We all returned from the lake early last evening.
We were able to enjoy eight full days at the lake this year—eight serene, peaceful days. We were surrounded by woods and water, and graced with fresh Northern breezes. It was very invigorating and very rejuvenating.
Joshua and I had not been up to the lake for exactly a year.
Last year, after we returned from our annual week at the lake, Josh and I had only three weeks to wrap things up at our old jobs and to move out of our old apartment. Once those tasks were completed, we were off to Britain for eighteen days. After we returned from Britain, we had only a couple of days at home before we had to set out for Boston. Consequently, the week of July 4 was our final visit to the lake last year.
This year, everyone in my family has been making use of the lake house since late May, spending alternate weekends at the lake. For everyone else, last week was just like another weekend at the lake, more or less (albeit a very long one), but for Josh and me last week was exceedingly welcome, even necessary. We were able to drop our guards completely and relax, fully, for the first time in a year.
And, more important, for the first time Josh and I were able to bond with my niece.
The first time we saw her, at Christmas, she was only three weeks old, and Josh and I were home only for four days. Given her infancy, and given our short time at home, there was no genuine opportunity for us to bond with her at Christmas.
The second time we saw her, in March, my niece was fourteen weeks old, and able to distinguish between different persons, but Josh and I were home only for three days, and those three days were not enough time for us to bond with her.
She had forgotten about us since March, I believe, but after a full week together she now knows who we are, and she can now sense that we are a permanent and integral part of her family. After a couple of days together, she reacted no differently to Josh and me than to my middle brother, whom she sees several times a week. She allowed Josh and me to hold her and feed her and play with her as freely and as often as we wanted.
She is now seven months old, and her mother says that she now knows us well enough that she will never again forget who we are, even if we don’t see her between the middle of August and Christmas (which is very likely).
Of course, we shall be seeing a great deal more of her over the next five weeks, so I hope my sister-in-law is correct: that my niece will know us so well by mid-August that she will easily remember who we are after the passage of several months.
She is a beautiful little girl. She has very bright and very alive eyes. She has a sweet disposition. She is very good-natured. She has a gentle smile that makes me weak-kneed.
She sits up now, generally on someone’s lap, and watches whatever is going on. Most of the time, she watches her brother, who is always in motion, playing with his toys or playing with the dog or running around or jumping up and down or chattering up a storm.
My nephew provides his sister with much of her entertainment, just as he provides us with much of our entertainment.
Of course, he loves spending time at the lake. He can play outside all day, doing lots of different things, with lots of people to play with.
Out on the lawn, in the shade of several large trees at one side of the house, he particularly likes to play a game of one-on-one kickball with his Granddad. This is one of his favorite activities at the lake—and he always wins the game of kickball, even though no one can quite figure out what his rules are.
He also has a small John Deere scooter (it looks exactly like a miniature John Deere tractor) he rides around the yard. He likes it when everyone watches him make his revolutions on the grass.
In the early evening, he played croquet with us, but he never bothered to use a mallet. He moved his ball by kicking it, or simply picking it up and taking it wherever it was supposed to go. He thought everyone else was very inefficient, using mallets.
When he was done sending his own ball through the wickets, he helped his grandmother finish her game—by picking up her ball and taking it wherever it was supposed to go.
Needless to say, my nephew and my mother placed first and second in every croquet game all week!
The weather was good enough all week for us to remain outdoors for the entire day. We had our breakfast in the kitchen, but afterwards we were outside all day and seldom went back into the house. The weather never turned cold, so even our lunch and dinner meals were taken on the deck overlooking the lake.
My niece eats foods now—very bland, pureed foods—and it was fun to feed her.
She likes fruit—pureed applesauce, pureed pears, pureed peaches, pureed apricots, pureed plums, pureed cranberries, pureed strawberries, pureed blueberries, all but the strawberries and blueberries poached and cooled before pureeing—and she likes a couple of vegetables, such as pureed cooked peas and pureed cooked butter beans. She will eat pureed cooked carrots, too, but only if a touch of maple flavoring is added.
She likes riced mashed potatoes, and riced candied sweet potatoes.
She likes my mother’s homemade chicken broth, and homemade beef broth, and she likes my mother’s homemade cream-tomato soup.
She likes baby apple juice, and baby orange juice, and baby apple-cranberry juice, and baby raspberry-cranberry juice.
She also likes strawberry jello, and vanilla pudding, and homemade ice cream. We had homemade ice cream every night while we were at the lake, and she ate a small bowl of the homemade ice cream each night.
She eats more and more different foods each week, and she very definitely enjoys eating, but her bottle will remain one of her most important sources of nourishment for a few months more.
Of course, her brother eats practically everything now (except for cauliflower and a couple of other vegetables—but, oddly, he very much likes lentils; he is also very particular about seafood, which in any case is not often served to him). He has become a veritable food machine.
He eats a big breakfast, a good lunch, a nice snack after his nap, a big dinner, and another snack before bedtime. He gets a hearty array of fruits and vegetable each day, but he has developed a special fondness for all things beef. He eats more chicken than any other meat, and more white pork than beef, but two or three times a week he wants to know if steak is for dinner. “Give that boy a steak!” is always my father’s response when my nephew asks if steak is for dinner (and he had steak for dinner three times last week, grilled outdoors).
Every afternoon last week, after his nap, he wanted to eat watermelon. For some reason, he has developed a special fondness for watermelon this summer. We had plenty of watermelons with us, and we accommodated him by cutting open a fresh watermelon each afternoon when he woke from his nap.
The minute he gets up every morning, he is ready to eat his breakfast. He wants cereal immediately, followed by some kind of fruit in cream (bananas, strawberries, peaches). After his cereal and fruit, he plays with his toys in the kitchen while his “real breakfast” is prepared, which on weekdays most often consists of scrambled eggs, bacon, some kind of breakfast potato, toast, orange juice and cranberry juice. On Saturday mornings, he is accustomed to ham-and-cheese omelets. On Sunday mornings, he is accustomed to pancakes and sausages.
Because he and my niece rise early (they generally wake up between 6:45 and 7:00 a.m.), my middle brother and Josh and I would be the first ones up each morning, ready to take care of them and ready to prepare their breakfasts. We had them to ourselves for the first hour or so of each day, and we cherished that time.
The week flew by in a flash—and, at the end of the week, Josh and I were rested and renewed.
We had four laptops with us, all set up on the deck, so that everyone could keep up with whatever endeavors they desired from the outside world. In past years, we had taken a single laptop to the lake, but this year we went hog-wild, going all-out on the technology front.
My brothers kept close tabs on markets, mostly, and my sister-in-law kept in close contact with her parents, who will visit Minneapolis next month. It will be the first time her parents will see their new granddaughter.
My parents kept up with the news online, while the dog perused the most recent scientific journals on the subject of cloning (a subject about which he is particularly unsettled).
It was a great week.
It’s good to be home.
The next five weeks will be glorious.
Josh and I, staying with my parents, are mirroring the summer of 2006, when we spent the month of July and part of the month of August living at my parents’ house while we were in the process of locating and preparing an apartment of our own.
I hope my parents can stand having us around again.
Rental arrangements are currently being negotiated—but at least Josh and I will not be required to sign a short-term lease.
To help us out, the dog went downtown this morning to consult with his attorney. The dog hopes to be able to include Josh and me as “incidentals” pursuant to the terms of his own lease.
He has yet to receive an opinion from his attorney—but he is already complaining about the anticipated bill.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
A Source Of Wonder
The plentiful harvest of Elliott Carter’s recent output has been a source of wonder for those composers of my generation who were deeply affected in our formative years by the successive appearances—four years apart—of his three masterpieces of the 1960’s (Double Concerto, Piano Concerto, Concerto For Orchestra). That these phenomenally detailed yet immediately dramatic scores were the result of the painstaking development of a richly multi-leveled musical language—but one based on the simplest of building blocks—was evident to anyone who took the trouble to trace the evolution of that language from the Piano Sonata (1946) through the Cello Sonata (1948), the first two String Quartets (1951, 1959) and the Variations For Orchestra (1955).
Oliver Knussen (1999)
Oliver Knussen (1999)
Thursday, July 09, 2009
When The Stimulus Does Not Stimulate . . .
For persons who have studied economics, it is rather appalling to see the recent revival of interest in John Maynard Keynes, a ridiculous figure whose life work was totally—even universally—discredited more than two generations ago.
Between the mid-1960’s and the late-1970’s, Keynes’s theories were completely repudiated and his reputation left in tatters. The amazing thing was that it took over thirty years for economics scholars fully to assess and finally to dismiss Keynes’s work.
For practical purposes, the jig was already up when Richard Nixon uttered his immortal line, “We are all Keynesians now”. More than anything, Nixon’s clueless dictum signaled that Keynesian economic theories were already on their deathbeds, even if Nixon himself was too obtuse to realize it.
Whoever might have believed, as recent as five years ago, that persons who should know better might one day consider Keynesian policies a sensible course for this nation to pursue?
Of course, persons who now are calling for Keynesian policies are ideologues, and idiots, but that does not make reading Keynesian hogwash any less jarring.
It is ironic—but somehow fitting—that lower classes do all the suffering when Keynesian policies are implemented. As my father gleefully says, “If the lower classes want Keynesian policies, then by all means let’s give them Keynesian policies!”
Of course, everyone knows how Keynesian policies work out in the end: the lower classes lose their jobs, and credit, and homes, and everything else. We have, after all, been through this before.
The Austrian School Of Economics had Keynes’s number from day one—and was always quick to point out that the suffering under an application of Keynesian theories was destined to fall exclusively upon the lower classes.
From the early 1930’s, The Austrian School began issuing missives from Vienna, citing innumerable and fundamental fallacies in Keynes’s work and predicting the inevitable and disastrous results of Keynesian policies. The Austrian School was an insufferable thorn in Keynes’s side.
Alas, by the time of the Anschluss in 1938, The Austrian School had been dispersed, a victim first of anti-Semitism in the Europe of the 1930’s and later a victim of Hitler’s takeover of Austria.
Between 1933 and 1938, most economists from The Austrian School came straight to the U.S., but a few landed first in Britain, emigrating to the U.S. only after the war. This latter group was appalled at The British School Of Economics, totally in thrall at the time to the various insanities of Keynes. The Austrians could not tolerate for any length of time the lack of academic freedom in Oxford, Cambridge and the LSE, where Keynesian dogma was the only line of thought allowed. They were to seek greener pastures as soon as circumstances allowed.
Thank God these giants came to the U.S.
It is always amusing to read decades-old assessments of Keynes by The Austrian School. The Austrian School had fully demolished Keynes by the end of the 1930’s, before The Austrian School was even dispersed. However, it was not until the mid-1950’s that The Austrian School gained influence in the world of American academia and began the process of rendering Keynes moot to the world at large, first in colleges and universities and, over the following twenty years, in the worlds of business and politics.
The odious Richard Nixon was probably the last person on earth to grasp that Keynes’s theories were dead. Keynes had created nothing but one more insane ideology emanating from that insane decade of insane ideologies, the 1930’s—but an insane ideology that, unlike Fascism, did not die with the end of World War II. Keynesianism took somewhat longer to kill.
And now we witness the attempted resurrection of Keynes’s "evil and vulgar" doctrines.
It’s time to call in the Austrians.
Below are some delicious quotes from The Austrian School on Keynes.
The words are not so clumsy in the original German as they are in English.
________________________________________________
A dictum of Lord Keynes: In the long run we are all dead. I do not question the truth of this statement; I even consider it as the only correct declaration of the neo-British Cambridge school.
For what many people have admiringly called Keynes's brilliance of style and mastery of language were, in fact, cheap rhetorical tricks.
Keynes did not teach us how to perform the miracle of turning a stone into bread, but the not-at-all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn.
What he really did was to write an apology for the prevailing policies of governments.
The essence of Keynesianism is its complete failure to conceive the roles that saving and capital accumulation play in the improvement of economic conditions.
In old-fashioned language, Keynes proposed cheating the workers.
Keynes did not add any new idea to the body of inflationist fallacies, a thousand times refuted by economists. He merely knew how to cloak the plea for inflation and credit expansion in the sophisticated terminology of mathematical economics.
The fallacies implied in the Keynesian full-employment doctrine are, in new attire, essentially the same errors which [Adam] Smith and [Jean Baptiste] Say long since demolished.
________________________________________________
This is all going to end very, very badly—but at least the current occupant of the White House, if nothing else, is busily paving the way for the next Ronald Reagan.
There is, as always, a silver lining.
Between the mid-1960’s and the late-1970’s, Keynes’s theories were completely repudiated and his reputation left in tatters. The amazing thing was that it took over thirty years for economics scholars fully to assess and finally to dismiss Keynes’s work.
For practical purposes, the jig was already up when Richard Nixon uttered his immortal line, “We are all Keynesians now”. More than anything, Nixon’s clueless dictum signaled that Keynesian economic theories were already on their deathbeds, even if Nixon himself was too obtuse to realize it.
Whoever might have believed, as recent as five years ago, that persons who should know better might one day consider Keynesian policies a sensible course for this nation to pursue?
Of course, persons who now are calling for Keynesian policies are ideologues, and idiots, but that does not make reading Keynesian hogwash any less jarring.
It is ironic—but somehow fitting—that lower classes do all the suffering when Keynesian policies are implemented. As my father gleefully says, “If the lower classes want Keynesian policies, then by all means let’s give them Keynesian policies!”
Of course, everyone knows how Keynesian policies work out in the end: the lower classes lose their jobs, and credit, and homes, and everything else. We have, after all, been through this before.
The Austrian School Of Economics had Keynes’s number from day one—and was always quick to point out that the suffering under an application of Keynesian theories was destined to fall exclusively upon the lower classes.
From the early 1930’s, The Austrian School began issuing missives from Vienna, citing innumerable and fundamental fallacies in Keynes’s work and predicting the inevitable and disastrous results of Keynesian policies. The Austrian School was an insufferable thorn in Keynes’s side.
Alas, by the time of the Anschluss in 1938, The Austrian School had been dispersed, a victim first of anti-Semitism in the Europe of the 1930’s and later a victim of Hitler’s takeover of Austria.
Between 1933 and 1938, most economists from The Austrian School came straight to the U.S., but a few landed first in Britain, emigrating to the U.S. only after the war. This latter group was appalled at The British School Of Economics, totally in thrall at the time to the various insanities of Keynes. The Austrians could not tolerate for any length of time the lack of academic freedom in Oxford, Cambridge and the LSE, where Keynesian dogma was the only line of thought allowed. They were to seek greener pastures as soon as circumstances allowed.
Thank God these giants came to the U.S.
It is always amusing to read decades-old assessments of Keynes by The Austrian School. The Austrian School had fully demolished Keynes by the end of the 1930’s, before The Austrian School was even dispersed. However, it was not until the mid-1950’s that The Austrian School gained influence in the world of American academia and began the process of rendering Keynes moot to the world at large, first in colleges and universities and, over the following twenty years, in the worlds of business and politics.
The odious Richard Nixon was probably the last person on earth to grasp that Keynes’s theories were dead. Keynes had created nothing but one more insane ideology emanating from that insane decade of insane ideologies, the 1930’s—but an insane ideology that, unlike Fascism, did not die with the end of World War II. Keynesianism took somewhat longer to kill.
And now we witness the attempted resurrection of Keynes’s "evil and vulgar" doctrines.
It’s time to call in the Austrians.
Below are some delicious quotes from The Austrian School on Keynes.
The words are not so clumsy in the original German as they are in English.
________________________________________________
A dictum of Lord Keynes: In the long run we are all dead. I do not question the truth of this statement; I even consider it as the only correct declaration of the neo-British Cambridge school.
For what many people have admiringly called Keynes's brilliance of style and mastery of language were, in fact, cheap rhetorical tricks.
Keynes did not teach us how to perform the miracle of turning a stone into bread, but the not-at-all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn.
What he really did was to write an apology for the prevailing policies of governments.
The essence of Keynesianism is its complete failure to conceive the roles that saving and capital accumulation play in the improvement of economic conditions.
In old-fashioned language, Keynes proposed cheating the workers.
Keynes did not add any new idea to the body of inflationist fallacies, a thousand times refuted by economists. He merely knew how to cloak the plea for inflation and credit expansion in the sophisticated terminology of mathematical economics.
The fallacies implied in the Keynesian full-employment doctrine are, in new attire, essentially the same errors which [Adam] Smith and [Jean Baptiste] Say long since demolished.
________________________________________________
This is all going to end very, very badly—but at least the current occupant of the White House, if nothing else, is busily paving the way for the next Ronald Reagan.
There is, as always, a silver lining.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Weekend In Washington
Last weekend, Joshua and I flew down to Washington to join my parents for a two-day getaway. It was only the second time Josh and I had been to Washington since our graduations three years ago.
The purpose of the trip was to give my mother a special weekend over the summer months, as my parents will not take a trip this summer.
We all flew into Ronald Reagan Airport, and we stayed in nearby Crystal City. This made things convenient for everyone. All weekend, we used the excellent Washington subway, still the best and most beautiful subway system anywhere.
On Friday night, we attended a performance of the Royal Ballet, which I have already addressed.
On Saturday, we devoted the entire day to examining American art at three Washington museums, all within walking distance of one another.
A friend joined us for a Saturday morning breakfast at Old Ebbitt Grill, an historic restaurant my father especially likes. After breakfast, we began our day at the nearby Corcoran Gallery. We visited two exhibitions of paintings from the Corcoran’s permanent collection, “American Paintings From The Collection” and “Nature As Nation: 19th-Century American Landscapes”.
From the Corcoran, we walked one block to The Renwick Gallery to view the new salon installation of American paintings.
From The Renwick, we walked to The Smithsonian Museum Of American Art to view the exhibition, “1934: A New Deal For Artists”, a collection of WPA art that turned out to be very similar to a WPA exhibition Josh and I had attended last summer at Minneapolis’s Weisman Art Museum.
The WPA exhibition was very small, and took us no time at all. We spent the remainder of the afternoon exploring The Smithsonian Museum Of American Art’s permanent collection.
None of the Saturday exhibitions was anything to write home about, but we had a very pleasing day. We had a lot of fun simply ambling, looking and discussing. My mother always had something interesting to say about the various artworks we viewed, even the most atrocious ones, and we were all absorbed, digesting what she had to say.
Several of the paintings in the WPA exhibition had originated in Minnesota, a fact we found interesting. Further, right next to the WPA exhibition was an installation of sculpture by Paul Manship, a 20th-Century sculptor from Saint Paul. We had not known about the Manship installation prior to our visit, as it is not even mentioned on the museum’s website. We walked through the installation and were happy to have seen it.
After an early dinner, we attended a performance of Noel Coward’s 1932 play, “Design For Living”, at nearby Shakespeare Theatre. The play managed—just—to hold our attention for three hours. The program notes included a claim by director Michael Kahn that the play was “profound”. The play was as profound as Kahn’s commencement address at American University in Spring 2006, a commencement address we all endured as part of Josh’s extended graduation ceremonies, spread over two full days. I haven’t a clue what Kahn said that day—but then I hadn’t a clue what he said five minutes after he finished speaking.
On Sunday, we ate breakfast at our hotel. After breakfast, we took the subway to The Smithsonian Air And Space Museum, where we killed a very pleasant hour while waiting for The National Gallery Of Art to open for the day.
We viewed two exhibitions at The National Gallery, both emanating from Spain: “Luis Melendez: Master Of The Spanish Still Life” and “The Art Of Power: Royal Armor And Portraits From Imperial Spain”. For the latter exhibition, we were present on opening day. Both exhibitions were of manageable size, and I am glad we had the opportunity to view them.
The Melendez exhibition will travel to Los Angeles later this year and to Boston next year, but the “Royal Armor And Portraits” exhibition was a National Gallery exclusive.
As soon as we had seen the two exhibitions, we took a cab to Lincoln Theatre, temporary home of Washington’s Arena Stage, for the matinee performance of “Looped”, a new play by Matthew Lombardo about Tallulah Bankhead. The play, set in 1965, as Bankhead neared the end of her life, was utter camp, rotten and vulgar. The afternoon was somewhat redeemed by the actress portraying Bankhead, Valerie Harper, who was funny and wicked. The production of “Looped” was sponsored by, but was not a presentation of, Arena Stage.
After the play, we went back to our hotel, retrieved our luggage, and headed back to the airport. We had ninety minutes to kill before our flights, and we sat and had coffee and sandwiches before Josh and I had to catch our plane to Boston and my parents had to catch their plane to Minneapolis.
It was a short weekend, but we were able to see everything we wanted, and we had a stimulating time.
My mother enjoyed the weekend very, very much.
The weekend served its purpose well.
The purpose of the trip was to give my mother a special weekend over the summer months, as my parents will not take a trip this summer.
We all flew into Ronald Reagan Airport, and we stayed in nearby Crystal City. This made things convenient for everyone. All weekend, we used the excellent Washington subway, still the best and most beautiful subway system anywhere.
On Friday night, we attended a performance of the Royal Ballet, which I have already addressed.
On Saturday, we devoted the entire day to examining American art at three Washington museums, all within walking distance of one another.
A friend joined us for a Saturday morning breakfast at Old Ebbitt Grill, an historic restaurant my father especially likes. After breakfast, we began our day at the nearby Corcoran Gallery. We visited two exhibitions of paintings from the Corcoran’s permanent collection, “American Paintings From The Collection” and “Nature As Nation: 19th-Century American Landscapes”.
From the Corcoran, we walked one block to The Renwick Gallery to view the new salon installation of American paintings.
From The Renwick, we walked to The Smithsonian Museum Of American Art to view the exhibition, “1934: A New Deal For Artists”, a collection of WPA art that turned out to be very similar to a WPA exhibition Josh and I had attended last summer at Minneapolis’s Weisman Art Museum.
The WPA exhibition was very small, and took us no time at all. We spent the remainder of the afternoon exploring The Smithsonian Museum Of American Art’s permanent collection.
None of the Saturday exhibitions was anything to write home about, but we had a very pleasing day. We had a lot of fun simply ambling, looking and discussing. My mother always had something interesting to say about the various artworks we viewed, even the most atrocious ones, and we were all absorbed, digesting what she had to say.
Several of the paintings in the WPA exhibition had originated in Minnesota, a fact we found interesting. Further, right next to the WPA exhibition was an installation of sculpture by Paul Manship, a 20th-Century sculptor from Saint Paul. We had not known about the Manship installation prior to our visit, as it is not even mentioned on the museum’s website. We walked through the installation and were happy to have seen it.
After an early dinner, we attended a performance of Noel Coward’s 1932 play, “Design For Living”, at nearby Shakespeare Theatre. The play managed—just—to hold our attention for three hours. The program notes included a claim by director Michael Kahn that the play was “profound”. The play was as profound as Kahn’s commencement address at American University in Spring 2006, a commencement address we all endured as part of Josh’s extended graduation ceremonies, spread over two full days. I haven’t a clue what Kahn said that day—but then I hadn’t a clue what he said five minutes after he finished speaking.
On Sunday, we ate breakfast at our hotel. After breakfast, we took the subway to The Smithsonian Air And Space Museum, where we killed a very pleasant hour while waiting for The National Gallery Of Art to open for the day.
We viewed two exhibitions at The National Gallery, both emanating from Spain: “Luis Melendez: Master Of The Spanish Still Life” and “The Art Of Power: Royal Armor And Portraits From Imperial Spain”. For the latter exhibition, we were present on opening day. Both exhibitions were of manageable size, and I am glad we had the opportunity to view them.
The Melendez exhibition will travel to Los Angeles later this year and to Boston next year, but the “Royal Armor And Portraits” exhibition was a National Gallery exclusive.
As soon as we had seen the two exhibitions, we took a cab to Lincoln Theatre, temporary home of Washington’s Arena Stage, for the matinee performance of “Looped”, a new play by Matthew Lombardo about Tallulah Bankhead. The play, set in 1965, as Bankhead neared the end of her life, was utter camp, rotten and vulgar. The afternoon was somewhat redeemed by the actress portraying Bankhead, Valerie Harper, who was funny and wicked. The production of “Looped” was sponsored by, but was not a presentation of, Arena Stage.
After the play, we went back to our hotel, retrieved our luggage, and headed back to the airport. We had ninety minutes to kill before our flights, and we sat and had coffee and sandwiches before Josh and I had to catch our plane to Boston and my parents had to catch their plane to Minneapolis.
It was a short weekend, but we were able to see everything we wanted, and we had a stimulating time.
My mother enjoyed the weekend very, very much.
The weekend served its purpose well.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
To Mark The Day
Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)
1876
National Gallery Of Art, Washington
Oil On Canvas
24 3/16 Inches By 38 3/16 Inches
Thursday, July 02, 2009
The Royal Ballet
For those who are adherents of the Balanchine aesthetic of dance, performances of Britain’s Royal Ballet are bound to be disappointing.
To begin, and of greatest importance, technical standards at the Royal Ballet are not high. Royal Ballet dancers lack the speed, strength, musicality and sheer virtuosity of American dancers. What passes for dancing on the stage of The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, would never fly at New York City Ballet or American Ballet Theatre.
Further, Royal Ballet dancers remain guilty of the numerous clichés thrown at them over the years, clichés suggesting that Royal Ballet dancers stress “personality” over technique. “Actors in tights”, “they dance with their eyebrows” and “what they lack in muscle tone, they compensate with makeup” are the most common dismissals directed at Royal Ballet dancers. There remains a kernel of truth in all of these clichés, since such unfortunate tendencies continue to plague the company.
Moreover, the Royal Ballet seldom offers much of pure dance interest. Instead of dance, the Royal Ballet offers what must be called pageant, or at least ATTEMPTED pageant (most Royal Ballet offerings do not succeed as pageant any more than they succeed as dance). As a general rule, Royal Ballet dancers and productions are inert, ossified—and hideously overdressed and overstuffed.
All of these tendencies at their worst were on display in the Royal Ballet’s presentation of Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon”, which Josh and I and my parents attended at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington last Friday night.
MacMillan created his full-length “Manon” in 1974, while he was Director of the Royal Ballet. One of the lamest ballets ever created, “Manon” was the major legacy of the MacMillan era (1970-1977). More than any other MacMillan work, “Manon” marked the death knell of English Classicism and signaled the end of Frederick Ashton’s dominance over the once-great company.
“Manon” also heralded the beginning of the Royal Ballet’s gruesome decline, a decline that has continued, with a pause now and again to attempt to recapture the Ashton magic, for more than thirty-five years. The company has yet to recover from the disastrous MacMillan epoch.
By the end of the MacMillan era, the Royal Ballet was no longer able to dance the Classical repertory or the Ashton repertory with style and conviction. The company’s focus—and capabilities—had shifted toward mastering MacMillan’s own ballets, acutely bad 1970’s versions of German Expressionism in dance.
Things got worse under the directorship of the clueless Norman Morrice (1977-1986), whose background was in modern dance. At the time of the Morrice appointment, it was hoped that Morrice would be able to identify promising new choreographers and engage them for the company. Morrice’s eye for talent-spotting, however, was blind. He was never able to identify new talent—and, more alarmingly, was never able to acquire a satisfactory grasp of the Classical repertory. Mercifully, Morrice’s unhappy directorship was cut short, after which he completely disappeared from view. At the time of his death early last year, Morrice was a forgotten figure—and his tenure at the Royal Ballet had been largely forgotten, too.
Anthony Dowell, a former Royal Ballet dancer steeped in the ballets of Ashton, was appointed to succeed Morrice. Dowell’s assignment was to return the Royal Ballet to its Classical/Ashton roots, but Dowell’s long tenure (1986-2001) was only a measured success, if that. Renewed attention was paid to Ashton, but important new works and important new dancers did not materialize, and the company’s Classical repertory remained in listless shape. The Dowell era ended up being a caretaker regime that went on far too long.
An irrelevant Ross Stretton interlude (2001-2002) yielded little more than reams of malicious newspaper gossip.
Since 2002, the Royal Ballet has been in the hands of another caretaker, Monica Mason, also a former Royal Ballet dancer. Mason was handed the reins with the remit to preserve both the Ashton and the MacMillan repertories—a task impossible on its face, as a company may choose to master Classicism or Expressionism, but not both—and to raise standards in the Classical repertory.
The result, inevitably, is a company that is neither fish nor fowl, destined to offer weak performances of every corner of the repertory. The Ashton repertory suffers, the MacMillan repertory suffers, the Classical repertory suffers. This is the perfect formula for enshrining mediocrity into stone.
And the Royal Ballet last week was undoubtedly mediocre—if it even arose to that low standard. Other than the two principals we saw, Alina Cojocaru (from Romania) and Johan Kobborg (from Denmark), the company was in dreadful shape. I was dumbfounded at the shoddiness of the dancing on the stage.
“Manon” is considered to be a classic in London, but the ballet has always pretty much been sniffed at if not outright dismissed by American dance observers. Last week, the Washington Post reviewer called the ballet “garbage”, and she was not far wrong (although I would have substituted the word “kitsch” for “garbage”). MacMillan’s work is not held in high regard in the U.S., and this is because American audiences exposed to a steady stream of Balanchine cannot be expected take MacMillan’s work seriously.
MacMillan was not a creative, imaginative choreographer in the mold of a Balanchine. His steps have no interest, and no continuity. He was unable to fashion a sequence of phrases and movements into an integrated whole. MacMillan simply had no talent for choreography, as countless experts—among them Balanchine—have been quick to point out.
MacMillan was also not a musical choreographer. He was unable to CHOOSE music wisely—he did not choose good music, and he did not choose “danceable” music—and he was unable to USE music wisely. For MacMillan, music was mere background. He did not choreograph TO or AGAINST the music—instead, the interplay between music and dance was loose, even incidental. In a MacMillan ballet, there is no essential, unbreakable bond between the music and the dance as there is in the work of a great choreographer.
The music for “Manon” proves the point. The score for “Manon” is an ineffective hodgepodge of pieces by Jules Massenet, none borrowed from Massenet’s opera of the same name. The score neither sustains nor supports the story that unfolds on the stage. Further, as might be expected, the score lacks coherency. I cannot imagine a capable choreographer even agreeing to work with such piffle.
However, a bad musical score hardly proves fatal for “Manon” because the ballet itself is the problem. There is not a single moment of choreographic interest.
In fact, I’m not even sure that “Manon” is a ballet.
It is, mostly, a story told in “movement”. Its foundation is not Classical ballet, but the provincial British theatrical. Specifically, its genesis is the world of British pantomime, here transferred to the ballet stage. British pantomime is not now and has never been exportable, and the pantomine-based “Manon” truly should never have been permitted to leave the confines of the British Isles. The rest of the world is very much better off without it.
Why did the Royal Ballet drag this meretricious nonsense halfway around the world for display to a Washington audience?
I wish I knew the answer to that question, because “Manon” was a woeful artistic blunder. (It was a commercial blunder as well—performances in Washington, the only stop on the Royal Ballet’s 2009 U.S. tour, were sparsely attended, even with heavy papering of the Kennedy Center Opera House—and I understand that the Kennedy Center took an ugly financial bath on the engagement.)
Last week’s “Manon” was the second time I have seen the ballet. My middle brother and I saw the Royal Ballet perform “Manon” at Covent Garden in, I think, 2002 (but it may have been 2001 or 2003). I hope never to see the silly thing again.
Ironically, I enjoyed last week’s performance immensely, but this was solely because I focused all my attention on Miss Cojocaru, who gave what must be called a star’s performance.
And Miss Cojocaru is indeed a star. She has riveting stage presence. She can bring anything she dances fully to life. She even managed to give the impression that she believed passionately in the ballet, which had to be quite a trick, as the role of Manon is an inherently ungrateful one, and completely unworthy of Miss Cojocaru’s vast talents.
My parents were delighted to see the Royal Ballet again, but they were not delighted to see “Manon”. Alas, “Manon” was the only ballet on the Royal Ballet bill all last weekend, so we had no choice but to see “Manon” if we wanted to see the Royal Ballet. At least we had our pick of four different casts, and were able to obtain tickets for the finest of the four casts.
My parents had seen “Manon” before, too, in 1979 in Chicago, and all they remembered from that long-ago “Manon” performance was that the ballet itself had been a cipher, the score dreadful, and the physical production sumptuous. Having now seen the ballet a second time, my parents are sticking with their original assessment (although they certainly appreciated Miss Cojocaru).
Josh was diffident about “Manon”. He, too, thought Miss Cojocaru was the best thing about the performance, but he also enjoyed—and laughed at—the shameless mugging of the supporting cast, derived from the silent screen.
Josh was not the only member of the audience smirking and snickering at the silly goings-on onstage. There was more than a little giggling during the performance.
We found the Washington audience’s reaction to “Manon” to be very interesting.
Applause was polite but nowise enthusiastic, not even for Miss Cojocaru. Applause died out even before the large cast managed to take a full round of bows, which is very, very uncommon. The Kennedy Center Opera House emptied within three minutes of the house lights coming up. A fire alarm could not have cleared the house so quickly.
We overheard persons talking at intermission and after the performance, and most persons were comparing the Royal Ballet with the Bolshoi Ballet, which had appeared in Washington the previous week.
Of course, the Bolshoi Ballet continues to maintain very high technical standards while the Royal Ballet does not, and the chitchat we overheard was mostly shock and dismay about the current shabby state of the Royal Ballet. The company is in a veritable state of crisis.
I have always welcomed the chance to see the Royal Ballet. I’m glad I saw the Royal Ballet again, and I’m glad my parents saw the Royal Ballet again, and I’m glad Josh had his first opportunity to see the Royal Ballet.
However, the Royal Ballet’s Washington appearance was altogether embarrassing. The company is in dreadful shape.
I am going to write further about the Royal Ballet.
I am going to write about the Royal Ballet next week, while we are all up at the lake. I have an extensive history of following the Royal Ballet, my parents have an extensive history of following the Royal Ballet, and my sister-in-law has an extensive history of following the Royal Ballet (she, of course, grew up on the Royal Ballet), and I want to record my and their memories of past performances we have attended in different cities at different times.
I will also tell the story of the time my parents met Edris Stannus. (I resolutely refuse to call that foolish woman by the ridiculous public name she chose for herself. The woman was the daughter of an Irish glassmaker. She had no connection to the House Of Valois and she was not a descendant of the Capetian Dynasty.)
________________________________________________
“To me, the stage is alive only when there are ideas on it. And there are no ideas in ballet.”—British Stage Director Peter Hall
A sentiment applicable to the ballets of Kenneth MacMillan, Mr. Hall, but surely not to the ballets of George Balanchine.
To begin, and of greatest importance, technical standards at the Royal Ballet are not high. Royal Ballet dancers lack the speed, strength, musicality and sheer virtuosity of American dancers. What passes for dancing on the stage of The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, would never fly at New York City Ballet or American Ballet Theatre.
Further, Royal Ballet dancers remain guilty of the numerous clichés thrown at them over the years, clichés suggesting that Royal Ballet dancers stress “personality” over technique. “Actors in tights”, “they dance with their eyebrows” and “what they lack in muscle tone, they compensate with makeup” are the most common dismissals directed at Royal Ballet dancers. There remains a kernel of truth in all of these clichés, since such unfortunate tendencies continue to plague the company.
Moreover, the Royal Ballet seldom offers much of pure dance interest. Instead of dance, the Royal Ballet offers what must be called pageant, or at least ATTEMPTED pageant (most Royal Ballet offerings do not succeed as pageant any more than they succeed as dance). As a general rule, Royal Ballet dancers and productions are inert, ossified—and hideously overdressed and overstuffed.
All of these tendencies at their worst were on display in the Royal Ballet’s presentation of Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon”, which Josh and I and my parents attended at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington last Friday night.
MacMillan created his full-length “Manon” in 1974, while he was Director of the Royal Ballet. One of the lamest ballets ever created, “Manon” was the major legacy of the MacMillan era (1970-1977). More than any other MacMillan work, “Manon” marked the death knell of English Classicism and signaled the end of Frederick Ashton’s dominance over the once-great company.
“Manon” also heralded the beginning of the Royal Ballet’s gruesome decline, a decline that has continued, with a pause now and again to attempt to recapture the Ashton magic, for more than thirty-five years. The company has yet to recover from the disastrous MacMillan epoch.
By the end of the MacMillan era, the Royal Ballet was no longer able to dance the Classical repertory or the Ashton repertory with style and conviction. The company’s focus—and capabilities—had shifted toward mastering MacMillan’s own ballets, acutely bad 1970’s versions of German Expressionism in dance.
Things got worse under the directorship of the clueless Norman Morrice (1977-1986), whose background was in modern dance. At the time of the Morrice appointment, it was hoped that Morrice would be able to identify promising new choreographers and engage them for the company. Morrice’s eye for talent-spotting, however, was blind. He was never able to identify new talent—and, more alarmingly, was never able to acquire a satisfactory grasp of the Classical repertory. Mercifully, Morrice’s unhappy directorship was cut short, after which he completely disappeared from view. At the time of his death early last year, Morrice was a forgotten figure—and his tenure at the Royal Ballet had been largely forgotten, too.
Anthony Dowell, a former Royal Ballet dancer steeped in the ballets of Ashton, was appointed to succeed Morrice. Dowell’s assignment was to return the Royal Ballet to its Classical/Ashton roots, but Dowell’s long tenure (1986-2001) was only a measured success, if that. Renewed attention was paid to Ashton, but important new works and important new dancers did not materialize, and the company’s Classical repertory remained in listless shape. The Dowell era ended up being a caretaker regime that went on far too long.
An irrelevant Ross Stretton interlude (2001-2002) yielded little more than reams of malicious newspaper gossip.
Since 2002, the Royal Ballet has been in the hands of another caretaker, Monica Mason, also a former Royal Ballet dancer. Mason was handed the reins with the remit to preserve both the Ashton and the MacMillan repertories—a task impossible on its face, as a company may choose to master Classicism or Expressionism, but not both—and to raise standards in the Classical repertory.
The result, inevitably, is a company that is neither fish nor fowl, destined to offer weak performances of every corner of the repertory. The Ashton repertory suffers, the MacMillan repertory suffers, the Classical repertory suffers. This is the perfect formula for enshrining mediocrity into stone.
And the Royal Ballet last week was undoubtedly mediocre—if it even arose to that low standard. Other than the two principals we saw, Alina Cojocaru (from Romania) and Johan Kobborg (from Denmark), the company was in dreadful shape. I was dumbfounded at the shoddiness of the dancing on the stage.
“Manon” is considered to be a classic in London, but the ballet has always pretty much been sniffed at if not outright dismissed by American dance observers. Last week, the Washington Post reviewer called the ballet “garbage”, and she was not far wrong (although I would have substituted the word “kitsch” for “garbage”). MacMillan’s work is not held in high regard in the U.S., and this is because American audiences exposed to a steady stream of Balanchine cannot be expected take MacMillan’s work seriously.
MacMillan was not a creative, imaginative choreographer in the mold of a Balanchine. His steps have no interest, and no continuity. He was unable to fashion a sequence of phrases and movements into an integrated whole. MacMillan simply had no talent for choreography, as countless experts—among them Balanchine—have been quick to point out.
MacMillan was also not a musical choreographer. He was unable to CHOOSE music wisely—he did not choose good music, and he did not choose “danceable” music—and he was unable to USE music wisely. For MacMillan, music was mere background. He did not choreograph TO or AGAINST the music—instead, the interplay between music and dance was loose, even incidental. In a MacMillan ballet, there is no essential, unbreakable bond between the music and the dance as there is in the work of a great choreographer.
The music for “Manon” proves the point. The score for “Manon” is an ineffective hodgepodge of pieces by Jules Massenet, none borrowed from Massenet’s opera of the same name. The score neither sustains nor supports the story that unfolds on the stage. Further, as might be expected, the score lacks coherency. I cannot imagine a capable choreographer even agreeing to work with such piffle.
However, a bad musical score hardly proves fatal for “Manon” because the ballet itself is the problem. There is not a single moment of choreographic interest.
In fact, I’m not even sure that “Manon” is a ballet.
It is, mostly, a story told in “movement”. Its foundation is not Classical ballet, but the provincial British theatrical. Specifically, its genesis is the world of British pantomime, here transferred to the ballet stage. British pantomime is not now and has never been exportable, and the pantomine-based “Manon” truly should never have been permitted to leave the confines of the British Isles. The rest of the world is very much better off without it.
Why did the Royal Ballet drag this meretricious nonsense halfway around the world for display to a Washington audience?
I wish I knew the answer to that question, because “Manon” was a woeful artistic blunder. (It was a commercial blunder as well—performances in Washington, the only stop on the Royal Ballet’s 2009 U.S. tour, were sparsely attended, even with heavy papering of the Kennedy Center Opera House—and I understand that the Kennedy Center took an ugly financial bath on the engagement.)
Last week’s “Manon” was the second time I have seen the ballet. My middle brother and I saw the Royal Ballet perform “Manon” at Covent Garden in, I think, 2002 (but it may have been 2001 or 2003). I hope never to see the silly thing again.
Ironically, I enjoyed last week’s performance immensely, but this was solely because I focused all my attention on Miss Cojocaru, who gave what must be called a star’s performance.
And Miss Cojocaru is indeed a star. She has riveting stage presence. She can bring anything she dances fully to life. She even managed to give the impression that she believed passionately in the ballet, which had to be quite a trick, as the role of Manon is an inherently ungrateful one, and completely unworthy of Miss Cojocaru’s vast talents.
My parents were delighted to see the Royal Ballet again, but they were not delighted to see “Manon”. Alas, “Manon” was the only ballet on the Royal Ballet bill all last weekend, so we had no choice but to see “Manon” if we wanted to see the Royal Ballet. At least we had our pick of four different casts, and were able to obtain tickets for the finest of the four casts.
My parents had seen “Manon” before, too, in 1979 in Chicago, and all they remembered from that long-ago “Manon” performance was that the ballet itself had been a cipher, the score dreadful, and the physical production sumptuous. Having now seen the ballet a second time, my parents are sticking with their original assessment (although they certainly appreciated Miss Cojocaru).
Josh was diffident about “Manon”. He, too, thought Miss Cojocaru was the best thing about the performance, but he also enjoyed—and laughed at—the shameless mugging of the supporting cast, derived from the silent screen.
Josh was not the only member of the audience smirking and snickering at the silly goings-on onstage. There was more than a little giggling during the performance.
We found the Washington audience’s reaction to “Manon” to be very interesting.
Applause was polite but nowise enthusiastic, not even for Miss Cojocaru. Applause died out even before the large cast managed to take a full round of bows, which is very, very uncommon. The Kennedy Center Opera House emptied within three minutes of the house lights coming up. A fire alarm could not have cleared the house so quickly.
We overheard persons talking at intermission and after the performance, and most persons were comparing the Royal Ballet with the Bolshoi Ballet, which had appeared in Washington the previous week.
Of course, the Bolshoi Ballet continues to maintain very high technical standards while the Royal Ballet does not, and the chitchat we overheard was mostly shock and dismay about the current shabby state of the Royal Ballet. The company is in a veritable state of crisis.
I have always welcomed the chance to see the Royal Ballet. I’m glad I saw the Royal Ballet again, and I’m glad my parents saw the Royal Ballet again, and I’m glad Josh had his first opportunity to see the Royal Ballet.
However, the Royal Ballet’s Washington appearance was altogether embarrassing. The company is in dreadful shape.
I am going to write further about the Royal Ballet.
I am going to write about the Royal Ballet next week, while we are all up at the lake. I have an extensive history of following the Royal Ballet, my parents have an extensive history of following the Royal Ballet, and my sister-in-law has an extensive history of following the Royal Ballet (she, of course, grew up on the Royal Ballet), and I want to record my and their memories of past performances we have attended in different cities at different times.
I will also tell the story of the time my parents met Edris Stannus. (I resolutely refuse to call that foolish woman by the ridiculous public name she chose for herself. The woman was the daughter of an Irish glassmaker. She had no connection to the House Of Valois and she was not a descendant of the Capetian Dynasty.)
________________________________________________
“To me, the stage is alive only when there are ideas on it. And there are no ideas in ballet.”—British Stage Director Peter Hall
A sentiment applicable to the ballets of Kenneth MacMillan, Mr. Hall, but surely not to the ballets of George Balanchine.
Monday, June 29, 2009
On The Verge Of Panic
On Friday afternoon of last week, Joshua and I flew down to Washington for the weekend.
We joined my parents for a busy 48 hours in Washington, 48 hours into which we managed to squeeze a performance of the Royal Ballet (the main point of our Washington visit), two plays, and several art exhibitions.
We were out and about from early morning until late at night all weekend, and we had a lovely time.
On Friday morning of this week, Josh and I will rise at 3:00 a.m. and take a cab to the airport to catch an early flight home. If everything proceeds according to schedule, Josh and I should be in Minneapolis no later than 8:15 a.m. Minneapolis time.
My middle brother will pick Josh and me up at the airport and take us home. As soon as we arrive home, we plan to have a big breakfast, after which we will all immediately head up to the lake for a week of quiet and tranquility. We hope to arrive at the lake no later than 12:00 Noon.
Each year, we all keenly look forward to our week at the lake, yet this year we are more eager than ever for the week to get under way, what with both a niece and a nephew to play with and care for this year.
It should be great fun.
Meanwhile, I am intently completing assignments at work, all of which must be finished no later than Thursday afternoon—or I shall not be able to go away for six weeks.
I am on the verge of panic.
Josh has been busy preparing our things for the summer, determining what we will take with us and what we will leave behind, and boxing up a few things we no longer need in Boston—“detritus we don’t have room for” in Josh’s words—and shipping them home.
I hope he held on to our flatware.
We joined my parents for a busy 48 hours in Washington, 48 hours into which we managed to squeeze a performance of the Royal Ballet (the main point of our Washington visit), two plays, and several art exhibitions.
We were out and about from early morning until late at night all weekend, and we had a lovely time.
On Friday morning of this week, Josh and I will rise at 3:00 a.m. and take a cab to the airport to catch an early flight home. If everything proceeds according to schedule, Josh and I should be in Minneapolis no later than 8:15 a.m. Minneapolis time.
My middle brother will pick Josh and me up at the airport and take us home. As soon as we arrive home, we plan to have a big breakfast, after which we will all immediately head up to the lake for a week of quiet and tranquility. We hope to arrive at the lake no later than 12:00 Noon.
Each year, we all keenly look forward to our week at the lake, yet this year we are more eager than ever for the week to get under way, what with both a niece and a nephew to play with and care for this year.
It should be great fun.
Meanwhile, I am intently completing assignments at work, all of which must be finished no later than Thursday afternoon—or I shall not be able to go away for six weeks.
I am on the verge of panic.
Josh has been busy preparing our things for the summer, determining what we will take with us and what we will leave behind, and boxing up a few things we no longer need in Boston—“detritus we don’t have room for” in Josh’s words—and shipping them home.
I hope he held on to our flatware.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Still Not Up To Much
Joshua and I still are not up to much.
I have been busy at work, trying to complete some projects, and Josh has been taking it easy and enjoying his free time.
Last night we attended a party at a colleague’s home, but otherwise we have done nothing new or interesting.
Next weekend we travel to Washington to attend a performance of the Royal Ballet and to see a few art exhibitions.
The following weekend we head for home.
Summer is here.
I have been busy at work, trying to complete some projects, and Josh has been taking it easy and enjoying his free time.
Last night we attended a party at a colleague’s home, but otherwise we have done nothing new or interesting.
Next weekend we travel to Washington to attend a performance of the Royal Ballet and to see a few art exhibitions.
The following weekend we head for home.
Summer is here.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Handel, Beethoven, Brahms And Dohnanyi, And Janacek And Hindemith
For the last month or more, Josh and I have kept four discs in our player. The discs made for a very fine listening program, especially during Josh’s exam period, because the music was weighted more toward “objectivity” than “profundity”. “Profound” music in large doses must be avoided during weeks devoted to intense study, or so I have always believed.
Handel’s Concerti Grossi, Opus 3, performed by Tafelmusik under Jeanne Lamon, on the Sony label
Beethoven Piano Trios, performed by the Beaux Arts Trio, on the Philips label
Chamber music of Dohnanyi and Brahms transcribed for String Orchestra, performed by the NES Orchestra under Dmitry Sitkovetsky, on the Nonesuch label
Orchestral music of Janacek and Hindemith, performed by the London Symphony under Claudio Abbado, on the Decca label
Handel’s first set of Concerti Grossi (Opus 3) is not an integral set of compositions in the same sense as the latter set (Opus 6). The six concerti gathered together as Opus 3 recycle material from a variety of earlier sources—operas, anthems, orchestral works—and may have been compiled more by the original publisher than by the composer.
Each concerto has a different instrumentation. Each concerto may be classified as devolved from various German, Italian and French models. Each concerto is of different length, with the number of movements varying between two and five. There is nothing unified about the cycle—it is a diverse set of individual concertante works, nothing more, and Handel probably never intended all six works to be performed as a group. (There are multiple editions of Opus 3; in some editions, a seventh concerto is included, whose movements probably were intended for one or more of the other six concerti.)
Although the concerti were first published in 1734, when the 49-year-old Handel enjoyed great popularity in London, much of the music was probably written a quarter-century or more earlier.
Opus 3 was a great hit with the British public at the time of its initial publication. Tuneful, vivacious and often exhilarating, Opus 3 has an infectious, ear-catching appeal that remains irresistible after almost 300 years. The enormous success of Opus 3 inspired Handel to go on to write his great set of Opus 6 concerti, valued by many as the composer’s very finest instrumental compositions.
The Tafelmusik recording of Opus 3, released in 1993, is very fine. The performances have great energy and focus, which make listening a pleasure.
Tempi are very fast. In fact, tempi are so fast that the listener never has time to question whether instrumental timbres are pleasing.
On modern instruments, I prefer more moderate tempi for these works, but on period instruments the Tafelmusik tempi succeed on their own terms.
This disc is highly regarded among Handel scholars, and I can fully understand why this is so. Josh and I listened to the disc many, many times, always with pleasure.
I have never heard Tafelmusik in concert. Either the Toronto-based group has never offered a concert in a city in which I was living or visiting, or conflicts prevented me from attending their appearances. I hope to catch Tafelmusik in performance one day.
I never heard the Beaux Arts Trio in concert, either. For this I must be chastised, as I had numerous opportunities to hear the Beaux Arts Trio while I was in law school—and, for whatever reasons, I always decided not to get tickets. (The ensemble was long in residence at The Library Of Congress, only a few blocks from where I lived during my three years in Washington.)
I had always assumed that the Beaux Arts Trio would continue with another pianist once founding pianist Menahem Pressler finally retired. Pressler was the only remaining original member of the Beaux Arts Trio, the original violinist and cellist having long since retired, and I had assumed that violinist Daniel Hope and cellist Antonio Meneses would continue with a new master pianist once Pressler decided to call it a day.
My assumption was incorrect. When Pressler elected to retire last year, after fifty-three years as Beaux Arts pianist, the Beaux Arts Trio decided to retire, too. I had my chances to hear this legendary ensemble, and I failed to take advantage.
My father cannot believe my stupidity, as the Beaux Arts Trio has long been one of his most-cherished chamber ensembles. He became interested in the Beaux Arts Trio in the late 1960’s, and he heard the Beaux Arts many, many times over the years. He insists that, for at least two decades, the Beaux Arts Trio was nonpareil in music of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. I believe my father owns every disc the ensemble ever recorded.
The Philips disc of Beethoven Piano Trios is taken from a five-disc set of the complete Beethoven Piano Trios recorded between 1979 and 1983. The Beaux Arts violinist at the time was Isidore Cohen, and the Beaux Arts cellist at the time was Bernard Greenhouse. That 1979-1983 set was the second integral recording of the Beethoven Piano Trios recorded by the Beaux Arts Trio, the earlier edition having been recorded and issued in the mid-1960’s.
The disc offers three works, including the two most famous “named” trios: Number 4, Opus 11; Number 5, Opus 70 (“Ghost”); and Number 7, Opus 97 (“Archduke”).
These are cultured, urbane, aristocratic performances, very Central European in flavor and tone. The Beaux Arts Trio was always the least “American” of American chamber ensembles. A Central European sensibility permeates these Beethoven performances. Everything is measured and poised. The long line is observed, but interesting detail is captured and highlighted without ever losing the overall arc of a movement’s shape. The performances have forward momentum, but never at the expense of expression or characterization. In short, these are masterly performances, about as fine as one has a right to expect.
I have a quibble with the recording: the pianist is too forward. Whether this is the fault of the pianist or the engineers I cannot say, but the piano at times overpowers the violin and cello.
Suitably, the greatest work on the disc, the “Archduke”, receives the greatest performance. Josh and I listened to the “Archduke” over and over with the greatest of pleasure and admiration.
It was with the “Archduke” that the Beaux Arts Trio ended its final concert last September in Lucerne. That must have been a very emotional evening, both for the musicians and for the members of the audience.
The Nonesuch disc contains Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s own arrangements for String Orchestra of two chamber works: Ernst Dohnanyi’s Serenade, Opus 10, an early five-movement work for String Trio; and Brahms’s String Sextet No. 2, Opus 36. This disc, issued in 2000, is a follow-up to an earlier recording made by these same forces, the earlier recording having featured Sitkovetsky’s arrangement for String Orchestra of the “Goldberg Variations”.
I have always believed that Sitkovetsky’s arrangement of the “Goldberg Variations” was masterly. In transferring Bach’s lengthy keyboard composition to an entirely new medium, Sitkovetsky preserved the essence of the original while creating a brilliant and imaginative new work for String Orchestra, an original and independent work in its own right.
Sitkovetsky’s Dohnanyi/Brahms arrangements are not on the same high level.
The Dohnanyi is the more successful of the two arrangements. It surely was the easier arrangement to create, as Sitkovetsky merely had to flesh out Dohnanyi’s already-transparent writing for String Trio.
The Dohnanyi Serenade is a sophisticated, charming but slight work, lacking individuality and memorability. Sitkovetsky’s arrangement neither adds to nor detracts from the original. It is nice to hear this work once in a while, but it is easy to understand why the Dohnanyi Serenade has never entered the repertory.
Dohnanyi was a highly-skilled, highly-professional composer whose music never made much of a mark, during his lifetime or after, because it lacked individuality. It is music that might have been written by anyone.
Dohnanyi’s scores are completely admirable—they are polished, even learned—but no trace of a unique personality ever peeps through the pages.
Many of Dohnanyi’s works are very beautiful. I like the five-movement Symphony No. 1 very much, and I like both Violin Concertos. I appreciate the artistry of Variations On A Nursery Tune and I am even partial to his Concertino For Harp And Orchestra, which I believe to be a masterpiece. Nevertheless, Dohnanyi’s music will never reach a mainstream audience because it is so impersonal, totally lacking a unique stamp.
Sitkovetsky’s arrangement of Brahms’s Sextet No. 2 is not, I think, successful. In, fact, I cannot understand why Sitkovetsky thought the Brahms Sextet might benefit from an arrangement for String Orchestra in the first place.
The string writing in Brahms’s original is already dense. Given its denseness, there is no point in expanding the number of string players—added richness will go hand-in-hand with added opaqueness—nor is there much an arranger can do to lighten the textures short of rewriting the composition and turning Brahms’s voicings into hash.
Sitkovetsky’s is a very conservative arrangement, and for that perhaps one should be grateful. However, it adds nothing to Brahms’s original other than offering a larger body of sound.
As a general rule, Brahms’s music does not lend itself to arrangement. The music is already so perfectly-matched to the performing forces chosen by the composer that an arrangement only weakens what is already there.
The one exception to this rule is Schoenberg’s transcription for orchestra of Brahms’s early Piano Quartet No. 1, Opus 25. In that transcription, Schoenberg practically re-writes Brahms to serve his own ends. His is an aggressive, even radical, transcription. In the process, Schoenberg uses his own genius to serve the genius of Brahms—with the result that both composers are served brilliantly.
Sitkovetsky’s arrangement is not at that exalted level. Sitkovetsky’s arrangement of the Sextet No. 2 reminds me of two other unsuccessful arrangements of Brahms, Edmund Rubbra’s arrangement for orchestra of Brahms’s early piano work, Variations And Fugue On A Theme By Handel, and Luciano Berio’s arrangement for orchestra of one of Brahms’s late clarinet sonatas, the Sonata For Clarinet And Piano, Opus 120, No.1.
In all three cases, the arrangements are dutiful but not particularly imaginative and in no way enlightening. Nothing of value has been added to Brahms’s originals. Nothing new, nothing intriguing has been offered to give listeners a fresh perspective on the original compositions. In all three cases, I can only ask: what was the point?
Claudio Abbado’s 1969 recording of Janacek’s Sinfonietta and Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis On Themes Of Weber is one of the classics of the gramophone. It is the recording that made Abbado’s name outside of Italy.
This disc has been celebrated for four decades. The performances have been reissued frequently over the years, always with a new coupling. The coupling for the reissue Josh and I brought to Boston is a suite from Prokofiev’s ballet, “Le Chout”—but Josh and I skipped the Prokofiev, as it did not fit into our listening scheme.
These performances of the Janacek and the Hindemith are the finest I have ever heard. The performances are extremely brilliant, capturing a staggering level of detail, but the performances are also very subtle. The performances are so excellent that I can hardly listen to either work in another conductor’s hands.
The Hindemith is little more than an orchestral showpiece, but what a great showpiece it is. It is also one of the wittiest works ever written, and one of the most fun both to play and to hear.
Abbado obtains a level of virtuosity from the orchestra that no other conductor has ever been able to match, at least on disc. He also elicits a palpable sense of enjoyment from the players that is not duplicated on any other recording of the work.
The Janacek is a work of greater substance, and Abbado offers what I believe to be a profound performance. The performance has incredible energy and freshness, yet Abbado gives each of the five movements a very precise emotional weight, characterization and tinctura not achieved by other conductors. Compared to Abbado, every other recording of the Sinfonietta I have heard sounds like a generalized run-through.
Abbado finds things in Janacek’s score missed by other conductors. For instance, Abbado rightly sees Janacek’s supporting string figurations not as accompaniment but as musical content. At times, his analysis of the score borders on genius, most evident in the introduction to the fifth movement, where the repetitive descending string figurations are chilling, becoming part and parcel of the musical argument while adding a degree of drama and anticipation to what will soon prove to be the work’s culmination.
The whole performance shimmers, first bar to last. This is one of the great orchestral recordings of the stereo age.
In some quarters, this recording is highly controversial.
This is so for two reasons.
First, Abbado’s performance of the Janacek Sinfonietta lacks rusticity, and some observers find Abbado’s elegance and extremely sophisticated command of orchestral texture to be at odds with the composer’s intent in writing a very nationalistic, celebratory piece of music.
Second, the recording techniques used in both the Hindemith and the Janacek are not to all tastes.
The recording is multi-miked to death (there were probably more microphones present in the studio than there were instrumentalists) and engineered to death (highlighting is used to an extreme degree) and spliced to death (the many edits may be heard in the digital remastering), and some observers cannot get beyond the artificiality of the final result. Indeed, some persons insist that credit for these undeniably brilliant performances must be assigned above all to the sound engineers, and not to the musicians.
Quite obviously, these performances would have sounded vastly different if a single microphone had been suspended above the orchestra in an effort to capture a natural, unprocessed orchestral sound.
However, I have no problem with excessive engineering if the final result is as pleasing as it is here. I have always believed that the recording medium is a unique art form, quite different from the mere documentation of a live performance. I have always found the Abbado Hindemith/Janacek disc to be uncommonly enjoyable, and my opinion is not affected by how success for the enterprise must be apportioned between performers and engineers.
At the time this recording was made, Abbado was not happy at Decca and was contemplating leaving the label (in fact, he was shortly to depart for Deutsche Grammophon). Decca wanted to keep Abbado, as Decca realized what a valuable property it had on its hands, and Decca lavished every possible attention on this particular recording. Multiple sessions were used, and multiple Decca personnel were assigned to the project, a sign of the measures Decca was prepared to take to keep Abbado within its stable of conductors.
Nevertheless, despite the success of the recording, the Hindemith/Janacek pairing proved to be one of Abbado’s final projects at Decca. He was soon to seek happier ground elsewhere. This disc is the only lasting mark of Abbado’s work during his brief time with the Decca label.
Sometimes I think this forty-year-old recording is the finest recording Abbado ever made.
Abbado’s recording career has been checkered, with far more misses than hits. The only lasting recordings he made during his eighteen years at La Scala were Verdi’s “Macbeth” and “Simon Boccanegra”. His years as Principal Guest Conductor of the Chicago Symphony resulted in only one special recording, Mahler’s Symphony No. 7. Of the many, many recordings Abbado has made with the Vienna Philharmonic over the years, only Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 and Rossini’s “L'Italiana In Algeri” have proven to be durable. Abbado’s years at the helm of the London Symphony resulted in only one truly superb recording, Bizet’s “Carmen”. His recordings while Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic all met a certain high standard, but none of his Berlin Philharmonic recordings has managed to hold a claim on the public’s affection (including his pale Berlin remake of the Janacek/Hindemith pairing).
Abbado is, largely, a conductor who must be experienced live in order to be appreciated. Myself, I have never departed an Abbado concert feeling shortchanged.
However, I suspect that Abbado is not cut out to work in a recording studio. He CAN recreate a successful opera performance in the studio if he has already worked with the same artists in the theater, as he has proven several times. However, for orchestral works, I wonder whether Abbado needs the inspiration of an audience to give his best. Most of his orchestral recordings have proven to be disappointing to some degree.
Apparently Abbado can become prickly, even difficult, in the studio—and in his personal dealings with record company officials, too. He and Sony had a major falling-out over the “Boris Godunov” recording made in Berlin, with Abbado accusing Sony of being incompetent and Sony accusing Abbado of being incompetent.
In person, Abbado is apparently anything but the saintly figure portrayed by public-relations personnel. Some who have had extended dealings with Abbado over the years have raised serious concerns about his personal candor and integrity.
None of this, however, can take away from the success of the Decca recording Josh and I enjoyed.
Josh, who played trumpet all through grade school, junior high and high school, absolutely loved the disc, what with all the brilliant writing for brass on display. We must have played the disc twenty times, perhaps more, because Josh loved the music and the performances so much.
We’ll have to be sure to bring more Janacek and Hindemith discs to Boston next term.
Handel’s Concerti Grossi, Opus 3, performed by Tafelmusik under Jeanne Lamon, on the Sony label
Beethoven Piano Trios, performed by the Beaux Arts Trio, on the Philips label
Chamber music of Dohnanyi and Brahms transcribed for String Orchestra, performed by the NES Orchestra under Dmitry Sitkovetsky, on the Nonesuch label
Orchestral music of Janacek and Hindemith, performed by the London Symphony under Claudio Abbado, on the Decca label
Handel’s first set of Concerti Grossi (Opus 3) is not an integral set of compositions in the same sense as the latter set (Opus 6). The six concerti gathered together as Opus 3 recycle material from a variety of earlier sources—operas, anthems, orchestral works—and may have been compiled more by the original publisher than by the composer.
Each concerto has a different instrumentation. Each concerto may be classified as devolved from various German, Italian and French models. Each concerto is of different length, with the number of movements varying between two and five. There is nothing unified about the cycle—it is a diverse set of individual concertante works, nothing more, and Handel probably never intended all six works to be performed as a group. (There are multiple editions of Opus 3; in some editions, a seventh concerto is included, whose movements probably were intended for one or more of the other six concerti.)
Although the concerti were first published in 1734, when the 49-year-old Handel enjoyed great popularity in London, much of the music was probably written a quarter-century or more earlier.
Opus 3 was a great hit with the British public at the time of its initial publication. Tuneful, vivacious and often exhilarating, Opus 3 has an infectious, ear-catching appeal that remains irresistible after almost 300 years. The enormous success of Opus 3 inspired Handel to go on to write his great set of Opus 6 concerti, valued by many as the composer’s very finest instrumental compositions.
The Tafelmusik recording of Opus 3, released in 1993, is very fine. The performances have great energy and focus, which make listening a pleasure.
Tempi are very fast. In fact, tempi are so fast that the listener never has time to question whether instrumental timbres are pleasing.
On modern instruments, I prefer more moderate tempi for these works, but on period instruments the Tafelmusik tempi succeed on their own terms.
This disc is highly regarded among Handel scholars, and I can fully understand why this is so. Josh and I listened to the disc many, many times, always with pleasure.
I have never heard Tafelmusik in concert. Either the Toronto-based group has never offered a concert in a city in which I was living or visiting, or conflicts prevented me from attending their appearances. I hope to catch Tafelmusik in performance one day.
I never heard the Beaux Arts Trio in concert, either. For this I must be chastised, as I had numerous opportunities to hear the Beaux Arts Trio while I was in law school—and, for whatever reasons, I always decided not to get tickets. (The ensemble was long in residence at The Library Of Congress, only a few blocks from where I lived during my three years in Washington.)
I had always assumed that the Beaux Arts Trio would continue with another pianist once founding pianist Menahem Pressler finally retired. Pressler was the only remaining original member of the Beaux Arts Trio, the original violinist and cellist having long since retired, and I had assumed that violinist Daniel Hope and cellist Antonio Meneses would continue with a new master pianist once Pressler decided to call it a day.
My assumption was incorrect. When Pressler elected to retire last year, after fifty-three years as Beaux Arts pianist, the Beaux Arts Trio decided to retire, too. I had my chances to hear this legendary ensemble, and I failed to take advantage.
My father cannot believe my stupidity, as the Beaux Arts Trio has long been one of his most-cherished chamber ensembles. He became interested in the Beaux Arts Trio in the late 1960’s, and he heard the Beaux Arts many, many times over the years. He insists that, for at least two decades, the Beaux Arts Trio was nonpareil in music of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. I believe my father owns every disc the ensemble ever recorded.
The Philips disc of Beethoven Piano Trios is taken from a five-disc set of the complete Beethoven Piano Trios recorded between 1979 and 1983. The Beaux Arts violinist at the time was Isidore Cohen, and the Beaux Arts cellist at the time was Bernard Greenhouse. That 1979-1983 set was the second integral recording of the Beethoven Piano Trios recorded by the Beaux Arts Trio, the earlier edition having been recorded and issued in the mid-1960’s.
The disc offers three works, including the two most famous “named” trios: Number 4, Opus 11; Number 5, Opus 70 (“Ghost”); and Number 7, Opus 97 (“Archduke”).
These are cultured, urbane, aristocratic performances, very Central European in flavor and tone. The Beaux Arts Trio was always the least “American” of American chamber ensembles. A Central European sensibility permeates these Beethoven performances. Everything is measured and poised. The long line is observed, but interesting detail is captured and highlighted without ever losing the overall arc of a movement’s shape. The performances have forward momentum, but never at the expense of expression or characterization. In short, these are masterly performances, about as fine as one has a right to expect.
I have a quibble with the recording: the pianist is too forward. Whether this is the fault of the pianist or the engineers I cannot say, but the piano at times overpowers the violin and cello.
Suitably, the greatest work on the disc, the “Archduke”, receives the greatest performance. Josh and I listened to the “Archduke” over and over with the greatest of pleasure and admiration.
It was with the “Archduke” that the Beaux Arts Trio ended its final concert last September in Lucerne. That must have been a very emotional evening, both for the musicians and for the members of the audience.
The Nonesuch disc contains Dmitry Sitkovetsky’s own arrangements for String Orchestra of two chamber works: Ernst Dohnanyi’s Serenade, Opus 10, an early five-movement work for String Trio; and Brahms’s String Sextet No. 2, Opus 36. This disc, issued in 2000, is a follow-up to an earlier recording made by these same forces, the earlier recording having featured Sitkovetsky’s arrangement for String Orchestra of the “Goldberg Variations”.
I have always believed that Sitkovetsky’s arrangement of the “Goldberg Variations” was masterly. In transferring Bach’s lengthy keyboard composition to an entirely new medium, Sitkovetsky preserved the essence of the original while creating a brilliant and imaginative new work for String Orchestra, an original and independent work in its own right.
Sitkovetsky’s Dohnanyi/Brahms arrangements are not on the same high level.
The Dohnanyi is the more successful of the two arrangements. It surely was the easier arrangement to create, as Sitkovetsky merely had to flesh out Dohnanyi’s already-transparent writing for String Trio.
The Dohnanyi Serenade is a sophisticated, charming but slight work, lacking individuality and memorability. Sitkovetsky’s arrangement neither adds to nor detracts from the original. It is nice to hear this work once in a while, but it is easy to understand why the Dohnanyi Serenade has never entered the repertory.
Dohnanyi was a highly-skilled, highly-professional composer whose music never made much of a mark, during his lifetime or after, because it lacked individuality. It is music that might have been written by anyone.
Dohnanyi’s scores are completely admirable—they are polished, even learned—but no trace of a unique personality ever peeps through the pages.
Many of Dohnanyi’s works are very beautiful. I like the five-movement Symphony No. 1 very much, and I like both Violin Concertos. I appreciate the artistry of Variations On A Nursery Tune and I am even partial to his Concertino For Harp And Orchestra, which I believe to be a masterpiece. Nevertheless, Dohnanyi’s music will never reach a mainstream audience because it is so impersonal, totally lacking a unique stamp.
Sitkovetsky’s arrangement of Brahms’s Sextet No. 2 is not, I think, successful. In, fact, I cannot understand why Sitkovetsky thought the Brahms Sextet might benefit from an arrangement for String Orchestra in the first place.
The string writing in Brahms’s original is already dense. Given its denseness, there is no point in expanding the number of string players—added richness will go hand-in-hand with added opaqueness—nor is there much an arranger can do to lighten the textures short of rewriting the composition and turning Brahms’s voicings into hash.
Sitkovetsky’s is a very conservative arrangement, and for that perhaps one should be grateful. However, it adds nothing to Brahms’s original other than offering a larger body of sound.
As a general rule, Brahms’s music does not lend itself to arrangement. The music is already so perfectly-matched to the performing forces chosen by the composer that an arrangement only weakens what is already there.
The one exception to this rule is Schoenberg’s transcription for orchestra of Brahms’s early Piano Quartet No. 1, Opus 25. In that transcription, Schoenberg practically re-writes Brahms to serve his own ends. His is an aggressive, even radical, transcription. In the process, Schoenberg uses his own genius to serve the genius of Brahms—with the result that both composers are served brilliantly.
Sitkovetsky’s arrangement is not at that exalted level. Sitkovetsky’s arrangement of the Sextet No. 2 reminds me of two other unsuccessful arrangements of Brahms, Edmund Rubbra’s arrangement for orchestra of Brahms’s early piano work, Variations And Fugue On A Theme By Handel, and Luciano Berio’s arrangement for orchestra of one of Brahms’s late clarinet sonatas, the Sonata For Clarinet And Piano, Opus 120, No.1.
In all three cases, the arrangements are dutiful but not particularly imaginative and in no way enlightening. Nothing of value has been added to Brahms’s originals. Nothing new, nothing intriguing has been offered to give listeners a fresh perspective on the original compositions. In all three cases, I can only ask: what was the point?
Claudio Abbado’s 1969 recording of Janacek’s Sinfonietta and Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis On Themes Of Weber is one of the classics of the gramophone. It is the recording that made Abbado’s name outside of Italy.
This disc has been celebrated for four decades. The performances have been reissued frequently over the years, always with a new coupling. The coupling for the reissue Josh and I brought to Boston is a suite from Prokofiev’s ballet, “Le Chout”—but Josh and I skipped the Prokofiev, as it did not fit into our listening scheme.
These performances of the Janacek and the Hindemith are the finest I have ever heard. The performances are extremely brilliant, capturing a staggering level of detail, but the performances are also very subtle. The performances are so excellent that I can hardly listen to either work in another conductor’s hands.
The Hindemith is little more than an orchestral showpiece, but what a great showpiece it is. It is also one of the wittiest works ever written, and one of the most fun both to play and to hear.
Abbado obtains a level of virtuosity from the orchestra that no other conductor has ever been able to match, at least on disc. He also elicits a palpable sense of enjoyment from the players that is not duplicated on any other recording of the work.
The Janacek is a work of greater substance, and Abbado offers what I believe to be a profound performance. The performance has incredible energy and freshness, yet Abbado gives each of the five movements a very precise emotional weight, characterization and tinctura not achieved by other conductors. Compared to Abbado, every other recording of the Sinfonietta I have heard sounds like a generalized run-through.
Abbado finds things in Janacek’s score missed by other conductors. For instance, Abbado rightly sees Janacek’s supporting string figurations not as accompaniment but as musical content. At times, his analysis of the score borders on genius, most evident in the introduction to the fifth movement, where the repetitive descending string figurations are chilling, becoming part and parcel of the musical argument while adding a degree of drama and anticipation to what will soon prove to be the work’s culmination.
The whole performance shimmers, first bar to last. This is one of the great orchestral recordings of the stereo age.
In some quarters, this recording is highly controversial.
This is so for two reasons.
First, Abbado’s performance of the Janacek Sinfonietta lacks rusticity, and some observers find Abbado’s elegance and extremely sophisticated command of orchestral texture to be at odds with the composer’s intent in writing a very nationalistic, celebratory piece of music.
Second, the recording techniques used in both the Hindemith and the Janacek are not to all tastes.
The recording is multi-miked to death (there were probably more microphones present in the studio than there were instrumentalists) and engineered to death (highlighting is used to an extreme degree) and spliced to death (the many edits may be heard in the digital remastering), and some observers cannot get beyond the artificiality of the final result. Indeed, some persons insist that credit for these undeniably brilliant performances must be assigned above all to the sound engineers, and not to the musicians.
Quite obviously, these performances would have sounded vastly different if a single microphone had been suspended above the orchestra in an effort to capture a natural, unprocessed orchestral sound.
However, I have no problem with excessive engineering if the final result is as pleasing as it is here. I have always believed that the recording medium is a unique art form, quite different from the mere documentation of a live performance. I have always found the Abbado Hindemith/Janacek disc to be uncommonly enjoyable, and my opinion is not affected by how success for the enterprise must be apportioned between performers and engineers.
At the time this recording was made, Abbado was not happy at Decca and was contemplating leaving the label (in fact, he was shortly to depart for Deutsche Grammophon). Decca wanted to keep Abbado, as Decca realized what a valuable property it had on its hands, and Decca lavished every possible attention on this particular recording. Multiple sessions were used, and multiple Decca personnel were assigned to the project, a sign of the measures Decca was prepared to take to keep Abbado within its stable of conductors.
Nevertheless, despite the success of the recording, the Hindemith/Janacek pairing proved to be one of Abbado’s final projects at Decca. He was soon to seek happier ground elsewhere. This disc is the only lasting mark of Abbado’s work during his brief time with the Decca label.
Sometimes I think this forty-year-old recording is the finest recording Abbado ever made.
Abbado’s recording career has been checkered, with far more misses than hits. The only lasting recordings he made during his eighteen years at La Scala were Verdi’s “Macbeth” and “Simon Boccanegra”. His years as Principal Guest Conductor of the Chicago Symphony resulted in only one special recording, Mahler’s Symphony No. 7. Of the many, many recordings Abbado has made with the Vienna Philharmonic over the years, only Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 and Rossini’s “L'Italiana In Algeri” have proven to be durable. Abbado’s years at the helm of the London Symphony resulted in only one truly superb recording, Bizet’s “Carmen”. His recordings while Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic all met a certain high standard, but none of his Berlin Philharmonic recordings has managed to hold a claim on the public’s affection (including his pale Berlin remake of the Janacek/Hindemith pairing).
Abbado is, largely, a conductor who must be experienced live in order to be appreciated. Myself, I have never departed an Abbado concert feeling shortchanged.
However, I suspect that Abbado is not cut out to work in a recording studio. He CAN recreate a successful opera performance in the studio if he has already worked with the same artists in the theater, as he has proven several times. However, for orchestral works, I wonder whether Abbado needs the inspiration of an audience to give his best. Most of his orchestral recordings have proven to be disappointing to some degree.
Apparently Abbado can become prickly, even difficult, in the studio—and in his personal dealings with record company officials, too. He and Sony had a major falling-out over the “Boris Godunov” recording made in Berlin, with Abbado accusing Sony of being incompetent and Sony accusing Abbado of being incompetent.
In person, Abbado is apparently anything but the saintly figure portrayed by public-relations personnel. Some who have had extended dealings with Abbado over the years have raised serious concerns about his personal candor and integrity.
None of this, however, can take away from the success of the Decca recording Josh and I enjoyed.
Josh, who played trumpet all through grade school, junior high and high school, absolutely loved the disc, what with all the brilliant writing for brass on display. We must have played the disc twenty times, perhaps more, because Josh loved the music and the performances so much.
We’ll have to be sure to bring more Janacek and Hindemith discs to Boston next term.
Monday, June 08, 2009
"Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese"
This past weekend, Joshua and I went downtown to see Boston’s most important art exhibition of the year, “Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese: Rivals In Renaissance Venice”, at the Boston Museum Of Fine Arts.
The exhibition was superb. We were exceedingly pleased. Although there were only fifty-some paintings in the exhibition, it took Josh and me more than two hours to get through the exhibition. The exhibition was so fine that we may visit the exhibition again next weekend, too. We bought the exhibition catalog, and we plan to read it this week. It should make a second visit to the exhibition even more enriching for us.
The exhibition has proven to be very popular with Boston art-lovers. “Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese” was originally intended to end in mid-July, but the exhibition has now been extended until mid-August, when the paintings must travel to the Louvre, the only other venue for the exhibition.
The exhibition has received generous press attention. Major national magazines—TIME, Newsweek—have covered the exhibition, as have various national arts quarterlies such as The New Criterion. Most national newspapers have written about “Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese”. Even the Los Angeles Times sent its art critic to Boston for the opening.
London’s Times covered “Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese”, too, offering an extensive review written by Professor Rabb, now retired from Princeton.
It is not often that an art exhibition generates such a vast amount of press coverage.
I wish my mother could visit the exhibition. I told her all about it. Josh and I will take the exhibition catalog to Minneapolis in July so that my mother may read it. It would be nice if my parents could make a brief visit to Boston to attend “Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese” before the exhibition ends, but I do not believe their schedules will permit it.
The Boston Museum Of Fine Arts needs to review its admission policy. Tickets to “Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese” cost $25.00, far too much for an art exhibition. Admission to tax-supported institutions should be free, and admission to temporary exhibitions at tax-supported institutions should carry no more than a nominal charge.
The exhibition was superb. We were exceedingly pleased. Although there were only fifty-some paintings in the exhibition, it took Josh and me more than two hours to get through the exhibition. The exhibition was so fine that we may visit the exhibition again next weekend, too. We bought the exhibition catalog, and we plan to read it this week. It should make a second visit to the exhibition even more enriching for us.
The exhibition has proven to be very popular with Boston art-lovers. “Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese” was originally intended to end in mid-July, but the exhibition has now been extended until mid-August, when the paintings must travel to the Louvre, the only other venue for the exhibition.
The exhibition has received generous press attention. Major national magazines—TIME, Newsweek—have covered the exhibition, as have various national arts quarterlies such as The New Criterion. Most national newspapers have written about “Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese”. Even the Los Angeles Times sent its art critic to Boston for the opening.
London’s Times covered “Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese”, too, offering an extensive review written by Professor Rabb, now retired from Princeton.
It is not often that an art exhibition generates such a vast amount of press coverage.
I wish my mother could visit the exhibition. I told her all about it. Josh and I will take the exhibition catalog to Minneapolis in July so that my mother may read it. It would be nice if my parents could make a brief visit to Boston to attend “Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese” before the exhibition ends, but I do not believe their schedules will permit it.
The Boston Museum Of Fine Arts needs to review its admission policy. Tickets to “Titian, Tintoretto And Veronese” cost $25.00, far too much for an art exhibition. Admission to tax-supported institutions should be free, and admission to temporary exhibitions at tax-supported institutions should carry no more than a nominal charge.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
