Spring Cleaning - Music

            One last ‘list’ blog.   Then I’ll be back to normal.   I know everyone says this, but I love music.    The actual notes on pages as well as the sound of someone performing it.    Some people who know me might say I’m obsessed with it.    I wouldn’t argue.    Music is a monstrously large part of my life, like my movies and my books.    Maybe even more.    Because I perform music, I feel an untethered kinship to it; it becomes a boundless form of personal expression—something that just isn’t true for anything else I own.     So I only shed one stack of cd’s I never listen to (some I have never listened to) because those I kept are prized (for whatever reason)—usually, because I consider them as emotional ‘food’ for me.     And just like meals, I don’t want to eat the same thing over and over.    So I have a wide variety of sound and printed music: a WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE one.   They are easily classified, perhaps, but harder to define.     But I’ll try.   (What else am I going to do?)    From least in number to greatest, these categories are on my shelves:

Popular music written in my lifetime, or roughly the last 50 years.    I have much more from the ‘60’s and ‘70’s than anything later.    Mostly because I think music has changed for the worse (but everyone older says that about the younger generation.    I just happen to be right.)    Motown, The Beatles, Streisand, Midler, Elton John, Queen, a tiny bit of Madonna, not much Country (because I just can’t stand the vocal production favored), no Rap, The B-52’s, Aerosmith, Whitney Houston, etc.     I listen to these the least of all my discs, and other than some Streisand and Midler, I have no printed music for it.    Still, sometimes I just want to hear Bohemian Rhapsody.   Or Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.   Or Rock Lobster.    They are a little like a higher plane of junk food: tasty, enjoyable, well-done, though hardly edifying.   All to the good.    All Bach and no Barbra makes Paul a listless boy.

Then popular music written before I was born, from the ‘20’s through the ‘50’s.   (Instrumental and vocal.) Porter, Berlin, (my beloved) Gershwin, Rodgers (with Hart and Hammerstein), Jule Styne, Harold Arlen, Ellington, the Dorsey’s, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc.    Notice how many of these are Broadway composers.    That’s because I love Broadway, and it used to be where the ‘popular’ hits of the day came from.     But these are the pieces shed of their dramatic purpose just to be a ‘song’.    And the great players, many who played their own stuff—as you notice from the list.     The young Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, the essential Ella Fitzgerald (her Complete Songbook Collection is the single greatest box of pop music I own) Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Hartman, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Lena Horne.   And the ‘new’ interpreters like the young Barbra Streisand, Barbara Cook, Bernadette Peters, Audra McDonald, Jane Monheit, Linda Ronstadt (who fits one paragraph up as well).    Notice how many of these are Broadway performers.    Notice how many of them are women.    Most men who sing these are either: dead, imitative (how many Frank Sinatras do we have now?)  a one-album wonder—usually a Broadway headliner getting his ‘album’—or fucking irritating.   (Someone needs to stop Michael Feinstein from singing.    I love the conservation work he does, but he’s like a jazz Howdy Doody.) 

Then my treasured cast albums.   I worship Broadway music.   (Or movie scores written by Broadway composers.)   I always have.   I could sing Over The Rainbow before I went to school.   And this was before video tapes and we didn’t own any records.     I have the cast recording of (almost) every important Broadway show that has been recorded.    (I don’t have any Frank Wildhorn, and just four ‘monster hits’ of Lloyd Webber.    I could probably get rid of the recording of Cats a friend gave me.    I never listen to it.   But most of the other long-running shows.)    Name a musical, I probably have a recording, if it exists.   Early Jerome Kern to Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins and the luminous A Light in the Piazza, pun intended.)    All Rodgers and Hammerstein.   Many Rodgers and Hart.    All the Irving Berlin big hits.   Most of the Porter.    All the Gershwin that had been recorded ‘complete.’   Some rare-ish Harold Arlen shows like House of Flowers.    Frank Loesser’s hits and misses.     All Sondheim.    Many with multiple recordings.    Every note he has written that I could get my hands on.     I have dozens of printed scores from these, a shelf of collections of Broadway numbers, even single-song sheet music.   To me, great theatrical music is emotionally direct.    Surprising.   Intelligent.   Witty.    Moving.   What most pop music aspires to be, but isn’t.    Listen to ‘Your Daddy’s Son’ from Ragtime.    It tells a heart-breaking story—beginning, middle, end—in its packed four minutes, without a rote word or phrase.    The powerful interpretation of Audra McDonald doesn’t hurt.   Most of the music Reba McIntire sings, talented though she may be, can’t touch this.   Opera accomplishes the same but usually in different musical idioms.    But I love this music so much, a really smart tune and a catchy rhyme makes me happier than an entire shelf of The Rolling Stones or Madonna.     Here’s to a smart tune and a catchy rhyme! 

Then I move to a varied collection of classical music that isn’t opera or oratorio.   From Bach to Birtwistle, solo to symphony, every instrument of the Western tradition including voice, short sketches to hour-long wonders, every major form for the last thousand years—it’s represented among my recordings.    Yes, all the ‘great’ names are present.    All the major works of Beethoven, a shelf of Bach, Brahms (though not extensively…just isn’t a favorite), the Tchaikovsky symphonies and ballets, Dvorak large forms and small (I love his music), a fist full of Handel’s non-vocal pieces.    But I have so many composers who rival these (in my mind) that I cherish as much or more.   High representations of John Adams, Thomas Adès, Hector Berlioz, Harrison Birtwistle, Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten, Samuel Barber, William Byrd, Elliott Carter, Chopin piano music, Henri Dutilleux, Edward Elgar, Roberto Gerhard (he was a revelation when I discovered him), Hans Werner Henze (all his symphonies but one, and every other well-used form, plus a few distinct to him) Gustav Mahler (I think I have everything), Carl August Nielsen symphonies, Per Nørgård, Palestrina, a shelf of Sergei Prokofiev, all of Maurice Ravel, a ‘ton’ of Igor Stravinsky, Richard Strauss tone poems, Karol Szymanowski, Thomas Tallis, Michael Tippett, Ralph Vaughan Williams.    Okay, I’ll stop.  I left out many.     I listen to this music frequently.   Yesterday, I listened to Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.  I’ve loved that piece since I was an undergraduate.    I have hundreds of non-operatic scores of all kinds.   I’ll get more, I always do.

But the music I collect the most (on cassette, VCR, CD or DVD) is opera, which spans operettas and oratorios and some ‘musicals’ like Porgy and Bess or Street Scene.  Along with musicals, this is what I hear the most.   I have Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo from the beginning of the form and Robert Aldridge’s Elmer Gantry from 2007.   I have all John Adams that I know of, all Bellini, all Berlioz, all but one Bizet, all Britten, all Henze (except his latest two-character chamber opera which I can’t track down) all Janacek, all Prokofiev, all Puccini, all Schoenberg’s vocal works, all Richard Strauss, all Tippett, all Verdi, all Wagner.    Both Berg operas in multiple recordings.  A good selection of Cavalli.  (Practically) all Busoni.   Many works of Birtwistle, Donizetti, Dvorak, Gluck, Handel, Lehar, Massanet, all the last great Mozart operas (many times over), not nearly enough Offenbach (!), a foot of a shelf of Rameau, many Rimsky-Korsakov, half a dozen by Rossini (not my favorite), all but the unrecorded Shostakovich, the important Tchaikovsky, the majority of Vaughan Williams, several Weill (if you count his musicals, then much).

If you don’t read anything else on this blog, read this: works by composers banned, dispersed, and / or killed by the Nazis: The Birds by Walter Braunfels; The Magnificent Cuckold, and Beatrice Cenci by Berthold Goldschmidt; The Charlatan by Pavel Haas; Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City), Violanta, and Der Wunder (wonder or miracle) der Heliane by Erich Wolfgang Korngold; Brundibar and Betrothal in a Dream by Hans Krasa  (Brundibar will break your heart); Jonny Spielt Auf and Karl V (the first completed 12-tone opera) by Ernest Krenek; Moses and Aron by Arnold Schoenberg; Der Ferne Klang (The Distant Sound), Irrelohe, and The Branded by Franz Schreker; Flammen (Flames) by Erwin Schulhoff; among Weill’s works, a special mention to Die Bürgschaft (The Guarantee), and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, which really pissed off the Nazis; Zeus and Elida by Stefan Wolpe; The Dwarf, A Florentine Tragedy, and The Mermaid by Alexander Zemlinsky.  As I try to be a politically liberal-minded, historically-interested, caring, thinking, open, determined listener / musician, I have found it essential to my belief in Art—and its importance to humanity—to learn these (and other similar) works, in order to know our hidden history and shed light on it and its forgotten glories.    Most of these works are in a ‘difficult’ idiom: either highly chromatic, or atonal, or the more rigid 12-tone styles.    Some are traditionally tonal.    All of them are worth knowing.    Many I love.   Most were recorded as part of a series of releases from Decca called Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music).   Out-of-print for a while, many are resurfacing.   Arkivmusic has many.   ‘Killing off’ great pieces because they are too difficult or no longer popular is tragic to me.  (Politically motivated or not, though usually it has to do with money).   Some of these operas are being produced now.    Others only exist in these recordings.     Not all of them are masterpieces…but most are.    ‘Masterpiece’ does not denote popularity or ease of musical language.    You could ‘live’ without any of them.   Knowing about them, why would you want to?

Plus some favorites like Thomas Adès’s The Tempest (which is coming to The Met next year); Samuel Barber’s Vanessa; Marc-Antione Charpentier’s Médée; L’Etoile by Emmanuel Chabrier; Ulisse and The Prisoner by Luigi Dallapiccola; Oedipe by Georges Enesco; The Duenna by Roberto Gerhard; Porgy and Bess (of course!) by George Gershwin; The Great Gatsby (a great opera) by John Harbison; Croesus by Reinhard Keiser; A Dream Play by Ingvar Lidholm; Le Grand Macabre by Gyorgy Ligeti; Le Vin Herbé by Frank Martin (I actually have many of his vocal works, all beautiful if challenging.   This one is the story of Tristan and Isolde!); Maskerade and Saul and David by Carl Nielsen; both Ravel’s but especially L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (The Child and the Sorceries); Blood Wedding by Sandor Szokolay.   Some greats I haven’t mentioned like Debussy’s Pellèas et Mèlisande or The Coronation of Poppea by Monteverdi.  And many, many more.   (Aren’t you glad I didn’t mention all the individual operas of, say, Verdi or Strauss?)

I have shelves and shelves of opera scores, though certainly paltry compared to the recordings.    Only four I have no recordings for, all by forgotten composers of whom I have yet to see a single work recorded.   But I never say never.

Before I stop listing: a few performers—Claudio Arrau, Janet Baker, Maria Callas (duh), Placido Domingo, Jacqueline Du Pré, Renée Fleming, Angela Gheorghiu, Susan Graham, Thomas Hamson, Byron Janis, Philip Langridge, Birgit Nilsson, David Oistrakh, Peter Pears, Rosa Ronselle, Mtslav Rostropovich, Arthur Rubinstein, Gil Shaham, Dawn Upshaw, Anne Sofie von Otter.   And a few conductors: Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, William Christie, John Eliot Gardiner, Valery Gergiev, René Jacobs, Herbert von Karajan, James Levine, Antonio Pappano, Simon Rattle, Sir Georg Solti.    I have left out hundreds.

Does any of this mean anything?   Well, to me, I see a wide range of times, places, styles, formats, ‘movements’, geniuses, talents, very old to very new.    I am NOT the “I know what I like” kind of person.    I don’t know if I like it until I hear it.    My words to live by.   May they never change.

So... no more lists.    I hope interests were piqued enough to sample some of these works (movies, books, music) or perhaps, show a bit of where my twisting, probing mind might roam.

Spring Cleaning - Books

              A word of warning: if you don't like lists, read something else and come back to me later.

                I have been a voracious reader since young childhood.    My parents were happy to encourage me…especially if it kept me quiet.     (With five kids, who could blame them?)     They did make me go outside during the summer, but when it was cold, they allowed me all the time I wanted.   So for hours, I escaped into the pages of somewhere I had never been, meeting some people I did not know.     No one ever told me such-and-such book was too difficult for me to read.      I think they just assumed I would get bored with something beyond my grasp and move on to something else.    And they were correct.   So I learned a lexicon of new vocabulary, new ideas, new styles without pressure to ‘achieve’ something with it all.     Well, one person tried to suggest that a book on the shelf I couldn’t reach was ‘too old’ for me.    (I had climbed the shelves to retrieve it.  No lie.)     Luckily, I had a tiger for a second grade teacher.     She took the librarian into the library office—and (metaphorically) bit off all her limbs.    The bleeding woman came out to me, apologized (!) but told me to ask for help if the shelf was too high.   And I did.

                So I’ve been reading every imaginable kind of book since I could read.    Both fiction and non-fiction.    Biographies, autobiographies, histories, self-help were all on my list.    I read the entire Bible, which led to being called in front of the Elders of my church to tell me to stop preaching heresy.    (Like: who are the other people that Cain was worried about?)    I spent a year reading the entire set of the World Book Encyclopedia.     I didn’t understand or remember 99% of it, but I gave it a shot.    I still remember some things like your Eustachian tubes.    The two Brownings.     (I’m not sure why they stuck in my head.   But when I saw The Barretts of Wimpole Street some years later, I made the connection.)     Opera and its history.    (When I saw Don Giovanni on television years later, I remembered the picture.)   The parts of the body.    (There were these wonderful transparencies where you could lift one to find a lower level of parts: skin, then musculature, then the digestive system, then circulatory system, then the skeletal structure.)    Terms like zephyr.    (How could you forget a weird word like that?)   Influenza as the name of the real disease.     Quite a bit about cancer.     (I’m still scared to death of it.)   The Coliseum.     Ballet.     And a million other little things buried somewhere in my brain to be pulled out later.    So, no surprise, I have encyclopedic books on my shelves, some of which I have read from cover to cover.    Getting lost in short articles of numberless items, thoughts, opinions is a joy.   (Well, it’s a joy for me.)    Of course, I have read fiction of every stripe, especially plays.    I have loved reading plays.    Any play.   I still do.   Maybe that is why I have continued to write them.     I still have a few books from my childhood: most of them have been lost through numerous moves through colleges, cities, housing.     Still, I have some books I have kept for decades.     I will keep them for decades longer.

                I have a bad habit of keeping books I have enjoyed just to be collecting them.    Especially popular fiction.    But am I really going to re-read that murder mystery?    Or The Godfather?          Best Short Stories of 1989?     Or non-fiction book on baseball that is twenty years out of date?  Topical essays by Gore Vidal?    (Actually, the answer is ‘yes’ to that one.    He’s a complete ass, but an interesting one.    Nothing like them.)      Every novel I own by Saul Bellow?    (No, but I’ve kept my favorites.)     I used to look to these as a personal history of times and places of my life.     But I have begun to forget where and when I have read them.     And I know I will not read them again.    So this year, before I turn fifty, I have decided to let them go.     I have taken them from place to place.     My shelves are two and three books deep.      Time to whittle them down to two books deep.   On some shelves, one book.     I took down over two hundred things.

                But what have I kept?    The three types: fiction, non-fiction…and plays.   (Yes, I consider it a form all its own.)    Every book about a composer, like, say, The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz which is roaringly funny…and heartbreaking.    And as perfect companions: his book on orchestration and David Cairn’s two-volume biography.     Auto- (and just) biographies from Hildegard von Bingen to Hans Werner Henze.   George Perle’s books on Wozzeck and Lulu, respectively, which are not to be missed by serious musicians—they are so detailed and brilliant (certainly, if you love those works as I do.)     Some of those encyclopedia works.    I have a book of operas, Kobbé’s Opera Book, that I know I have read three times through, at the very least,  and certain entries, ten times or more.     I love the collected articles of the music critic Andrew Porter.    They comprise five books of reviews he had written for The New Yorker, from 1973 to 1986.    I have discovered dozens of composers of every age from reading his take on their music.     I return to them over and over again.   Howard Pollack’s biography : George Gershwin—His Life and Work…also detailed and brilliant, treating him as a major composer of the Twentieth Century, which he was.   (Don’t even try to argue with me.    You will end up like that librarian.)    Benjamin Britten’s Collected Letters.     Catherine Cessac’s major exploration of the life and works of Marc-Antione Charpentier.    Rimsky-Korsakov’s book on orchestration.     (Great to compare the many other books on orchestration I own, not just the Berlioz, which is my favorite.)    Plus dozens and dozens more.    A giant bookcase filled to overflow.   

Every important biography or autobiography of people in the theater or politics or movies or history I have managed to buy (as opposed to the numerous one’s I’ve checked out of the library.)   A tiny smapling:     Half a big shelf of books by or about Stephen Sondheim, whose music I worship as much as any ‘Classical’ composer’s.     His latest books, Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat—which are not just a compilation of his lyrics—are wonderful.     And probably not what you think he would be like.    I re-read a treasurable seven-volume set of the history of the Broadway musical by Ethan Mordden.    I disagree with him on some major works, but he is always informative…and funny.   Galina Vishnevskaya’s harrowing autobiography.    Believe me: no matter how bad you think your life is, unless you’re dead, your life is not that bad.    The autobiography of the dancer / choreographer Paul Taylor called Private Domain.    Uta Hagen’s ubiquitous (though sometimes risible) book on acting: Respect for Actors.   (And disrespect for everyone else.)    If she had been in one of my plays, I would have slapped her silly.    There were probably more good reasons than she admitted why she taught much more than she acted.   The New Book of Forms, no longer ‘new’, which is a useful, fascinating book about the myriad forms of poetry, from the first examples to ‘automatic writing’.     Three books by Gore Vidal.    (The question above was a trick question.)     John Boswell’s pioneering book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality.    (It’s still controversial.    I have heard many, admittedly straight, people discredit it.    All the more reason for me to keep it.)     A lovely book about the director Jean Renoir—yes, son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir—by André Bazin.    A gift from my college days.    A biography of the last year of an ‘non-famous’ man who dies of AIDS, told by his lover, the writer Paul Monette: On Borrowed Time.     It celebrates life, though it chronicles death.    An essential book on the subject.     The two books by the writers of The Daily Show: America, the Book, and Earth, the Book.     I can open them to just about any page and get a good laugh.      I have collections of The Far Side cartoons.     Same as the aforementioned books.    Laugh and laugh.    A book on NASA.   Two on Titanic.     A shelf of travel books on all the places I want to go.    I have no books on television (though I watch it.)    And hundreds of others.    I should get more on dance.

A shelf of poetry, with Shelley and Byron and Whitman next to Ginsburg and Eliot and James Merrill.    (Go read him, if you don’t know who he is.)    Plus collections from the far past to the nearer past to a few years ago past.    Two shelves of art books: Greek and Roman, Renaissance, Romantic, Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Expressionists, Post-Expressionists, whatever-the-fuck-you-want-ists, many historical (sometimes hysterical) books detailing centuries of people, places, works…like: a book bigger than many shelves can hold: The Great Book of French Impressionism.     A gift from my great friend, Dana Pitts.   Believe it or not, I have read all 400 plus pages, but since it’s three times bigger than most books, that averages out to be about 800 or more.     The Illiad and The Odyssey.    The Divine Comedy.    But not The Aeneid.    I need to get that.

Fiction?    Well, if the expected action of growing older is to become more conservative, more prone to watch fewer movies, listen to fewer composers, read fewer books by fewer authors—I do not fit the mold.     I have found more writers I want to explore every year that passes by.     (I’ll talk about music later.)   My books of fiction are as varied as the songs on most young people’s IPhones.    I have so many, I have not made my way through many of them, though I know I will.    Most are anything but ‘popular’ fiction.    A monster-book called Women and Men by James McElroy has sat on my shelves for many, many years.   It’s an undertaking akin to reading Ulysses…but longer.     I will read it, though.    Even if I re-read Ulysses first.   (I was far too young the first time.)     And JR by William Gaddis, though I have read A Frolic of His Own.    It has to do with litigations of several kinds, including one over a terrible script…which is written for you in the middle of the book!    Gaddis makes great demands on the reader, true, but they pay off.    Besides, someone who treasures James Patterson will never try to read them.       I have read much of Don DeLillo, but I still have an armful, like Mao II.   He’s written a lot.    I will never give up my copy of Underworld, one of the greatest novels ever written.    Truly.    I may not ever read its 800 pages again, but I am proud to own it, happy I have read this masterpiece.    And by some miracle, it was a bestseller!    I wonder how many of the people who bought it actually read it?    I have read the novels of John Cheever, but not all of his short stories.    I have read many, but not all.    The collection of them sits in an honored place.     No, he isn’t ‘difficult’ like Gaddis, just skilled.    And probably forgotten by most people.     I have two novels by Umberto Eco that I have not opened, since his work is also a major undertaking, one that is (usually) pleasurably mind-boggling in discursive details.     These are just interesting (to me) representatives of the hundreds I have kept.   And just to be odd, I have to mention two books I bought on a whim because they seemed intriguing, by two people no one seems to know: The Feast of Fools, by John David Morley and The Pope’s Rhinoceros by Lawrence Norfolk.    I have read some pages from each.    I’ll get back to them.    Who wouldn’t want to read a book called The Pope’s Rhinoceros?

The bulk of the shelves hold “Classics” ranging from Candide to Schiller to Tolstoy to Faulkner and Steinbeck.   I have many books by great ‘established’ writers of more recent vintage, besides those already mentioned, such as Saul Bellow, Walker Percy, William Kennedy, Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer, Pat Barker (she wrote a thoughtful, tragic trilogy of ‘non-fiction’ fiction about World War I, with real characters and events from their histories ‘imagined’ as well as told), Wally Lamb, Margaret Atwood, who has a library-worth of titles to her name, even Ken Follett who writes good strong historical novels between pop thrillers.   If I name any more, I’ll get hate mail.    I have finally divested myself of all the ‘popular’ books I have read, even enjoyed, but will not come back to read again.     No mysteries left.    No Agatha Christie.   No Dick Francis.   I can always go to a library if I want to read them.

But, oh no, you groan, the plays!    Well, every kind of play, including much of what you’d think you would find.    All of Shakespeare.    All of Christopher Marlowe, his predecessor.    Most of Eugene O’Neill.    Many of Tennessee Williams, though I’ve read all of them, even some which were not printed until after his death.      Multiple translations of the major Chekhov plays.    (I’ve seen them performed.   Translation affects them immensely.)    Greek tragedies.   Also multiple translations.     Grab Robert Lowell’s version of The Oresteia.    Marvelous.    Go on.   I’ll wait.    Faust.    She Stoops To Conquer.   The Duchess of Malfi.     (I loved the gruesomeness, in sixth grade.    Alas, I have never seen it live.)      Some Neil Simon (I say with no shame.    They aren’t masterworks, but they can be very funny.)    Added later: Tom Stoppard (I think I have read everything he has printed.)    Arcadia breaks my heart.    Another of the most original voices of the Late Twentieth Century: Peter Barnes.    I discovered him in graduate school when a friend put on one of his shorter plays.    Go read The Bewitched.    I read it every five or six years.    He’s a ‘love it or hate it’ kind of playwright.    I’m one of the ‘love its’.    It ends with a giant baby being born, breaking through the placenta (!) with a head shaped like an elephant.     Many plays by Edward Albee.    Seascape has to be the oddest stage work in the American lexicon.     Not the most avant-garde…just the oddest.    I’ve seen it done.    I love it, but it isn’t for all tastes.    All the late works of August Strindberg, like A Dream Play, a favorite since junior high.     (Yes, I was a weird child.)    Pieces by Noel Coward, whose plays have a bite to them people don’t always notice.     He wrote about the lazy, selfish, shallow people he knew.     He rarely sugar-coated them.   The characters think highly of themselves, over-emote, ‘break down’.    We are not always meant to.     All of George Bernard Shaw.    But he wrote soooo many plays, I haven’t made it through the book.     Lots of them, but I still have a treasure-trove to explore.     And I am never bored when I choose one.     Never.    Everything by Tony Kushner, our greatest living American playwright.    Yes, he is.    (See note about librarian.)    The Collected Works of Arthur Miller.    The ‘books’ to a hundred or so musicals.    (Not counting the ones that come with recordings.)    The plays of Shelley.   Yes, he wrote plays.   They aren’t particularly good.     Like I said, every kind of play.  

I left out several hundred playwrights.    I have one whole giant bookshelf and half another filled with single and collected plays.    Many, many collections.   They represent the history of writing for the theater, Greeks onward, including Asian works like No plays.   I have the entire series of Best American Plays, which has the full scripts of hundreds of works from about 1900 to 1985.    They represent every major American playwright…and some who were just popular.    Yes, I’ve read all the later ones and most of the earlier ones.   I have affection for a completely forgotten writer of the 20’s through the 50’s,  Maxwell Anderson.     He wrote verse plays.    One of them has a dump truck as a major set piece.   Weird kid, remember?   

So I’ve bombarded you with a sampling of what I’ve kept.    Why?    Because these have changed how I think, how I view the world, how I live in it.    Why I laugh.   Why I cry.    Why I act how I do.    Sure, I have read the ‘lower brow’ mysteries, historical novels, thrillers, and other pulp things—and enjoyed them.    But I come back to the ones still taking space on my shelves.   The ones with ideas people don’t always like.    The ones that keep you on your toes.    The tough ones.    The ones with poetry, even the novels.   The Grapes of Wrath is poetry disguised as fiction.    Works that are beautiful, crushing, hopeful, wise, foolish.     That is what life is to me.     That is what my life has been for me.    I am often too difficult for my own good.    I don’t always think like others.     My world has sadness and glory.    Yet I find myself, idealized, in these pages.    They evoke so much feeling, even the works you would not think that about.    And I hope you’re intrigued enough to pick one or two up to read it.   I know that  all the words ever written could never capture every aspect of life, all the details, all the emotions.     Yet people will continue to try.   And I’ll keep reading.   And as my lighter but still bowing shelves prove, at least to me, great works can hit on a fucking lot of it.    Now go read The Bewitched.   Or at the very least, Robert Lowell’s Oresteia.    I’ve become subversive in my ‘advanced’ age.   I’m converting the world to play readers, one play at a time.    And if you get through Women and Men before I do…don’t tell me what happens.

Spring Cleaning - movies

        October sees a big milestone for me: age fifty.   This has already brought on the normal questions of my mortality, and a reconsideration of the state of my life, and ways I want it to stay the same, and ways I want it to change.    And now, in anticipation of the event,  I've started a 'real time' Spring cleaning of my overstuffed bookshelves...and have been reminded of who I have been, who I am, and even who I want to be.    I have always enjoyed learning new things, reading new things, hearing new things.    But I keep with me treasured works, even if I rarely come back to them.    I guess this makes me a sentimentalist.   If so, a modified one.     Still...
         I have many movies (plus filmed live performances) on VHS, DVD, and now Blu-ray disc.    I kept and shall keep all of them.   As I look over my shelves, I seem to see patterns that I have forgotten or never noticed.    I have loved movies since I was a toddler (this was long before any of the above forms of replaying something over and over.)   I sat on the floor in front of the television while my mother cleaned the house or took in laundry to make extra money for the house.    She would come by and name some actor while I watched, usually not the star.    I knew who Sidney Greenstreet was before I knew my neighbors.    My mother started working a full-time job when I was five, still not in school, so I truly was young.   
           I'm somewhat selective: I won't watch just any movie.    And I keep even fewer.   But I have thousands, of many genres, languages, decades.    I have silent films.   Long live Charlie Chaplin!  Buster Keaton!    Michael Keaton, I can tolerate every few years in one of three movies.    I have Harry Potter.    I have The Marx Brothers (...I shot an elephant in my pajamas).   I have Inception.    I have Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast.    I have Disney's Beauty and the Beast.    I have most of the movies of Hitchcock.   I have very few movies by Frank Capra.   (Everyone of them has a character do something so stupid, so unmotivated, so shoehorned into the story to cause conflict, so maddening, I yell 'Oh, come on!' and I have to turn it off.)     I have many musicals.   Singin' In the Rain: (Lina...she can't act, she can't sing, she can't dance: the triple threat.)    Dreamgirls: (And I am tellin' you, I'm not goin')  I love Spielberg.     I do not love Clint Eastwood.    (I don't hate him, either.   I just think he is derivative.    But at least he steals from the best.)    I love Kurusawa.    I do not love Godard.   (I pretty much loathe him.   God, what pretentious, amateurish, drivel!    Root canal is less painful.)   Martin Scorsese, genius.   James Cameron, ingenious.    Powell and Pressburger, one-of-a-kind.    Blake Edwards, I kind of like three or four.  Jean Renior, a favorite.   Guy Ritchie, I own one.     I love Cary Grant.    I love Daniel Day Lewis.    Meryl Streep is one of my 'gods' of film.    Every frame of Jim Carrey should be melted down.   (Ok, I like one movie he is in.   The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.    It's the only movie where he doesn't mug for the camera.)    Arnold Schwarzenegger should be melted down (actor and human.)    Bette Davis, yes!    Reece Witherspoon, no!    I would watch Maggie Smith eat paint.   Will Smith?   A few movies.  Perhaps he should try eating paint.   Orson Welles is still under-rated.   Citizen Kane is one of the greatest movies ever made.  Every line is quotable.  Say 'Rosebud' to anyone over forty and they will show a sign of recognition.   Say it to people under forty, and many of them will show a sign of recognition.   A single word.    But he made more: Touch of Evil, The Lady From Shanghai, Othello, The Magnificent Ambersons.    Billy Wilder has more iconic (or at least important) movies that people don't know he made than any other major Hollywood writer / director.   Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, The Apartment, Witness for the Prosecution, Sabrina, The Spirit of St. Louis.  ([I am big.   It's the pictures that got small.]    [I'm a man!   Well, nobody's perfect.] [The insurance ran out on the 15th. I'd hate to think of your having a smashed fender or something while you're not, uh, fully covered.] [The minute we get off the train the alarm is sounded: The leper is back. Hide your liquor.]  [Did you hear what I said, Miss Kubelik?   I absolutely adore you.  Shut up and deal.]  [I am constantly surprised that women's hats do not provoke more murders.]  [It's all in the family.] [We get through 99% of the time.] many, many, many more great lines.  Quentin Tarantino just references iconic (or important) movies...not as wittily as he thinks or gets credit for.   And I have barely scratched the surface.     The list of great actors--or at least, great performances--could fill a (small) book.    The bad ones?    A shelf of books.
             So what does this say about me?    I cherish wit.   I love great writing about people--super-human ones included.   I love believable emotions, even when something blows up five minutes later.   I love movies that never have anything blow up five minutes later.   I love great acting in any form, even those created by animators and voice work.    I love movies from every year going back to the earliest days.    I love visually stunning work.   (Not really things blowing up as much as an eye-catching point-of-view, or shots you wouldn't expect.)   I love inimitable works.   (Any of the movies above, but Citizen Kane especially.)     I love inimitable actors.   I love great music scores that add depth, emotions, even humor.    (Far too many to name, but let Bernard Herrmann's North by Northwest be a great sample.)   I love musical performances: all kinds of characterful singing and / or dancing to music from Jule Styne to Stephen Sondheim.    (We'll talk more about opera later.)    I love to think.   I love to feel.    I like to cry (sometimes.)    I love to laugh.   I want movies to show life in all its forms, even life writ large.    Life in miniature is usually best left for the written word, where a shiver can be palpably described.     I don't want rote.   I don't want formula without surprise.   I don't want mindless.   I want what I want in my own life: memorable moments, big, little, good and bad.    I don't want a 'safe' life... it's too short.    Movies are a part of who I've become.   I would not be the person I am without them.    So I won't sell them or give them away.    Other things, sure.   But I'll watch them with (almost) anyone.

2011 in rembrance Part Two

Okay, so I've never been good at working on someone else's time table.    Weeks into 2012 and I'm still thinking about 2011.    Some of the reasons are good ones, some not.   Still, for what it's worth...

To me, theater was more impressive in 2011 than classical music offerings...save recordings.  See Part One.     (I admit, shame-faced, I saw too little of the other arts to write with much authority.  Though good things came on television.  I'll write about it later.  My one New Year's resolution is to remedy that negligence in 2012.)   Giant among tall people, Sir Derek Jacobi brought his legendary King Lear to Brooklyn Academy of Music.     'Legendary' as definition not exaggeration.     This was acting as highest art.    What you missed if you did not catch it!    From his initial, somewhat senile, arrogance, through his cruel escape into the void of wandering disillusionment, Jacobi effortlessly bound us to him, and we greedily followed, wanting more.   He gave it.   That  psychotic break as he descends into madness,  so difficult to manage, was as vital as it was wrenching.   He had a marvelous moment when he 'hid' behind imaginary bed curtains so 'the world' could not see him sleep.  And oh, that moment of self-awareness brought on by the return of Cordelia...only to lose her.   Heart-breaking, as it should be.    And with that final, painful loss of his own life to grief, Jacobi proved to be without superiors.   Some may be different, and equally wonderful, but none in my experience have been greater.   The coup de theatre of the storm scene will surely stay in the mind of all who saw it.    But only the greatest could keep from being upstaged by it.    Needless to say, Sir Derek was never in doubt of such a thing.  
The entire cast was worthy of him.    Ron Cook as The Fool was particularly noteworthy, if for no other reason that he made the part work.    And the production gave him a great send-off: no longer able to help his beloved king, he left to find life elsewhere, broken in his uselessness.    And Paul Jesson made Glouchester a tragic figure of almost the stature of Lear...as he should be, since he is a mirror to Lear: both are blind to their children's villany, one figuratively, one literally (the blinding was horrific and not for the squeamish) a double tragedy of foolish fathers.    But each man and woman in every role was superlative--save one uncomfortable young man in a small part.    He should learn a bit more before he tries verse again.   Surely someone told him.

In another production from Britain, Mark Rylance dazzled in Jerusalem, a play by Jez Butterworth, that divided those who saw it.    Rylance was electric for three hours, off-stage for just a few minutes, never once false or pandering to the audience for cheap laughs.   I found the play pretentious, but people I respect felt differently.    The only certainty was the play would have never made it across the ocean without him.    Rylance's disdain at the Tony Awards and his subsequent ‘gift’ of the actual ‘trophy’ to a man who didn’t want it, just made him look a self-centered prick.    But his skill could not be denied.    This was also powerful acting.   But I would wager everyone who voted for him would have liked to meet him face to face and say "kiss my ass."

A better play, also with exemplary acting, was Other Desert Cities, by Jon Robin Baitz.     The cast of five was so impeccable, they all deserve to be mentioned (alphabetically): Stockard Channing, Rachel Griffiths, Stacy Keach, Judith Light, and Mathew Risch.   The women had better parts, and they didn’t disappoint.   Griffiths was the center around which the others circled, and she was never over-shadowed...which is saying a lot, since Channing and Light were so commanding, spellbinding.    What a joy to watch these three women!     Keach and Risch were nearly as great with their fewer opportunities, and the time flew by.     And that last half-hour was unsuspected, despairing.    I doubt anyone could have guessed where it was leading for its climax.   The audience was truly shocked.   You could feel the energy.   
Alas, one of my favorite plays—Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia—was all but destroyed by an excrutiating performance by a poorly directed, screeching young actress.    The discovery of her sad demise after the last scene of the play seemed useless.   If I could have had my way, she would have died after the first!   On the plus side, the play was revived, far from a given, and the rest of the actors were a powerful team.    Raul Esparza, Billy Crudup, and Lia Williams were particularly fine.   Satisfyingly, an understudy for one of the major characters went on for the first time (the other actors clapped for him at the curtain call) and gave a powerful, humorous, and finally, sad performance of a marvelous creation by Stoppard.    His name was Jack Cutmore-Scott.    If you see his name on something, go watch it.   I hope his career is long and rewarding.
Not everything was on Broadway.   I also enjoyed a smart, ‘well made’ play—in the best sense—performed by a talented young cast and produced by a small but mighty theater group: Exit Carolyn by Jennie Berman Eng, produced by Sans A Productions.    The fine young actors were Lauren Blumenfeld, Jake Loewenthal, Anna O’Donoghue, and Laura Ramadei.   It played at The Drilling Company, an intimate though useful theater space.    Given the exit of so many similar groups, its survival was cheering.    Hopefully, fewer companies will drop by the wayside, and more will start up.    I can dream.
Star turns made Anything Goes and How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying enticing but not enough for me to part with my money.    Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's Follies was a show for the ages.    A brilliant work about loss and regret, age as a cruel truth-teller, this was theater at its best.     I don’t exaggerate.    It was one of the greatest things I have seen on Broadway.   Period.  
Sondheim had a great year.   2011 began with the final performances of the revival of A Little Night Music with a matchless Bernadette Peters ruining Send In The Clowns for everyone else.   No one will touch its power.   Sorry folks.   And the second, final, half of his book containing his private ideas about his--and other's-- lyrics, all printed for a great read, came out to wild acclaim.  Like its predecessor, it is witty, bitchy, wise, honest, and unflinching.   Boy, they're just unmissable!    Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat.   The subtitles alone make you want to read them.   (I won't tell you what they say, just so you'll have to check them out.)   Go get them if you don't have them!   And, of course, the production of Follies and a cast recording as fine as any for a Sondheim show.
A confession as digression: I became obsessed by Follies unlike anything I can remember, save a few operas.   A few!    I have loved many shows, seeing them a second time with pleasure.   I remember them, think on them, enjoy them...but in some kind of moderation.    But this Follies is different.    I had to see it again.    I could have gone back ten times.   I've listened to the cast recording four or five times by now, and I only got it in December.   And I already have multiple recordings of the score!     I can sing most of it.    But hearing it again is like new.   I finally realize how all those people I have laughed at could rewatch multiple performances of a Broadway show within a short period of time.   At least I did get to see it a second time.   But since it's closing on Sunday, and no one is just going to hand me $80 for a half-price ticket, twice is all I will get.   But I saw it twice! 
Follies is the story of ghosts, literally and figuratively.   The time is 1971, the place a dilapidated theater, the occasion, a party that becomes a wake for the lost optimism of the first half of the 20th Century as defined by popular entertainment.   It becomes a Follies of sorts, like those of Florenz Ziegfeld, as character after character performs old numbers, the still vivid memories the sign of their lost dreams.   They remember them, mostly word and note  perfect, many with regret.   The plot involves four main characters and their younger selves, but the 'old' numbers give everything a surprising depth.   To hear how brilliantly Sondheim has written each piece as a symbol of the performer's fallen dreams, is to understand why he is a genius...and know why casual attention to his work is foolish.   (He will never have the performance numbers of Lloyd Webber.   But he is the superior in every way.   He is superior to most composers who write for the stage.   Or the lyricists.   Sorry, but it's true.   And after all this time, no one needs me to say so.    I jujst like saying it)   With a smart, odd, original book, the whole becomes a harsh microcosm for the lack of optimism...still with us, alas.  
The work should have aged past its sell-by date.    It talks of things from almost a century ago.   The fact that it is so relevant reflects cruelly on the reality of life on Earth right now.   Or has it always been such?
Not a number failed to go over.   Some stopped the show.   Broadway Baby, Who’s That Woman? otherwise known as The Mirror Song, I’m Still Here, Could I Leave You? brought the audience to wild ovations.    Wild ovations.   Great among equals, Elaine Page filled I’m Still Here with a sense of rage at the rollercoaster ride of her life.    After the music stopped, she stood on the stage, a character who has to calm down to regain her equilibrium, as the place went nuts.   Shit, this was great!    All of these numbers!
But the evening rises or falls with the four leads and they were superlative.    Some of the best performances in any kind of theater, much less singing and dancing in a musical.    Like I said, superlative.   How often can a person say that and mean it so definitively?   Yet, here I've seen many examples in 2011.  And now, four more.   How superb they all were!   Jan Maxwell as Phyllis, Ron Raines as Ben, her husband,  Danny Burstein as Buddy, Sally's husband...and the peerless Sondheim interpreter, Bernadette Peters (again) as Sally.   Like Jacobi, Rylance, etc., she is inimitable.  This whole blog has been about great acting, and she proved to anyone who cared to really watch and listen, that she was as good as any of them.    As the delusional Sally, she begins the evening...and ends it.    The symmetry was apt.   No, she didn't have the funny one-liners: they were (chiefly) the possession of the perfect Jan Maxwell as Phyllis.   Every person in the room loved her, every moment she was onstage.   But Peters didn't need them.   Sally came in looking to be that young showgirl again; part of the power of the work is the audience knows it cannot happen.    Every time she revisited a moment from the past: coming down the stairs one last time, as she had thirty years prior, or singing and dancing in that unmatched Mirror Song--she was so fiercely trying to rekindle the magic you wanted to look away (but couldn't.)   Sally was doing everything 'for real', not a happy, let's-run-through-this-for fun that the rest of the guests were doing.   She sang In Buddy’s Eyes with a pathetic, unconvincing optimism, sadly touching in its emphatic delusions.    That defeated second half--just after we've seen her memory of the 'losing' the love of the young Ben--was desperate self-delusion sung sotto voce.   You could probably count on one hand the actresses that could make that work, much less move the audience so.   The rapturous Too Many Mornings brought thrills and a sense of smashing surp-rise, especially when an also perfectly cast Danny Burstein as Sally's husband, Buddy, was there to witness it.    Hearing Peters’ Sally and a masterful Ron Raines' Ben deceive themselves into thinking they have always been in love was unlike anything I have seen in a musical.   The number is haunted by their younger selves.   In fact, each 'older' character starts off in an imagainary embrace of the 'memory' person, then moves to the 'real' version of each other, as blind wish fulfillment overtakes everything.   I've known what happens from reading the script and watching some blurry videos of past productions, but the moment is burned into my memory...not the only moment in the show to do that.   
And then the show cracks in half (!) and we have the ‘Follies’ numbers, soul-bearing songs from each of the four protagonists.    Buddy’s God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Oh-You-Do-I’ll-See-You-Later Blues is baggy-pants comic as man trapped in a no win situation: a mistress who loves him that he does not love, and a wife that is just the opposite.    It was manic and funny…and painful.   Spot on.     And then Sally came out.    This has to rank with the greatest of my ‘I was there’ moments.   Peters just broke every heart with the self-destructive Losing My Mind.   It kicked you in the gut, hard.   Wrenching and painful to watch, but unforgettable.    A good reason to see the show twice: the first time Sally was already broken, tragic.   The second, she was so desperate in her pain, she seemed to break in the middle of the song.    In fact, Peters was so overcome, the conductor had to wait for her to collect herself enough to finish.    I’ve seen nothing like it.   Comparable only to greats like Jacobi at his finest.  The difference in performance—the obvious talent to be completely ‘in the moment’, though it be different every night—is a testament to her myriad abilities.    What 'Method' acting should be.    (Like any great actor, there are some fools who always want her to do it however they deem 'correct', however someone else did it or would do it, instead of the way Peters does.    Remember what the saying to Mark Rylance should be?)   
Then to top her show-stopping Could I Leave You?,Jan Maxwell returned to stop it again with a sensational song and dance, The Story of Lucy and Jessie.   And I mean dance.    Phyllis is the Tony winning role.   She has the best lines and two wonderful, powerful numbers.     And she alone comes through the ordeal wiser and happier in herself.    I predict Maxwell will win the Tony for this lay-‘em-in-the-aisles turn, though Peters had the most difficult role and was inimitable.     Many actors have been great as Phyllis: it’s a great role    How many have been so hopeful, raw, desperate, crumbled, defeated, and heartbreaking as Sally?    This must be one of Peters’ greatest triumphs.   Throughout, she was thrilling, but her final scene was even more, just too painful to watch unmoved.     As she exited, inconsolable, broken, so did you a few minnutes later.  
Another sign of the overall greatness?   40 plus people on the stage and not a one superfluous, weak, or uninteresting.   Even great opera performances rarely get that much right!   Of course, none of this would have been possible without a great musical director.   James Moore did everyone proud.    Production values were exceedingly high, adding yet more glory.   The costumes for just the showgirls were an eyeful.   But skillful as they all were- lighting, costumes, sets, dances, musical staging--they were just icing.   No, the show was not holiday ‘fun’...to its financial detriment.    But it was brilliant.    One-of-a-kind.    If anyone going in still thought Follies a seriously flawed work, he certainly left the theater convinced otherwise.
To pass over quickly: the requisite flops popped up: Catch Me If You Can thrilled no one, though Norbert Leo Butz won another Tony.    Sister Act was so light in its pleasures, it all but evaporated.     Yes, it was funny, and the score was better than one might expect.    And the cast put it over with consummate skill.    But had I not seen it at a discount price, I would have been gravely disappointed.     Too much was rote.    At least two songs could (should?) have been cut without harming it.    It already looked like it was on tour.   Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was just the movie onstage.    Anything Goes only went when Sutton Foster was onstage.   This show has passed its sell-by date.    Cut to just its musical numbers, it would be as satisfactory.    Enough said.   No one will remember any of them ten years from now.     Follies will be talked about in fifty. 
   Still, I have high hopes for theater in 2012.   And music.   And art.   And photography.   And dance.  (I promise to see more of all of them.)   And television.  Nothing as wonderful as Follies, but that is understandable.   I have high hopes for every year.  But as the years pass, I have more apprehension about life outside it.

2011 in remembrance Part One

         America (and most of the rest of the world, including New York) went through an unsettling year.    The fruits of protest and government toppling have not had time to register, though the initial shock seems all-too present and real.    Many small performing groups quietly disbanded, some re-remerging as something else, most not.    Festivals shrunk or departed, funds drying up enough to hurt even the most venerated of organizations.   Fewer concerts were seen, though only someone who did not live in New York probably noticed.     The Metropolitan Opera finished one season and started another, hits and misses rolling out of the machine like fine-tuned clockwork.    Broadway saw some exceptional shows and some extraordinary performances…and a few times when show and performance were unforgettable.    But mostly not.   The Classical Music recordings were more egalitarian than some years: a plethora of new works and under-recorded composers arrived on smaller labels, making them far more enticing than the ‘same old stuff’ from the larger companies.   And lovers of Stephen Sondheim had a feast of a year.   Still, with the Occupy Wall Street movement—and its children—very much alive, more and more people turned away from public performances.    No, 2011 was not a banner year for those who love The Arts in New York.    It had its joys but they were not particularly copious; in fact, they were depressingly fewer than in previous years...at least, for me.

Of course, the big, sad story here is the end of the once ‘essential’ New York City Opera.    And the truth needs to be faced: no one was going.    Popular works, new works, seldom seen works—none brought in crowds.    The reasons are probably myriad…and immaterial.    No one came, short and simple.   Whether some new organization will rise from the ashes, phoenix-like, no one knows yet.   (Announcements keep appearing, including this week.)   But its decline has been slow, steady, and painful.    Had The Met produced something like Bernstein’s A Quiet Place, it would have drawn people in—I have no doubt.    The older company has a larger fan base, more curious patrons, more publicity, more underwriters.   The work is beautiful, if odd.    But so are The Nose and From the House of the Dead and Satyagraha and Doctor Atomic.    And Bernstein’s name would bring in paying customers from outside the opera world had they known about it.    But that was part of the problem: no one knew about it.    At New York City Opera, it came and went with little or no fanfare.   It was doomed before it opened.    I have hope that something can be done to save the ‘common people’s’ company, but believe it is gone.     And that is heartbreaking to true opera fans.    Some wonderful shows—and wonderful singers—graced its stage.     May they find a place where, once again, they can shine.

The Met ended one season and started another with its machinery firmly in place.    People came to see some lackluster productions, with lackluster performances, garnering lackluster reviews.    A few stand out: Capriccio with a radiant Renèe Fleming was one.    Anna Bolena with an impressive Anna Netrebko was another.   (I must admit, once again, I like Netrebko more than I love her.    Too much of her bel canto feels precise rather than spontaneous.    Still, she shone as Bolena more than some of her earlier roles.)   But far too many offerings were mediocre—neither great nor terrible.     That is the nature of the art form, but the last few seasons have been disheartening, at least to me.     Too much I have skipped from a lack of interest.    Maybe Götterdämmerung was wonderful.   But judging from the audio broadcast, probably not.    Even the upcoming Billy Budd has some casting issues.    I’ll do my best to be there, but with gritted teeth: I love the work that much.

The best opera experience I had this year was Opera Company of Philadelphia’s Phaedra by Hans Werner Henze.    A chamber opera, it was perfect for the group’s smaller space.   The singers were worthy of the material, (especially the Phaedra of Tamara Mumford, despite some over-singing, and best of all, the lyric tenor William Burden) the staging cogent, impressive, apt, and the music filled the hall with moving intensity.   Corrado Rovaris was the expert conductor.   The opera has many beauties, and some painful, violent passages that counterbalance the lyricism.    The performance I saw was with an all-but sold-out crowd, most of them intrigued: very few coughs, only a few walk-outs (expected) but very few for such a challenging work.   Most people seemed rapt.   The talk afterwards was positive, from what I heard.    Besides, I’ve seen people walk out of The Met during some classic pieces—it’s hardly a sign of worth or popularity or approval.

Naxos, and the labels it releases, continued its robust recordings of lesser known and new works in every genre of classical music.   They were the brightest light in the classical music ‘world’.   Operas included Anna Nicole by Mark-Anthony Turnage; the prolific Einojuhani Rautavaara’s The Mine and Aleksis Kivi; the anything-but-easy-to-love Medea by Aribert Reimann, plus the rare 19^th Century Il convitato di pietra (The Stone Guest) by the equally rare Giovanni Pacini –yes, the same source as Don Giovanni; and the rare Donizetti work, Marino Faliero.   Symphonies arrived by Alexander Borodin, Malcolm Arnold, John Corigliano, Howard Hanson, Morton Gould, and Havergal Brian .   Concerti were particularly popular, counting piano by John Ireland, Frederick Delius, Aram Khachaturian; violin by William Alwyn, Max Bruch, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco; plus every other instrument known to man, including percussion battery by Joseph Schwantner.   Chamber music thrived: flute music by Ned Rorem, piano music by Arvo Pärt and Roberto Gerhard (a favorite composer of mine), and guitar music by Aaron Jay Kernis (another favorite composer of mine).    This list doesn’t even scratch the surface, much less name all the rare works that came out in 2011.   The major labels continued to disappoint, though The Met broadcasts are worth buying (mostly) and Anna Bolena with Netrebko is an important addition to the video catalogue.   Plus, I am happy London/Decca is re-releasing some of the Entartete Musik recordings of works by composers killed or displaced by the Nazis.    But the smaller labels were the place to find the works not over recorded elsewhere.    Those releases were a great sign of continued health, at least for recordings that do not have to sell thousands of copies to make a profit.     But 2012?    A crap shoot.