Ionarts-at-Large: Countryside Chamber Music—Daniel Grimwood in Schwabach

The old stables of the medieval town of Schwabach—that famed gold leaf production center of the world—make for a very decent make-shift concert venue with a little regular series of classical music to which the locals—some more, some less, most very enthusiastically—allow themselves to be goaded.

Beneath the 450-some year old beams of the half-timbered house, which houses town council meetings when not filled with the gifts of Euterpe (that’s the muse of song, for those whose parents tried to save on their education), pianist Daniel Grimwood* and Nazrin Rashidova performed a mother’s day concert in which they dragged the Schwabachers sneakily from the classical period (Mozart) to the 20^th century (Poulenc) by way of Beethoven, Fauré, and Moritz Moszkowski.

In Schwabach (40.000 souls, give or take a few), Daniel Grimwood – unknown the world over as a pianist – is a minor star, having played himself into the hearts of the good burghers by giving memorable concerts of the town’s tenuous musical claim to fame: Adolf von Henselt.

W.A.Mozart, Sonataw f.Fortepiano & Violin K296, 379 & 454 , P.Müllejans, K.Bezuidenhout Harmonia Mundi

The two started out with Mozart, and awkwardly so—a little anxious, a case of too much, and sounding like late Beethoven in gesture—but were quickly at home in the more lyrical bits of Sonata K.454. Still, it was a lesson in why Mozart should not be the warm-up of any recital, with any instrument or assortment of instruments. Mozart is tricky, of course; you don’t want timid Dresden-china tip-toeing, but it also better not sound like Mussolini’s architecture looked. In this case, a good deal of relaxed, liberated, jovial air would have done much to (further) improve the listener’s Mozart-enjoyment and to bring out more of the subtle humor and graceful touch.

The work is officially titled a sonata for pianoforte and violin, in that order, and Grimwood made no pretense of letting this be a showpiece for the violin. Nazrin Rashidova, meanwhile, is not a violinist who needs to fear an independent-minded, volume-lusty pianist: She’s got a sometimes piercing, sometimes feisty, certainly ambitious tone that would dominate many a more timid ivory-artist.

To indulge in simply throwing adjectives at the reader, however well considered a bunch of adjectives they are, is a disgraceful habit. It’s bad writing and makes for even worse reading. Take this less a sign of awareness on my part than a warning: Brace yourself, because here comes

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Briefly Noted: Haydn 2032

Haydn, Symphonies, Vol. 2 (nos. 22, 46, 47), Il Giardino Armonico, G. Antonini (released on June 30, 2015) ALPHA671 | 75'18" Vol. 1 (1, 39, 49) (2014) ALPHA670 | 70'52"

Any good recording of Joseph Haydn's symphonies is welcome at Ionarts, where the Austrian composer's music is a matter of faith. The 200th anniversary of Haydn's death, in 2009, brought a number of new contenders to our ears, by Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre, Gottfried von der Goltz and the Freiburger Barockorchester, and Bruno Weil and Tafelmusik (in re-release). Last year the Alpha label and the Joseph Haydn Stiftung Basel inaugurated the Haydn 2032 project, for which Giovanni Antonini will record all of Haydn's 107 symphonies, divided between his period-instrument ensemble Il Giardino Armonico and the Kammerorchester Basel, in time for the 300th anniversary of the composer's birth, in 2032.

Antonini worked with the former group on the first two releases in the series, and it puts its crisp and lightly balanced sound to excellent effect in these relatively early symphonies. Limited numbers of strings are well matched to the sounds of 2-key oboes, 4-key English horns, one-key flute (played by Antonini himself), natural horns, and harpsichord (for most of the early symphonies), reflecting the size of the orchestra Haydn led while in the employ of the Esterházy family, generally somewhere between one and two dozen players. Of the six Haydn symphonies recorded so far, scholar H. C. Robbins Landon, whose critical editions remain the gold standard, advised that harpsichord was implied or required in nos. 1, 22, 39, and 49, and omitted in nos. 46 or 47. Antonini follows Robbins Landon only in the case of no. 1, leaving out the instrument in no. 22, perhaps because the harpsichord would distract from the odd, inspired dialogue of horn and English horn in the first movement, as well as nos. 39 and 49.

In an unusual but value-enhancing way Antonini has included, on each disc of three symphonies each so far, a less-known work by one of Haydn's contemporaries: on the first disc, Gluck's ballet music for Don Juan, last heard from Opera Lafayette in 2008; on the second, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach's Sinfonia in F Major, Fk. 67. Both of these pieces are well worth hearing, and Antonini situates them, in extensive booklet notes (in booklets, it must be said, already very thick with lots of seemingly unrelated photographs), as foils for and influences on Haydn's symphonies. By the end of the series, this combination should leave the listener with not only a better understanding of Haydn's symphonies, but also a broader context for them in the history of 18th-century music.

For Your Consideration: 'Results'

Results, directed by Andrew Bujalski

Results, the new feature from independent filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, is likely to appeal to viewers looking for a romantic comedy, while not being in most ways a stereotypical romantic comedy. It belongs tangentially to the newish genre of independent romantic comedy known, for better or worse, as mumblecore. Its main characters, Trevor and Kat, are true believers in the gym and personal trainer culture, reminiscent in some ways of Linda and Chad in the Coen brothers' Burn after Reading, played by Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt. While Trevor and Kat are showing the bodily less fortunate how to make their lives perfect -- knees apart here, butt out there -- they are in some ways the least likely to understand themselves and what they want.

Trevor, played with smarmy honesty and (his own) Australian accent by Guy Pearce, owns a gym and life philosophy institute called Power 4 Life. The mantras he peddles are absurd, but he proffers them with the utmost seriousness, especially when the client has as much money as flab from which to be separated. He finds both in Kevin Corrigan's Danny, who walks into Trevor's gym in Austin, Texas, ready to spend a lot of money. Danny, we learn, has come into an unexpected inheritance and throws his money around, for example offering $200 for someone to come to his house to make his TV and cable box work together, or for another person to bring him a nice cat.

Other Reviews: New York Times | Los Angeles Times | Washington Post The New Yorker | NPR | David Edelstein

Uncomfortable with being watched at the gym, Danny ends up having one of Trevor's personal trainers, the intense and sometimes unpredictable Kat, come to his house for personal sessions. Played by Cobie Smulders of the Avengers movies, Kat is physically toned to perfection but given to emotional binges. Nice supporting turns come from Giovanni Ribisi, as a hipster who turns out to be a lawyer, and Anthony Michael Hall of all people as the Russian fitness guru worshiped by Trevor. Bujalski's script is fresh and weird, rarely telegraphing where it is going, yet still feeling completely natural in the way it unfolds. The soundtrack, often consisting of on-set performances by live musicians, is a nod to Austin's music scene.

This film opens today at Landmark's E Street Cinema.

Yaritza Veliz Makes Debut

Charles T. Downey, Chilean soprano has a mixed D.C. debut (Washington Post, June 5)

Yaritza Veliz won first prize at the Women in Music competition last year in Santiago, Chile, beating singers from all across that country. The young Chilean soprano made her Washington debut Wednesday, presented by the Embassy of Chile in the intimate auditorium at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

As revealed by four opera arias in the program’s second half, Veliz has a voice distinguished by a clean, pretty tone... [Continue reading]

Yaritza Veliz (soprano) and Justina Lee (piano)
National Museum of Women in the Arts

Briefly Noted: Music for 18 Musicians

S. Reich, Music for 18 Musicians, Ensemble Signal, B. Lubman (released on May 12, 2015) HMU 907608 | 59'17"

A few major works come to mind as defining the outline of "minimalism" (the term that everyone loves to hate) in music: Terry Riley's In C, Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, and Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. The last piece, premiered just a few months before Einstein in 1976, is the yin to Einstein's yang in some ways: concision rather than sprawl, precision rather than sloppy excess. Steve Reich, who is approaching his 80th birthday, has recorded the work twice: a visceral live recording with ECM, and a less ordered and longer version on Nonesuch (not because of tempo but because of the choices on number of repetitions). Reich's recordings complicate the field for any other competitors, but there have been a few nonetheless.

This new recording by Ensemble Signal is the second to appear under the leadership of Brad Lubman, who helped supervise the recording by Ensemble Modern in the 90s. With four players loaned from Third Coast Percussion, Lubman here conducts a group of twenty, which helps ease some of the doubling issues, and he even takes the third marimba part in Section VII. (Vocalist and Pulitzer-winner Caroline Shaw is heard on Voice 2.) The otherwise excellent recording by the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, from 2008, appealed for its excellent sound and for a slightly slower, more easy-going feel to it. Here the piece has more of the not rushed but impelled feel of Reich's first recording, hitting a timing that is just a minute longer than the Ensemble Modern disc. The audio engineering is also top-notch, revealing every articulation, crescendo, and nuance in vivid sonic detail. Put it on the shelf with the other recordings, along with the recordings we wish would be made, like the performance by the Ensemble Intercontemporain embedded below.

À mon chevet: 'Min Kamp Fjerde bok'

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

'Karl Ove, grandma rang while you were out.'

'Oh?'

'Yes. It wasn't a pleasant conversation, I'm afraid. She said . . . well, she said you weren't to go there any more. She said you'd never had anything to eat whenever you turned up, you were shabbily dressed and were always asking them for money.'

'What?!' I said.

'Yes,' mum said. 'She said it was my job to look after you and not theirs. It was my responsibility. So now they don't want you to go there.'

I started crying. I couldn't help myself, the tears came with such force. I turned away from her, my face contorted into ugly grimaces, I covered it with my hands, and even though I didn't want to, I sobbed.

I took a saucepan from the cupboard and filled it with water.

'This has got nothing to do with you,' mum said. 'You have to understand that. This is about me. It's me they want to hurt.'

I put the pan on the stove, barely able to see through all the tears, raised my hand in front of my face again, bowed my head. Another loud sob rolled out.

She was wrong, I knew that, this was about me. I had been there, I had physically felt all the silences and all the unease I carried with me, and in a way I understood them.

But I said nothing. The convulsive twitches in my face let up. I took a few deep breaths, wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my jumper. Sat down on a chair. Mum didn't move.

'I'm so angry,' she said. 'I don't think I've ever been so angry before. You're their grandchild. It's difficult for you now. It's their duty to support you. No matter what.'

'It isn't difficult,' I said. 'I'm fine.'

-- Karl Ove Knausgaard, Dancing in the Dark (My Struggle: Book 4), pp. 265-66 (trans. Don Bartlett)

The only problem I have with reading Min Kamp, the six-volume Norwegian novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard, is the lag in time between publication of the volumes in their English translation. I inhale each volume that arrives and then have to wait far too long for the next one. After examining his father's death (vol. 1), the collapse of his first marriage (vol.2), and his early childhood (vol. 3), Knausgaard turns to his young adulthood in the fourth volume. The book opens with his move to northern Norway, at age 18, to take a job as a teacher, where he begins his work as a writer. While there, he reflects back on his later teenage years, at one point acknowledging that he writes about those years not as a teenager but as a much older man. Multiple perspectives come into play, as we learn more and more about friends and various members of his family, like his father, whose disastrous collapse into alcoholism is traced further, and in this section quoted from the book, a painful episode involving his father's parents.

Math + Music

Moravec, Northern Lights Electric, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, G. Rose (bmop, 2012)

Charles T. Downey, Math + music = a little dry, but pleasant (Washington Post, June 2)

The equation of math with counterpoint is not necessarily axiomatic, but the probability is high that J.S. Bach will headline a concert program on the theme of mathematics and music. A concert by the Phillips Camerata on Sunday afternoon at the Phillips Collection, offered in conjunction with two exhibitions on artists and mathematics at the museum, reasserted this theorem. QED.

For pure fugues, the group turned to Mozart, or at least to arrangements of Bach preludes and fugues for string trio... [Continue reading]

Phillips Camerata
Music by Mozart, Bach, Moravec
Phillips Collection

PREVIOUSLY:
Charles T. Downey, NOI New Lights (Moravec, Brandenburg Gate) (Ionarts, July 1, 2012)

Opera Lafayette Makes Further Case for Grétry

Talise Trevigne (Mme. Hubert) and Sophie Junker (Denise) in L'Épreuve Villageoise, Opera Lafayette (photo by Louis Forget)
André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741-1813) was one of those composers who enjoyed vast notoriety during his life and is now almost completely forgotten. His opera L'Amant jaloux played in the newly built Opéra Royal de Versailles in 1778, where Mozart may have heard it, and was the staged opera that reopened that theater in 2009. His operas were taken around the world, including to theaters here in the newly born United States. Opera Lafayette has not forgotten Grétry, branching out into later territory for a 2011 performance of Le Magnifique. This weekend the ensemble mounted a staged performance of the composer's slender but charming opéra-bouffon L’Épreuve Villageoise, heard at the second of two performances on Saturday evening, in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, a fine conclusion to the company's twentieth anniversary season.

Belgian soprano Sophie Junker brought a pretty voice, stronger at the top than the bottom, and lovely stage presence to the role of Denise, the village girl wooed by two men. Both hope to share in the farm she will inherit from her mother, Mme. Hubert, sung with a luscious sound by soprano Talise Trevigne. Baritone Thomas Dolié was a puffed-up La France, the nobleman who tries to woo Denise after having already failed with her mother, although his tendency to rush undermined many of the numbers in which he took part. As André, Denise's intended from the village, tenor Francisco Fernández-Rueda brought more rustic humor than vocal accomplishment. Ryan Brown led his orchestra of period instruments in a vibrant reading of the score, enlivened in the choral scenes by the addition of a rustic accordion on stage, and a small chorus provided enough of a flavor of the village festivities.

You can hear the parts of Grétry's bubbly score that likely made an impression on the young Mozart, especially the duets and ensembles that both move the action forward and delineate characters from one another. L’Épreuve Villageoise, set to the first libretto by Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Choudard, dit Desforges -- a colorful character who penned a wide-ranging memoir called Le Poète -- takes up the trend of paysannerie, the idealization of peasant speech and manners in worldly Paris and Versailles. Grétry provides a musical counterpart to the bad grammar and country idiom of the libretto's vivid characters, as noted by scholar David Charlton in his book Grétry and the Growth of Opéra-comique: "Repeated-note phrases, a restricted melodic range, and rather stiff rhythms gave rise to a music that seems to walk on short country legs. With a start of surprise the English-speaking music lover [hears] the prototype of ditties in Arthur Sullivan's Savoy operas. [...] It already enshrines the spirit of the American musical."

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Exhuming ‘L’Épreuve Villageoise’ for a fun evening, with a tried and true story (Washington Post, June 1) Anthony Tommasini, ‘L’Épreuve Villageoise,’ a Rare Gem, at Gould Hall (New York Times, May 28)

Nick Olcott's staging got off on the wrong foot, as he does too often, by staging the overture with shenanigans, a moment that should break the visual tie to the real world through an absence of images. Shifting the opera to pre-Civil War New Orleans was an interesting nod to the transplantation of Grétry's music to the early theaters of that city, but to make the shift while completely ignoring the history of slavery in that region is too much, unless evoking the spirit of the minstrel show was what Olcott intended. The staging was so basic -- three screens with what looked like early printed depictions of a Southern plantation, plus some colorful costumes -- that it was easy to forget what Olcott claimed to be doing.

The next season from Opera Lafayette will include performances of Vivaldi's Catone in Utica (November 28 and 29), Chabrier's Une éducation manquée (February 2 and 3), and a selection of scenes from operas by Martini, Cherubini, and Sacchini (April 29).