À mon chevet: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

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

Harry turned over his trading card and read:

ALBUS DUMBLEDORE
Currently Headmaster of Hogwarts

Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore enjoys chamber music and tenpin bowling.

Harry turned the card back over and saw, to his astonishment, that Dumbledore's face had disappeared.

"He's gone!"

"Well, you can't expect him to hang around all day," said Ron.

***

"Nicolas Flamel," [Hermione] whispered dramatically, " is the only known maker of the Sorcerer's Stone!"

This didn't have quite the effect she'd expected.

"The what?" said Harry and Ron.

"Oh, honestly, don't you two read? Look -- read that, there." She pushed the book toward them, and Harry and Ron read:

The ancient study of alchemy is concerned with making the Sorcerer's Stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal. There have been many reports of the Sorcerer's Stone over the centuries, but the only Stone currently in existence belongs to Mr. Nicolas Flamel, the noted alchemist and opera lover. Mr. Flamel, who celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday last year, enjoys a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle (six hundred and fifty-eight).

-- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, pp. 102-103 / 219-20 (emphases mine)

I held off from reading any of the Harry Potter books when they came out, planning instead to read them to our kids when they got older. I started the first book with Master Ionarts some time ago, but he quickly grew frustrated with how slowly we were progressing and proceeded to devour the books on his own instead. Now that he has read them a few times and generally become obsessed with all things Harry Potter, he is tolerating me reading them to him. A hint: do not re-read a book with a 9-year-old boy if you have hang-ups about not wanting to know how everything -- literally, everything -- turns out in the end.

As for the excerpts quoted here, it probably goes without saying that the two best, smartest wizards in the books are devotees of classical music and opera. No word yet on whether Voldemort is obsessed with the music of Bach, as most psychopathic murderers inevitably are.

Fringe Festival: 7 Sopranos

Read my review published in the Going Out Guide of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Divas Just Want to Have Fun!
Washington Post, July 14, 2011

How many sopranos does it take to screw in a light bulb? As the old joke goes — and there were so many to choose from — it takes two: one to screw in the light bulb and the other to say she could have done it better.

On Tuesday night, it took 7 Sopranos, a local collective of high-voiced women in matching red gowns, to perform a perky, not-too-annoying faux recital called “Divas Just Want to Have Fun!” on the stage in the basement of the Mount Vernon United Methodist Church. Surprisingly, for a concept intended to play on the stereotype of sopranos as spotlight-craving showboats, there were few vocal pyrotechnics and even fewer soaring high notes. Indeed, it was a program that did not show off powerful solo voices as much as put an ensemble spin on some of the most famous chestnuts of the soprano repertory. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Bethany Ziegler, Seven Sopranos Come to Capital Fringe Festival (Georgetown Patch, July 13)

What to Hear Next Season: Early Music

See my preview of early music concerts on the 2011-2012 season in Washington:

Early Music to Hear in the 2011-12 Season (Washingtonian, July 13):

La Tarantella: Antidotum Tarantulae, L'Arpeggiata, C. Pluhar

Most of the groups mentioned in my review of the Washington Early Music Festival have not made announcements about their plans for concerts in the 2011-12 season, but it is not too soon to put some early music events on your calendar. You do not want to miss some of the best historically informed performance ensembles coming to the Washington area in the upcoming season.

The free concert series at the Library of Congress generally includes at least a few early music events. This year you will want to hear the daredevil viola da gambla player Paolo Pandolfo, returning to the venue after an extraordinary concert there last year (January 28), the Tarantella program of Christina Pluhar’s ensemble L’Arpeggiata, known for mixing the highbrow and the popular (March 19), and Concerto Köln with cellist Jan Freiheit (April 26). We will have a complete preview of the Library of Congress series shortly: You can reserve seats to these free concerts through Ticketmaster, for the usual processing fees, or take a chance and show up early to wait on line for an unclaimed seat. [Continue reading]

What Else to Hear Next Season
Washington Performing Arts Society | Opera | National Symphony Orchestra
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra | Vocal Music | Chamber Music

Second Viennoiserie

Berg / Webern / Schoenberg, Quatuor Diotima, S. Piau, M.-N. Lemieux (released on February 22, 2011) Naïve V 5240 | 64'23"

The Quatuor Diotima has captivated my ears enough times, both in concert and on disc, that the names of two favorite singers, Sandrine Piau and Marie-Nicole Lemieux, were only the icing on the pastry of this recent release. The program brings together three pieces for string quartet and solo voice, by the big three composers of the Second Viennese School. This is a combination that was somewhat in vogue in the 20th century, as composers looked for ways to revive the string quartet genre after it had run out of steam in the previous century. The other examples that come to mind, like Ginastera's third quartet or Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge, are really song cycles with string quartet accompaniment. The Diotima proceeds from Schoenberg's second quartet, with its third and fourth movements with Piau, radiant and enigmatic, to two oddities. Webern's six bagatelles, op. 9, each no more than a delightfully unexpected sonic bite, are presented with the lagniappe of a seventh bagatelle, never published, with a truly odd little poem sung in the velvety contralto of Lemieux, a compressed expression of grief for the composer's dead mother. For good measure, they include Berg's gorgeous Lyric Suite, in the recently restored version with a vocal part added to the Largo Desolato movement: the hidden words that reveal the amorous program of the work are a poem by Baudelaire, a blasphemous paraphrase of Psalm 129, with the lover crying out to his beloved when he is unable to sleep. That the final work is recorded complete lifts this disc over a similar disc released by the Petersen Quartett a couple years ago, with Christine Schäfer on the soprano part, as good as it apparently was.

Early Music in Washington

See my review of the gala concert of the Washington Early Music Festival:

Review: Washington Early Music Festival (Washingtonian, July 11):

Soror mea, Sponsa mea: Canticum Canticorum nei Conventi, Cappella Artemisia

The body of music known as “classical music,” judging by the fairly narrow offerings of traditional classical music ensembles at least, began with Mozart. Fortunately Washington has a surprising number of performing groups specializing in early music, a nebulous term that is usually applied to music composed before the 18th century and played on historical instruments or otherwise informed by scholarship, in an attempt to revive the sounds of previous centuries. Since 2004, the Washington Early Music Festival has offered a forum for these ensembles to present concerts on a common theme. After the first couple of seasons presenting the festival every summer, the event is now presented in even-numbered years only, in alternation with the Boston Early Music Festival. In odd-numbered years, the festival presents a single gala concert, which happened on Saturday, at St. Mark’s Church on Capitol Hill.

The three-hour event featured nine ensembles in perhaps too much music, all of it loosely centered on the theme of passions, some celestial and some more human. The most beautiful musical discovery was a motet, Ave suavis dilectio, by Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704), a woman who had a prolific career as a composer while a nun in an Ursuline convent. Soprano Rosa Lamoreaux sang with limpid tone, never pushed to more abrasive sound by the clean playing of ArcoVoce, and trading phrases of the Latin poem, on the delights of the Catholic sacraments, with ecstatic outbursts from the paired violins. [Continue reading]

SEE ALSO:
Stephen Brookes, Washington Early Music Festival fundraising gala (Washington Post, July 11)

In Brief: That's Delicious Edition

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

• The food folks are in town, for the NASFT's Fancy Food Show at the Washington Convention Center, and that means one of my oldest friends, the brother of our Hollywood correspondent, is in town, too. [Fancy Food Show]


• This week your online listening list includes Daniel Catán's opera Il Postino from the Théâtre du Châtelet, a rare performance of Nicola Porpora's 1728 opera Semiramide riconosciuta from the Festival de Beaune, a recital by Rafał Blechacz from Schwetzingen, Bernard Haitink and the London Symphony Orchestra with pianist Maria Joaõ Pires, the world premiere of Julien Joubert's L’Atelier du Nouveau Monde, a program of Mozart's sacred music from Le Cercle de l'Harmonie under Jérémie Rhorer, Gabriela Montero playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue at the Festival de Saint-Denis, a concert of Baroque music with ll Giardino Armonico at the Cité de la Musique, and the Nash Ensemble in London. [France Musique]


• The Proms open on this Friday, but if you cannot make the trip to London, you can listen online. [BBC Proms]


• The Verbier Festival also opens on Friday, and for those unable to get to Switzerland, there will be online videos, too. [Verbier Festival]


• From the Festival de Saint-Denis, online video of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, with Werner Güra, Lucy Crowe, Christine Rice, and others as soloists. [Medici.tv]


• In case you are not already overwhelmed by the possibilities, there are online videos from the Aix-en-Provence Festival, beginning with the Jerusalem Quartet playing Shostakovich. [ARTE Liveweb]


• Speaking of places we wish we were this summer, Lunettes Rouges has a series of posts from Les Rencontres d'Arles. [Amateur d'Art]


• I tweeted about this earlier in the week, but I am still just stunned that someone has stolen the Codex Calixtinus from the cathedral library of Santiago de Compostela. [Olive Press]

Vilde Frang Goes Solo

Grieg / Bartók / R. Strauss, Sonatas, V. Frang, M. Lifits (released on March 29, 2011) EMI 9 47639 2 | 78'49"

After participating in an EMI disc devoted to the obscure chamber music corners of Chopin's output (and a disc of Sibelius and Prokofiev concertos, not reviewed), Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang is back with this recital of violin sonatas. As noted of Frang before (live), her lean and clean tone bears little resemblance to the brash energy of her mentor, Anne-Sophie Mutter. Grieg's first violin sonata (op. 1, from 1865) is likely the piece most familiar to the average listener. Later in life, Grieg described his three violin sonatas as a sort of autobiographical trilogy, characterizing the "three periods of my evolution," and Frang gives the first sonata the sense of musical questing and youthful impetuosity that the composer ascribed to it, with moments of lonely reverie, too. Pianist Michail Lifits, born in Uzbekistan, helps steady Frang's somewhat erratic pace in the hectic last movement and overall provides a colorful but solid frame at the piano.

Yehudi Menuhin commissioned Bartók's sonata for solo violin (Sz. 117, BB 124) in the 1940s, and the legendary violinist later negotiated some changes removing passages in quarter tones and other difficulties, alterations that were approved by the composer. In the work Bartok was inspired by Bach's unaccompanied violin pieces in the compositional processes evoked in the Fuga and Ciacona movements, and Menuhin's plan from the start was to program the work with Bach, as was done at the premiere. The chromaticism and folk inspiration of the last two movements are pure Bartók, though, and Frang is forceful and confident but not brutal to the point of ugliness, even in the weirder plucked and sliding effects. Frang gives beauty and individuality to the contrapuntal voices of the double-stop passages, making the Bartók the best part of this disc. Richard Strauss wrote his violin sonata in E-flat, op. 18, in the late 1880s as he was courting his wife, Pauline. As might be expected the piece is appropriately tender and lyrical, especially the middle movement ("Improvisation"), a song without words played with refined charm by Frang. The outer fast movements show Strauss's early debt to Schumann and Brahms in their fairly traditional sonata-allegro forms. As noted by scholars Heiner Wajemann and R. Larry Todd, even though Strauss did not speak highly of Brahms, a critical opinion that only became heightened later in life, Strauss's early chamber music pieces reveal his influence.

The Day That Silence Flared Up

“July 12^th, 1970, is a day of infamy in the history of classical music.”

If you have never heard of that day, or don’t associate anything in particular with it: neither did I. Incidentally, the tragedy of that date is closely connected with never hearing anything of it, because it was the day Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt’s house burnt down and with it his (largely unpublished) body of music; wiping out some nine tenths of his output.

G.Tveitt, Piano Concerto No.4, 'Hardanger Variations' for two pianos & orchestra, H.Gimse, G.Süssmann / B.Engeset / Royal Scottish NO Naxos 8.555761

The introductory line is plagiarized from Robert R. Reilly’s chapter on the composer, and about Geirr Tveitt (born Nils Tveit) I learned through his book, “Surprised by Beauty”. Of the many composers covered in “Surprised” that I didn’t know then, Geirr Tveitt somehow, inexplicably, remained ‘undiscovered’ for me—until now*, almost eight years later. He was the prepenultimate unknown quantity that Reilly covers in “Surprised”, now only Stephen Gerber and Alexander Tcherepnin still await my own discovery. (Though I’ll also need to get more closely acquainted with Harald Sæverud and László Lajtha.)

What a blot of ignorance that has been at last been lifted from my classical music conscience. What magnificence there can be in Tveitt! I cherish the puppy-like naïveté of this discovery so greatly in part because there are so few left for me. There once was a time when I came across such unadulterated beauty and sophistication from a ‘new’ composer or ‘new’ work. But those were times that still held undiscovered Bach works in store for me, or later composers like Zelenka or Janáček or Poulenc or Duparc. For now I prefer not to wait to get as much Tveitt under my belt as I can; to not make myself a make-pretend Geirr Tveitt demi-expert over the course of a week of CD purchasing, Grove-reading, and intrepid googling. (I’ll save that for a some time next year.) I’ll write about the epiphany, instead.

One of the dearest coincidences finally put a copy of his Fourth Piano Concerto “Aurora Borealis” (1947) and the de-facto Two-Piano Concerto “Variations on a Folksong from Hardanger” (1939) in my hands. It starts with the latter—and when I think back to the repertoire played at the Piano Duo part of the ARD Competition, I can’t help to cringe about all that Mendelssohn and Mozart in the finale… when Poulenc and this Tveitt concerto would have been available. The “Variations” double concert is part of the large body of work that Tveitt devoted to folksongs from Hardanger, of which he collected about a thousand only to use them, variously worked over, in his compositions. They speak to the listener as Tveitt wraps their charming simplicity and liveliness into virtuosic orchestration with French impressionistic touches that could well call ‘home’ a place somewhere between Ravel and Sibelius.

I know I compare almost every somewhat tuneful 20^th century piano concerto to Ravel’s—but it’s just such a good reference point with all three movements showing something that none of the concertos of Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff, Reger, Busoni et al. contain. And the links are not surprising in this case: Tveitt’s Second Piano Concerto (lost) was dedicated to the composer and Paris had been his most important station abroad as a student and composer-performer. The outbreak of song and tranquility in the middle of the Variations is something for the soul to soar on; like the most serene moment in Messiaen, but simpler. The Fourth Piano Concerto is just a little more austere, busier, and louder in a few places between its long sometimes chirpy whispers that describe the appearance, height, and diminishing of the northern lights. The piano part is embedded in the whole, rather than leading with dazzling soloist caprices. Both concertos are about half an hour long, which I would normally consider about the perfect length for a concerto… just under these circumstances, it seems like not long enough by a nine tenths of a measure.

* Two tiny Tveitt exposures and mentions from 2005 and 2007 (“Much of it sounds like Debussy or digestible Messiaen… but more immediate and more immediately enjoyable.”) apart, that is.