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Beethoven, The Emerson, The Alexander, and Me

I grew up listening to Beethoven.  Actually I probably grew up listening to Beethoven, Bach and Brahms, but it is the Beethoven that I remember.    I remember my father placing his LP’s lovingly on the turntable, the large speaker he had made from a kit.  I remember how he set the pressure on the stylus as lightly as possible, so that the needle would just kiss the surface of the LP:  just enough to extract the sound without wearing out the LP.  I don’t actually know if you wear out LPs but I remember that is what I was told.  I remember learning not to run through the house, not to allow a door to slam, that such noises would cause the old wooden boards to shake and the needle to skip.  Scratching Beethoven was a capitol offense.

 Later, when I was finally allowed to take the piano lessons I had been craving since I was 4 or 5 (I was 16), my piano teacher wanted me to perform a piece by Beethoven in a competition.  I played it the way I had heard it on my dad’s recordings.  But my teacher told me that was wrong, that it needed to be more gentle and melodic and I learned to play it her way.  My father told me my teacher was wrong and I was torn.  I always aimed to please, too uncertain of my own tastes and opinions, too eager to please.  In the competition I played for my teacher.   The judges said I could have won if I understood Beethoven better, if I had played the piece my father’s way.

 The music of Beethoven was like a part of me; but a part of me I am not sure I ever fully understood.  It was there, I recognized it, but I did not know it.

 Years later, G and I went to a series of concerts at Lincoln Center.  It was 1997 and the Emerson Quartet was presenting the complete Beethoven Quartet Cycle, with other works, in a series of 8 concerts. I was in heaven.  When the cycle was released on CD, G and I bought the set.  For years, when we listened to a recording Beethoven string quartets, we listened to the Emerson play them.

Just this past week I have listened to them again, and I have made a rather shocking discovery.  I don’t like the Emerson Quartet’s performance of the Beethoven String Quartets, at least I don’t like the recorded performances.  I don’t like them at all, with, perhaps, the exception of No. 11 in F minor, but that one quartet is not enough to redeem a series of recordings that seem emotionally void, empty, and vapid, even if precisely and expertly performed.

I am forced to wonder what I was listening to.  Was I listening, actually listening, or I was listening through the ear of memory, through the haze of the desire, through the fog of expectation?  I really don’t know. The truth is often listened to these CDs in the car, when we were travelling somewhere, and the car is a less than ideal venue for music.  The noise of the car, the road, conversations, the distractions of driving -- listening to music in the car can be as much about expectation as what is actually heard.

It came to my attention, while sorting through our CD collection for an upcoming project, that we have two complete sets of the Beethoven String Quartets, and another set of just the late quartets.    This came as a bit of a surprise; I expected some overlap, just not quite so much.  Of course I had to listen to them to see if we actually needed all three recordings.

The entire exercise makes me question if I would have liked the Emerson’s rendition more if it had been the first recording I listened to.  But it wasn’t. 

First I listened to a recording of the late quartets by the Alexander quartet.  I purchased it after a concert in which I had been completely blown away by the music.  They performed Beethoven and Shostakovich and I bought recordings of each.  I recall that G asked me at the time why I needed more Beethoven when we had the Emerson at home, and I had said that I didn’t recall the Emerson sounding like “that” meaning the concert we had just heard.  But after I got home, and listened to the recording a few times, it was just filed away and forgotten.

 My loss.

 I was immediately struck by the emotion and power the Alexander Quartet brought to the music.  The music was gripping:  sometimes shockingly aggressive, sometimes meltingly tender and filled with humanity.  I sat on the edge of my chair, gripping the armrests, remembering how I felt exactly this same way at the performance two years before.  Admittedly there were times when the players seemed to skim past a few notes and this was even more evident when I compared the playing to that of the Emerson.  But I seem to be a person who reacts to music on an emotional, almost visceral, level, and to me, the emotional depth of the performance seemed to far surpass the minor imperfections.

 Listening to the same piece as recorded by the Emerson was a disappointment.  Yes, the notes were recognizably the same.  But the music seemed cold and almost superficial; they were playing Beethoven but it was only a shadow of Beethoven.  The overwhelming spirituality of the 15^th quartet was particularly lacking.  My mind wandered; in fact there were times when the performance seemed almost boring.  The music was a background melody to the landscape of the mind.  There was nothing compelling, nothing to make me take notice.

 At this point I turned to the third set of Beethoven String Quartets in our possession.   This set was by the Takacs Quartet and I was eager to see how they compared in this case.  In terms of the late quartets at least, they came in second best. Technically I think the playing was tighter and even richer than the Emerson, and there was emotion and depth to the performance, but my heart had already been won over  by the pure  power of the Alexander Quartet.

 I didn’t stop there however.  I went on to compare the Emerson and Takacs in selections from the early and middle quartets.  Here the Takacs really surpassed the Emerson in terms of power, emotion, and precision.  Both groups seem better suited to the earlier quartets than to the late quartets.  Even so, the recording by the Takacs Quartet displayed a strong balance of precision, emotion and grace, at times seeming almost edgy in its strength.  The Emerson occasionally seemed scattered and disconnected; in fact I think their performances were superior on the late quartets, at least as compared to their own performances of the early quartets. 

 I am no longer particularly interested in the Emerson Quartet's Beethoven recordings, but I will keep them because G adores them and I am not going to force my point of view on him.  Instead of eliminating a set of CDs it seems I will have to add more, because now I want to hear the Alexander Quartet’s version of the early and middle quartets.  If I had not heard the Alexander Quartet, the Takacs Quartet's recording of the Beethoven String Quartets would be my favorite, and they are incredibly beautiful, capturing the range of emotions found in the music, and yet they are not enough....for me.

But I have heard the Alexander and now I want to find their recordings of the early and middle quartets.  I can understand that they may not be to everyone's taste, but then they are to mine.  But then, I like Mahler too, so obviously outrageous eruptions of emotion are right up my alley. 

 

Reading about Music

I finished reading The Rest is Noise this morning and it is a really fabulous book which I thoroughly enjoyed reading.  I spent a long time with it, not because it was at all difficult, but more because it was such a joy.....

Hmmm.  I seem to be saying that a lot of late.

I was just a teeny tiny bit disappointed that the last quarter of the 20th century seemed to get short shrift, at least in the number of pages devoted to it, but then "classical" and "pop" seem like such archaic terms to me today, that an adequate discussion of the last 20 or 30 years would probably take an entire book in and of itself.

 I was particularly struck by this quote from the epilogue:

"At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the impulse to pit classical music against pop culture no longer makes intellectual or emotional sense.  Young composers have grown up with pop music ringing in their ears, and they make use of it or ignore it as the occasion demands.  They are seeking the middle ground between the life of the mind and the noise of the street. Likewise, some of the liveliest reactions to twentieth century  and contemporary classical music have come from the pop arena, roughly defined."

And this reminds me of a talk by Leon Botstein, given several years ago at the opening concert of one of the Bard Music Festivals, I don't remember which one, but it was a 20th century composer, possibly Schoenberg. Basically Botstein said that this music (whatever it was) was easy for members of his generation (or my generation and younger) and what is truly difficult for those of us who grew up listening to the 20th century, particularly the latter half of the 20th century, is the music of Haydn and Mozart.

This overlapping of influences and sounds is so much a part of life, and perhaps I am truly just not enough of an intellectual, that it seems difficult to completely separate out the threads of Schoenberg and Stravinsky from Reich, Adams, Talking Heads, Takemitsu, Björk, Coltrane, and Lou Reed.  I am not speaking literally here, just jumbling together the thoughts that come out of my mind.  I hope you understand.

But the music of Mozart or Beethoven,of Haydn or Brahms, much as I adore it, now that is something different.  Oh they provide a sort of background.  We have all heard the melodies.  But to listen, to sit back and actually listen to what they produce - that requires a completely different kind of mental attention, one that perhaps our forebears were more readily trained.  Is it that our ears are different? Or have we formed different mental synapses?

Now I need to go listen to some music.

It seems I use my Ipod mostly to listen to new music

One day last week I was listening to a friend's music collection as she shuffled it from her Ipod and I wondered why I never managed to get around to ripping my CD's to disk so that I could play my own music.  But when I got home and started to re-examine this idea I got all bogged down in my own conflicted feelings about music formats and the what, when, where, and why of my own interests in music.

And then it struck me that although I like the idea of having my music available on an ipod, what has really happened is that it has become a tool for me to use to explore, download, and listen to new music and that this has become very important to me.  I've never been good at making a decision about music, of whatever genre, and the ipod has provided a fabulous tool for exploring whatever music may capture my fancy.

Most played in the past week:

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band:  Outer South

Josh Ritter:  The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter

Metric:  Fantasies

Simone Dinnerstein:  Bach Goldberg Variations

Music Monday

We are having yet another dark, dreary day filled with rains.

It started out sunny, despite the 70% threat of thunderstorms, and I ran my errands and did my morning chores in hopes that I would get out in the garden this afternoon.  We have had slightly more than 12 inches of rain in the last month, which is unusually high.  To some extent I don't mind as the rain and the shady front yard is unusually lush this year.  But so are the weeds and it has rained enough that I have not been able to keep up with them.  

Some part of me fears that this lush spring will be followed by an unusually dry July and August; it has happened before, and I am not eager to be out gardening in the heat, so I was out in the yard working and planting a few things until I was pretty well soaked through.  

Then it seemed like a perfect time to come inside and listen to Philip Glass's Waiting for the Barbarians.  Although I once would have said that I was not a person who listened to operas (although I attending performances), it seems that I have been mistaken. 

I ordered the recording of the opera after watching a film about Philip Glass on PBS (GLASS:  a portrait of Philip in twelve parts).  The film was quite interesting, but what I really wanted was to see the opera Glass was composing, and which was performed, while they were filming.  Of course I can't see it now, but I certainly could buy the CD, and I have been listening to it pretty frequently since it arrived in mid May, with the exception of the week that Owen was here.

I admit to loving the music of Phillip Glass.  I have loved Glass's music since I purchased a couple of albums in college (Music in Eight Parts, Einstein on the Beach). But I do think I would love this opera regardless of whether I knew anything about the composers previous work.  In this opera the work is unmistakably glass, but there is a greater variety in the orchestration than in his early operatic works and the music and the mood it conveys consistently portrays and reveals the progression of the story.  The voices are almost spoken, narrated even, as if instead of reading a book, or having the book read to us, it is performed for us with the same immediacy that one finds in reading a book.  But of course instead of reading words on a page and imagining, one is listening and the power of the words are joined by the strength of music to convey urgency and crisis.  

It seems to me that Waiting for the Barbarians stands on it own as a musical work very well and is quite beautiful and effective as music, without the visual stimulus of seeing it on the stage.  Yet I would love to see this opera, not just hear it.  Although given the frequency with which contemporary opera's tend to be performed I do not see this as quite likely.  Once upon a time I would have said I would fly off anywhere to see it.  Once upon a time that may have been possible, but this is not the tenor of my life right now, so it would have to come pretty close to home, and even then I might miss it.  Still, Waiting for the Barbarians joins the short list of contemporary operas I would really like to see someday.  

Although not at all alike, it strikes me that the other opera on this list is Poul Ruder's opera The Handmaid's Tale which, although not at all like Glass's opera, is also more of a music narrative than a traditional opera.  

Music Monday

Somewhere along the line it seems that I stopped writing about concerts we have attended, and although I have thought about writing about things I was listening to and thinking about, I never quite managed to get around to it.

Then, on Friday, I took M and grandson Owen to LaGuardia.  On the way home I listened to my own music pretty much for the first time in a week and it struck me that no matter how much I loved the company, and no matter how nice Owen’s music was, music for a 2 ½ year old is still rather simple and repetitive, and I really missed playing my own music.  Luckily for me I had a 2 hour drive home, alone in the car with my CD changer,  allowing for a perfect bit of musical indulgence.

I had intended to listen a couple of new albums, new to me at least.  We now have one of those little tape jobbies that allow you to connect your Ipod to the car stereo, which had been used to play Owen’s music in the car, and I was looking forward to listening to some new sounds on the way home, but the new album was grating in the car: the base rumbled, the high notes were shrill.  I have a pretty decent car stereo but a car stereo, combined with road noise is not the best music venue; it is not as good as an Ipod with headphones, which in turn is not as nice as a really good stereo with decent speakers, and it was not suitable for the album in question.  I will report on that another time

What did I listen to?  Old favorites in my CD Changer.  Hazmat Modine’s Bahamut and a CD reissue of two Delbert McClinton albums:  Victim of Life’s Circumstances and Genuine Cowhide.  Both are old and familiar, and yes, repetitious.  I have listened to them more times than I can count, and will continue to listen again and again.

I’ve had Bahamut a couple of years now (it came out in 2006) and I absolutely love it.  It makes me profoundly happy every time I listen to it.  In the car, it perks me up and I sing along and bounce (very subtly) in my seat as I drive.  I learned about the group from an e-mail conversation with several friends revolving around Tuvan throat singers, who perform on three of the songs, accompanied by drums, tuba, and Hawaiian steel guitar.  As you can see, it is not quite what you would expect.  In fact the whole album is not quite what you would expect and yet it is also completely accessible and comfortable, somehow bridging that gap between surprise and familiarity in a way that seems perfectly natural, at least to me.   

I really don’t know how to classify this album although I tend to think of it as heavily blues based. I’d describe it as gritty delta blues with a heavy dose of harmonica and New Orleans jazz, with a touch of calypso, klezmer music, Native American, and other influences.  Just writing all this makes it seem so pretentious and “arty” but that is not the effect I get.  I love Wayne Schuman’s vocals, he is marvelous on the harmonica, and I suspect that he is the glue that ties everything together.  “Lost Fox Train” is a fabulous harmonica solo which made me wish I could share it with Owen (maybe someday) who is fascinated with harmonica right now (and drums).  There are moments of pure Blues, and moments that kind of hazily merge word fusion with blues and traditional forms.  It is pure happiness, but happiness tinged with knowledge of the darker edges of the world. 

As for Delbert McClinton, he is something else entirely; although there are definitely blues influences in both of these albums. I guess I would call it kind of a rockin' country/blues hybrid.  I discovered Delbert McClinton in college in New York, even though he is Texan and I am Texan. At the time McClinton’s music seemed amazing to me, music I certainly had never encountered in the traditional country music world where I grew up or in the art-rock, big band swing milieu of my college “set”. I spent my summers in Texas searching out his older albums in record bins and used record stores, and when half of my record collection was stolen (including Delbert) the summer after graduation, I was heart-broken.  Gradually Delbert drifted to the back of my mind.

When I discovered that Victim of Life’s Circumstances/Genuine Cowhide and been reissued in a single CD I was eager to give it a try and I was thrilled to learn that the music speaks to me as much now as it did 30 some odd years ago.  If anything I am more impressed now at how really remarkable the songs are.  McClinton wrote all the songs on Victim of Life’s Circumstances, and they are just marvelous.  The album’s hard-stomping, rocking country music shows deep influence of blues, R&B, and funk and fits McClinton’s Texas twang perfectly.  When I listen to these albums today, I can see why they were so hard to find at the time; they are like nothing else I remember. The second album, Genuine Cowhide, is a mixture of a couple of original songs with a collection of some of the great R&B and Blues covers.  It must have seemed outrageous in 1976.  McClinton makes each song work, and he makes the entire album seem of a piece.  Each song is recognizable for itself and yet each one is also perfect McClinton.  This album was my introduction to Blues and R&B and it lead me to explore these genres further, and yet it still stands on its own.    There is more R&B and Blues here than probably any Texas White Boy could have been expected to pull off, and it smokes and rolls. 

It is definitely not music for a 3 year old.  But it is music that speaks to the heart of a 50 year old, perhaps even more so than it did to her youthful former self.

Anticipation and Disappointment

Last weekend we went to a piano recital, part of the annual piano fesitval hosted by the Howland Chamber Music Circle.    I look forward to almost every concert in this series and for the most part the concerts are a joy.  

I knew the name of the pianist, Frederic Chiu, and I knew he would be playing Chopin.  This was enough for me to be rather excited about the performance.  I did not remember ever having heard him before and I did not do any anticipatory research, preferring, generally, to go into the concert with fresh ears.  Therefore I could not, at first, pinpoint why I felt a tinge of disappointment when Mr. Chiu walked into the hall at the beginning of the performance.  "Oh him" some part of my mind said, although I had no recollection as to why that thought had popped into the active part of my mind.  I quickly squelched any misgivings.

The opening piece, the Sonata in E Major, Opus 6, by Felix Mendelssohn  was lovely and I had no major complaints with it or with the second piece by Mendelssohn.  However, when we got to the Chopin etudes Opus 25, the Chopin that I had been anticipating for weeks, my attitude cooled even though parts of the performance were breathtaking. Mr. Chiu is a fabulous pianist with fabulous skill and technique and who I would say plays in a rather dramatic, romantic and Lisztian mode.  In the opening etude, the #1, the arpeggios began beautifully, building power and emotion only to become muddied to my ear from overpedalling, and perhaps a little overstated in the emotion, almost bombastic.   This was followed by the #10 and the #11, which were breathtaking.  The dizzying speed and clarity of the playing was just phenomenal and I was truly transported by this second piece, in which Mr. Chiu seemed to capture chilling clarity with tremendously sweeping emotion.  The #4 was also stunning, again played with light-fingered clarity.  Then he lost me completely with the #3 and the #12.  

As we broke for the intermission I was contemplating these etudes, how I could admire the technique and style while still be unhappy with the performance?  I decided that I like a little more nuance in Chopin.  I think Chiu is occasionally too loud where I prefer a lighter, rippling delicacy which shimmers like light on the surface of the water, hinting at but not revealing all the depths beneath.  There is little nuance.  I think in the grand gestures of his playing, Chiu rolls right over the little inconsistencies in rhythm that bring such poignancy to Chopin. It is the little bumps and glitches in Chopin that bring new depth, at least to my ears, and the blinding arpeggios of Frederic Chiu seem to just crush them.

Perhaps I am mistaken.  I have played very little Chopin and not for many many years.  I have never studied music.  I could never, in my wildest dreams play as well as Frederic Chiu. These are just my thoughts on my own preferances.  

It was in the second half of the program that I realized where I had heard the artist before.  He played at Bard during the Liszt Festival.  I was not entranced then either. I recall thinking he was by far technically the best pianist we heard that afternoon, but he was not the one I enjoyed listening to the most.  Oh well.

I think Liszt suits Chiu's fiery, almost over the top virtuosity better than Chopin.  It is too bad I am not particularly a fan of Liszt, something I had not realized until that in-depth study of Liszt up at Bard a couple of summers ago.  Chiu playing a Liszt transcription of Wagner seemed like the perfect pairing of pianist and music.  Unfortunately I am not particularly a fan of Wagner either. It was beautiful. I was stunned by the performance, but it was an appreciate born of the mind, not of the heart.

When, in my development, did I switch my loyalties to thoughtful quiet subtlety?  I think in my youth I loved fiery romanticism.  I really want to like Frederic Chiu.  He is fascinating in conversation.  His technique takes my breath away.  But the music he plays does not make my heart sing.

There may be one exception to that.  As an encore he performed a piece by Prokofiev that had my heart in my throat and nearly brought tears to my eyes.  In the program it was mentioned that he was scheduled to play Prokofiev at Bard in 2010.  That may be a concert worth seeking out.

First Concert of 2009

We had planned to go in to New York to see Gustavo Dudamel conduct the New York Philharmonic.  He was conducting Mahler's Fifth, one of his signature pieces, and one of my favorite works, so the concert was eagerly anticipated.  Alas, fears and concerns over the weather interfered with our plans.

We did however make ti to our Sunday afternoon concert, the first concert of the Howland Chamber Circle's Piano Series, featuring Gilles Vonsattel.

I was not disappointed.  We never are at this venue.  I was completely unfamiliar with the opening work, "Les Soires de Nazelles" by Poulenc.  It was lovely although rather a frivolous indulgence, not the way I think of most of Poulenc's work.  G did not like it.

It was the second half of the concert that I found the most fabulous.   Vonsattel began with Nico Muhy's Booklet, which was something of a tour-de-force.  I really don't know anything about Muhy, but I certainly want to hear more.  Often with modern works I feel one needs to listen over and over until one has almost absorbed the music before it really begins to make sense, but I think perhaps this piece reaches out to the listener a little sooner.  There seem to be hidden echoes of early church music in this otherwise very modern composition, or at least so it seemed on this my first listening.  I have an impression of an interesting and moving combination of massively pounding and dominant waves of sound contrasted with the very delicate and almost frivolous.  The work combined pedal octaves with a very loud, at times massively pounding, toccata-like structure played with the left hand, while the right was tripping along with soft harmonies and melodic bits.    This is a work I would dearly love to hear again.

The Muhy was followed by Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, another technically demanding work but completely different from the Muhy.  I would have liked to be in a position where I could have watched the pianist playing, but that might have also distracted from my pure enjoyment of the music. Sitting in the back, my head resting on a pillar behind my chair, letting the music of Ravel wash over one is a perfectly fine way to end a Sunday afternoon. 

So, we had a fabulous concert, followed by a lovely little dinner, and an absolutely horrendous drive home in a combination of slow and sleet with about 1/2 inch of slushy slippery stuff on the roads and very little visibility.  

Last Concert of the Beacon Season

We went to a fabulous concert today, the last concert of the Howland Chamber Music Circle, and it was truly lovely.  In fact I rave about most of these concerts and the last two have been exceptional. 

Today we heard the Peabody Trio perform the Beethoven Trio in B-flat major, the "archduke" and the Schubert Trio #1 in B-flat major.  Somehow it didn't connect in my brain that both were in B-flat major until I wrote this, I suppose it is not the kind of thing I notice or would notice, another sign of something lacking in my education and perceptions of the world I suppose.   

G tells me that the Beethoven "archduke" is one of his favorite pieces of music and this performance was fabulous.  I love this trio, and although I wouldn't quite call it a favorite, there is something about Beethoven that just thrills me to no end.  I love the mix of fun and seriousness, humor and pathos, like everything in the world is wrapped up in a piece of music.  In the B-flat major trio, the third movement is incredibly ethereal and moving, one can almost get lost in its beauty.

But then, just in case you have allowed yourself to wallow off in a fog of otherworldly beauty, Beethoven slaps you upside the head with the beginning of the fourth movement, which proceeds without pause like a jolt of lightening.   Now that the listener has been shocked out of his or her reverie, it is hard not to smile at the irrepressible humor in the final movement, bubbling along and escalating into the fabulous conclusion.  The audience almost rose up in unison at the last note with great applause (and this must have been the practice run because the swell of rising listeners was perfected for the repeat performance at the end of the Schubert)

Ah Beethoven and Schubert, how better to end the season.  Not only that but we had more Beethoven three weeks ago, when I was indulged in a breathtaking performance of my favorite quartet.  The Alexander Quartet played Beethoven's String Quartet #13 Opus 130 with the concluding Grosse Fuge.  I don't know why I don't think of this piece more often.  Each time I hear it in its entirety I think it is just perfect.   I don't believe I always heard the quartet played with the fifth movement (the Grosse Fuge) and I do remember that the first time I heard the complete original work with the included Fuge, I was STUNNED.  I can't imagine the quartet without that ending, it ties everything up .  I am amazed that it was dropped, although not surprised at Beethoven's chagrin that it was not liked. I believe he is reputed to have said "asses", or did I dream that?

Now of course I was aware of the Grosse Fuge before, and I don't really remember if my father's recordings of Beethoven's quartets played the 13th in the original version (5 movements) or in the altered version as I heard the music and absorbed it but didn't really think about it until after I left home. But I certainly know that I have heard quite a few performances of the four-movement 13th, more than the five-movement version.  It is such a shame too.

So, two fabulous concerts. 

Oh yes, the Schubert was nice too, how could it not be?  It is such a fresh, bright, cheery piece, and as I said before it was followed by a great welling-up of the audience in appreciation.

A thought

I wonder what this says about me?

I hear a piece of 12-tone music, such as Anton Webern's Five Pieces, Op 5, and I immediately start to smile and I want to dance.  I get a little thrill, as if all the cells in my body feel a little spark.  Obviously these were youthful pieces, perhaps a little rough.  But still they make me happy.  Almost all 12-tone music does, even the somber pieces seem to wake me up in special way. 

Oh, I know, no one "does" 12-tone any more.  Oh well.

And by the way, Ravel's Quartet in F Major makes me very happy too.

What a lovely evening.