, then Philip Langridge in the same two operas, Birtwistle's The Minotaur, Henze's Der Junge Lord, Ian McKellen in King Lear, From the House of the Dead--same production that came to the Met, etc.    I actually enjoy many videos of stage performances, so I just named some I am particularly fond of.

Brilliant, special, beloved audio recordings: 100's.   Really good recordings: 1000's.   One (wonderful) choice from "each" type: cast album City of Angels, Ella Fitzgerald Song Books (I know, I cheated: this boxed set has 13 discs.   I love all of them.) Simon Rattle conducting Mahler's 2nd Symphony, Rostropovich playing Bach Suites, Henze's The Bassarids, Queen's Greatest Hits, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman.

Talking with someone who actually knows and loves classical music that is beyond the standard rep.   Even better if they know some of my own favorites that are really beyond the standard rep, like Birtwistle, Henze, Norgard, Rihm, Busoni, Schulhoff, Krasa, Cavalli, Chabrier, Lidholm, Rimsky-Korsakov operas, Ades, Creston, Gerhard, Dutilleux, Dvorak operas other than Rusalka, Goldschmidt, most of Britten, Szmanowski, Schreker, Bernstein classical pieces, probably a few I'm just not thinking of at the moment, many others that I quite enjoy but do not love and pieces by the well-played composers that are less well known.   (That list would be book length.)    These talks have been some of the most delightful hours I have spent.    Their rarity makes them all the more treasurable.

And last for now: experiencing music with someone you love.  In any form.  Nothing as sweet.  May I have a lifetime more of these precious moments.

P.S. Yes, I know I included some non-musical things but they were connected in spirit.

Prejudices

I believe everyone has some sort of prejudice about something, and I am no exception.     My prejudices are almost all musical.     I've mentioned a few before.    Confession is supposed to be good for something so here is a list of things, actions, beliefs, opinions, and behaviors that make me want to scream at people or inform them of the fact that they are small-minded lazy idiots.   In case you've missed them.    In no particular order:

I loathe Wagnerites.    Mind you, I'm not talking about people who love Wagner's music even though they can hear it's excesses and redundancies, notice the flawed libretti, the uncomfortable political overtones, the all-but-impossible demands on singers requiring even the most tolerant listener to accept some really ugly sounds roaring across the the orchestra pit.    You know, smart, knowledgeable music lovers who accept Wagner as one of the greats and add him to their collection of performances, recordings, DVD's, etc.    Notice how I said one of the greats.    One of many.

These are not Wagnerites.     They would be the people who cannot be bothered to listen, view, learn, discuss, ponder anyone other than Wagner.   Who see every performance they can get into of every production of every one of his works and nothing else.   Nothing else.    Who know every cast of every minute of music ever played at Bayreuth.    Who are horrified if they are ever done in translation.     Who believe his music is the pinnacle so why would you ever listen to anything else?     Those people.   They flock to every work of his when it appears at the Met.   You can find them at Walkure if you go.     They will be the jerks pontificating during the intermissions.     Shame it's against the law to just walk up and slap them.     Or scream "pull your heads out of your asses...there is a whole millennium of music being played and it's wonderful, too.     And some of it is not even opera!"

And I loathe people who only know the "war horses" and rarely if ever venture far afield of them.    Who know some Bach, but only the orchestral stuff (and they're not quite sure of the names); all the Mozart that's on the Amadeus soundtrack (their favorite classical cd); Beethoven's popular symphonies, a few piano sonatas, maybe some quartets (but maybe not); Brahms' violin concerto, his 1st Symphony, maybe The German Requiem (or maybe not); Tchaikovsky's violin concerto, sixth symphony, Romeo and Juliet, 1812, (but Eugene Onegin? certainly not;) Dvorak's cello concerto and The New World Symphony; Schubert's unfinished, maybe one or two more symphonies, the Trout (song and quintet); and a whole slew of one-offs by big names like Schumann, Handel, Haydn, and even Saint-Saens (Carnival of the Animals, it's soooo charming.)     They are the reason we have fourteen thousand recordings of Beethoven's Fifth.     They are the people who tell you how wonderful the "classics" are when they find out you are a classical musician but stare at you when you answer their question about what you are working on at the moment.    They rave "don't you just love Lang Lang?"   Or explain why they no longer buy season tickets.      They should be locked in their houses with their 22 cd's of the Brahms' violin concerto whenever any hall is playing anything worth hearing.  Not that any classical music would be filling their homes.     They probably don't listen to any  anymore.    Too many programs on TV.     "Don't you just love Glee?"

And I want to shoot every person who brings up in conversation how they "hate" new music...but then can't name any of it.   Because they have no idea what's being written.    They still think Schoenberg is new.   They might venture out every decade or so to hear something people have been "raving" about, but they won't like it that much.    No matter what it sounds like.     It could be as popular in style as The Rhapsody in Blue but they won't like it and will add it to the (non-existent) list of reasons why they hate new music.    Well, new music hates you back!

And then we have the "I only listen to..."symphonies, or opera, or chamber music, or solo piano, or vocalists singing favorites, or "crossover", or Bach, or Beethoven, etc.   But unlike Wagnerites, they do not have everything memorized down to the note.    In fact, they stopped listening to classical music "as much as they used to" because their lives got too hectic or their work changed or they got HBO.   And "yeah, we should go to a concert again.     Let us know when you're performing!"    "Sure, I'll leave those seats empty in your honor."

Of course, there's the house favorite: "I know what I like."    (Yes, I'm talking to you.)    No...you like what you know ...as of whatever you knew when you stopped trying to learn anything.    Therefore, anything that sounds like what you know is good.    Anything that does not sound like what you know is not.     Why would you want to bother learning how to appreciate anything different [read: more difficult] when you have all these favorites at your fingertips?    I have yet to met anyone who says this and means Stockhausen and Babbitt or Birtwistle and Carter.    In fact, I'm not sure I've met anyone who has said that cliche who would even know anything about those four.     Probably not even all of their first names.     (An admission:  I think Stockhausen and Babbitt are overrated but I have heard and studied their music, quite a bit actually, and formed my opinion afterward.    I'm not saying I don't understand their music.    I think I have a pretty good grasp of it.   And I actually do like some of Stockhausen, parts of his operas in particular.   But he had a buttload of really bad ideas and had no shame in sharing them.    I like exactly one piece by Babbitt.    It's short and for guitar.     A guitar can make anything tolerable.)

And then there is the brother of the above: "Oh, I just don't like [fill in the blank.]     I've tried to appreciate him, but his music just doesn't speak to me."  Right.   Except they can't really describe any of it, or remember when they last heard any of it, or what exactly the aspects are that they don't like.   And it's never Bach or Mozart or Brahms but someone like Berlioz or Schoenberg or Stravinsky.    Because no one would dare admit they don't like Mozart.     Well, I would be more impressed if they said Mozart but loved Schoenberg.     Fat chance.

Or the sister of the above: "I don't like much 20th Century music."    Or more than a couple of hours worth, total, unless you mean Puccini.   Schoenberg, Strauss, Prokofiev, Ravel, Berg, Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams, Milhaud, Webern, Janacek, Bartok, Poulenc, Copland, Britten, Shostakovich,  Barber, Messiaen, Henze, Carter, Crumb, Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, Adams, and Ades are all interchangeably uninteresting (assuming they have even heard music by all of these people.)    And this is to ignore the dozens of others they have never heard...and never will.    "Certainly none of these people can compare to Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven."  Well, those people can't compare with each other.    You can't really compare different musics as far as worth.    It's a useless waste of time, and personal taste is the only real arbiter.   All of these people have written wonderful music.   Also some of those people you've never heard.     The world is richer for having the B minor Mass and the War Requiem just to randomly pick two works.

Of course, I meet the tiny minority of music students (usually composition majors) who only like 20th Century music, especially the most complex...or the most simple.    Hopefully, they will come in contact with Monteverdi or Handel or Berlioz in a sizzling performance and expand their range.   If not, we have the happy knowledge that we won't be listening to too much of their music either, so the history of music wins this cosmic battle.     No one without appreciation of the past makes any kind of lasting impression on the present--my reinterpretation of an old saying.

Or the "I love opera!" people who mean they love opera singers.     And mostly retired and / or dead ones.   They can name every Callas recording.    Have shelves filled with Caruso and Flagstad and Bjorling and Nilsson and Corelli and Sutherland and Caballe plus a few favorites that are not necessarily as well-known so they can claim superiority over the mere casual fan (Magda Olivero is a big one.)    Yet they bash any singer today who has any measure of acclaim unless they are wildly popular yet thoroughly mediocre--then they hear some direct connection to one of the stars above.    Sort of an Emperor's New Clothes...only they, and their truly gifted counterparts, can see and hear why so-and-so is so fabulous.    And the (truly) greatest singers of the present age are not.    Naturally, they know everything by Bellini and Verdi but can't name more than three operas written after Puccini they that are completely familiar with.   But they keep buying their season tickets and priding themselves on their knowledge of the horrible decline in singing.    My response to them is "expletive deleted you, too."

And last (for today) are the snobs who will never admit someone who can write great "popular" music can be any good at "classical".     How Gershwin songs are wonderful, but An American in Paris is for people who don't know real classical music.   Or Bernstein's West Side Story is great, but A Quiet Place (if they even know it) is second rate.     If they don't know that one, they are sure to know one of his symphonies or Mass or Arias and Barcarolles to hold up as inferior.     Or Aaron Copland could only write simple "folk-like" music...everything else is sub-par.    ("What is it with that piano concerto?")   Or Sondheim's Passion or Sweeney Todd do not belong in an opera house, being "mere" musicals.    In fact, they don't understand why all these classically trained singers are wasting their time with them.    Or Weill only wrote those cabaret tunes for Communist musicals, didn't he?    God, who would want to hear an opera by him?  And so forth.    I just smile at these imbeciles.    They are missing out on glorious, difficult, memorable pieces that make quite a bit of "classical" music written by "classical" composers sound paltry.    Fine.   More seats for me.    And by the way, Weill wrote some wonderful operas.

In praise of English

The battle for translation versus original language and titles (or program notes) has long been thought to be settled--and translation pretty much lost.    Other than very small opera companies and The English National Opera (or the Chandos Opera in English series of recordings), the pro-native language advocates have all but given up.    Yet I still believe no amount of "help" with a language that you do not understand can ever compare to the direct involvement of one you do, essentially hearing with no "barriers".     The main reason that things are let "as is" has more to do with singers being able to sing anywhere just to pay the bills than any real concern for authenticity.    If you learn Cosi Fan Tutte in Italian, you can sing it anywhere in the world.     And any singer from any part of the world can sing it anywhere.    This makes a certain sense.     But it's no real excuse.    The Met does works in translation all the time: Don Carlos, for instance, a work written to a French text.    There are plenty of performers who have learned both the Italian version and the French version and have gone back and forth successfully.    Really, Verdi hated the Italian translation but realized he would get more performances if the Italian was available.    Yet the Met does it in Italian, even though virtually anyone who knows both can enumerate for you the myriad ways the French text is preferable.    But audiences have gotten used to ignoring words and concentrating their attention on the music (or more truthfully, the melody) because idiots have convinced them that the actual sounds of the various words are much more important than their communicative ability--that somehow Verdi would be denigrated to be heard in English.     Factor in that a house the size of the Met makes it very difficult to understand any language being sung, so why not have it be Russian or German or Czech?    No one can really understand it anyway.     This is all old news.    We, the advocates of understanding, have long since lost the battle.    

But I continue to fight it.    So over the years I have used translations for a great many classical pieces and audience response has always been positive.    Surprisingly so.    In fact, to continue to perform lesser-known works of a certain difficulty, I have had to create a few "singing" versions of pieces that have only prose translations or "literal" ones that were not meant to be sung.     This is a difficult, (usually) long, tedious process--I am forced to rely on other people's translations, a person or two who speaks the language in question, and dictionaries--but I have always sung better in English and feel the work has been worth it.    Part of the solution is to find works composed to English texts, which I do often.    That is a whole 'nuther can of worms which I may open later.    

So why am I talking about this now?     Because of a piece performed at our last concert, where poems by children of Terezin's ghetto who were killed were set to music by a fine composer, Lori Laitman.   They were in English and the audience was very moved by them.    They could not distance themselves so they had to hear the poems as "intended."    This led me to re-listen to a group of operas written by victims of the Holocaust which were recorded in the latter decade of the 20th Century by London Records.    The series was called Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music) because that was the label the Nazis placed on any style of which they disapproved.     Because the Nazis were an extremely conservative group, they only approved of extremely conservative music, and banned anything that did not fit rigid models from the (usually German) past.    So many of the pieces that were recorded are of "difficult" music.     The period of the early 20th Century until the Second World War was one of experimentation, mixed methods, extended harmonies, conversational melodies, complication and simplicity (sometimes in the same piece), popular music invading "serious" music, etc.    Composers were looking for new ways to hear things--not necessarily to cater to the popular audience.     Yet, listening to some of these--chiefly Erwin Schulhoff's Flammen (Flames), Hans Krasa's Verloben im Traum (Betrothal in a Dream), and Pavel Haas' Sarlatan (Charlatan), all composers murdered by the Nazis by the way--I have come to a sad conclusion: these are all worthy pieces, but their various styles do not make for easy listening (or performance) and the language barrier is the final nail in the coffin.    Why would any group put so much money into a performance of a piece written in Czech by an all but unknown composer who writes in a somewhat difficult style, when they can spend that money on a premiere of a new work by a living composer with a libretto already in English, or a production of, say, Shostakovich's The Nose?    They wouldn't.   Not here, anyway.    If they performed some of these Entartete operas in English, would more people come?      Maybe, but the people who did come would,  I believe,  appreciate them more and be more willing to try to understand what the composer was after.     My proof?    A children's opera by Hans Krasa, Brundibar, which has been performed all over the English-speaking world in a marvelous translation by Tony Kushner.    Granted, it's only an hour long and the music is much simpler than Krasa's full-length one, but the correlation is fairly apt.    I would love to see any of these works, in any version, but I fear I am a very small minority.    Even the London recordings are out-of-print.    [Side note: another group, Music of Remembrance, has picked up the idea, but their budgets are smaller, and are comprised more of short pieces.   They did, however, record Brundibar, which is delightful.   And a few performers, like Anne-Sofie von Otter, have recorded some of the shorter vocal works.    But how long will they stay in print?     How many performers will learn these pieces?    Good question.    So buy these while you can!]   Yes, they were saved from extinction of one kind only to be all but destroyed by another: too few people want to have to "work" to appreciate music.    At least, not music that isn't "universally" accepted as "essential."   (Lulu, for instance.   Which I worship, so don't get me wrong.)    Not in an English-speaking country, anyway.    So they lie around in manuscript, unheard.    Even Los Angeles Opera, in an honorable bid to keep some of this music "alive", did a work that was so conservative musically, Lehar could have written it: The Birds, by Walter Braunfels.     They hedged their bets.     I believe the whole idea of performing in a language the audience does not understand will forever keep the more difficult of these (and many like) works dead in the water.     It's just one barrier too many.     I fight it on a small scale, but: English translation is dead.     Long live English translation.