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| Yesterday I attended a piano recital for the first time in about five years--not that there's any lack of great music to be had here in Houston, but you either 1) have to travel about 30 minutes to get it, especially if you live in the suburbs; 2) it costs an arm and a leg to get a crap seat; or 3) they're playing Rach 2 AGAIN--I swear this town can never get enough of that, Mozart, and waltzes. Driving back from Benny's Gymboree last week I heard the strains of someone performing Scriabin Sonata No. 5 on NPR's The Front Row--some local up-and-coming pianist whose playing was infused with such dynamism I made up my mind to go, no matter what. Even better, it was free and only about 10 minutes away!
Anyways, I went. I'll withhold the artist's name in case she Googles herself, but S. Lee will suffice. Needless to say, the Korean community was out in full force.
Besides Scriabin 5, Ms. Lee programmed six Beethoven Bagatelles (Danny P: the one with the ragtime groove was included) and the monstrous Rachmaninoff Second Sonata. Formidable program, and she was indeed a formidable pianist, possessing incredible speed with clarity, especially with the difficult alternating sixths-thirds 16th-note pattern in the climax of the first mvmt of the Rach; accuracy slipped a bit in the Scriabin, but those chordal leaps are no picnic, especially for small hands; and perhaps her two greatest assets were the remarkable subtle spectrum of color she was able to produce in just the mezzo piano-pianissimo range; and the attention to detail with her voicing, bringing out interesting motives in every phrase she played. The latter was to her advantage in the Beethoven, resulting in a delightful lyrical experience that was actually more Schubertian than Beethoven, but no less magical and fresh. However, it was to her detriment with the big guys.
Maybe it's just my deeply personal history with the Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, but it seems to me that if you're playing the music of hot-blooded, manic-depressive, and possibly schizophrenic Russians, you can't be so concerned with bringing out the interesting descending inner voice in the thumb of the right hand that the very (tortured) soul of the music is lost. For instance, said climax of the first movement of the Rach was executed brilliantly, but there was no sense of drawing blood. The second movement sounded beautiful and elegant, but dispassionate. The Scriabin suffered even worse: the naturally sharp angles of the main motive were flattened in favor of speed; the middle section lacked interest and momentum; the jazzy bits did not groove. Overall, she sounded maxed out on these two epic pieces, especially at the loud parts. Very disappointing.
Which is not to say it was bad. It was phenomenal--an amazing feat that she was able to pull off, and more than pull off, such a challenging program, and top it off with one of the Rachmaninoff's hardest Etudes-Tableaux as an encore, but I left feeling uninspired. Perhaps it was an off-day for the Scriabin, or maybe I was recalling the rush of the music itself when I heard it on the radio...
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| Rhythm and No Rhythm
I've never liked Olivier Messiaen (after hearing some mush about birds on pipe organ a couple of years back), but after reading Ross' book, I might have to give Quartet for the End of Time a listen. Composed in a concentration camp for clarinet, cello, violin, and piano (the only instrumentalists he found among his fellow inmates), and performed on broken instruments for the prisoners and SS officers in 1941, the title itself--after a passage in the book of Revelation--is also a play on Messiaen's eschewing of meter and rhythmic regularity...though harmonically, he sticks to tonality.
On the other end of the spectrum (or perhaps off it altogether), I've been digging funk. Especially the 1978 vids of Bootsy Collins (who played with James Brown and Parliament) doing "Stretchin' Out" and "I'd Rather Be with You," and Larry Graham and his Graham Central Station doing "Pow" in 1976. Also explored a bit of Jaco Pastorius' spacey virtuosity, which reminded me of a tune off Pat Metheny's white album entitled "Jaco"--so I had to listen to that again. Incredible work.
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| Ahhh
Under cover of getting alphabet books for Benny, I couldn't resist picking this up for myself. (Terrible place, Barnes and Noble.) I wasn't sure about this "bundling" thing some labels like to do, you know, getting all these pieces for the price of one, because the performances are more often than not very ho-hum. But Chinese frugality won out in the end, and besides--London Symphony? Sir Colin Davis? Can't be all that bad. So far, I am quite pleased with the gamble, though I admit I skipped right to the 2nd piano concerto. I'd forgotten what an incredible piece of music that is. What a ride! First movement is so primal in the piano part, flanked by all the powerful brass; but when the second movement melts in with the strings shimmering in a backdrop of hollow intervals, it sounds so arcane. And Kovacevich has totally shown that he's got the minerals for Bartok--solid playing. Looking forward to re-experiencing the Concerto for Orchestra again too; I remember being on the edge of my seat when I heard that live.
If anyone's got/heard Geza Anda's recording of the concerti, lemme know how that is, because I almost got it instead. I hear there's also an intriguing recording of the concerti with Zimmerman, Andsnes, and Grimaud doing 1, 2, and 3, respectively--with none other than Pierre Boulez conducting three different orchestras. One of these days I'll have to pick that up. But for now my CD collection has been rescued.
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| For jtlonthewestside
Last night I finally watched the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie for Theaters, which watched like a very long, high quality episode of ATHF. High quality by ATHF standards, that is, which would be Seasons 1-3. Overall, totally enjoyable. Though I felt my brain turning to mush around the 1:15 minute mark, it perked back up again near the end. Not recommended for those who believe the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Though Jason might want to give it another chance, hahahaha, (or not.)
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| Christmas Reading 
Over the holidays I devoured Kevin Bazzana's gripping bio of brilliant, weird pianist Erwin Nyiregyhazi, a prodigy who started out life playing for European royalty--and died 80 years later in penury and obscurity. Bazzana paints a multifaceted portrait of Nyiregyhazi as the exploited child, the consummate musician whose playing moved even the grumpy Schoenberg, the 19th-century romantic in the postmodern world, an ungrateful womanizing bastard who alienated his loved ones, and the supreme idealist who, on many occasions, chose starvation rather than the compromise of his artistic vision. Although overall I found Nyiregyhazi completely unlikeable as a person and as a musician (arrogance, a lack of fidelity to the scores, expression at the expense of correct notes), the same (seemingly) slipshod musicianship inspired me somewhat. The goal of the performer to bring forth the essence of a piece--the composer's message beyond mere notation, that human element we all call "expression"--but what Nyiregyhazi took to an radical extreme. Whether this means plugging in bits of Scriabin's symphonies into his piano sonatas, doubling octaves in the bass, transposing themes and just freeform improvisation like he did, I don't know. Sadly, you can't pull stuff like that off these days and be taken seriously. At Aspen a few years ago I heard Lynn Harrell play a fun little cadenza of his own improvisation during a Haydn cello concerto and was vilified (unfairly, I thought) for being disrespectful. No wonder Nyiregyhazi's reputation did not survive. Yet, as Bazzana asks, was he truly a failure for retaining the purity of his artistry? Even though in Nyiregyhazi's mind he was a success, I still felt a bit sad for him. But anyways, a very good read. | | |
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