In Brief: Is It Summer Yet?

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• The warning on this post reads, "This entry will be of interest only to that tiny minority of readers who both use the Chicago Manual of Style and enjoy pointless bibliographical research." If you see yourself in that description as I do, your destiny awaits. A reader responded in less than a quarter-hour to fill in one bit of the research missed in the post. Yet again, the Internets bring nerds together. [Languagehat]


• Via Boing Boing, a cat playing a theremin. Srsly. The best part is the saucer-eyed dismay of the cat-musician's companion at the end of the video. "You call that music?" [Laughing Squid]


• It is hard to imagine the Salle Labrouste, the main reading room of the old Richelieu site of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, being used for anything but the storage and reading of books. Through June 8, the room houses a special exhibit, a reworking of Sophie Calle's Prenez soin de vous, created for the 2007 Venice Biennale. Our favorite French art blogger has a review. [Lunettes Rouges]


• The idea of this Web site is for people to submit two photos of themselves: one taken when they were children and the other taken recently, but in the same pose as the child photo. The results are memorable. [Color Wars]


• Ban Al Sobotka twirling the octopus over his head? It's an outrage! [NHL Experts Blog]


• From our own Mark Barry, mark April 30 on your calendar if you are in New York. [Free Arts NYC 9th Annual Arts Auction Benefit]

Europa Galante / John Holloway @ LoC

Fabio Biondi, violinist

After singing for the Holy Father and the American bishops on Wednesday, I had plans to get a head start on the crowds for the trip back to Capitol Hill. That evening was one of the most anticipated concerts on the Library of Congress series, featuring Europa Galante, a leading Italian historically informed performance (HIP) ensembles. Unfortunately, the Secret Service and MPD shut down the route of the Pope's motorcade way too early, cutting off our path to the Metro for an hour and a half until the Pope left the National Shrine. So I arrived at the Library in time to hear only the second half.

Thanks to a switch in the program, the first piece after intermission was the D minor concerto by Vivaldi, RV 540, for viola d'amore and lute. The group's leader, Fabio Biondi, had a spiky, electric sound on the viola d'amore, but it was Giangiacomo Pinardi's performance on the lute that impressed most, featured regularly in solo episodes with the violin section on the bass line. After the group's superlative debut complete opera recording of Vivaldi's Bajazet, this live concert was, perhaps inevitably, a disappointment. The intonation, especially from the cello, was disturbingly rough at times, and Biondi's solo work, although ingeniously embellished with ornaments, cut against the ensemble grain more than floated above it. The Suite "Les Nations," Biondi's arrangement of various national dance movements, was a series of pleasing diversions, composers of one nationality aping the musical stereotypes of another. The most striking moment of the evening was the pizzicato dessert, a "little dance" from Gluck's ballet Don Juan.

Other Reviews: Stephen Brookes, Holloway/Linden/Mortensen Trio (Washington Post, April 19) Matthew Guerrieri, Trio demonstrates collaboration in the midst of contrasts (Boston Globe, April 14) Anne Midgette, Crossing Borders but Often Going Nowhere (Washington Post, April 18) Bernard Holland, World Tour, in a Baroque Sort of Way (New York Times, April 14) Joshua Kosman, Daring Europa Galante approach boosts Vivaldi (San Francisco Chronicle, April 7) Chris Pasles, Live: Europa Galante (Los Angeles Times, April 3)

Never one to complain of hearing too much Baroque music, I was back at the Library of Congress on Thursday night for a recital by three leading HIP soloists, violinist John Holloway, cellist Jaap ter Linden, and harpsichordist Lars Ulrik Mortensen. Holloway's sound held up to expectations from his recordings for the ECM New Series, the last reviewed being his unaccompanied Bach. The playing was more solid, less wild than Biondi's, with ethereal high sound in the slow movements but occasional missteps in intonation.

John Holloway: Veracini Biber Biber, Muffat

The best part of the evening was the discovery of two sonatas by Jean-Marie Leclair (1694-1764) and one of the sonatas of Francesco Maria Veracini (1690-1768). The latter especially makes for an instructive comparison to the highly chromatic harmonic language of J. S. Bach. Veracini's op. 2, no. 12 (D minor) has not one but two Passagallo (Passacaglia) movements, as well as a chromatic capriccio on two subjects and their inversions. Programmed at the end of the recital, this work was a suitable climax, followed by a lovely encore from another of the composer's sonatas, a set of variations on a Scottish air. Jaap ter Linden excelled in Vivaldi's cello sonata no. 7 (G minor, RV 4), especially the thrilling moto perpetuo of the concluding Gigue. As an example of the sonata da camera, the precursor of the suite, the Vivaldi was brilliantly paired with a superior Corelli violin sonata (op. 5, no. 8, E minor).

Lars Ulrik Mortensen had his own admirable solo moment in Les Barricades Mistérieuses, from Couperin's sixth ordre for keyboard, evenly articulated as it wandered harmonically. Another welcome discovery was the music of Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689-1755), represented by a trio (op. 37, no. 5, A minor), with its slow movement accompanied on the harpsichord's lute stop and the final movement with a folk dance middle section. While the audience for both concerts was surprisingly not completely full, the even lower attendance for this recital was doubly a shame because of the quality of music-making.

The next concert on the free series at the Library of Congress features Camerata Pacifica (April 24, 8 pm).

Perahia's Partitas

Bach, Partitas 2-4, Murray Perahia, piano (released March 18, 2008) Sony Classical 88697-22697-2

Murray Perahia's latest recording brings together the second, third, and fourth partitas of Bach. That programming reassures me that I was not too harsh on the recording of the same pieces by Cédric Tiberghien. Having loved Perahia's recording of the Goldberg Variations and admired his live performance of the fourth partita last fall, I can hardly be surprised to find myself loving this disc. When it comes to Bach's keyboard music, I almost always prefer a recording on a good harpsichord, but there is room in my ears for fine recordings on modern instruments. Recent favorites are Alexandre Tharaud for balletic, muscular grace and Angela Hewitt for velvet suavity.

In an article in The Independent with Geoffrey Norris (Why Murray Perahia turned to Bach, March 20), Perahia has spoken about his connection to Bach, having become obsessed with his music by studying it when recovering from a hand injury. From what I have heard so far, Perahia's Bach is technically assured and stylistically daring but informed. These three partitas are played with an intelligent understanding of the forms but with flair and interest for the ear, too. Rarely in a way that draws attention to itself, but in a favorite movement like the Rondeau in no. 2, for example, his crunchy articulations and fun embellishments make you wish he had taken the repeat. The distinctive part of the partitas is that Bach breaks away from the rigorous order of dances in the other suites, including a broader range of alternate dances and other forms (Capriccio, Rondeau, Burlesca).

In one of those color pieces, the Scherzo in no. 3, Perahia takes a hard-edged approach, emphasizing the jagged quality of the subject and darting through the movement, with both repeats, in just over one minute. The odd chord in measure 28 of that piece (the A minor triad underneath the rounded binary restatement of the opening subject, undermined by an unexplained G#), according to Paul Badura-Skoda (Interpreting Bach at the Keyboard, p. 220), "makes sense only when it is arpeggiated." That is more or less what Perahia does, making the dyad sound like an ornament.

The same freedom applies to the first-movement preludes: the opening Sinfonia of no. 2 is a model of stylistic polish, from the added lute-like rolled chords of the opening Grave to the filigree 32nd notes and the contrapuntal closing section. In the third partita's opening Fantasia, Perahia uses the piano's greater range of voicing to take what is by appearances a two-part texture and pull it into a greater number of voices, expanding some notes that hang in the air. The first movement of Partita No. 4 is labeled an overture. In the French style, its slow, dotted opening section is far overshadowed by the extended three-part fugue. How does Perahia get those long, held bass notes (F# and then B, right in the middle of the fugue) to sustain so clearly? He does the same thing with the sustained A in the first half of the Aria. The Sarabande, with its moment of reverie in the second measure (and repeated twice later), is thankfully more elegant than moony. The Gigue, while played very fast, never feels frenetic. What can one do but hope that Perahia will recover soon from his latest hand troubles and record the second volume?

À mon chevet: Musicophilia

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

Deutsch et al. have also showed very dramatic differences in the incidence of absolute pitch in two populations of first-year music students: one at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and the other at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. "For students who had begun musical training between ages 4 and 5," they wrote, "approximately 60% of the Chinese students met the criterion for absolute pitch, while only about 14% of the U.S. nontonal language speakers met the criterion." For those who had begun musical training at age six or seven, the numbers in both groups were correspondingly lower, about 55 percent and 6 percent. [...]

This striking discrepancy led Deutsch et al. to conjecture that "if given the opportunity, infants can acquire absolute pitch as a feature of speech, which can then carry over to music." For speakers of a nontonal language such as English, they felt, "the acquisition of absolute pitch during music training is analogous to learning the tones of a second language." They observed that there was a critical period for the development of absolute pitch, before the age of eight or so -- roughly the same age at which children find it much more difficult to learn the phonemes of another language (and thus to speak a second language with a native accent). Deutsch et al. suggested, therefore, that all infants might have the potential for acquiring absolute pitch, which could perhaps be "realized by enabling infants to associate pitches with verbal labels during the critical period" for language acquisition.

-- Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia (2007), "Papa Blows His Nose in G: Absolute Pitch," p. 127

That's the evidence. Get to work, parents!

Arts Varia: The Pope Is Here!

Yesterday Anne Midgette reported the uncomfortable news that Washington National Opera has cut the jobs of nine staff members, including its head of public relations. Add that to the latest bad news from the continuing implosion of the Smithsonian, and it has been a rough week for the city's cultural institutions.

As it turns out, the Post was confused about the musical plans for the White House welcome ceremony for the pope today. To my great relief, Kathleen Battle sang, much more appropriately, Albert Hay Malotte's arrangement of The Lord's Prayer, with harp accompaniment. Unfortunately, the Army Chorus then did sing Battle Hymn of the Republic, in that horribly over-the-top arrangement. It was grotesque.

The music for the papal liturgies is more important, somewhat unevenly assessed by the Post today. Tune in at 5:30 pm for the broadcast of the Pope's celebration of Vespers at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I'm heading over there after lunch.

Washington Concert Opera: Bianca e Falliero

Bianca e Falliero: DVD CD

When the lights went out in the first few moments of Washington Concert Opera's performance at Lisner Auditorium on Sunday night, one assumed that it was another chance for music director Antony Walker to come to the rescue. The man who recently sang the role of Radames from the podium while simultaneously conducting the last act of Aida, however, simply had to wait for the lights to come back on. As Walker and WCO have done so many times in the past, their latest performance brings to light a neglected opera, Rossini's Bianca e Falliero. In 1819, when this opera was premiered at La Scala, it was the fourth one that Rossini had completed that year. Yes, Bianca sounds like most other Rossini operas and, at about three hours of solid music, could benefit from some judicious cutting. At the same time, it is worth the rediscovery, especially a few memorable numbers.

Vivica Genaux has one of those voices, with an inimitable timbre and a ferocious technique (with unforgettable mandibular manipulations). She has been extraordinary on disc (in Vivaldi operas and recital), while on stage, in Baltimore Opera's L'Assedio di Corinto, her dynamic presence outweighs the compressed volume of her voice. In spite of being "stricken with spring allergies," which may have caused a slight uncertainty at the upper and lower extremities of her range, this was an incisive, marble-solid Falliero (in her red jacket and black ponytail, she also struck a wasp-waisted figure). Genaux was paired in the opera's exquisite duets with the well-scaled light soprano of Anna Christy, familiar to Washington audiences from her appearances at Wolf Trap in 2000 and 2001. Christy may not have that large, steely tone that a Rossini soprano occasionally needs, she was vocally and physically a sweet soprano heroine with some killer high notes when she needed them.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, WCO's 'Bianca' Is Something To Sing About (Washington Post, April 15) T. L. Ponick, WCO renders 'Bianca' with brilliance (Washington Times, April 15)

No baritone probably wants to replace Teddy Tahu Rhodes, but Daniel Mobbs stepped in robustly as Capellio, Bianca's suitor who ends up saving his rival's life (as the sole dissenting member of the Consiglio dei Tre that judges Falliero). The third lead of the opera is Bianca's domineering father, Contareno, sung here by tenor Charles Workman, with valiant but occasionally forced tone. He was at his best in the extraordinary Act II quartet, embedded as a video from another performance below. Walker conducted with verve and a twinkle in his eye as he drove his forces forward, to which the chorus and orchestra responded effectively, with particularly fine brass swells and flute solo by Sara Stern in the prison scene.

Washington Concert Opera will expand its next season from two to three performances: Donizetti's Maria Padilla (November 9), a recital with Stephanie Blythe and Nathalie Paulin (May 3), and Mercadante's Il Giuramento (May 31).


Rossini, Bianca e Falliero, quartet from Act II,
Rossini Opera Festival in 2005 (see also the finale)

Double Double Toil and Trouble

A distaff is a tool used to hold unspun wool during spinning. Over time it became a reference for anything domestic, the mother's side of the family, then women in general. In Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit, now at the Bennington Museum, contemporary artists personalize the tools of daily chores and toil. If every picture tells a story, then the domestic tools that women have historically used also have a human attachment. Frying pans didn't cook a meal by themselves as the ghost-like faces in Alison Saar's cast bronze pans, titled Mirror/Mirror, suggest or even more directly in her mother Betye Saar's iron washboard, National Racism: We Was Mostly Bout' Survival, with a photograph of an enslaved laundress; it had a real soul attached.


In Tatana Kellner's Ironing installation, the science and history of ironing are imprinted/burned onto the back of white shirts, and a monitor plays a video of a self-propelled iron with the sound of steam escaping; it's monotonous, repetitive work by a tool with an intelligent, sweating, thinking person attached to it. Lisa Alvarado's Mexican Woman's Toolkit is a large floral tote bag hanging on wooden pegs, which visitors are invited to rummage through. The bag belongs to a Mexican domestic in WWII-era Chicago: her life is service to others, she has no privacy.

When I pass by an old farmhouse or abandoned factory I think of the people and lives that passed through it. That was my response to Marie Watt's Blanket Column. It is what must be a 12' stack of donated blankets, each with a hanging tag attached with notes of the known history of each blanket, bought at a flea market or recently given up by a growing child, very touching, very personal. I had to run my finger along the edge of one of the blankets.

There is humor here, too. Mildred Johnson took a 20th-century advice book for young girls, What Young Girls Ought to Know, and folded the pages, creating some clever book art. A second book, The Joy of Cooking, is shredded and gracefully hung from an old grater; it's one of the most striking pieces in the show. Then there's Dave Cole's Trophy Wife, reminiscent of a 50s captive housewife.

Artists have a long tradition of reconfiguring domestic objects, and of course this is a perfect exhibit for them. Tracy Krumm's Yoke/Folded and Cavity/Strainer have graceful dignity and cast dreamy shadows on the wall. Judith Hoyt's clever Bucket Woman and Grater Woman follow a more traditional folk way. Tiffany Besonen's Mini-Ambiotic consists of flowers crafted from sewing pattern paper, wax, and the artist's hair bursting forth on a vine of wire from a child-size ironing board, perhaps daring to dream a fantastic alternative as only a child can.

Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit, curated by Rickie Solinger, will be at the Bennington Museum, Bennington, Vermont, through June 1st. More on Flickr.

When Worlds Collide

Like most people (including many Catholics), President Bush likes only some parts of the present pope's views, those that already are part of his political stance. Buried deep inside an article in the Washington Post by Michael Abramowitz about the President's admiration for the pontiff (Building Ties With Catholics A Bush Priority, April 15 -- the nuthouse comments on the article are proof positive that newspapers need to moderate all comments posted on their Web sites) is this nugget of information relevant to our subject matter:

A sign of this respect will come this afternoon, when Bush and first lady Laura Bush greet Pope Benedict XVI after his plane lands at Andrews Air Force Base, the first time in his seven years in office that the president will leave the White House to receive a visiting foreign dignitary. Bush will host Benedict tomorrow for a private 45-minute meeting in the Oval Office after an elaborate official arrival ceremony featuring soprano Kathleen Battle singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." About 9,000 invited guests are expected on the South Lawn, more than were present for the arrival ceremony for Queen Elizabeth II last May.

The pope, who in protocol terms is the only person on the planet more or less equal to an emperor, outranks both the President of the United States and the Queen of England. No surprises there, but whaah? -- Kathleen Battle? Battle Hymn of the Republic? What the hell? Why on earth would she sing that?

Yes, that hymn was inspired by a visit to a Union Army camp on the Potomac here in Washington, but any of the spirituals that now make up most of Ms. Battle's repertoire list would be much more à propos. If you read the text of Battle Hymn, however, you find a delicious irony, in the fourth verse: "He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat." Stay the course, Kathleen!

UPDATE:
You can watch the EWTN coverage of the papal visit, live on the Internet.

UPDATE 2:
What actually happened.