Outside Perspective

Mahler - David DeAngelo

What can one say about an absolutely great performance of absolutely great music? 

It was great.  Absolutely great.  It was stunning, in fact.

So stunned that I have no idea where to begin (even one day later) - so let's talk about Dana Fuchs instead.

I noticed sometime last week that Fuchs was singing at the Three Rivers Arts Festival.  As my wife is a fan, we planned on hitting the festival in order to see her performance.  That was before we learned that the only tickets available for the Mahler were for the same evening as Fuchs' show.  What would it be like to quick-step from Dana Fuchs to Gustav Mahler?  Stunning.  It would be absolutely stunning.

After catching a bite to eat (me shoveling down a plate of shrimp fried rice while the wife had a falafel), we made our way over to the Dollar Bank Stage where Fuchs was just beginning what was to be an hour-long set.  Dressed in her "Sadie" clothes (and if you don't get the reference, go see Across The Universe), with swayving hair and ambulant cleavage, she sang and jumped and commanded a stage far too small for her voice or her talent. 

And the band cooked.  The band with the formidable Fuchs was tight and rhythmically multi-layered despite being only a trio.  The guitarist knew his way around the fingerboard and the well-miked drums produced a discernible thump thump thump in the chest throughout the music.  The bass player, while holding down the changes, played them into a melodic role easily equal to the rest of the band.  Each part great.  The whole, greater still.

The most fitting song of her set had to be, for me at least, Bible Baby.  In her introduction to the song, Fuchs told the story of how, as a disappointed teenager leaving her intolerant church to join one more open, she was encouraged to sing by a woman in the choir who told her,

Sometimes you just gotta let momma music take over.

The song, one of deep hope in the face of life's deep struggles, begins with these lines,

Mama's first baby, barely two
Daddy needed the bottle more than you
Praise the Lord - Hallelujah - you're alive!

With each setback, each disappointment, the message is the same: Praise the Lord, Hallelujah - you're alive! 

Ok now we can talk about the Mahler.

Kanny of the Trib said the performance "unfolded with exceptional breath" while Druckenbrod of the P-G (who sat merely 6 rows ahead of us) said:

Mahler's writing and orchestration is so strong that it can prop up many a mediocre performance. However, when a conductor with a vision and performers with grace and ability connect as they did last night, the work gains an ineffable glow.

Mahler scholar Henry-Louis de la Grange describes the "program" of the symphony this way:

For Mahler, writing a symphony was tantamount to expressing 'the inner aspect' of his 'whole life', of 'constructing a world with all the technical means at my disposal'. As a result, it was necessary to facilitate access to this world for unprepared listeners. It was in this spirit that he once again drew up several different, but essentially similar, programmes for the Second Symphony. In the first movement, the 'hero' of the symphony is buried after a long struggle with 'life and destiny'. He casts a backward glance at his life, first at a moment of happiness (depicted in the second movement) and then at the cruel hurly-burly of existence, the 'bustle of appearances' and the 'spirit of disbelief and negation' that had seized hold of him (Scherzo). 'He despairs of himself and of God. [...] Utter disgust for every form of existence and evolution seizes him in an iron grip, tormenting him until he utters a cry of despair.'

In the fourth movement, 'the stirring words of simple faith sound' in the hero's ears and hold out the promise of light. As for the final movement: 'The horror of the day of days has come upon us. The earth trembles, the graves burst open, the dead arise and march forth in endless procession. The great and the small of this earth, the kings and the beggars, the just and the godless, all press forward. The cry for mercy and forgiveness sounds fearful in our ears. The wailing becomes gradually more terrible. Our senses desert us, all consciousness dies as the Eternal Judge approaches. The Last Trump sounds; the trumpets of the Apocalypse ring out. In the eerie silence that follows, we can just barely make out a distant nightingale, a last tremulous echo of earthly life. The gentle sound of a chorus of saints and heavenly hosts is then heard: "Rise again, yes, rise again thou wilt!" Then God in all His glory comes into sight. A wondrous light strikes us to the heart. All is quiet and blissful. Behold: there is no judgement, no sinners, no just men, no great and no small; there is no punishment and no reward. A feeling of overwhelming love fills us with blissful knowledge and illuminates our existence.'

It was a huge orchestra - seventeen winds, twenty-five brass, seven percussionists, two harps, an organ, and by the composer's command "the largest possible contingent of strings."  Then there's the chorus.  Druckenbrod numbers them at 150.  I trust him.  He wears glasses.  And then there are two soloists.  I didn't think they could fit anyone else on the stage.

It's amazing to me how Mahler, given the huge orchestrational forces he had marshalled, could still produce at times some of the quietest music I'd ever heard.  From a brass section playing off stage (in effect using the stage's walls as a mute) to the two harps playing alone, the quiet quiet parts were barely audible.  And the loud sections were, well you get the picture.  In between there are swatches of orchestrational color not usually heard elsewhere.

The piece has been called "80 minutes of anguished, ultimately triumphant speculation on the meaning of life" and I think that that's just about right.  Beyond the details of Mahler's program, (where the agnostics of the world - and I count myself among them - are, of course, free not to accept its theology) the fact we can sit there and hear such deep beauty regardless of our own personal speculations shudders my spine.

One of music's aspects that is forever a mystery to me is how it wields such power over us, the humans in the seats.  Don't mistake me, I am grateful that it does, but with only 12 tones (given the musical language we're discussing right now) and a handful of gestures, it's a mystery how it can focus our attention like nothing else.  And it's possible to spend a life time fully immersed in it with little fear of boredom or fatigue.  Perhaps Schopenhaur was right, as it has nothing to represent, perhaps music represents nothing but the Will of the universe itself.  It is one of the joys of living as it is at the heart of experiencing life.

Sometimes you just gotta let momma music take over.

Praise the lord.  Hallelujah - you're alive!

A Standing Ovation! - Bethany Hensel

Wow, it felt so good being back at the Symphony!!  And to be welcomed back by such a program!

It began with Beethoven's dramatic, beautiful Egmont Overture.  I had never heard this piece before - actually, I had never even heard of it, period! - but man, am I so glad I got to hear it live on Friday.  It was my second favorite piece of the entire night!  The PSO was in excellent form and didn't once let the music overwhelm them.  The Overture was sumptuous, and it would have, in lesser hands, been easy to get lost in.  

The second piece of the night was Mozart's Symphony No. 38 "Prague".  Written in the city it was named for, Symphony No. 3 was very pretty, very classic, but, after following such a powerful piece as the Overture, seemed almost...light.  To me, it had no real sense of urgency or steam behind it, and as a person who gravitates more towards music with a bunch of drama to it, I wasn't overly excited about "Prague".  It was an amazing piece, don't get me wrong, but just not for me.  

Now, my absolute favorite moment of the night was after intermission, when violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann came to the stage and, with the PSO, magnificently performed Beethoven's Violin Concerto.  Funnily enough, my absolute favorite violinst, Joshua Bell, recorded this piece some odd years ago, and it was inevitable that I began to compare the pieces and how the two men interpreted such a war horse.  

Both men attacked it with vigor, both men played passionately, but whereas Joshua Bell wrote his own cadenza, Frank Peter Zimmermann stayed with the score through and through and really showed it off.  The third movement was especially stunning, if only due to the intense speed at which Zimmermann was playing.  What a performance!

By far, my favorite part of the night.  :)

However, I must say that a close second -tying with the Beethoven Overture - was the encore Mr. Zimmermann played after the Concerto.  It was incredibly fun and very impressive.  If he ever decides to record that coquettish little tune, I'll definitely buy it!

*Contented sigh.  What a marvelous way to come back to the Symphony.

ceiling detail - Elizabeth Perry

During intermission on Saturday night, I looked up at the ceiling above our Family Circle seats and noticed a dozen faces looking down on us.

Back from China - Louis Luangkesorn

My wife and I went to Friday's concert, after a long break while the PSO went on their tour of China. We quickly found the board of pictures from the trip, including the picture of 'No horn' sign among those taken by Chuck Lirrett and Stephanie Tretick.
 

I especially enjoyed it because I had just returned from a trip to China myself, and like Chuck was amused by the "No horn" sign, especially when it was found outside a concert hall or school of music. And during our trip, we encountered a few friends who noted the PSO's appearances in Beijing and Shanghai not long before. My wife's family has an association with the Tianjin Conservatory of Music, and when visiting the school and various faculty there, we came upon their Wall of Fame, with pictures of illustrious alumni and staff from over the years. And another picture, of some distinguished alumni and friends from the United States who had recently come to teach and inspire the next generation of musicians.

It seems that Adam Liu, Cello and alumni of the Tianjin Conservatory of Music, and a few other PSO friends came to the Tianjin Conservatory of Music ahead of us. We laughed at the many interwoven connections we have in our lives, and how small and how rich our world is.

Beethoven, Mozart and (again) Beethoven - David DeAngelo

Before I start on tonight's concert (which was great, by the way) I gotta say one thing:  I LOVE getting to concerts early.  It doesn't happen often and it's not like the evening is ruined by showing up on time, but there's something special about watching musicians get ready.  It's like when you're early enough to a ballgame to catch some batting practice.  On the one hand, it's just the warm up and nothing important is happening but on the other you can tell something important is going to take place nevertheless.

Owing to our seats in the "Family Circle" section, my wife and I were able to look down upon the band assembling.  A sampling from Saturday Night:

• A cellist (whatzizname - the one who's a dead ringer for The Amazing Randi), sauntering over to his friend the timpanist for a nice chat,
• The First Chair Trumpet banging out some snippets of the ending to the Egmont,
• The Horn and Wind players separately going over some parts last minute - stacked, aleatorically speaking, in a way that only Charles Ives or John Cage could love.

Until the time when the hall lights go down and the oboe pitches the A440, it's a wonderful peek into a different frame of mind.  The men in White Tie, the women in Black Dress waiting for the beginning of the concert to arrive.  The buzz of anticipation is ever-present.

We'd made it downtown with a few hours to spare.  We thought we'd walk around the Arts Festival - where, let's all be honest, there easily has to be half as many tattoos/body piercings as there are overall patrons.  This is NOT to say, of course, that half the crowd was inked and pierced - just that those who were, were inked and pierced alot. 

Not a big deal.  Though in retrospect, I have to admit to feeling a bit, um, under-decorated.  But then again I am old and dottering and thus this is more or less expected from men of my time and place.

Back to the music.  Of this week's concerts, The Trib's Mark Kanny wrote:

Artistic diversity is usually thought of as contrasting works from different times, cultures and styles. Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony take a different tack at this week's subscription concerts, showing that works from the same period and place can provide just as stimulating and rewarding a concert experience. Maybe more so.

All of the music performed Thursday afternoon at Heinz Hall, and which will be repeated tonight and Saturday evening, was composed within the span of a quarter century in Vienna, Austria. It was the high tide of Viennese classicism led by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.

While I think he's right (of course, he's right - he's Mark frickin' Kanny!), there are some big differences between the classicisms of Mozart and of Beethoven.  The danger here is that it's too easy to generalize such things so much as to render them completely empty of any real validity.  That being said, perhaps a careful generalization is in order.  Between Mozart and Beethoven the musical imagination of Europe markedly shifts from High Enlightenment to Early Romanticism.  In Mozart, we find Voltaire's Enlightenment at its fullest flower, a human mind delighting and reveling in the exuberant exercise of its own intelligence.  In Beethoven there is struggle.  There is always struggle in Beethoven.  As if newly recognizing our own unnoticed dark corners, Beethoven is at a constant struggle with the shadows our intelligence can't so easily comprehend. 

The music of this evening is evidence of that.

I agree with Druckenbrod of the P-G that the Honeck's tempos in the Egmont were hardly what one would call slow.  But, he writes:

They accentuated the drama of the piece that honors a real-life hero, the 16th-century Flemish Count of Egmont, who fought for freedom against the Spanish and was beheaded for it. (Beethoven actually symbolized it with an abrupt stroke by the violins.)

But some nobility was lost in the heightened moments that were almost noisy in Honeck's hands. The horns, however, were wonderfully rustic in the coda, and the strings gained a rich timbre.

I think he's missing something.  As James R. Oestreich pointed out a decade ago: 

The overture...brilliantly evokes the defiant strength of its hero, who is modeled after a 16th-century warrior executed for his role in the fight to free the Netherlands from Spanish dominion. Beethoven's heaven-storming conclusion unmistakably proclaims the ultimate victory of the cause to which Egmont has given his life.

This is serious, stirring, restorative music, as was recognized in Munich in 1972, when the Munich Philharmonic presented it as the keynote of a memorial service on the day after the killings in the Olympic Village.

The first thing I think about the piece is its nearly imperceptible shifts from minor to major - from dark and brooding at the beginning to bright and triumphant at the end.  The tempos, to me at least, fit the struggle and I can't say that any "nobility" was lost.  To the contrary.

Soloist in the Beethoven, Violin Concerto Frank Peter Zimmermann, commanded the room the moment he started playing, building the form like any good carpenter should.  And the Prague.  What can you say about a late Mozart symphony that hasn't already been said about any masterpiece ever?

One perk for this old trumpeter to sitting above the band and looking down is that I could better see the hardware George Vosburgh and co was using.  A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to chat with him about his trumpets and he said that for Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart they played Vortuba rotary valve trumpets.  That was certainly the case last night and it was nice to see what they looked like as well as what they sounded like.