Nimble Tread

Minghella's Madama

Steve Smith has a few things to say about the Met's new Butterfly production that won't make getting a ticket any easier.

Up, Up and Away

I'm off to Montreal tomorrow, and thanks to recent changes made by the Department of Transportation, my violin's coming with me.  This is good news.  Very good news.  Also good news, though of a somewhat different sort, is that the English Concert will be playing Bach's Christmas Oratorio at Westminster Abbey on December 7th.  The band's been playing terrifically -- most recently last night at the Wigmore -- and combined with the Abbey's singular atmosphere, it should be a great show. 

Foist

Angela Gheorghiu phoned in sick to last night's staging of Faust at Covent Garden, and though there were throngs of disappointed fans, the performance didn't necessarily suffer from her absence.  Katie van Kooten proved a capable, if somewhat clumsy, Marguerite, and as she'll be singing the role on September 25th and 29th,  was naturally very comfortable with the production's mechanics.  Her performance was, however, overshadowed by Piotr Beczala, who sang Faust wonderfully, and actually reminded me of a young Roberto Alagna, himself no stranger to the role.  My chief gripe, and this is no small matter, was that Beczala didn't make enough of his Act I rejuvenation.  There was no snap, no pizzazz, no gush of youthful verve.  Instead he simply lapsed into standard paradigm romantic tenor behaviour, which, though well done -- particularly as the evening wore on -- required a longer warming period between his character and the audience.  Still, his strong, heady voice carried the day, and he should be pleased.

Less successful was Orlin Anastassov in the role of Méphistophélès.  Say what you will about Bryn Terfl, he definitely had the right idea in his interpretation of the chthonic character.  He was equal parts sleeze, cunning, and charm, and demonstrated a genuine misanthropy toward the human race.  Anastassov, on the other hand, seemed more petty, childishly waving away a mob of French types who'd gotten the better of him with a crucifix.  There was hardly a trace of irony in his voice when he called Faust "Master," and his vocal tone and colour did little to confirm his diabolical ideals.  He seemed as much victim as victimizer, a dynamic that really threw a wrench into the works.

The opera was passable on the whole, but not by a wide margin.  Even the louche ballerinas of Act V seemed to have had their minds on something else -- Rosh Hashannah, perhaps -- and weren't nearly depraved enough to set the old ladies gasping, which is, after all, the whole point of the show.

Lunchtime Limerick for a Rainy Day

There was an Old Man in a boat,
Who said, "I'm afloat! I'm afloat!"
When they said, "No! you ain't!" he was ready to faint,
That unhappy Old Man in a boat.
                           -Edward Lear

Autumn Reading Liszt

On my way home from Magdalena Kožená's recital at the Wigmore -- which incidentally was strong vocally, but, dissapointingly, bland as gruel in the expressivity department  -- I came across the following in Charles Rosen's fun book, Piano Notes:

In difficult technical passages [...] the problem is to disengage the mind and allow the body to take over on its own.  This is certainly why Liszt advised his students to read a book while practicing, as Moriz Rosenthal reported.  Only when one can play in tempo the skips in La Campanella or the octaves at the opening of the development section of the Tchaikovsky Concerto in B-flat Minor while thinking about what to order for dinner, can one pay attention to the interpretation.
The advantage of reading a book while practicing for pure technique alone is that it enables us to forget the boredom of playing a passage over and over again, a dozen, or fifty or a hundred times until the body has absorbed it.  Not all books, however, lend themselves equally well to this employment.  Poetry interferes subtly with the rhythm of the music, and so does really admirable prose.  The most useful, I have found for myself, are detective stories, sociology, and literary criticism.  However, any reading matter that distracts the mind without engaging the senses or emotions too powerfully will work.

Mr. Rosen, ever the dispenser of sound advice, has perhaps worked a miracle and provided me with a framework in which to finally finish Harold Bloom's Where Shall Wisdom be Found?  I just wonder how this cunning little strategy will work with the violin. 

Reissued

I had a look at Alex Ross's increasingly comprehensive Lorraine Hunt Lieberson discography, and thought I'd mention that the Wigmore Hall Live label will reissue LHL's 2000 Live From Wigmore Hall disc in the next month or two.  On the cd: Mahler's Ruckert Lieder; Handel's e vive ancore...Scherza infida, from Ariodante; Handel's As with rosy steps the morn, from Theodora; Peter Lieberson's Songs on Poems by Rilke and Ashoka's Dream Triraksha's Aria; Deep River; and Brahms' Umbewegte laue luft.

Full of Hot Air

Something Nick Paumgarten wrote a while ago in The New Yorker's The Talk of the Town intrigued me, and I decided to do some supplementary research.  In his casual, "Up and Away," Paumgarten wrote about Beate Liepert, an atmospheric physicist, who has taken to flight in order to round up data concerning air pollution.  Her vessel of choice is a beflamed hot-air balloon that, when piloted by Marty Pfenninger, typically floats to a height of six-thousand feet or so, allowing Ms. Liepert to have a look at what the air particles are up to at that elevation. 
Paumgarten passingly mentioned that the first hot-air balloon's flight, in 1783, reached its comic heights [my assessment] after it "landed in a pasture, and peasants attacked it with pitchforks."  Inspired by this, and by my associating the whole business with an old favourite George Plimpton piece, The Man in the Flying Lawn Chair, I took to the internet and came up with the following titbit of history:

From the U.S. Centennial Flight Commission:
Once human passengers had demonstrated that they could safely travel by balloon, balloon flight was firmly established. However, the limitation of using air was soon discovered because, as the air in the balloon cooled, the balloon was forced to descend. If a fire was kept burning to warm the air constantly, sparks were likely to reach the bag and set it afire. Hydrogen overcame this obstacle.  Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles, member of the French Academy of Science, successfully tested a new type of balloon in which hydrogen replaced air in a silk bag that had been treated with an elastic gum so that hydrogen could not readily pass through it. On August 27, 1783, Charles launched the first balloon inflated with hydrogen gas in Paris. Unlike the Montgolfier balloon, this hydrogen-inflated balloon was closed to contain the gas. The sphere, which measured 13 feet (4 meters) in diameter, ascended from the Place des Victories in Paris to a height of nearly 3,000 feet (914 meters) and came down some 15 miles (24 kilometers) away where terrified peasants attacked and destroyed it. Although highly flammable, hydrogen soon replaced air as the buoyant gas for balloons.

And there you have it.  The story is true, and the New Yorker fact-checkers can keep there jobs.  The besieged balloon was not, however, the first hot-air balloon; it wasn't even the first manned hot-air balloon.  The former honour belongs to Joseph and Jacques Mongolfier, two brothers whose early ballooning exploits culminated, at least in my opinion, in their floating a sheep, a rooster, and a duck to regions well beyond their domain -- the duck, cool as a cucumber, being perhaps the exception -- on September 19, 1783.  The first manned flight came shortly thereafter, when, under the Mongolfier brothers' watchful eyes, Jean-François Piltre de Rozier, and perhaps the Marquis d'Arlandes, remained aloft for four minutes.  Balloon aeronautics developed quickly, and a shade more than a month later, Jean-François and the Marquis were at it again, this time making a free-ascent and cruising for 5.5 miles before returning to terra firma in grand, bulbous style. 

Homecoming 2006

Concerto for Laptop and Orchestra

Hats off to Mark Elder who put the Last Night of the Proms rostrum to good use, speaking out against the Department for Transport's idiotic carry on baggage policy that's effectively made UK musicians' lives miserable by forcing them to either check their instruments into the cargo hold -- yeah, right -- or take the Eurostar to Paris and fly from there.  Tours have been canceled, as have concert dates in the UK.  New York's Orchestra of St. Luke's decided to forego a visit to Edinburgh and a Proms appearance, and the Mariinsky was nearly banned from taking their instruments onto their own chartered jet.  Elder noted that the situation was "deeply to be regretted," and added that something needed to be done "at the highest level[...]otherwise next year we will be looking forward to a concerto of laptop and orchestra."  His point is clear, though it might have been made more effective by omitting mention of an orchestra, which, I'm told, includes fifty-or-so cabin-outlawed instruments.  Perhaps Concerto for Laptop and Laptops would have been more apt.  Still, his very public declamation has doubtless attracted considerable support to the Musicians' Union, and will hopefully help the organization in its lobbying efforts.  The Independent ran a good piece yesterday that included a sweet little jab at the UK's economic bias, noting "Business people had already succeeded in easing restrictions on carrying laptops, and duty-free items had been exempted because of the potential financial losses involved, he said. But the monetary clout of musicians may not have been enough to have had an impact."  Good point.  Far more sardonic, though equally perceptual, is the Daily Telegraph coverage, which observes: "[...]as a result of the latest restrictions on air travel, musicians are being ordered to stow instruments larger than a laptop computer in the hold. The fear is that they have strung their bows with razor wire or packed their tubas with liquid explosive. As our columnist Julian Lloyd Webber pointed out last month, the instruments are so valuable, and the baggage crews so cack-handed, that musicians are, increasingly, unable to travel."  The word on the street is that restrictions will soon be eased.  I sure hope so, because I'm flying to Montreal on the 30th, and will be mightily peeved if I can't bring my violin on the plane.  Chestnut roaster or not, there's no way it's going in the cargo hold. 

Stravinksy Baroque

Last night marked the beginning of the Wigmore Hall's chamber music season, which got underway in fine style with an all-Stravinsky programme for violin and piano played by Anthony Marwood and pianist/composer Thomas Adès.  Marwood's a regular at the Hall, both as a soloist and as a member of the Florestan Trio, and it's easy to see why.  His playing is not only technically solid, but downright wonderful in its expressiveness.  He's capable of moving from one genre to the next with hardly a trace of incongruous overlap, and is particularly handy when it comes to working his way through pieces containing fluctuations in energy.  Accordingly, he was perfectly in his element with Stravinsky and the handful of music selected for the concert. 
Many of the pieces were arrangements of ballet suites for violin and piano that Stravinsky worked up for performances with Samuel Dushkin, a Polish-born violinist with whom the composer enjoyed a fine working relationship, though one hardly on the order of Joachim and Brahms or David and Mendelssohn.  Unlike those earlier teams, however, Stravinsky and Dushkin's efforts were recorded using reasonably advanced methods and, tellingly, are still in print. 
Where Stravinsky was indubitably in control, and Dushkin seemingly happy as a relatively passive collaborator, the relationship between pianist and violinist at last night's concert was entirely reversed.   Marwood dominated the stage, and played with such conviction that most would have a hard time keeping up.  While Adès is certainly a fine pianist, he played rather poorly last night, tinkling along with his nose in the score, giving one the impression that he was playing the pieces for the very first time.   He played error free, but virtually inflection free as well, which must have made life a bit difficult for Marwood.  The Suite Italienne from Pulcinella Pastorale, Baroque in tone and lovely in character, was brought off well, as were the songs from The Nightingale.  Less successful from the point of view of unity were Duo Concertante, Divertimento, and The Firebird suite, each of which suffered from Adès' lack of pep and the consequent flatness in the musicians' interplay.  To Marwood's credit, he maintained his vigor throughout, and made it very clear that he'd not only taken the time to get the music under his fingers, but had also managed to work out that pesky business of musicality.  He made smart choices that took Stravinsky's views on expressiveness into consideration and used the tension inherent in such a system to his advantage, creating a shimmering tonal weave that was really a pleasure to hear.  He'll be back at the Wigmore on September 27th, and this time with his Florestan cohorts.