Andrew Patner: The View from Here

My (radio) guest tonight -- Alaska-based composer John Luther Adams

 

Tonight, in a conversation recorded two weeks ago, I speak with American composer John Luther Adams (above).  Long resident in Alaska, Adams was in Chicago to hear several of his pieces played on March 15 as a part of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW concert series in a program curated by outgoing CSO Mead Composer-in-Residence Osvaldo Golijov.  Adams's 2007 work for orchestra and electronics Dark Waves will have its major orchestral première in October with guest conductor Jaap Van Zweden leading the CSO.   (Van Zweden gave the European première of the work with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in Amsterdam in December, 2007.)  Adams and I  talk about personal and artistic independence in the life of a composer, the attraction of specific spaces and the limitations of regionalism, and even the Alaska Baseball League and its annual Midnight Sun Game,  among other topics.  We'll also listen to Dark Waves in its (12 minute) entirety and to excerpts of  Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing (1991-1995).

You can read Alex Ross's 2008 New Yorker profile of Adams, "Song of the Earth," here.

10 p.m. to 11 p.m. CDT on 98.7WFMT Chicago and via free streaming on wfmt.com and subsequently available indefinitely for download/podcast/streaming at wfmt.com/criticalthinking.

See you on the radio!

CSO: conductor Jurowski's debut, "Isle of the Dead" is "Beyond the Score" subject

Here is my full Saturday March 27 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday March 25, 2010, Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with guest conductor Vladimir Jurowski and pianist Peter Serkin, and the Friday afternoon March 26, 2010 CSO Beyond the Score program on Rachmaninoff's tone-poem, The Isle of the Dead.

 
 Jurowski makes CSO debut with mixed Russian program

But conductor nails it with Rachmaninoff piece

BY ANDREW PATNER

Repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. and Tuesday March 30 at 7:30 p.m.

RECOMMENDED

The CSO Beyond the Score presentation of Rachmaninoff's The Isle of the Dead repeats Sunday at 3 p.m.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

When I mentioned on Twitter Thursday that I was headed off to see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with "Jurowski and Serkin in a program of Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev," a friend commented, "You sound like Danny Kaye."

Indeed, all three composers are mentioned in the hilarious patter song, "Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians)," which Ira Gershwin and Kurt Weill wrote for Kaye in their 1941 Broadway musical, Lady in the Dark.  And had he been alive then, and written music along with leading it, guest conductor Vladimir Jurowski certainly could have had his name fit into the list of 50 notables Gershwin assembled.

As it was, the Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev on the program were united by little more than their country of origin.  Rachmaninoff's 1909 The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29, is the moody artist's only tone poem, and it combines "the Russian soul" with the composer's lifelong fascination with the Western chant "Dies irae" ("Day of wrath") from the Mass for the Dead.  Stravinsky's 1923-24 Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments is very much of his post-Russian neoclassical meets his idea of jazz period.  And Prokofiev's 1947 reworking and expansion of his 1929-30 C Major Fourth Symphony as his Op. 112 is a Soviet-era work that seems assembled from a rummage sale.

Dark, tall, and slender, Jurowski, turning 38 next month, is probably one of those conductors who works best over time and not on a first conducting date, such as Thursday's.  Musicians in several cities report his rehearsal style is pedantic, yet he is said to do great things with his Glyndebourne Festival Opera and London Philharmonic Orchestra, where he has held the top musical posts for years.  Surely because of intense preparation for The Isle of the Dead as the subject matter of the current CSO Beyond the Score presentation (one more performance, at 3 p.m. Sunday), the Rachmaninoff was the great success of the evening with its beautiful colors, unusual 5/8 time capturing the rowing of oars on the water, and extremes of brass intensity and string and woodwind meditation all handled beautifully by conductor and players.

Peter Serkin, 62 but looking no different than he has for 40 years, was the soloist in the Stravinsky, long a specialty of his, including at least one CSO performance, at Ravinia in 1993.  Unexpected hesitancies by both soloist and conductor made it hard to fully focus. The presentation of this intricate work will probably gel with additional performances.  Assistant principal oboe Michael Henoch led the winds in a lovely fashion.

Prokofiev's first version of his Fourth Symphony was not much, an attempt to distill his ballet The Prodigal Son into concert form.  His later expansion is much less but longer and louder.  With the possible exception of the connoisseurs' preferred Sixth Symphony, the composer's inability to create development in a work, or really much abstract music at all, rarely prevented him from piling bit upon bit as he did here for 35 minutes.  Jurowski offered it as a showpiece, and the players made it so as well.

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s enviable principal clarinet Ricardo Morales was a welcome guest in all three works, as was Scots-Canadian flutist Lorna McGhee, in two.

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Friday afternoon, the CSO presented the first of its two Beyond the Score programs analyzing The Isle of the Dead.  Gerard McBurney, co-creator of the series and its artistic director was in his usual spot as narrator/host more than ably assisted by actor and University of Chicago classicist Nicholas Rudall.  This was the first time that the series took up a shorter work -- about 20 minutes in duration -- and this enabled McBurney to present the program without intermission adding to its power and strength.  Lights were turned up somewhat when the full work was played after the historical, harmonic, geographic (Rachmaninoff composed the work in Dresden), and cultural analysis.  But If this format is tried again, there's no reason that the lights can't go up further.  We're here to see the CSO as well as to hear them.

With this work there was also little need to stretch to make visual connections -- Rachmaninoff famously based the piece on a hugely popular engraving of the time by symbolist Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), even including reference to the picture and artist in his title..  Video, still projections, and montages underlined musical points which in turn underscored the selections on the screen.  Rudall's readings -- from the composer's correspondence to Virgil's Aeneid -- illuminated the performance rather than imposing speculative hypotheses.

I invited a young graduate student friend who is something of a newcomer to symphonic concerts.  He was spellbound and afterwards sent a text message to a friend telling her what he'd just seen.  She replied that, more than a century after its great vogue, The Isle of the Dead was one of her favorite pictures but she did not know about Rachmaninoff's musical version.  Now she hopes to attend the Sunday afternoon performance.  Nice.

Chicago Opera Theater unveils diverse 2011 season (as 2010 is set to begin)

Here is the full version -- including links -- of my Thursday March 25, 2010, Chicago Sun-Times article on the 2011 season announcement by Chicago Opera Theater.

 

Artists's conception for Tod Machover's new cyber-opera, Death and the Powers.

Chicago Opera Theater schedule

2011 LINEUP | Local premières and a brilliant programming swap 

BY ANDREW PATNER

On the eve of its April-May 2010 season of unusual works by Rossini, Cavalli, and Jake Heggie, Chicago Opera Theater is announcing its 2011 season, including local premières both old and new and a rather brilliant programing swap that will save the company “a great deal of money” while unveiling two additional intriguing works for Chicago audiences next spring.

• COT will open its season April 2 to 10, 2011, with the Midwest première of a new opera by electronic and computer music pioneer Tod Machover of the MIT Media Lab,  Death and the Powers  (above). 

COT has been involved for years in the development of this work which features a libretto by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky and staging by Diane Paulus, director of the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of the musical Hair, whose early work with COT boosted her profile tremendously.  The experimental co-production will have its world première this September in Monaco and will run at Harvard's American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), in Cambridge, Mass., where Paulus is artistic director, before traveling to Chicago. Gil Rose, of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, makes his COT conducting debut.  Alex McDowell whose work has been seen in such films as Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the designer.  

Powers is based on a story by Paulus’s husband, Randy Weiner, which features a protagonist who literally downloads himself.  COT promises "a chorus of robots and a musical chandelier."  The production and its development have been supported by Opera Futurum in Monaco.

• The company then continues its three-season survey of Baroque retellings of the Medea story April 23 to May 1, 2011, with the very belated Chicago première of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s 1693 Medée, remarkably the first production by a Chicago company of a Charpentier opera.  Brit Christian Curnyn, who makes his company debut next month with the first COT Medea installment, Giasone (“Jason”) by Francesco Cavalli, conducts and Australian Justin Way, whose 2006 Abduction from the Seraglio was a COT highlight, directs. In an intriguing development, Chicago’s Baroque Band will be the orchestra for Medée. Another Baroque rarity, Handel's Teseo ("Theseus"), rounds out the trilogy in 2012.

• The previously announced production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s musical comedy piece Moscow, Cheryomushki ("Moscow, Cherry Tree Towers") which won COT’s annual "People’s Opera" poll and fundraising scheme last year was to round out the 2011 season.  Instead it is being pushed to the autumn of 2011 where, with COT resident conductor Alexander Platt in the pit, it will open the 2011-12 season and still fall within the city-wide "Soviet Experience" festival spearheaded by the University of Chicago Presents, according to COT general director Brian Dickie.

• The third spring slot May 7 to 13, 2011, will be taken by an ingenious pairing of two rarely-presented dramatic song cycles of obsession -- Janáček's Czech The Diary of One Who Disappeared (Zápisník zmizelého) with popular tenor Joseph Kaiser, and Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben (“A Woman’s Life and Love”) with a mezzo to be announced later --  under the heading HE/SHE.  Collaborative pianist Craig Terry will play for both works directed by veteran Lillian Groag and designed by Peter Harrison whose design for the 2005 Death in Venice was a major COT hit.

In addition to its moving the Shostakovich to the next season (which Dickie said could save about $400,000), COT will also conserve cash this season by not having to contract full freelance orchestras for three productions.

All COT performances are at the Harris Theater. Subscriptions range from $76 to $310; single tickets go on sale in 2011. Phone: (312) 704-8414, or online at www.chicagooperatheater.org.

My (radio) guest tonight -- composer/performer Corey Dargel

Tonight, in a conversation recorded last week, I speak with Texas-born, Brooklyn-based, Oberlin alum composer/performer/songwriter Corey Dargel (above, photo credit: Samanatha West).  Corey just performed with members of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in Chicago  and his new two-CD, two-song-cycle set Someone Will Take Care of Me will be out this spring from New Amsterdam Records.   We talk about coming of age as a composer (Corey is 32), finding a voice, performing one's own work, "classical" vs. "popular" music, and dealing with topics that might seem on the edge to some.  And we listen to songs from Thirteen Near-Death Experiences and Removable Parts.

10 p.m. to 11 p.m. CDT on 98.7WFMT Chicago and via free streaming on wfmt.com and available as for free podcast/download./streaming indefinitely afterwards at wfmt.com/criticalthinking .

See you on the radio!

My (radio) guest tonight -- Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda

 

 Tonight, in a conversation recorded last week, I speak with the Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda (above).  Noseda, chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester and music director of the Teatro Reggio opera house in Turin, made a thrilling debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last month with music of Saariaho, Beethoven, and the CSO première (!) of the 1895 Rachmaninoff First Symphony, a work Noseda has championed and that he recorded in 2008 for Chandos.  (You can see my Chicago Sun-Times review of the concert here.)  We talk about the development of a conductor; working, for the first time, with the great Radu Lupu;  studying and working with Valery Gergiev; and the relative merits of language and physical communication, among other topics. 

10 p.m. to 11 p.m. CST on 98.7WFMT Chicago and via free streaming on wfmt.com and subsequently available indefinitely for download/podcast/streaming at wfmt.com/criticalthinking.

See you on the radio!

CSO: Gilmore pianist Gerstein's debut, Dutoit's steady hand in mixed Russian works

Here is my Saturday March 6 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Thursday March 4, 2010 Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert with guest conductor Charles Dutoit and pianist Kirill Gerstein.

CSO Russian bill of mixed but popular works draws cheers, raises questions

New Gilmore Artist Gerstein makes his downtown subscription debut with veteran Dutoit

BY ANDREW PATNER

RECOMMENDED

Repeats Saturday at 8 p.m.

There is music that is not truly great and yet is understandably loved by many concertgoers.  Usually these works falls into one of two categories -- lyrical, tuneful pieces with virtuosic opportunities for soloists and bombastic sonic showcases.  Much such music comes from Russia.

I can be a sucker for the first group.  A great Rachmaninoff piano concerto played by a great pianist or a young artist on his or her way to greatness can be both a thrill and a cause for all manner of reverie and nostalgia.  I’m a partisan of the Third Concerto, perhaps the last great throwback work of its kind: lush and moving, a marriage of killer melodies with thoroughbred-level keyboard racing, with no acknowledgment of the dramatic changes in the musical and cultural worlds around it.  What must it have been like to hear its composer, one of history’s great pianists, play this with the New York Philharmonic and Gustav Mahler in 1910 when Mahler had already composed his entire catalog?

[Russian-born pianist Kirill Gerstein, left, gave a smashing performance of Rachmaninoff's Second Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Thursday night.]

Perhaps because of some tunes that were turned into various pop songs, it’s the C minor Second Concerto of 1900-01 that was the most popular for decades. Kirill Gerstein, 30, the 2010-13 Gilmore Artist, chose it for his Chicago Symphony Orchestra downtown subscription debut Thursday night.  (He has played the Tchaikovsky First at Ravinia and chamber music at The University of Chicago Presents.)

A highly intellectual, Russian-born musician with training and experience in jazz as well as classical, Gerstein gave a performance that was constantly alive rhythmically and brilliantly exposed the phenomenal demands this half-hour work puts on a soloist.  He kept it from becoming sappy and blended original insights with Rachmaninoff’s goals.  Swiss guest conductor Charles Dutoit was, as is his wont, a perfect accompanist.

The Shostakovich Symphony No. 11 of 1957 is of the second category: sound and fury and mournfulness played endlessly for more than an hour, drawing cheers from fans of loud brass playing and percussion.  It’s the classical equivalent of arena rock.  With one difference. As Soviet music expert Gerard McBurney correctly writes in the program notes, this is a work, subtitled “The Year 1905,” that crystallizes Shostakovich’s two faces: official servant of the Communist Party leadership and signal waver to the dissident and oppressed in Stalinist and post-Stalinist Soviet society.  It simultaneously commemorates the slaughter of innocent peasants by the Tsarist police in the abortive 1905 Russian Revolution, officially marks the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik coup in 1917, and on another level protests the oppression of the state.

One cannot deny the power that this piece must hold for those who lived through the tragedy of those years.  But the work’s actual musical value has eluded even many Shostakovich boosters over the years.  As he does with any large, complex score, Dutoit made the piece move and even seem logical and balanced.  English horn Scott Hostetler won a well-deserved ovation, a battery of percussion -- including a bell to wake the dead -- was employed to the hilt, and even the violas got to take a section bow.

A further note on the Rachmaninoff: When a senior player is working through a crisis, respect and patience are appropriate.  When several sections of the winds are without top leadership, however, you have an institutional problem.  Soloists are entitled to proper support, and CSO audiences to playing at the highest level.  If it had not been for the lead oboe and bassoon, the key wind contributions would have been a total disaster.  It’s a further credit to the talented Gerstein that he seemed unfazed by the strange sounds that came his, and our, way.

My (radio) guest tonight -- British opera director Stephen Langridge

 Tonight, in a conversation recorded two weeks ago, I speak with the British opera and music theatre director Stephen Langridge (above).  Langridge's new, staged production of Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, featuring Susan Graham,  Paul Groves, and John Relyea, and superb work from music director Sir Andrew Davis and the Lyric Chorus and Orchestra, is running now at Lyric Opera of Chicago through March 17.  (You can see my Chicago Sun-Times review here.)  We talk about Berlioz, staging the "unstageable," working with prisoners and with living composers (which is harder?), among other topics. This production marks Langridge's Western Hemispheric debut.

10 p.m. to 11 p.m. CDT on 98.7WFMT Chicago and via free streaming on wfmt.com

See you on the radio!