Too Twisted or Twisted Too

(The spell check is busted!)

They put a mic in your hand and a film crew behind you. You are told to go into the crowd and ask people, random passersby, quesitons that will lead to pithy remarks promoting Twisted 2. What would you ask people? I have to do this on Frday, so any pointers would be helpful.

Central Ohio mavens may remember Twisted, a wonderful production from the Columbus Symphony, Opera Columbus and Ballet Met, given at the Ohio Theatre two years ago.

Now, it's time for Twisted 2:

Ohio Theatre

September 22 7.30 pm
September 23 8 pm
September 24 8 pm
September 25 8 pm

The original production sounded wonderul of course, but my God it looked fantastic, too.
I was the host/emcee/circus barker, clad in a tux expertly fitted on portly me by the wonderful Ballet Met wardrobe staff. Only one snarky remark about my avoirdupuis (awesome word, yes?) and that NOT from wardrobe, those tactful and gifted people.

Twisted 2 opens with the Ride of the Valkyries with me on a white horse and chain mail...not. There'll be selections from Schonberg's Verklarte Nacht, music by Smetana and Haydn, selections form Turandot, Barber of Seville, Carmen and Porgy and Bess.

Even better, the fabulous Columbus Symphony conducted by Rossen Milanov-I'm agog to hear them in wagner, finally-and nothing-but beautfiul Ballet Met, thank you Edwaard Liang. Opera Columbus's Peggy Kriha Dye formulates the perfect program to have the ommunity humming-literally-and returning to the box office.

Me? I get to open and close the show. Hello, thank you slam bam thank you all. What's different is the video produciton. This Friday I repair to the Gateway plaza near OSU, WOSU's expert TV staff in charge, to ask passersby...so...would you kiss a tenor?...could you do a jetee?....what the hell (I have to say hell, not ...well...) is a jetee?....Can you name three operas, not counting Phantom.....If I told you the orchesrta includig a crumhorn, maracas and a virginal, would you be inclined to go?

I'm told CD 10-something (are there other radio stations in Columbus? I wasn't aware) will be at a beer garden at the Gateway Friay night. That'll make for intersting ambient sound, but a liquored up random passerby is not a bad thing.

C'mon down to Gateway plaza near campus Friday night around 6 and be part of the show. We'll
talk aobut the Columbus Symphony as a perfect date night, how in most operas everyone shtups the wrong person and everyone usually dies-great music, too-and how the ballet looks more beautiful than anything you've seen this side of a newborn's tush.

See you Friday. More important, see you in the Ohio Theatre in September.

A New Blog to Check Out

This blog emphaiszes equal opportuniy for all.

It's a passionate rerad, updated often.

Of interest to anyone who has ever been told 'No' despite best efforts.

Recommended.

. http://advocacystoriesandstuff.blogspot.com/

Columbus Symphony May 20, 21 2016: Latin America! Piazzolla, Golijov, Ginastera

Rossen Milanov conducts the Columbus Symphony in two concerts of music by composers born in Argentina, Golijov, Ginastera and Piazzolla in the Southern Theater, Friday May 20 and Saturday May 21 at 8 PM. Violinist Bella Hristova joins the Orchestra in Piazzolla's Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.

Pre-concert talks one hour before each concert. This is the 2015-2016 season finale.

Osvaldo Golijov

Tango! The duple meter dance craze that European and african traditions sent to Argentina in the mid 19th century! I've had more than one friend born in Latin American tell me that all music made south of he border is intended to be danced. Latins don't sit and gaze into space in concert hall.Their music came from Africa, from Spain and from Italy. Rhythm and color are more important that tunes or contemplation.This weekend's Columbus Symphony concerts feature music by the master of the nuevo tango, Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992), by his teacher Alberto Ginastera (1916-1982) and by Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960)

Of the three,  Piazzolla became a Latin American wide sensation, a popular star. He was the true successor of Carlo Gardel, whose sexy tango singing made him a heart throb on three continents before his untimely death in a place crash in 1935. Indeed, the young Piazzolla was encouraged by Carlo Gardel, who went so far as to invite the boy to tour, and its a very good thing Astor didn't get on that plane.

Piazzolla was born in Argentina but spent his formative years in New York.  He was known as a brawler, a ladies man and as an exemplary musician. Not wishing to by typed as a popular entertainer, Piazzolla studied with Ginastera and later went to Paris to work with Nadia Boulanger. That auguste lady, mentor to Stravinsky and Copland, was unimpressed until he played her some original tangos. The lady sent him packing. There is your future. Go and pursue it. He did.

Piazzola wasn't afraid to incorporate the rhythms and the sounds of the waterfront dives of New York and Buenos Aires into his music. Estancios Portenas The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires,  was written between 1966 and 1970. The composer did not intend the works to be played together. He enjoyed performing and riffing on these pieces with his own ensemble, with guitar, piano, rhythm, sometimes flute and always Pazzolla on the bandoneon.

The four seasons were knitted together into one piece after Piazzolla's death by Leonid Desnyatikov.   You'll hear delightful references to Vivaldi's Four Seasons buried in Piazzolla's fire and smolder. I'll bet Astor Piazzolla, who wanted to study counterpoint with Boulanger, would have been delighted.

Osvaldo Golijov, of Argentine, Jewish and Arab background, wrote Last Rounds  for string ensemble in 1991. He had just heard of Astor Piazzolla's debilitating stroke, leading to his death the following year. Piazzolla was a known pugilist, hence the title 'Last Rounds' in his honor. For Golijov, Piazzolla had been a national hero, and his death marked an ending point,  a "we'll never see the likes of him again" in Argentina's music. The second section of Last Rounds, lentissimo,  subtly quotes Carlos Gardel's Mi Buenos Aires Querido.

Alberto Ginastera

Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) became an international figure. His opera Don Rodrigo opened the New York State Theatre at Lincoln Center in 1966, starring a chubby Spanish tenor called Placido Domingo. Ginastera came to the U.S. in 1945 to study with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood. He was always very good at 'netwroking' and wasn't shy about self promotion. Ginastera often used the dance rhythms of Latin America in the most modern musical forms. His music is often astringent but grabs the listener with its vitality. He is never dull. Of our three composers, Ginastera was probably the most sophisticated and sometimes the least audience friendly.

Variaciones Concertanes comes from 1953. This is similar to the orchestral suites of Bach and Haydn. We are presented with  a theme that is later explored by small orchestral ensembles featuring a solo instrument. We begin with Harp and cello, and later feature the flute, clarinet, trumpet and horn. Finally, there's a wild 'perpetual motion' for violin' and a concluding rondo for orchestra. This is the popular Ginastera, leading into a period where he favored the twelve tone method and looked toward ultra-modern music. But that's another story.

Columbus Symphony April 22 and 23: A Scandal Concert and Mozart!

Rossen Milanov conducts Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony no. 1; Liszt/Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy and Mozart's Symphony 41, Jupiter Southern Theater, 8 p.m. this Friday and Saturday in the Southern Theatre. Pre-concert talks at 7. Stewart Goodyear is piano soloist.

Stewart Goodyear

The Columbus Symphony 's Vienna Festival continues this weekend with a more than century trajectory of music this weekend. We'll be moving from Mozart's last symphony, not performed in his lifetime, to a synthesis of a Schubert lied which grew into a fantasy for solo piano and was refigured by Franz Liszt, on to what Rossen Milanov refers to the "Mt. Everest of romantic music", Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony 1.

WHEW! Fasten your seatblets.

Let's start at the end. Arnold Schoenberg  (1874-1951) produced a concert in Vienna on March 31, 1913, to introduce some of his own music and that of his pupils, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. This was the Vienna where Mahler had recently died, and the Vienna of Sigmund Freud. Thoughts turned inward were finding their way into deeply personal, often highly chromatic music. The older order passeth, the old Emperor, the waltzes, the pretty tunes and pretty sensations became earthy, dangerous and Schoenberg.

Schoenberg had been working in a rich, heavily romantic style, writing music of well cushioned

Rossen Milanov

beauty mixed with eroticism. His expansive lines nevertheless embraced conventional tonality, providing the listener points of rest and direction throughout. This was about to change.

The Kammersymhonie presented by Schoenberg that night in Vienna is scored for fifteen instruments and runs about twenty minutes. There are tunes, there are points of reference. But such points are presented in short bursts, and seldom repeated. Later on Schoenberg was to say that musical motifs/melodic gems/tunes needed to fulfill their function quickly and move on. This deprived the listener of a road map. Listeners willing to explore get carried away by rapidly shifting sounds and themes. They may sound chaotic at first, but begin to make sense as you listen further and expect more:

About that Scandal Concert. The audience rioted on hearing two of the five Altenberg Songs by Alban Berg. Composer Oscar Strauss was sued for slugging a music critic. Said critic went on to write that the punch was "the only good sound in the entire evening".

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) lived half as long as Beethoven and was twice as prolific, maintaining an astonishingly high quality. The Wanderer Fantasy for solo piano, was suggested by Der Wanderer, Schubert's song to a text by Georg Phillip Schmidt. A lot of romantic poetry, reflected in music, has to do with sehnsucht, or yearning. This can be sexual, or it can mean moving toward a goal, an ideal-- and failing to arrive. That which we love and need the most in unattainable. Such seems to be the thought behind Der Wanderer. 

The piano fantasy flows from one movement to the next, each "riffing" on a different section of the lied.

The adaptation for piano combines sonata form and sets of variations. The adagio part of the song becomes the adagio movement of the piano fantasy. The finale is such a killer that Schubert himself couldn't play it. "It's the devil's own music" he said.

Franz Liszt (1811-1876), classical music's first mega-star who wasn't a castrato singer, adapted the Wanderer Fantasy for piano and orchestra in 1851. Liszt was an old hand at putting his own spin on other composer's music, while not neglecting his own. Rossini, Schubert and later Verdi were favorite subjects. I doubt any of these composers would have minded. They would have appreciated Liszt's ear and his skill at the keyboard, along with his notoriety. Getting those tunes out there was good box office.

Will Mozart's music be a relief as it ends this weekend's programming? It fascinating to work backwards, from Freud's Vienna with his seeming chaos nearing war, to Mozart's expert soothing classicism. Never forget that Mozart had no problem considering himself an entertainer. He didn't set out to make grand personal statements in his music. He set out to write the best music, and he did. The Jupiter was Mozart's last Symphony. It was not played in his lifetime. It is the product of the astonishing summer of 1788, where he wrote his final three symphonies in quick succession. Astonishing too is that fact that Mozart, was passe by 1788. His music was no longer in favor. The nobility who supported to him were off fighting wars. Mozart's final three years, which saw two more operas among several magnificent works, were lonely, difficult and poor. Yet hear what he accomplished in that summer. Even Woody Allen said in Annie Hall "the slow movement of the Jupiter symphony makes life worth living!

And Here's to Mahler!

Rossen Milanov conducts the Columbus Symphony this weekend, in Mahler's Symphony 4, Johann Strauss's Fruhlingstimmen and Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra by Osvaldo Golijov. Dawn Upshaw is the soloist. April 15, and 16 8 p.m. in the Ohio Theater.

Mention a Mahler symphony to anyone who has never heard a Mahler symphony and the reactions run the gamut from interest to running from the room with horror. Listen once and you'll find them addictive. A good addiciton. A life giving addiciton. I promise.


Gustav Mahler (180-1911) was a big personality who worked in large forms. During his lifetime he was one of the most celebrated conductors in the world. Before his early death, he had served directorships in Hamburg, and been music director of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Hofoper, the New York Philharmonic, and with Toscanini was the dominant musical personality at the Metropolitan Opera. Mahler's musical word was law, wherever he worked. Add to this a difficult marriage to Alma Schindler and the death of two young children and its a miracle he lived as long as he did.

As a composer, Mahler is remembered today for his enormous symphonies and his volumes of songs. There is no chamber music, there are no opera and no sacred music. There are nine numbered symphonies, part of a tenth, and his final work Das Lied von der Erde often classified as another symphony.

What about the Symphony number 4?

It's a curious work. This symphony is the spring time Mahler. He seems less mired in the struggle between life and death, light and dark, breath and no breath . Work began in the summer of 1900. When else was he going to write music? On the train between conducting gigs all over Europe (yes) ? But Mahler counted on idyllic summers in the Austrian Alps for his work. When a local band began practising within earshot, the composer thought he'd have to bid farewell to the Symphony until he could move. One day the band left. Three days later work began and three weeks later the symphony was complete.

Almost. We have a first moment that opens with sleigh bells and offers a soaring early theme for the violins. A second movement he-I imagine gleefully called a dance of death, with he violins a scordatura, tuned higher than the other instruments, giving a rough, almost nasty sound. Then the most sublime adagio. Richard Strauss told Mahler, I could never ave written music like that. Mahler himself imagined "St. Ursula, the most serious of the saints, presiding with a smile."
Mahler's obsession with larger forms brought him literally to the heavens. It was as if he had no other way to out write himself, in the time he he had left.

Mahler intended to end his third symphony with a child's vision of heaven, a poem from the German folk collection, Des Knaben Wunderhorn. 

The Third went a different way. But there's a lovely interlude with three angels

Three angles sang a sweet song...they shouted joyfully the whole...that Peter was free from sin...

But there's a theme here Mahler used again in the Fourth: Du sollst ja nicht weisen/Ach komm und erbarme dich uber mich:  Thou shall not weep/O come and have mercy on me...becomes the refrain in Das himmlische leben:  Saint Peter looks on...The Angels bake bread!....Saint Martha must be the cook!  The angelic voices cheer the senses, so that all awake to joy!

Mahler needed a finale for his fourth symphony. The work began larger, ran into a raucous dance, and settled into that gorgeous adagio. The finish was provided by another setting of the Wunderhorn songs, which he had completed ten years earlier. It is not an anti climax, but a pendant. A child's vision of heaven, Das himmlische Leben, The Heavenly Life

 
The Fourth became the most accessible of the Mahler symphonies. At just under an hour it is the shortest. It does not predict the end of the world. Instead, after a storm it suggests peace, with a child's smile.

Osvaldo Golijov was born in La Plata, Argentina in 1960. He studied there, and later in Israel an the States. Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra are part of the composer's output written for soprano Dawn Upshaw. Golijov has a sophisticated background, but his tone it seems to me is more at home with the Wunderhorn songs of the Mahler Fourth than the high drama of the later Mahler Symphonies. Golijov brings to his music the influences of the Far East, French sophistication and downtown grunge. What he also has is a gift for the sublime.  He can create music which is not slow, but timeless, as if time  is  unnecessary, the music filling every need:

Golijov spent a week at OSU a few years ago. He was a charming and modest gentleman and very generous with his time. I found him happier discussing the other people's music than his own. Still, I was about to discover for myself his terrific klezmer themed The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, and his oratorio La pasion segun San Marco. The St. Mark Passion was recently heard on Classical 101s Musica Sacra. I was lucky enough to catch a performance of his opera Ainadamar in Boston, another work written for Dawn Upshaw. (Note to composers:If Dawn Upshaw want sing to sing your music, DO NOT SAY NO)

Lua descolorida are verses by the Galician poet Rosalia de Castro (1837-1885)

 Moon, colorless, like the color of pale gold; though you see me, I'd like you not to see me from the heights; Take me in your rays, silently, to the space where you travel

The other songs in this set are How Slow the Wind to poetry by Emily Dickinson, and the lullaby Night of the Flying Horses, Close Your Eyes by Sally Potter, sung in Yiddish and used in Potter's film The Man who Cried. There's a sense of space, time and culture in all of Golijov's music, along with a healthy entertainment-quotient. He transcends the tango, the downtown grunge, and yiddischkeit.

Elijah, Get Thee Hence, Elijah

The Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Chorus present Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah in the Ohio Theater April 1 and 2 at 8 p.m. Your humble author gives pre performance talks in the theater at 7 p.m. Ronald J. Jenkins is conductor of the Columbus Symphony Chorus. Rossen Milanov,  Music Director of the Columbus Symphony, conducts both performances.

If you were a composer in mid 19th century Germany it would be easy to get lost between the death of Beethoven in 1827 and the death of Brahms 70 years later. Schubert does well. Robert Schumann holds his own. I sometimes worry about Carl Maria von Weber ( 1786-1826) and Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). Weber's operas Eurytanthe and Der Fresichutz should be performed more often. Mendelssohn might have the same problem as Haydn:  a prolific composer who excelled in every genre. It's less a question of what to perform then where to begin.

Elijah is one of Mendelssohn's last works, and is probably his best loved today. It was commissioned by England's Birmingham Choral Festival, which had been the musical home of Handel's oratorios in the hundred years since that composer's death. Birmingham was a choral society in the best sense, open to member of the community from every class and station, as long as you could hold a tune and probably sing loud. We're told the Society made a lot of sound, and went for splendor in its performances. No bad thing this, since Mendelssohn was a true romantic. He loved program music. His overture to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was premiered when the composer was just 17. It was an instant hit and made the young mans' name.

Mendelssohn at the piano with Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort

The oratorio had been in decline since Haydn's The Seasons and The Creation were introduced in the beginning of the 19th century. Schubert's Lazarus was left incomplete. Liszt was toying off and on with Christus, but Mendelssohn had had a success with St. Paul. But gone were the days when Handel would produce a new biblical-themed choral extravaganza every year. The last, The Triumph of Time and Truth was written in 1757.

Mendelssohn, one day reading the bible,  came across tales of the prophet Elijah in the first book of Kings. In 1838 Mendelssohn wrote to his friend Julius Schubring

    I picture Elijah as a grand and mighty prophet of a kind we would do well to have in our own day.
Powerful, zealous but also harsh and angry and saturnine; a striking contrast to the court sycophants  and the rabble; in antithesis, in fact virtually to the whole world, yet borne on wings of angels.

Schubring assisted Mendelssohn in putting together a German language libretto based on the Old Testament. The years over which the composer worked on Elijah saw him as the music director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, and serving as de facto music director for the new German Emperor. There was a lot of administrative work and a lot of "court sycophants". Mendelssohn's regular trips to England, where his music was loved,  must have been a refreshing change. Likewise the admiration of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, who attended Mendelssohn's concerts and entertained him at Windsor.

Mendelssohn was no stranger to oratorio. He grew up on Palestrina as a child in the Berlin Singakademie. He singlehandedly brought J.S. Bach out from academia with his performances of the St. Matthew Passion, a work long neglected. Suddenly Bach was recognized as the father of Western music. St. Paul had been sung brilliantly in Birmingham, and a triumphant return to a fine chorus with a new work was too good to resist. Elijah, conducted by Mendelssohn had its premiere on August 26, 1846,  two weeks after he complete ed the score. It was hoped that Mendelssohn' s colleague Jenny Lind would sing. She did not, then. Nevertheless Elijah was a crowd pleaser then and now. Mendelssohn set Schubring's German texts from the Old Testament, I and II Kings and some of the Psalms. At the same time, an English text was prepared by William Bartholomew. The premiere was sung in English, the German text used at home.

The best one word description I can come up with for Mendelssohn's music is melodic. The man knew how to write a tune.  He also had an uncanny dramatic sense. Elijah opens with a granitic recitative for the prophet, establishing immediately who is boss. Then there's a symphonic overture The chorus begins with the cry Help Lord! Why have you forsaken us?

Go to the concerts this weekend if you want to hear more. Elijah himself is musically isolated with slow, dark music. The soprano,  tenor and mezzo each have splendid, lyrical (tuneful ) arias to relieve the dramatic tension.

My favorite moments in the score come toward the end of part 1. Elijah and the followers of Judah get into a shouting contest with King Ahab and the followers of Baal. Which god can relieve the drought? Elijah jeers on the Baalites, whose god does not respond. Call him louder!

The only down side to the Elijah premiere was the appearance of the composer himself: thin, bald and stooped. He died a year later. He had endured the death of his beloved sister, the composer Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. Not even a happy marriage and five children got him over this shock. Mendelssohn died on November 4, 1847, sixteen months after Elijah's first performance.

"We were horrified, astounded and distressed to read in the paper of the death of Mendelssohn, the greatest musical genius since Mozart, and the most amiable man."

So wrote Queen Victoria, who was known to love a good funeral. More to the point, in thirty- eight years,  Felix Mendelssohn accomplished more than many a monarch.

Mary, Mary

Tomorrow would have been my mother's 95th birthday.
She would tell you she was really 81 "and don't I look wondahful?"
She did, and she would today, even at 95!
It's hard to beleive she's been gone for thirty years.
She'd insist she was in heaven, "Hiding from your poor father and his sisters, who were all lovely women. Could never live with them."

She was a piece of work was Mary Duddy Purdy.
She was a small woman, strong, tough, vulnerable, troubled, smart and funny.
She was a lioness to me, her only child, even though her mantra to me,  her only child,  was always: "Take up thy mat and walk".

No whinig allowed.

She dispproved of my love life, though I imagine her to have been secretly relieved I had one. "If you

want to marry that lovely fat girl, suit yourself. She has quite the mouth on her."
Said woman, with whom I was involved all through college, sang I know that my redeemer liveth as the processional at my father's funeral in 1981. We all had to stand. And stand. The singing was beautiful and the music sublime. But, in a stage whisper from the new widow I -and the entire church-heard "This is very long! You know I got people comin' back to the house afthah!"

My mother had three brothers. Army/Navy veterans, tough guys. I expect they were all afraid of her.
Her parents lived to be very old. Into her fifties she would march into her childhood home to clean curtains, arrange furniture, leave meals and lists for my Uncles...who had lives of their own-too bad, they shoulda asked first.

Mother loved her beer, and God help you if you took the last one.
God help you even more if you took the last one on a Sunday, when back in the day beer sales were prohibited. More than once I was send down to Uncle Jack's basement, where it was well known he hid a stash "down cellah."

That this was technically breaking and entering was of no cocnern to her. She made me do it.

She adored her brothers, her parents, her nieces and nephews, and me.

At her death one of my cousins cried out, "Who will run our lives?"

That she knew neither her daughter in law or her only grandchild is a lasting sorrow to me.
Her granddaughter is the image of her.

She endured the years of my father's long, long decline, and a lonely widowhood. She was beginning to  lose her memory when she died suddenly. God was good to her.

MYCincinnati Ensemble at Wild Goose Creative in Columbus

That's not a typo. It IS MYCincinnati.

The MYCincinnati Chamber Ensemble is an El-Sistema inspired orchestra program based in Cincinnati. You'll recall that El Sistema is the music education program for young people begun some years ago in Venezuela.  The program has gone worldwide, with conductor megastar Gustavo Dudamel the poster boy. 

It's great that El Sistema has developed such fantastic programs, and has inspired similar efforts.

The MYCincinnati Ambassador Ensemble is a string sextet of young musicians led by MYCincinnati Director Eddy Kwon.  The Ensemble will play at Wild Goose Creative in Columbus, 2491 Summit St., on Sunday March 20 at 2 PM. Admission is free.

The chamber ensemble describes itself as "A radical youth string ensemble committed to social justice, collective action through avant performance, and experimental collaborations."

Sounds like heaven to an old Leftie like me. A documentary film on the ensemble,  produced by Michael Wilson and Harry Wilson will be shown at Wild Goose, along with a 'live' performance.

MYCincinnati is a free, daily youth orchestra program that uses music as a vehicle for youth development, community engagement and social change. Over 80 young musicians meet for at least 2 hours every weekday learning violin, viola, cello, double bass and playing in an orchestra.

Come to Wild Goose Creative this Sunday at 2 pm to see and hear a group of kids, ages 13-18, play music and work toward making an inclusive world. You can sit by me.

Columbus Symphony: Haydn, Dvorak and Theofanidis

Robert Moody

Christopher Theofanidis

The Columbus Symphony performs Dvorak's Symphony 7 in D minor, op. 70; Haydn's Cello Concerto in C, HobVIIb No 1, and Muse by Christopher Theofanidis. March 18-19 in the Ohio Theater. Guest conductor is Robert Moody, with Mark Kosower, cello.

Pre-concert talks one hour before each performance.

MUSE by Christopher Theofanidis is a 12 minute piece for strings and harpsichord. It was written for The Brandenburg Project, sponsored by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestras. Six composers were selected to write pieces based on each of Bach's Brandenburg Concerti, with the idea of creating a catalog of concerti for the 21st century. Theonfanidis (b. 1967-) was told to use the 3rd Brandenburg. Muse uses an especially lovely pulse in the second movement (below @ 3:00)

Antonin Dvorak's Seventh Symphony, considered by many his greatest works,  owes its existence to a 'perfect storm'. Dvorak by the 1880s had become a well regarded musician and composer whose career was confined to the Slavic countries. His use of Czech folk music, the titles given some of his works (Slavonic Dances) isolated his career from the mainstream: the German-Austro world of Schumann, Brahms and Wagner.

It was Brahms who became a mentor to Dvorak and recommended him to the Viennese publisher Fritz Simrock. Herr Simrock was a businessman first. He expected a more worldly composer than Dvorak but was happy to publish the Slavic spiced short pieces which were good sellers for home music making. Added to this was the encouragement of music's mightiest music journalist of the time, Eduard Hanslick, who wrote Dvorak,

It would be advantageous for your works to become known outside of your narrow Czech fatherland, which in any case does not do much for you.

But you don't become a world famous composer by writing Slavic Dances.

Antonin Dvorak (1840-1901)

Dvorak's Stabat Mater had made a big hit at several of the large British choral festivals, and by 1884 the composer had been invited to write a new work for the London Philharmonic Society. Here at last was the big time. He was also trying to complete an opera for Vienna, but when that project stalled he went to work on his Symphony. The first performance of the 7th, conducted by the composer in London was a smash. The Vienna premiere conducted by Hans Richter put Dvorak on the intentional map.

The Seventh Symphony is pure music. It was inspired by Brahms Symphony 3, and Brahms was adamant that none of his symphonic music had a program. It wasn't supposed to be about anything. He had encouraged Dvorak to eschew the folk music style that had guaranteed his career to date. Outside of the Czech countries Dvorak had seemed provincial. Not with the 7th in London and in Vienna.

The work is in four movements and is scored for large orchestra. The theme of the first movement came not in a dream or in a lightning flash of inspiration, but at the railway station. Dvorak loved trains almost as much as he loved music. It was the arrival of a band of Hungarian artists at  Prague that Dvorak said gave him the Symphony's principal theme. Brooding, expectant, dramatic.

The second movement in particular is the source of lovely melody. It is only in the third, with the use of the furiant, a dance rhythm in 3 subdivided with in 2-3 or 3-3 that he nods more toward Prague than Vienna

Dvorak fell out with Simrock over billing. He insisted that his name be spelled in the Czech way, Antonin. Simrock said the German Anton was better business. I just wanted to tell you that a composer has a homeland which he must serve with faith and which he must love. 

It wasn't easy to give up a nationalistic style, and Dvorak often returned to the dance rhythms and colors of Czech speakers. Ironically, Dvorak later made a career in America, where he was considered the most cosmopolitan of composers. But that's another story.

If Dvorak's Seventh Symphony owes trains, Brahms, Hanslick and Simrock for its inspiration, Haydn's Cello Concerto in C wasn't known to exist at all until 1961  (Haydn died in 1809) .  The score was found among musical detritus in the Prague National Museum by musicologist Oldrich Plunkert.

Mark Kosower

How to authenticate the work unknown for so long? The first movement, not in Haydn's hand had been listed in the composer's own catalog of his works. The pages found had initials and a dedication to Joseph Weigl, who we can authenticate served as cellist of the Esterhazy Orchestra during the 1760s.

We have a three movement work enhanced by the use of ritornelli, a principal theme that keeps 'returning' usually for full orchestra. The cello is not an easy instrument for which to write a concerto. The instrument's low, mellow tone was not designed to cut through an orchestra. By giving the tutti-the entire band its own opportunities to shine,  Haydn can give pride of place to the cello,  either in the long lines favored in the second movement, or the intricate filigree of the first, and the finale. Whether discovered in 1760 or 1961, Haydn's Cc Major Concerto for Cello is another work loaded with that composer's skill and wit. And remember, Haydn was writing as composer in residence of a wealthy, noble family. The greater the music, the greater their prestige.

John Luther Adams and the Columbus Symphony Happy Hour

The Columbus Symphony presents music by Rimsky-Korsakov, Respighi and John Luther Adams at a Happy Hour Concert Thursday at 6.30 in the Ohio Theater. Peter Stafford Wislon conducts. Admission is free. No tickets needed. Cash bar with free eats.

This weekend's programs adds the Piano Concerto 5 5 by Saint-Saens with Pascal Roge. Friday

Peter Stafford Wilson

and Saturday nights at 8 in the Ohio Theater.


Our own Columbus symphony repeats the wildly successful 'Happy Hour' concert model this Thursday. To white: Free concerts, no tickets needed, just show up. Free eats. Cash bar, and take the brewskies in the theater with you if you want. Loosen your girdle, sit back, imbibe and listen to a wonderful orchestra, YOUR wonderful orchestra play a one hour concert of music by Rimsky-Korsakov, Respighi and John Luther Adams.

John Luther Adams

Who? John Adams the second U.S. president? John Adams who wrote Nixon in China. No. This is John Luther Adams, an American composer born in 1953. JLA is an environmentalist and something of a sound scape artist. Oh, God that sounds like a-tonal noise to me!

No and again No. JLA won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for his one movement symphonic work, 'Become Ocean.' He deserved to win. Adams, who lived in Alaska for many years, takes his inspiration from nature. Big deal.So did Mahler and Bruckner, not to mention Vivaldi. Yes, but none of those worthies wrote music that so depicts space, and silence. If that doesn't make sense to you, check out some of John Luther Adam's musicon youtube. No its not minutes of silence a la John Cage gimmickry. This is music of stars shining, mountains coming into and going out of view, glaciers creaking, rivers rushing, drying and trying to rush aagain. This is not music with the idea of  'babbling'; brooks' but with a spiritual connection to the elements.

John Luther Adams is a sound painter that will take you to the depths of icy water and to the the clouds above them. The Columbus symphony performs his Dreams of White on White this weekend's concerts. Here's a chance to hear a composer literally making waves.

Any large and lusty oorchestra, like our own will revel in the color Rimsky-Korsakov brings to his music. The Capriccio espagnol is the next best thing to sipping an aperitif on the Ramblas while looking at the girls. Respighi, who studied with Rimsky-Korsakov, inherited his masters love for orchestral color. There are those who will tell you he was further inspired by Mussolini's fascisti. I suspect the duce understood the propaganda value of the creative artist. The composer Mascagni wrote a long and boring opera about Nero, clearly meant to flatter the government. Respighi stuck to the eternal city. We'll hear the glamorous Fountains of Rome.

If you've never been to an orchestral concert, this program is for you. Peter Stafford Wilson always condcus with skill and charm. The Columbus Symphony will mesmerize those brought up on Digital-Imax. Go hear some 'live' music. Thursday night is free! The weekend adds a superb French pianist in Monsiueur Roge. Camille Saint--Saens did everythig well, in music (and elsewhere if you believe the strories). Want to know more? Pre-concert talks one hour before the Friday and Saturday perforamnces. I tell secrets!

This Weekend's Russian Festival with the Columbus Symphony

The Columbus Symphony performs a Russian Festival in the Ohio Theater  Friday January 9th and Saturday the 10th at 8 p.m. Your humble author (!) offers pre-concert talks in the theater one hour prior to every Classical series performance.

Rossen Milanov conducts the Columbus Symphony in two programs of music by Russian composers in the Ohio Theater this weekend. We'll hear Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a Suite from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto 3, and Shostakovitch's Symphony 5. 

If these gray days of winter seem akin to the howling winds on the Russian steppes, it seems worth looking at the life of a musician in Russia over the past 150 years.

Shostakovitch lived and trembled under the Soviet regime. Rachmaninoff left Russia prior to the murder of the last Tsar in 1918. Tchaikovsky and Rimsky -Korsakov were the products of a society influenced by the Russian autocracy. Mussorgsky, who may have been the most gifted of all, died young from alcoholism, having spent most of his working life as a low level Russian bureaucrat.

Mussorgsky is an interesting case. His addictions and "day job" made it difficult for him to finish a lot of his music. Of his larger scores given today, only A Night on Bald Mountain is considered complete in the composer's own handwriting. Pictures at an Exhibition was begun as a work for solo piano, later orchestrated by Ravel. Mussorgsky's great opera Boris Godunov was re orchestrated after the composer's death by Rimsky-Korsakov, and later by Shostakovitch. Tchaikovsky, also emotionally fragile, was left to create and finish his own music.

Over the last thirty years musicians have returned to Mussorgsky's original scores. We hear a spare, sinewy and harsh orchestral color, very far from Rimsky-Kosakov, that master orchestrator. Did Rimsky improve upon Mussorgsky's music, or just get in the way? The fact remains that without the intervention of Rimsky-Korsakov and others, we would know less of Mussorgsky's music than we do now. And had Mussorgsky lived to maturity, and been blessed with better mental health, who knows what he would have accomplished?

And here is Mussorgsky's original:

Russian composers of the 19th century were subjected to the same market forces and critical perceptions affecting (plaguing?) composers today. If the people don't like your music they won't come to your concerts. If the news papers don't like your music people will stay away. Tchaikovsky did not have a strong enough ego to resist these forces, though his talent was obviously divine. Rimsky-Korsakov, known in his lifetime as a (great) teacher of music -Stravinsky was his pupil-had a healthy sense of his own worth and struggled on.

Russian musicians were influenced by the modes and melodies of the Russian church, and by the music making available to the eighty percent of the population living in want, if not slavery in the countryside. Peasants made there own music, filled with sorrow and joy. The intelligentsia listened, copied, expanded and gave a Russian language of music to the west. As vast as he country itself.

If the Soviet Union mean to enforce complete equality it also took away any vestige of artistic Shostakovitch had to write what the Politburo wanted people to hear. The influence of church music was verboten-if hard to eradicate. The countryside was fine, as long as the downtrodden peasants were uplifted. What would not do was free thought. 'Formalism' was a capital offense, writing or creating what you wanted. Shostakovitch was ruined when Stalin heard Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. This opera by the thirty year old Shostakovitch depicted Russian peasant life in its brutality, with music and on stage depictions often pornographic. Watch the clip and listen to the music. The characters are doing exactly what the music suggests they are doing.

freedom.

For his sins all the knives went out for Shostakovitch. Hiding away was not an option. The Soviet world  literally put a gun to his head making it crucial that his next work, be what it may, delight the Soviet authorities. Indeed, a letter signed by he composer indicated his 5th symphony to be "A Soviets' response to just criticism." Shostakovitch's Fifth symphony was premiered in Leningrad in 1937. The success was immediate. The conductor Mravinsky held the score up above his head, like the gospels, as the audience roared its approval. 

Inevitably, persons began to assign emotion to this work. Was it a victory symphony over the Soviet bureaucracy? Was it an apology? Was the martial finale a call to arms or a victory march? Was the long, largo movement, meditative and enthralling in its beauty, a lament?

Shostakovitch could say nothing. Russian music had come full circle, with the market circumventing the

authority of the government, as it had in the days of the Tsars a hundred years before, The people-peasants?-heard what they needed to hear in a new work the composer needed to write. Statues of Stalin are being pulled down in the 21st century. Shostakovitch's music triumphs in Moscow, St. Petersburg, London, Paris, New York and Columbus.

BOOKS READ IN 2015

Deborah Voigt

BOOKS READ 2015

What's more interesting to me is What did you read? Please leave your favorites on this blog!

These are the books I read in 2015. I admit to having to review some of them, read many months ago, and have indicated a few notes in   (  ). 

I no longer have an iron clad memory. I knew enough about each * to remember loving the reading of same. + indicates an author interview.

My favorite books read in 2015:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. The world evaporates and the survivors huddle together in makeshift communities. A touring company of actors perform King Lear for the survivors.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande A physician explores how we die. Is life at all costs worth it?

Bettyville  by George Hodgman A gay man leaves his life in New York to care for his elderly mother in North Carolina. I interviewed author George Hodgman for All Sides Weekend Books

Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson

T. Geronimo Jones

 Three students go to a buddy's hometown and are impacted by a terrible accident. Author interveiw for ASWB

Inside the O'Briens by Lisa Genova A family is affected by a terrible, hereditary illness. And they don't give in. Nobody goes easily. 

The Wright Brothers by David McCullogh A close look at the intersecting lives of Wilbur and Orville Wright, with their formidable sister Catherine more than in the background.

Rosemary: The Missing Kennedy by Kate Clifford Larson The eldest Kennedy daughter was disabled by a lobotomy ordered by her father and spent sixty years out of the public eye. The story of a beautiful young woman whose limits the family could not accept. Author interview for ASWB

Did You Ever Have a Family? by Bill Clegg. The New York Times hated this book. The New York Times doesn't know what its talking about.

____________________________

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

*Can we talk about something more pleasant?  By Roz Chast

At Freddie’s by Penelope Fitzgerald

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Boy on the Ice (Derek Boogard-hockey enforcer) by John Branch

Suspended Sentences: Three novellas by Patrick Modiano: Afterimage; Suspended Sentences; Fires of Ruin

Gray Mountain by John Grisham

Not my Father’s Son by Alan Cumming

King’s Curse Phillipa Gregory

*Hand to Mouth Linda Tirano

The Tudor Vendetta  Gortner

Map of Betrayal Ha Jin

Digging for Richard III Michael W. Pitts

Call Me Debbie Deborah Voigt

*Station Eleven Emily St. John Mandel

Offshore Penelope Fitzgerald

We were liars  e. lockhart

Still Alice Lisa Genova

Everything I Never Told You  Celeste Ng

Roland Hayes: Legacy of an American Tenor Christopher Brooks and Robert Sims

A Royal Experiment (George III and family)

      Janice Hadlow

Before He Finds Her Michael Kardos

Glen Campbell Life with my Father Debby Campbell

The Death of a President  William Manchester

The Gathering Anne Enright

All Gone  Alex Wichtel

The Good Son (JFK Jr.) Christopher Andersen

Stand Up and Sing Jessye Norman

The Sacrifice Joyce Carol Oates (Tawana Brawley)

*Being Mortal Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande

The Woman Who Wasn’t There Robin Gaby Fisher and Angelo Guglielmo

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands Chris Bojalian

Revival Stephen King

*The Whites Harry Brandt (cop Billy Graves)

The Boston Girl Anita Diamant (Addie Baum)

Vivid Faces : The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland R.F. Foster

*A History of Loneliness John Boyne

*+Bettyville George Hodgman

My Father’s Wives Mike Greenberg

*Welcome to Braggsville  T. Geronimo Johnson

*The Red Badge of Courage  Stephen Crane

*Family Ties  John Boyne

+Mockingbird Next Door  Marja Mills

Frog  Mo Yan (Gugu mid wife)

*Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class  Scott Timberg

The Long Loneliness Dorothy Day

Thomas Menino Mayor for the 21^st Century

The Absolutist  John Boyne

To Die For  Joyce Maynard (Pam Smart)

The Drop Dennis Lehane

Dennis Lehane

Lord of the Flies William Goldsmith

+The Phantom of Fifth Avenue (Huguette Clark)

Huguette Clark

Meryl Gordon

The Brothers  Marya Gessen  (Tsarnaev)

The Heist (Gardner Museum) Stephen Kurkjian

All Involved  Ryan Chattis (Rodney K LA riots)

Crippen John Boyne

***To Kill a Mockingbird  Harper Lee

*Inside the O’Briens    Lisa Genova (Huntington's)

The Residence Kate Andersen Brower

Mussolini and the Pope  David Kerzer

Hell and Good Company the Spanish Civil War and the World it Made  Richard Rhodes

The Fifth Gospel  Ian Caldwell

The Book of Joan Melissa Rivers

Love Anthony Lisa Genova (autistic boy)

Crane Death of Bob Crane Bob Crane Jr

The Girl on the Train  Paula Hawkins

A Vision of Voices: John Crosby  Craig A. Smith

Madeleine Kahn William V. Madison

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me  Jennifer Teege

Days of Rage: America’s Underground Bryan 

Burroughs

*Princes at War Deborah Cadbury

A Fine Romance Candice Bergen

Left Neglected  Lisa Genova

Our Town   Kevin Jon McEnroe (Joanna Moore)

Islands in the Stream  Ernest Hemingway

Stalin’s Daughter The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva Rosemary Sullivan

*The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

*Tchaikovsky by Alexandr Podiansky

*Muse Jonathan Galassi (Ida Perkins, poet Paul Dukasch publisher)

A Lucky Life Interrupted  Tom Brokaw

Harper Lee

Go Set a Watchman Harper Lee

Tennessee Williams John Lahr

New York  Edward Rutherfurd

A Complex Fate: William L. Shirer and the 20^th  Century Ken Cuthbertson

Our Man in Charleston Christopher Dickey

                                     (Robert Bunch Civil War)

The Speech  Bernie Sanders

The Bookaneer Matthew Pearl

Paris Edmund Rutherfurd

Act One Moss Hart

Can I go now? Sue Mengers  Brian Kellow

Persuasion Jane Austen

Strangler  Brian McGrory

Dazzler: The Life of Moss  Hart  Seven Bach

Stronger Jeff Bauman (Boston Marathon Chelmsford MA)

Northanger Abbey Jane Austen

Purity Jonathan Franzen

My First 100 Years in Show Business Mary Louise Wilson

Mr Smith Goes to Prison Jeff Smith

Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen

Under the Same Sky Joseph Kim (NKorea)

*Mary McGrory by John Norris

*Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter   Kate Clifford Larson

The Missing Kennedy  Elizabeth Stroehler Pentacoff

The Taming of the Queen  Phillipa Gregory

A Common Struggle Patrick Kennedy

*Finale A Novel of the Reagan Years Thomas Mallon

*The Turner House  Angela Flournoy

Nixon Evan Thomas

Antonia Fraser

My History Antonia Fraser

Rebels of Ireland Edward Rutheford

RFK Jr. Jerry Oppenheimer

Emma Jane Austen

Great is the Truth: Secret, Scandal and the Quest for Truth at Horace Mann School  Amos Kamil

*Fellow Travelers  Thomas Mallon

****Did you ever have a family Bill Clegg

Truth in Advertising John Kenney

Razzle Dazzle :The Battle for Broadway Michael Riedel

The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients  Four Lives  Theresa Brown, RN

Lady Bird and Lyndon :The Hidden Story of the Marriage that Made a President   Betty Boyd Caroli

*The Washingtons Flora Fraser

The Man in the High Castle Philip K. Dick

Lost Illusions  Honore de Balzac