Category Archives: Reviews

July 23, 2012 · 9:13 pm

Review: Minnesota Orchestra and Erin Keefe in Beethoven, July 2012

I went to see the Minnesota Orchestra in Winona, Minnesota, yesterday. Things have changed since I saw them there last, in the summer of 2010. To put it bluntly, the musicians’ contracts expire in September, and from the outside, things are looking unnervingly unsettled. The musicians have written a few carefully vague blog entries that include such sentences as “management’s current proposals would seriously diminish the artistic quality of the orchestra in its ability to retain and attract the best musicians possible and, thus, jeopardize its current top-tier status.” The orchestra’s CEO has sent a couple of odd emails to patrons discussing some of the fundraising triumphs of the past season, with a mention at the end that oh, yeah, by the way: “We continue in contract talks with our musicians, hopeful that we will be able to find common ground to resolve our significant financial challenges.” It is tempting, if ultimately futile, to read between those lines. Staff members have been fired; the upcoming season is short and unabashedly unadventurous; Orchestra Hall is in the middle of a major renovation, and everyone is working in temporary spaces. Maybe I’m paranoid, but this feels awfully like the uneasy calm before a storm.

Some people have seized upon the conflict with a kind of ghoulish delight, braying opinions with all the class, subtlety, and intellectual prowess of CNN covering the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act. I understand why: it’s a chance for everyone, no matter how ill-informed (and at this point, just about everyone is ill-informed) to advance their pet theories about why orchestras are doomed. And oh, how people in the classical music biz love debating why orchestras are doomed! Add in a juicy topical debate about the role of unions and the ultra-wealthy in a community’s artistic life, and the topic becomes irresistible. Mix, bake, set out to cool. Serves a savory meal for hundreds of cultural critics – professional, amateur, and those in the gray netherworld in between.

In short, this may become a big story. There is, potentially, a lot at stake.

Only none of us on the outside knows exactly what.

Yet.

So, we wait.

Anyway, those were some of the uplifting thoughts cycling through my head yesterday. I’ve been looking forward to this show since it was announced (especially since the program included the concerto debut of the Orchestra’s new concertmaster Erin Keefe), but there was a part of me that was weirdly hesitant to go. I’m only too aware that, thanks to the abridged season, I’m more than likely not going to see the Orchestra until 2013. (Rather unbelievably, there are only four daytime classical concerts left in 2012, and two of those are holiday performances of Brandenburg concertos and The Messiah…) There’s so much uncertainty in my life right now – personally as well as musically – that at this point, 2013 seems like a distant mirage that might never actually get here. What will transpire in the next six months? As I drove the two hours to Winona, I tried my best to shake the feeling I might be saying a kind of good-bye.

The opening was the Coriolan Overture: dramatic, defiant, burning with a raw, almost sinister power. The sound was savage, striking again and again with brute staccato force. Quiet dolce passages offered no relief from the tension; they only tightened the screws, making the next terrifying forte blast all the more devastating. By the time the quiet, albeit emphatic, pizzes brought the piece to an end, it was clear the artistic gauntlet had been thrown. Top that, was the unspoken insinuation. Clearly, despite (because of?) what’s going on behind closed doors, this is an orchestra that knows exactly what to say and exactly how to say it…maybe now more than ever.

After the fierce overture, Erin Keefe strode onstage looking like a veritable goddess in a violet gown, long pleated skirt pooling at her feet. Not only was this her first time soloing with the Orchestra, it was her first time playing the Beethoven concerto; she learned it specifically for this set of concerts. Although she didn’t look it, I had to wonder if she was, at least on a certain level, terrified. What violinist wouldn’t be? But from the moment those opening octaves pierced the air, it was clear she – and we! – had absolutely nothing to fear.

I’ve never heard the first movement of the Beethoven concerto played with such a striking narrative arc. So often so many passages can feel superfluous, leading to the old “it’s nothing but scales!” complaint – but here every note, every phrase, felt indispensable. Her sound was silvery, her dynamics breathtaking, her Kreisler cadenzas shudderingly bold and fearless. Maybe there was a little fatigue in the second half – or certain places where the sound felt a tad scrunched – or a few barely out of tune notes here and there – but these teensy tiny things were more reassurances of her humanity than actual flaws. Tears ran down my face…tears of joy, sadness, satisfaction, yearning, triumph, defeat, and every irreconcilable emotion in between. When played well, the Beethoven concerto has the power to say everything. And thanks to Erin Keefe and her colleagues in the Orchestra, yesterday, it said everything.

After intermission came the Eroica. This is one of those Beethoven pieces that I like and respect and admire but don’t wholeheartedly love…I’m more of a seventh symphony girl, I guess. But nonetheless, what a transporting joy it was to hear live: the orchestra played with all the tightness, conviction, and fire they’d displayed in the Coriolan. Precision – purpose – boundless, limitless, endless energy – all underlain with a restless, arresting passion that – at least in my listening experience – has never been so potent.

For whatever reason (probably in light of…recent events), throughout the afternoon I was struck by the humanity of the people onstage, and by the individuality of each player. Principal cellist Tony Ross warmed up with the devastating opening of the Elgar concerto. A violinist played through a portion of Dvořák New World over and over (they’re performing it in Minneapolis on Friday). Concertmaster Stephanie Arado mouthed some words to a cellist; he nodded. The air conditioning made a racket in the first half of the program, so it was turned off for the second, resulting in the word going round of “lose the jackets and ties!” Men came back out sporting exposed suspenders and rolled-up cuffs; women took off their white sweaters to reveal short-sleeved shirts and bare arms. Sweaty faces glimmered determined in the lights. In between movements of the Eroica, a violinist’s shoulder rest fell off (I sympathized; it looked like the same model as mine, and golly that thing has a tendency to fall off during the most inconvenient times). Everyone watched the reattachment except for Maestro Vänskä, who stood by impassively, pretending to be lost in abstract contemplation of the music before him, only raising his hands again once the rest was re-secured. At the very end of the show, when Vänskä gave each section the opportunity to stand and receive plaudits from the audience, the musicians gave a resounding congratulatory whoop to the ever under-appreciated violas, in one of the group’s many awesomely orch-dorky traditions.

In short, I remembered how the Minnesota Orchestra is not a monolith, not a hive of mindless worker bees, not a colony of bow-tied ants, no matter how often it can look like it, what with the single-minded discipline and bows moving in breathtaking unison and all. It’s made up of a diverse collection of passionate, obscenely talented, well-rounded individuals. For most of them, merely playing an instrument at the very highest level was not enough. So they also became conductors and writers and competitors and composers and historians and educators and artistic directors…among other things. They are the best of the best the musical world has to offer, and their love of their art serves as an example to the rest of us. May we listeners never take them – or musicians like them – for granted.

The Minnesota Orchestra is clearly in flux. They have a new concertmaster who over the course of the last year has proven herself to be an orchestral musician, chamber player, and soloist of the very first rank. A number of important names from the orchestra roster will not be returning in 2012-13 season. Next year a renovated Orchestra Hall will be opened, and if the renderings are any indication, it will be stunning. There are indications that programming in the future will be…um, different. Eventually, a new contract will be signed. Those five changes are likely just the tip of the iceberg. I have my fingers crossed that throughout all the changes, the glory of the core product remains unaffected. My hoping won’t actually do any good, but whatever. It makes me feel better.

I’m not delusional enough to think that anyone with any power from either “side” in Minneapolis is actually reading the bloggy ramblings of a 23-year-old amateur string-player from Wisconsin, nor am I delusional enough to think that they should. But I do hope that as they make the difficult decisions that lie ahead, they never stop remembering the passion of the people onstage, not even for a moment. If the organization’s plans to “Build for the Future” neglect to harness the musicians’ passion, then those plans aren’t worth making. Simple as that. Passion is an asset no budget can buy, and yesterday afternoon, I realized that we underestimate the power of that passion at our peril.

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Filed under My Writing, Reviews

Tagged as Minnesota Beethoven Festival, Minnesota Orchestra, passion

April 3, 2012 · 10:55 am

Review: Premiere of Judd Greenstein’s Acadia, Minnesota Orchestra

If I could go back in time a few years to talk to my twenty-year-old self, the first thing I’d say is, prepare for endings and beginnings. Prepare for rebellion, discombobulation, and a new ambition that will stun you with its ruthlessness. Prepare for a pivot; prepare for change.

It’s no coincidence that this new taste for new things has been reflected in my musical life. In the last year, I did my best hipster impression at my first indie rock concert – said “screw it” and learned some challenging new repertoire I’d been holding back on learning without a teacher – joined a semi-professional orchestra, and didn’t die – took up viola on a whim, and liked it – found myself cheering on an effort to commission a half-hour orchestral composition – and then, strangest of all, found myself attending the premiere of said half-hour orchestral composition. (Is this the same girl who as a teenager pretty much refused to listen to anything written less than a hundred years ago? Really?) I’d never been to a premiere before, so I didn’t know what to expect. But for a variety of reasons, I decided to dress up Friday night and give it a chance.

And I’m so glad I did.

The program, consisting of the premiere of Judd Greenstein’s new four-movement orchestral work Acadia, attracted quite the mix of patrons, ranging from well-dressed elderly couples to young families to enthused hipsters. Two college kids sat behind me, one of whom had never been to Orchestra Hall before. He burst out laughing when he read in the program that Greenstein is writing his doctoral dissertation on hip-hop. “Dude, that is just so cool. Can you imagine?”

The concert was part of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Inside the Classics series, so, as is customary, the first half of the show was devoted to discussing and dissecting the piece, the second to performing it in full. To start things off, series host and Orchestra violist Sam Bergman observed that music that exists on the page alone isn’t really finished; it requires both performers and an audience to bring it life. This inspiring thought made me applaud all the harder when Greenstein himself came onstage to take part in the discussion about his work. If he was remotely nervous at the thought of talking in front of hundreds of people about the piece he’s devoted the last year of his life to writing, he didn’t show it. He immediately won the crowd over with an air of relaxed, good-humored genius. Thanks in large part to his eloquence, the first half of the show was over in an enlightening flash. After intermission, conductor Sarah Hicks ascended the podium and cued the orchestra to begin.

At first listen, Acadia was astonishing. I’ve never heard anything like it. I got dizzy attempting to put various passages in context – oh, look, Pärt! Glass! minimalism! Copland? hip-hop! Romantic sweep and color! jazz! Ravel! Boulanger? movie music! … Bon Iver? These genres aren’t supposed to mix, but the mix not only worked; it felt inevitable. The themes came and went, bubbled to the surface then melted back into it, sometimes yearning, sometimes insistent, always full of character and rhythmic drive. Like a good lover, they were both attractive and interesting: attractive enough to catch your attention at first glance, interesting enough to spend time getting to know. The pace was unnervingly masterful – almost frighteningly so for a composer who has never attempted a work of this scale before. The narrative struck me as being one of journey, reflection, then finally acceptance, maybe even celebration. Change. Evolution. Growth. Happily, Greenstein was smart enough never to detail what exact events had inspired him, so instead of feeling as if we were merely listening to his experiences, we felt as if he were giving voice to ours. There’s a power in ambiguity.

Certain passages were so clever and so unexpectedly beautiful that I looked around to try to catch someone, anyone’s, eye. Can you believe this?, I wanted to ask them. Are you feeling what I am? What am I feeling? Because I don’t know – I’ve never felt anything like this before. What do you think?

But no one else met my glance; rows upon rows of people were totally absorbed, sitting absolutely quietly, concentrating. No coughs, no sneezes, no rustling of programs. It felt as if the very walls were listening.

As I sat there, I toyed with the thought of what it must have felt like to attend a premiere of a piece by Beethoven or Tchaikovsky or Bartók. Did premieres of the (for lack of a better word) classics feel different from others? Did they feel anything like this? The communal electricity here was a strange mix of thrilling and hot, happy and anxious. I watched the impassive back of Greenstein’s head twenty rows ahead of me. Did he know he’d created something really special, or was he merely hoping? For that matter – had he? Is this piece really as fantastic as I think it is, or am I just predisposed to like it after having followed its progress for so many months? I don’t know. Does it matter? I don’t know.

A little over half an hour after it began, Acadia’s satisfying (and surprising!) last note reverberated through the hall. The audience clung to the sound. It wasn’t long before a grateful Greenstein was taking bows before a very loud standing ovation.

Will Acadia have a life beyond the Minnesota Orchestra? I’d be comfortable placing a bet that it will, and I’m not a betting woman. But even if it doesn’t, it and the project around it accomplished things classical musicians always say we want to do, but rarely actually get around to: it brought a new audience into the hall, it took (some pretty crazy) risks, it gave a brilliant young composer a chance to test-drive a world-class orchestra. In an industry that spends an awful lot of time bemoaning its ever-approaching irrelevancy and demise, those are things to celebrate.

In January Greenstein wrote some words on the Minnesota Orchestra blog that have been stuck in my brain for months. The day I got back home, I went to reread them. After hearing the piece they described, they resonated more than ever.

“I first heard the term Acadia in the context of Acadia National Park, where I spent a few incredible days camping with a good friend, a long weekend that turned out to be a pivotal time – literally, in the sense of a pivot – in my life. If I were to break my life into two sections, the first part would end in that Acadian weekend, hiking in hills on the edge of open ocean, exploring the southern tip of that land that stretches along the coast, upward to the Arctic… And so, for a commission that means as much to me as any I’ve ever received, I wrote this piece with that word in mind, a pivotal word for a composition that may mark the end of something, or the beginning.”

Endings and beginnings. Who knows what kinds? The beginning of a young composer’s triumphant career writing for orchestra? – the end of the Minnesota Orchestra’s commitment to new music? – the beginning of a new way of paying for commissions? – the end of a time in my life when I only feel capable of engaging with the work of dead men? – the beginning of my personal musical maturity, and the end of its childhood? The beginning of the concert life of Acadia? – the end of it? I have guesses and gut instincts, but honestly, I don’t know. No one does. We may have brought Acadia to life, but now it has to live or die on its own merits. Nonetheless, no matter what happens in the future, what happened last weekend was special – unbelievably so – and I’ll always remember it.

A portion of Greenstein’s autograph, inscribed with an important theme from Acadia

***

And even if you weren’t there, maybe you’ll remember, too, because a free recording of Acadia is available here. You have to sign up for an account with the Minnesota Orchestra, but doing so is quick and easy. Both Twin Cities critics gave the piece a rave, and everyone I’ve heard talking about it loved it, so it just might be worth your while to check it out.

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Tagged as echo chamber, Microcommission, Minnesota Orchestra

January 27, 2012 · 5:07 pm

Brahmspalooza ‘012!: Part 3

On Thursday 12 January and Saturday 14 January, violinist James Ehnes took the Orchestra Hall stage to play the Brahms concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra. I was at both performances, but unfortunately I can’t review either.

Well, I could, theoretically. But you’d have no reason to trust anything I say because my pro-Ehnes bias has a long history. A month after my thirteenth birthday, I heard a performance of his Tchaikovsky concerto broadcast live on public radio. I taped the concert (taped, as in taping using cassette tapes – do the kids nowadays even know what those are?), and thank God I did, because my life would have been a very different thing if I hadn’t. The first half of the concert consisted of a Shostakovich symphony that flew completely over my head. But the second half was Tchaikovsky. And it was unforgettable. It spoke to me in a way that nothing had before and nothing will again. I don’t know why; I wish I did. I’ve listened to it literally thousands of times over the last decade, and I can’t know any more if it really is as earth-shattering as I felt it to be when I was thirteen. It took on a life of its own.

I listened to that recording constantly as a teenager. I listened to it before and after school. I bought a Dover miniature score and read it during class. I listened to it before I announced to my teacher that, despite only knowing first position and a little bit of third, I wanted to be a professional violinist. (Let’s skim over how unrealistic that goal ultimately was, and just focus on the good intentions, okay?) I listened to it when I was lonely and crying and afraid. I listened to it when I was seventeen and convinced I was dying and my doctors told me nothing was wrong to me. I listened to it when I recovered. I listened to it when I injured my wrist and it seemed likely I’d never play violin again. I listened to it after my counselor suggested that maybe it would be a good idea if I gave up music. I listened to it when I was a student at the 2006 Green Lake Festival Chamber Music Workshop in Ripon, Wisconsin; I monopolized the listening room with it after everyone else had stopped practicing and gone back to the dorm for the night. I became obsessed with this recording and the violin, and I waited for the day when I would tire of them.

I’m still waiting.

At the risk of sounding over-dramatic, I honestly believe that without that recording, something awful would have happened to me. I would have continued on the drifting path of study I’d been on, only bringing out the violin every week or two, then month or two. Until finally one day it would have been a year or more since I’d played last, and I’d have opened the closet door and looked at the unused fiddle and told myself, “you know, I should sell that…”

The mere thought of this alternate universe brings on a panic attack. Because it was so close to materializing.

The classical music world is competitive and cutthroat. We’re the less crazy, less attractive versions of the characters in Black Swan. We lock ourselves into practice rooms for weeks at a time. We spend our lives preparing for careers that we almost certainly will never have. We’re constantly asking ourselves, are we good enough?, and casting paranoid glances over our shoulders and realizing we aren’t. And yet despite all the pressure and the politics, a weirdly high percentage of the artists I’ve met are incredibly kind and humble, and are people worthy of looking up to, not just musically, but personally. I don’t know why this is, but it’s true. I’ve had the amazing opportunity to meet Ehnes and chat with him a bit after various concerts over the last nine years. And despite his abilities and achievements, James Ehnes is among the kindest and humblest of them all.

So you know what? Ehnes didn’t even need to do a single thing besides walk onstage before I started misting up. On top of that, the performance was sentimental in another way, since his first appearance with a major American orchestra was actually with the Minnesota Orchestra in 1992 after winning the WAMSO competition. It was all a bit like the closing scene of a sappy Hallmark movie in which the boy-next-door protagonist, after decades of hard work, finally makes good and comes home.

I’ll try faking objectivity and try to pick out a highlight or two to describe, although this is difficult since everything he played was a highlight. For the Thursday morning performance, I was in the front row. Saturday night, I was in the first tier, third row from the back. That night I could tell it was taking a little bit longer for the sound to reach me – alas, even James Ehnes cannot defy laws of acoustical physics – but other than that, given the distance it was traveling, the sound on Saturday sounded remarkably similar to the sound on Thursday. That 1715 Strad was throwing its voice like nobody’s business. And there was such a range of dynamics, with every note, pianissimo or fortissimo, discernible from the very back of the hall. It was literally jaw-dropping. One violin is not supposed to be able to pierce through the texture of an entire symphony orchestra, especially not when playing pianissimo! But it did. Listeners who aren’t sure if it’s possible or not…rest assured, it is. It was so disorienting in such a wonderful way.

Another thing that I appreciated – especially after the puzzling Friday night Serkin performance – was the fact that Vänskä and Ehnes seemed to have relatively complementary views of the concerto. Either that, or Ehnes is capable of seamlessly blending in with an opposing approach without ever compromising his own artistic vision. Either option seems plausible.

The more restrained Thursday morning crowd didn’t applaud long enough to draw out an encore, but on Saturday night, the audience simply would not let him go. He came back onstage with Paganini 24 (“Brahms wrote nothing for solo violin,” he said from the stage, “but he did write a set of piano variations on this tune…”). He then proceeded to play Paganini 24 in a way no human being should be able to. This level of technical and musical achievement is supposed to only be attainable on disc, over the course of multiple sessions, with the help of state-of-the-art recording equipment and a crafty, cynical editor. But maybe with Ehnes it’s wise to expect the impossible. During the triple stops of the eighth variation I could have sworn there were two violinists, one suspended on the left side of the hall and the other on the right, their sounds colliding together onstage. I’ve never heard anything like it. I probably never will again.

The audience still wasn’t satiated. So he returned again with Paganini 16. (“This? Has nothing to do with Brahms,” he said by way of introduction.)

Words fail me.

You know, I’m sure Brahms third symphony afterward was fantastic, but for me, nothing was going to measure up to the electricity of seeing Brahms concerto followed by two Caprices performed by one of the great violinists of the age who singlehandedly inspired me to keep going with the violin at a time when I was dangerously close to quitting. Sorry, Minnesota Orchestra; you know I love you! I think you’ve got to start scheduling your super-duper drop-dead amazing soloists after intermission so I’m not listening to your no doubt lovely symphonic performances completely shell-shocked.

Anyway. I’m not quite sure what exactly this entry was. An Ehnes appreciation post? A glimpse into my wangsty Tchaikovsky-tinged teenhood? Me admitting I ended up having no objectivity whatsoever during Brahmspalooza? All of the above? Who knows!

There’s only one way I can think of to wrap this disjointed ramble up, and that’s by reiterating the fact that I’m so thankful not just for James Ehnes’s talent, but rather for the bigger fact that music has such a powerful ability to inspire. I’m just so damned grateful, for all of it. I think just about every musician hears a performance or two in their lives that stands out in their mind as life-changing. What were yours?

So Brahmspalooza ‘012 ended on an unbelievable high note…literally.

***

As a postscript, happy birthday to James Ehnes, who turns 36 today. It hardly suffices, but thank you.

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Tagged as Brahmspalooza, James Ehnes, James Ehnes is a god, Minnesota Orchestra

January 26, 2012 · 6:36 pm

Brahmspalooza ‘012!: Part 2

Brahmspalooza ‘012 has disappeared in the rearview mirror. I’ve taken such a long detour through Violaland that, despite good intentions, I haven’t had the time to write about my brush with Brahms. But I do want to set down my thoughts about the four (count ’em – four) concerts I attended before I forget so many details that I end up sounding like one of those critics who writes eighty percent of his review before stepping in the hall.

As it happened, Brahmspalooza was interrupted by a totally unexpected introduction to none other than Augustin Hadelich. A friend offered me a ticket to see him play the Ligeti violin concerto with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. It took approximately a tenth of a second to decide that this would be worth the cab fare from Minneapolis.

For those of you who think that Minnesotans are a bunch of laid-back Marge Gundersons, you might be surprised at the long history of fraternal dysfunction between the Twin Cities. In 1965 St. Paul decided to observe Daylight Saving Time with the rest of the nation, while Minneapolis opted to conform with Minnesota state law, leading – unbelivably – to a time when the two cities’ clocks were set an hour apart. And in an even creepier incident, in 1890 the New York Times reported that census workers were kidnapped so that there wouldn’t be a record of one city outgrowing the other. You can’t make this stuff up.

Thankfully, members of the Minnesota Orchestra (in Minneapolis) and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra (you can guess where they’re based) haven’t resorted to kidnapping each other. (Although this might be an interesting plot twist to the next Gerald Elias novel…) I haven’t spent enough time in the Minnesota music scene to know if there’s any kind of rivalry, or if one is generally considered to be superior to the other. All I can say is that I’m very happy that Minneapolis-St. Paul is able to support two world-class orchestras. We suffer an embarrassment of riches.

As beautifully performed as they were, the opening and closing pieces on the program – The Marriage of Figaro overture and El Amor Brujo by de Falla – were totally and completely eclipsed by Hadelich in the Ligeti. It was my first time hearing both the violinist and the piece, and I can’t imagine a more beguiling introduction to either. Hadelich is astonishing. When he plays you hear his soul, full of heart and character and warmth. He also clearly has an insatiable intellect, and his sheer commitment to Ligeti was inspiring. I’m still on the fence about the piece itself. On one hand, I loved its virtuosity and eerie beauty. Hearing certain acoustical effects resonate live through the auditorium was an unbelievable, unforgettable experience. But I don’t know how well those effects would translate to disc; for me it was one of those pieces that only makes real sense live. I hope someday I get to see it again. I know I’ll see Hadelich again; I imagine that after that performance someone from the SPCO ambushed him at the stage door with a new contract. His tossed-off encore – the twenty-fourth caprice, obviously! – gave the impression of being completely effortless. But we violinists know the truth.

So, the inevitable question… Who’s better, the SPCO or the Minnesota Orchestra? Please don’t make me choose, especially after the SPCO breezed through the incredibly virtuosic orchestral writing of the Ligeti. They’re both worth buying tickets to. Let’s leave it at that.

Brahmspalooza ‘012 resumed that evening with a performance by the Minnesota Orchestra back in Minneapolis. By supper-time I was getting awfully sore and tired (I was subsisting on a couple hours’ sleep, and I’d been sprinting around two downtowns attempting to catch cabs and escape the bite of the Arctic wind). No problem, I told myself, I’ll just pop a Tylenol. This was a huge mistake. For me Tylenol dulls not only the pain, but everything else: thoughts, impressions, emotions. When I’m doing nothing more than surfing the web and breathing, that’s fine. But when I’m trying to listen to one of the country’s, if not the world’s, greatest orchestras, I can’t afford to be cloudy. If I’m nearly falling asleep at a Minnesota Orchestra concert, that means either they’re in bad shape or I’m in bad shape. I’m going to assume that Friday night it was a case of the latter.

The program consisted of two pieces – Brahms first piano concerto starring Peter Serkin and Brahms first serenade for orchestra. Serkin made a surprise appearance before the concert started, wandering onstage and playing a few minutes before suddenly disappearing again. I’m not sure if I liked that he did this, and it’s bothering me why I’m not sure if I liked it. I don’t begrudge violinists a few moments to warm up; why should I object to a pianist doing the same thing? But it did take away a bit of the exciting pomp and circumstance of the great artist emerging with the conductor from the auditorium door, and I missed that. Maybe though the pomp and circumstance is overrated.

Sadly, Serkin’s performance fell largely flat for me. I hesitate to say the first movement was a mess, but…something very big and very integral was missing, and I can’t figure out what it was. Passion? Authenticity? An overarching conception? My sanity? Soloist and conductor struck me as often working at cross-purposes: I felt like Serkin wanted to explore the subtleties, the nooks and crannies, of every sumptuous phrase, while Vanska wanted to charge ahead and emphasize Brahms’s broad heroic lines. I can appreciate both approaches, but meshed together, they just didn’t work. On top of this, although I couldn’t tell for sure from my seat, it seemed that the visual lines of communication between the principles might have been broken by the piano. Whether because of this or other reasons, there was a general fuzziness to the first movement that set me on edge. But then came an utterly divine Adagio with hushed string whispers and a lovely pearly touch from Serkin. The sounds settled softly over the audience like a down blanket. It was a young man’s portrait of his beloved, and it was so beautiful. I spent the rest of the concerto trying to process the discrepancies between those two movements. After the applause ended, I turned to my companion and demanded, “What was that?” And then I moaned and said, “I am never drugging myself before a concert again.”

After intermission came the first serenade. Listening to it live, I decided it’s too long for its own good. It goes on and on and on. And on. And then on some more. Sometimes when I listen to it I have the temptation to snap oh shut up and just write your damned symphony already. But that being said, it’s still Brahms, you know? Even long-winded Brahms is Brahms. And that first movement in particular is so special. Does anyone do that sweet, elated, hesitant, joyful, buoyant, serious, lighthearted thing like Brahms? He takes these ridiculously complex, oftentimes contradictory, yet instantly recognizable emotions, and then he composes music that perfectly expresses them. It had been a very full day, and my thoughts were beginning to drift, but I felt a happiness, a contentment, of the very deepest kind as I heard the quiet ending of the first movement fade away. Any fuzziness or timidity I’d felt in the piano concerto had vanished; the Orchestra was back to being the crazy-wonderful beast it normally is.

But who knows what I would have thought or heard if I would have held off a few hours on the medication? I’m vowing here publicly never to listen under the influence again, no matter how bad the pain gets. It’s just not worth it. It makes me wonder how many performances we really like or don’t like we actually don’t know if we like or not…if that makes sense. What other non-musical influences do we bring into the concert hall with us, whether they be the side-effects of Tylenol, or a flattering review we just read about the soloist, or the bitter aftertaste of a fight with a loved one? And how do those influences affect our ability to process what we hear? The realization that the experience of live music might be even more subjective than I’ve thought…? That’s seriously unnerving.

The first and the last concerts I attended that weekend consisted of Ehnes in Brahms concerto. I’ll get to him sooner or later, but all I’ll say for now is:

Two Paganini encores.

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Tagged as Brahmspalooza, Emily needs to take it easy on the drugs, Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra

December 25, 2011 · 6:06 pm

Review: Bon Iver, Homecoming Concert, December 13

Imagine. You’re an ambitious kid from a small town. This small town’s most famous export is the inventor of fraud-proof ballot paper. The arts scene is pathetic compared to the ones in Minneapolis, Chicago, or New York. Every artist you admire – every artist you love and respect and desperately want to emulate – is from a big city, went to school in a big city, found themselves in a big city. Nobody comes here because they want to. Nobody stays here and is successful. As long as I’m here, you think to yourself, I will have no chance of making what I want to have happen, happen.

Why, then, is it so difficult to say good-bye?

As you grow older, never making the break, never quite finding the courage or the cash to move away, you struggle to choose between forging a career in the arts and embracing the family and the small-town culture that raised you. You try your best to come to terms with things, and to not be ungrateful. Because there are worse places to be.

Then, suddenly, a neighbor becomes an international superstar. He’s an alumnus of the high school your mom went to. You hear breathless rumors in the press that he shops at your grocery store. Your youth symphony rehearsals were held on the same university campus he attended. The superstar’s drummer used to play at a restaurant two blocks from your house. Thirty years ago your grandparents almost bought a house on the corner of Third and Lake…an unassuming intersection that the superstar makes famous in a Grammy-nominated song. You hear these things, and you’re heartened.

Slowly but surely, you start experimenting with shedding the insecurity. You start trusting yourself a little bit more. You think, well, if he can make it…why can’t I? You feel a tentative pride. I’m from western Wisconsin, and I’m not ashamed of it. Which isn’t to say you won’t ever leave your small town…you know you will; you know you have to, someday. But you see now, with clarity, what should have been obvious all along: your provincial background shouldn’t keep you from dreaming anything. There’s a chance that you might live happily – or at least, contentedly – ever after.

This isn’t some weird fairy tale. Bizarre as it seems, it’s a true story, and it’s mine.

The superstar in question is Justin Vernon and his band Bon Iver, the genre-busting nine-member group that has fused virtuosic musicianship with elements of rock, folk, jazz, and even contemporary classical to create their own unique, wildly popular indie-rock sound. Vernon is from my hometown of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, population 65,000, but he hasn’t given a hometown show since 2008. It turns out that earning multiple Grammy nominations, collaborating with celebrities, and embarking on sold-out international tours tend to take up a person’s time.

But this fall, Bon Iver announced they were coming home. Two hometown shows, December 12 and 13 at Zorn Arena at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. $15 for gallery seats.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said to my laptop when I read the news. “You are kidding me.”

***

Nothing went the way it was supposed to in 2011, for better and for worse. Three of my family’s four cats died. I met some outrageously talented people whose kindnesses moved me to tears. I participated in some disillusioning family feuds. I went to several world-class concerts. I tentatively started coming out of the closet as an asexual (a process much more difficult – and much more liberating – than it sounds). I had the chance to take a violin lesson, my first in five years. I played a couple of solos with string orchestra. I spent a day in Minneapolis admiring the cultural diversity and then came back to Eau Claire and found out that someone I’ve known my whole life takes a perverse pleasure in employing unspeakable racial slurs. Back and forth – forth and back – lows and highs – highs and lows. The combination of the dreadful and the divine was disorienting.

In short, everything got turned upside-down. So maybe in a weird way it was fitting that I, the self-avowed classical freak, found myself closing out the year by waiting in line for an hour in the Wisconsin winter to get good seats for an indie rock group.

I went to the show with the two people I love best in the world. (…If I admitted that one of them was my mom, would I lose some cool points? … I would? Okay.) We got a bit chilly and loopy in line, and so we started a drinking game, substituting hugs for alcohol. Hug whenever you see beards, flannel, plaid, blaze orange, or a Recall Walker petition. This was a Bon Iver concert held in Wisconsin directly after deer hunting season, so as you can imagine, we spent more time embracing than not. Our game was interrupted when the line began moving forward, and moving forward very quickly. I’m used to the leisurely pace of ticket collection at classical concerts, where elderly volunteers slowly rip off stubs and then hand you programs. Nothing like that here. People were jogging along the corridors to secure the best seats. We spun up the concrete stairs and into the gallery, and got front row bleacher seats overlooking the stage.

Victory.

By nine o’ clock, after the opening act (the lovely Lianne La Havas) wrapped up, the anticipation had reached a fever pitch. The electricity was just burning through the arena; it was all I could do to keep from shrieking myself hoarse with excitement…and the band hadn’t even taken the stage yet. I briefly entertained the idea of what it would be like if orchestral audiences behaved this way – screaming, stamping, hollering FUCK YEAH, MAHLER!!! WOOOO! before the conductor ascends the podium. (Sacrilegious as it sounds, I now kinda want to experience this, for, as the cool kids say on Tumblr, reasons.)

Finally the band came onstage. Justin Vernon was there, and I was there, and my mom and my best friend were there, and 3497 other people were there, and we were all there, and were all there together, and in some inexplicably moving way, the fact was sacred. It felt a bit like we were at an indie rock revival: we had a wild hipster crowd of laypeople, eight virtuosic back-up apostles, and Justin Vernon as our bearded, angelic-voiced preacher. As soon as the band launched into Perth, the crowd went berserk. Right away I was so overcome by the percussion, brass, and audience thumping my sternum that I started grinning uncontrollably and tearing up like a crazy person. What a relief to be in a venue where I could react to good music however I like and not be afraid of showing it, instead of tightening up and holding it all in, as I’m forced to do during particularly thrilling bits of Shostakovich or Sibelius.

After Perth and Minnesota, WI came the gentle guitar in the entrance to Holocene. I completely and immediately lost it. This was a song that I’ve inadvertently tied up to the memory of one of my cats. She was the closest thing I’ll have to a child for a very long time – maybe ever – and her sudden death in May was the most devastating thing I’ve ever endured. Late this summer there came an afternoon when I realized, suddenly, that it was time to fold up the blanket she slept on. To steel myself, I turned on Holocene, and I did it.

And just like that, the lyrics burned into the memory, and the memory of the loss itself –

At once I knew I was not magnificent / High above the highway aisle / Jagged vacance thick with ice / And I could see for miles miles miles.

I cried that afternoon, but less than I thought I would. Less than I would have if I hadn’t had the companionship of the song and the lyrics and the voice. Of music.

I set the folded blanket down and looked out the open window. The breeze picked up. I looked beyond the trees and far away into the empty blue sky. Somehow I’d survived the loss. I might have cracked open, but, miraculously, I hadn’t broken.

“And I could see for miles miles miles,” I sang to myself – sang to the sky – and five months later, to Bon Iver.

***

One of the many life lessons I’ve learned this year is that genre doesn’t matter. If music is engaging, and if it touches you, it doesn’t matter what form it comes in – whether that be an hour-long violin concerto or an indie rock song with gorgeously impenetrable lyrics. And if Bon Iver is anything, especially live, it’s engaging. From the pulsating lights, to the astonishingly virtuosic bass saxophone solos, to Vernon’s oddly endearing bobbing onstage as he plays guitar…it’s all engaging, all of it.

Eventually Vernon paused for a moment to catch his breath and talk to us. I won’t use more than a couple of quotations since I can’t remember word-for-word what he said, but I do remember the gist of his impromptu remarks, and I always will.

Since his commercial success, he said, things have been strange. Everywhere he goes, everyone tells him how special he is. “Well, I already knew that,” he said. “My parents taught me that!” The crowd giggled. And that’s, he said, the reason he knows it’s important to stay connected with one’s geographically isolated small-town roots – to keep a sense of perspective, to remember not to rely on what “important” “big-name” people say. “Even though we do like to complain about all the shit that goes on in this town…” (Audience applause.) Being from a small town reminds you that we are, in fact, all small and – in the long run, no matter how successful we are – insignificant. “We’re small,” he said, “we’re small,” and he shrugged.

The last number of the night was The Wolves (Act I and II). The second portion of the song – the second act – is a line that drips again and again with desolation: “What might have been lost – what might have been lost – what might have been lost…” It’s a tradition at Bon Iver shows for the audience to sing along with the band, beginning very quietly, then getting louder and louder and louder, culminating at the end with a primordial, gut-choking, venue-wide shriek. Vernon was about to describe the tradition to us, but then suddenly he stopped short and stepped back from the mike and said, “You all know what to do.”

Yeah. We did.

The band began the song, Vernon’s voice straining and aching through the room through the first act. Then came the quiet, agonizingly insistent refrain. Sitting up high in the gallery, those five short words meant more to me than they ever had before, and probably ever will again.

What might have been lost…

The deaths of my cats – my sweet darlings – my kids…

What might have been lost…

The resulting vulnerability that cracked me open in ways I was never, ever expecting…

What might have been lost…

Having to let go of relationships that have become untenable, for heartbreakingly stupid reasons I’ll never really understand.

What might have been lost…

People I love, people I trust, telling me that I really shouldn’t do what I want – that what I want is too much to expect, too much to hope for. That I should sit down, shut up, stay in town, settle for the status quo, and stop rocking the boat…

What might have been lost…

New faces, kind faces, dear faces, telling me the exact opposite…

What might have been lost…

Having to choose between the two paths…

What might have been lost…

The relief and agony of knowing the latter path is the inevitable one; that even more difficult good-byes lay ahead…

What might have been lost…

My own paralyzing insecurity…which maybe, in the final analysis, is the only thing holding me back.

Don’t bother me…!

Eventually I couldn’t hear my thoughts anymore. My voice became the crowd’s, and the crowd’s became mine. At the end we let out a crazy long communal cry, together.

I broke down, gutted out.

Catharsis.

There was no encore after that. How could there be? The band took their bows. Vernon looked up at the gallery where I was sitting and waved. He couldn’t see me, but I waved back wildly with gratitude, tears staining my face.

After the show I emerged from the buzz of Zorn Arena out into the silent December night. I walked over the university footbridge to get back to the car. I glanced over the railing at the blurry lights of the city wavering in the river. I’ve lived in Eau Claire my whole life, but from this new vantage point I couldn’t recognize any of the landmarks. All I could see was their abstract, impressionistic beauty, smeared across the night, floating away in the water.

***

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Filed under My Writing, Reviews

Tagged as Bon Iver, the one and only time I'll ever blog about brass instruments

November 15, 2011 · 12:31 pm

Something Old, Something New: Some Reflections on the Minnesota Orchestra’s Inside the Classics Project

It’s a warm night for November in Minneapolis, but I’m wearing tights, and I’m in a bus shelter, and I’m getting very cold. I remember I’ve forgotten something important, something I was stupid to forget, so I take the bus up the street to Target. I don’t know the store, but it’s big and it has escalators, so I assume it has what I need. It doesn’t. So I go outside again. My feet are throbbing in my cheap heels. I have a fleeting guilty thought of how vain I am, that I’m forcing body parts into painful positions on the off-chance that some strangers I’ll never meet again might find elongated legs aesthetically attractive. Adding credence to the thought of vanity is the dawning realization that although yes, I am a very small girl, I am not a size 1 girl; the secondhand dress I was so proud of finding at the thrift shop is beginning to feel more and more like a whalebone corset. I struggle to take a breath; my body forces me to yawn instead. I glance up and down Nicollet Mall and see a Walgreens. So I cross the street and wander up and down the aisles. Finally I find what I need. I pay and leave and sit down in the shelter again. I worry I’m sitting on my skirt, that I will stand up and find that the black fabric that has been so carefully ironed is now crushed. I feel a flash of frustration; if I’m going to wear a too-tight outfit, I want it to look spectacular, dammit. I shift my weight on the tulle. As I do, my stomach starts making strange noises it hadn’t made before I buttoned up the dress. I wonder idly how this bodes for the quieter moments of the concert I’m about to attend. I wonder if anyone else will hear me, if they’ll guess that the noises are from the too-tight dress, if they’ll think me vain. Am I vain? A kind-looking woman steps inside the shelter; she speaks pleasantly to the man standing next to her, then takes out her phone and screams that she’ll be home in a minute, that she’s waiting for the bus, and that’s she’s fine, except she’s cold, very cold! She quits the call suddenly without saying good-bye. A little girl runs between us and starts to cry. Buses come and go. Mine is late. I hop aboard and sway down the street. People speak in a buzz of languages I can’t identify, much less understand. I pull the cord for a stop; at the next corner the back door doesn’t open. I bang at it a little; everybody looks at me with raised eyebrows, except the driver, who doesn’t see me at all. I sigh and stand back from the door. At the next stop I get off and sit for a moment on the edge of a fountain that has been drained for the winter. I see the hall in the distance; it’s further away than I want it to be, but it’s not worth waiting twenty minutes for the bus in the other direction. A man comes by and tries to sell me a rose. I tell him no thank you. This is an unwelcome reminder that appearances are deceptive; despite the seemingly expensive dress and musical tastes, I have no money. (Tomorrow afternoon I will have to scrounge through my purse to find a few dollars’ worth of coins to pay a parking garage fee I forgot I owed.) I finally bundle up against the wind and set off for Orchestra Hall. Once I get inside I limp through the lobby and down the stairs. I get into the restroom and try to steady myself. It’s hard; my ankles are wobbling. I soak my hands in very hot water.

When the auditorium doors open and I take my seat, my mind is still buzzing with inconsequential thoughts. Judging by the fragments of lighthearted chit-chat I hear all around me, so is everyone else’s. The only discussion of the music is coming from an elderly woman behind me who is reading the program notes to her companion slowly, in a loud voice. A little after eight o’ clock, the house lights go down and the orchestra tunes.

But the rites and rituals of a traditional orchestral concert end there. A violist, brandishing a microphone instead of a viola, and a conductor – a stylish young female conductor – come out onto the stage. She ascends the podium and raises her arms to cue the orchestra. The lights go dark, and darker, and darker. The first aching strains of the third movement of Shostakovich’s fifth symphony emanate into the hall.

“I’ve often thought that one of the best ways to take the measure of an artist is to observe how he reacts to circumstances beyond his control,” the violist says. “How does he respond to hardship, to success, to criticism, and how are those responses reflected in his work? When an artist finds himself in a place that is nakedly hostile to Art, how does he defend himself? Does he become a rebel, speaking truth to power and risking his freedom or even his life? Does he flee to the safety of art that challenges nothing and acquiesces to the powerful? Or does he carve some more complicated middle path, and leave it up to history to sort out his legacy?”

The blackness of the hall, the music, and the words transport me to a different place. Thoughts about the dress and the heels and the tulle and the (lack of) money and the cold and the pain and the bus and every other inconvenience I’ve suffered on this long, long day of travel suddenly vanish. Physically, I may be in Minneapolis’s Orchestra Hall, at one of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Inside the Classics shows on Shostakovich five, but mentally, I’m in the Soviet Union of the 1930s.

Despite my exhaustion, I don’t get to sleep until well past one o’ clock that night. I’m unable to get certain notes of the symphony, or the violist’s terrifying suggestions of what those notes might mean, out of my mind. This is music at its most engaging, I think to myself, lying on the hotel bed and looking out at the Minneapolis skyline, all lit up in the crisp November night. This is a new way of doing an old thing. And if my experience as a listener is any indication, it just might be working.

***

I started reading the Minnesota Orchestra blog, Inside the Classics, sometime in 2009. I feel safe in saying that it’s one of the most engaging in the classical music world. It’s written by two big musical personalities, Orchestra violist and former ArtsJournal news editor Sam Bergman and Principal Pops and Presentations Conductor Sarah Hicks, both of whom bring their own unique and eloquent voices to the virtual table. Entries are wide-ranging in both tone and subject matter. To give a little taste of what they write about, a few of the eighty-odd tags on their blog include elitism, loud brass instruments, musical dorkery, musician humor, new music, philosophical musings, stirring the pot, the long-suffering audience, things that make us look lame and snooty, and Sam as neurotic freak.

Three times a year Sam and Sarah (as they call each other on the blog and onstage) get together with the orchestra to give what they call “a show about a concert.” Last year they covered Dvorák’s seventh symphony, Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe and La Valse, and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. I’d read about these concerts in the promotional booklets the Orchestra sends out every year and thought they looked interesting, but – and here’s a shocker – it turns out that when you’re a disabled young person caught up in the cogs of the worst economic downtown since the Great Depression, you tend to not have a lot of money to go see concerts, much less concerts in other cities. However, when a review that I wrote about the Minnesota Orchestra for violinist.com last summer became the subject of a flattering entry of Bergman’s (gotta love the echo chamber!), I decided I wanted to do whatever I could to get to Minneapolis and meet him and see what he does in-person. (Okay, so clearly I come to this subject with some bias, especially since [in the interest of full responsible journalistic disclosure and all that jazz] I’ve met Bergman a few times since then, and I took a violin lesson from him in October, and I think he’s a good guy. But in my opinion, writers who think themselves free of bias are deluding themselves, especially when they’re writing about the incestuous world of classical music, where everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone else. If the alternative to bias means not getting to know the most interesting people in our art, I’ll choose the bias any day, thanks. If you feel this invalidates everything I’m about to say, you’re totally free to quit reading. Anyway.)

Long story short, this March I was finally able to make the trip to Minneapolis for an Inside the Classics show on Ravel, and I had a blast. The show’s first half consists of Sam and Sarah having a dialogue about the composer, elements that influenced him and his work, and the form and structure of the piece in question, with the orchestra supplying samples of it and other related works to put it into perspective. (This portion of the show is similar to what Michael Tilson Thomas does in the San Francisco Symphony’s gripping PBS series Keeping Score. If you haven’t seen that show yet, you must. In fact, you have my permission to stop reading this and watch an episode. You’re welcome.) After intermission, Bergman puts away the microphone and heads back to his seat in the viola section, Hicks ascends the podium, and the orchestra blazes through a full uninterrupted performance of the work. Cue wild whoops and hollers from the appreciative audience. Last season’s concerts featured informal Q&A sessions after each show, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to wait around afterward and say hi and engage them in a quick conversation about what you like (or don’t like) about what they’re doing.

(Sam and Sarah sell the ItC concept on Youtube. Look, classical musicians have finally figured out how to upload videos! Go us!)

I think shows like these tend to succeed or stumble based on two things: the quality of the writing and the charisma of the host(s). Bergman and Hicks leap over both hurdles with flying colors. They’re smart, funny, and sophisticated; they know how to appeal to seasoned concertgoers without ever talking down to newcomers; they have chemistry to burn. One or the other could easily hold the stage alone, but together they conquer it. They both are a real inspiration to this writer who loves music, and who is trying her best to figure out how exactly one field can inspire the other: put another way, how to use words to discuss a wordless art form. When I see Sam and Sarah taking their bows after the first half of the concert is over, and then look around me at a 2500-seat auditorium filled to the brim with a crowd much younger and more engaged than the hoity-toity moribund one stereotypically associated with orchestral music, I feel all sorts of questions percolating in my brain. How exactly have they built up such a loyal audience? What have they done right (because obviously they’re doing a lot of things right)? Why does so much orchestral music have the reputation of being so irrelevant and incomprehensible since, framed correctly, it’s clearly not? How can we share it with people who are interested in it but hesitant to set foot in a hall? How can we fulfill audiences’ thirsts for knowledge – thirsts that sometimes they didn’t even know they had? Where do new technologies and new traditions fit into the picture?

I’m a dork; I’ve always been a dork; I’ve never really stopped to think about any of these things before, because if there’s an orchestra concert and I’m in town and I have the money, I go to it, no questions asked. But not everyone is as fortunate as me; not everyone has six years of private music lessons and a summer at chamber music camp under their belt; not everyone has a family supportive of musical endeavors; not everyone has kind engaging musician friends who are willing to drop everything to discuss what they love and loathe about their art. So, if the vast majority of orchestral audiences don’t have those advantages to stoke their love of music, how can we reach them and serve them and deepen our connection with them? The whole Inside the Classics project – the blog and the concert series both – encourages me to ask these hugely important questions. I’m well aware they’re ancient chestnuts to a lot of people who make their living in the arts, but they’re new and exciting to me. And I’m finding it fascinating to watch the members of the Minnesota Orchestra attempt to answer them.

***

In November 2010 the Inside the Classics team announced they were commissioning a major new orchestral work by Brooklyn-based composer Judd Greenstein. Okay, whatever, big deal; commissions like this happen all the time, right? Wrong. This project is unique on a variety of levels. It wouldn’t be financed by one major donor, or a fund contributed to by major donors; instead, it would be paid for by ordinary people who would each chip in anything from $1 to $1500. Bergman and Hicks labeled this project the “Microcommission.” A donation page was set up on the Minnesota Orchestra website, and at the end of each 2010-2011 Inside the Classics concert, viola cases were scattered throughout the lobby, in which audiences were encouraged to drop any spare cash. (I knew viola cases were good for something!) By June 2011, hundreds of people had given $20,000, enough to buy the Inside the Classics audience a brand new orchestral work. Leading up to the big premiere in March 2012, Greenstein – a thoughtful, engaging young composer who writes appetizing music influenced by a wide variety of genres – is contributing his thoughts about his work and the creative process on the Inside the Classics blog. (He wrote a mind-bogglingly interesting entry this month about nomenclature and why he’s hesitating to call this new work a symphony. If that kind of thing floats your boat, you’ll want to check it out.) He was even a part of the Shostakovich 5 show this week, elaborating on the idea of how composers “steal” from one another, employing an extended metaphor about a very tasty crouton. (Okay, so maybe you had to be there, but trust me, it was entertaining and enlightening.) Next January he’s going to be in Minneapolis again to provide input on the next Inside the Classics show on John Adams’s My Father Knew Charles Ives, and of course he’ll be an integral part of the March season finale at which his new piece will be dissected and premiered. And as if there wasn’t enough going on already, he and Bergman have just launched a project called The Listening Room, described here as “an online book club, only with music instead of books.” Together the two of them are going to be soliciting questions from blog readers, resulting in a (hopefully) absorbing discussion of the music that has influenced Greenstein. (Even if you live nowhere near Minnesota, you can take part in this. So stay tuned.)

(Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, during a visit to New York earlier this year, Bergman conducted a five-part video interview with Greenstein in which they discuss everything from Milton Babbitt to the future of live music to social experiences in the concert hall. So yeah. They’ve been busy.)

The microcommission is one of those ideas that is so painfully obvious, it’s embarrassing that nobody in the classical music world has embraced it yet. (At least not that I know of, anyway.) The idea of microfunding has permeated our modern digital culture, from the emails we get from various politicians and fundraising organizations begging for “small donations of just $5, $10, or $20!” – to celebrities going on Twitter hiatuses until their fans chip in a certain amount of cash for various charitable purposes – even to late-night television, where this April Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert sang a duet of Rebecca Black’s Friday as a reward for their audiences after 2000+ viewers raised nearly $120,000 for the awesome website Donors Choose. So heck, why not extend the concept to orchestral music? All the cool kids are doing it, so why can’t we nerds have some fun with the idea, too?

The Inside the Classics team didn’t stop there, even though they easily could have done so, and patted themselves on the back for their innovation, to boot. But they didn’t. They realized they could seize this opportunity to get even more creative: to use new technology to connect audience members and to help them form an emotional and intellectual connection to “their” piece and its composer. (By the way, their selection of Judd Greenstein as the microcommission composer was an inspired one. He very neatly and effectively shatters the myth that all contemporary composers live in lonely unheated garrets, suffering from acute social anxiety disorder and writing hideous cacophonous things that they swear to God our grandchildren will understand.)

(Case in point, Greenstein’s fantastic quartet Four on the Floor, performed by, you guessed it, members of the Minnesota Orchestra.)

After the show on Shostakovich 5, the audience was invited to stay for a post-concert performance of Greenstein’s quartet Four on the Floor. This high-voltage piece was performed by four musicians from the orchestra (including Bergman, who obviously had a bit of a full plate this weekend). It’s a fun piece to listen to, but it’s even more fun to watch. Complicated rhythms ricochet back and forth between the parts, and at times the first and second violins seem like they’re in a wild dance-to-the-death with the viola and cello. After the final virtuosic chords ripped through the hall, the audience – which was bigger than I thought it would be – burst into wild applause. It was quite a sight to see the ensemble and the composer taking their bows together onstage: three ridiculously accomplished members of the orchestra, the violist/writer/host who has put so much thought and creativity into making this series happen, and the young up-and-coming composer who I feel is on the edge of unleashing some very, very exciting sounds that even small-town Midwestern me will be able to appreciate. I hope I’m able to make it to Minneapolis in March to see the final result of this creative ferment.

That being said, I have no idea how the project will pan out. Nobody knows yet if audiences will like Greenstein’s new piece, or if tickets will sell. Speaking more broadly, I don’t know how many more years the Inside the Classics series or blog will go on, or if the concept could survive in any meaningful form if either Bergman or Hicks would, for whatever reason, give up their ItC duties. But maybe, in some weird way, that’s all beside the point. Maybe it’s the mere willingness to experiment that matters. Because even if certain aspects of the project fall short of expectations, chances are, others won’t. And some might even exceed them. Actually, it’s totally within the realm of possibility that the Minnesota Orchestra is starting new concertgoing traditions that will serve to deepen their audience’s appreciation for old and new music alike. That’s exciting. That’s thrilling. Maybe musicians in other cities will sit up and take note and try similar things, customizing ideas for their own individual communities. And maybe in the process we’ll finally shut up at least some of the people who take such sadistic pleasure in telling us that no matter what we do, we and the music we love are doomed to perpetual irrelevance. God, wouldn’t that be fantastic?

* * *

Where is orchestral music headed? Are we in our final death throes, like everyone keeps insinuating we are (like we keep telling ourselves we are)? Is an out-of-the-box approach going to charm an audience that comes largely for old programming served up in a traditional manner? Can we get an audience that thrives on new experiences to buy tickets to the warhorses, as long as they’re performed with passion and commitment? Can we serve both demographics, or even get the two demographics to mix? Are either of those ideas wise in the long-run? What traditions will tomorrow’s audiences embrace? What will our programs look like ten years from now? Twenty? Fifty? Will there come a day when wordless all-music concerts will be heavily supplemented by concerts with affable, intelligent hosts? Will more orchestras start employing eloquent, opinionated bloggers as tools to establish deeper connections with their audience? Will we eventually be expected to communicate about music just as effectively with words as we do with our instruments?

I’d be a presumptuous ass to say I knew the answers to any of those questions. I’m wary of anyone who claims with any certainty to see the future. But I do know that my life as a listener has been vastly expanded by the new approaches the Minnesota Orchestra is trying, and you know what? For me, that’s reason enough to love what they’re doing, and to encourage other musicians in other communities to think about following at least some of their leads at least some of the time.

Because I want other music-lovers to have the same exciting experiences I’ve had. I want other people to come to concerts totally absorbed by stupid inconsequential things, then be transported to other times and places via the power of thought-provoking writing and music. I want witty charming intelligent musicians onstage sharing their thoughts about the repertoire. I want insights to bring back home to my own listening – insights that I simply won’t ever get in a traditional music-only concert. I want other people to have mind-expanding experiences with the work of living composers, and maybe even with the actual living composers themselves. In short, I want other people to get the same joy out of orchestral music that this blog and this series and this orchestra has given to me. I hope to God that’s not an impossibly naive wish.

So if you’re in the Minneapolis area, buy a ticket to an Inside the Classics show, give it a try, and let me know what you think. (I don’t think Sam or Sarah would mind hearing your thoughts, either, positive or negative!) If your own local orchestra has a similar program, try it out; see what works and what doesn’t. Putting on these kinds of concerts and utilizing new technologies are just two of the many tools available to us orchestral musicians as we move deeper into the twenty-first century. If audience-cultivating methods like these can succeed, maybe – maybe? – we’re not quite as close to dying off as we like to think.

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Filed under My Writing, Reviews

Tagged as echo chamber, Emily's first hesitant forays into music journalism, Microcommission, Minnesota Orchestra

November 5, 2011 · 9:12 pm

Review: Minnesota Orchestra and Midori in Britten, Sibelius, and Debussy

Confession time: I live in small-town Wisconsin, and it’s driving me crazy. This year I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the Minneapolis metro, and while doing so I’ve discovered beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m actually a big city girl at heart. (Well, bigger city girl, anyway. I realize that some people don’t consider Minneapolis to be a big city. However, I invite those people to move to western Wisconsin, live there for twenty-two years, and then visit Minneapolis. I can assure you they will reconsider their opinion.) Nothing else fulfills me – artistically, emotionally, spiritually – like the kind of world-class performances you find so often in the Twin Cities. Every time I walk down Nicollet Mall to Orchestra Hall, drunk with the throbbing energy of the city, dizzy with the thought that any minute now I’ll be in the big hall with the big orchestra and the big soloists, I feel like a magical new dimension of life is opening up before me. So you can imagine how thrilled I was this week when the stars aligned and I had the opportunity to see the Minnesota Orchestra and Midori in an 11AM program of Britten, Sibelius, and Debussy. The concert exceeded expectations in unexpected ways; I learned more about orchestral music in one morning than I’ve ever learned at a single concert before.

The concert began with the haunting Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten. I haven’t listened to much Britten, and I’m not sure why; I invariably love whatever I hear, but I just never take that next step to seek out more. Note to self: more Britten. This is lovely, powerful, weirdly unsettling music, soaked through with misty moonlit atmosphere. I love it. The orchestra played beautifully, although I don’t recall any individual standout moments. (Upon reflection, this may have been because I was too busy fangirling and thinking “oh my God I’m in Orchestra Hall! and look! there’s Osmo Frigging Vanskä! and Erin Keefe and Sarah Kwak and Sam Bergman and Peter McGuire and Tony Ross and all the others oh my God!” to pay as much attention as I should have to the actual music.) I did, however, get the general impression that the Britten was, more than anything else, serving as a curtain-raiser for the event that the orchestra website and brochures have been trumpeting for months: the return of Midori to the Twin Cities.

This is not my first encounter with Midori; I saw her in July 2010 in recital in Winona, Minnesota, and I wrote after that concert that “Her sound – at least as I heard it from the front row of the balcony – was clear, classic, elegant, beautiful, but maybe a bit small, and focused at the center of the hall, as opposed to extending out to the sides.” This time I was way out on the side of Orchestra Hall in the seventh row, so I had a chance to test out my July 2010 hypothesis. Turns out my doubts as to whether her sound could carry out to the corners were well-founded. Her playing was anemic, and it wasn’t a matter of mere acoustics; concertmaster Erin Keefe pierced through much more effortlessly during her brief solos in the second half of the program than Midori did in any of the Sibelius. In an attempt to get another perspective I listened to the MPR broadcast of Friday night’s concert, and I heard the same thing there. In both the broadcast and in real life, certain brief passages came across as clear and loud and gutsy, as if a technician had turned up a mike, but then within a few measures the sound would invariably, mysteriously, fade away again. I’d noted the same disconnect in her sound between the main body of her program and her encore in her July 2010 recital; it’s a very odd phenomenon. To add to the awkwardness, one of the Minnesota Orchestra’s trademarks is a huge dynamic range. Usually, of course, this is a divine treat, but in this particular performance, it almost became a liability as various players struggled not to obliterate their soloist. Whenever a tutti came and they were cut loose to do their wild magnificent thing, it ended up sounding like a toddler was futzing with the volume dial on a very expensive speaker. They never did find their balance, at least not from my seat. I’m sure part of the problem is that I’ve never heard the Sibelius live, and I’m spoiled with unnatural balance on recordings, but my gut’s saying it was more than that, that another player could have pierced through more often. Hopefully someday I’ll get another shot at hearing the Sibelius live, and then I’ll see if this was just a fluke, or if everybody vanishes so far away into the texture. (And who knows, maybe someday I’ll realize I owe Midori an apology for expecting superhuman volume.)

Aside from the projection issues, there were a couple of strange interludes in the first and second movements where everything seemed to slow down, where I didn’t quite understand where she was headed, where my thoughts wandered, where my attention was drawn to the second violinists, or audience members up high in the tiers, or the sheen of Erin Keefe’s hair underneath the spotlight. (Although to be fair, Erin Keefe does have gorgeous hair.) I heard a lot of passion in what Midori was playing, but I felt absolutely none of it. It felt very odd – almost voyeuristic, as if I was in the same room with someone who was crying over a love letter that I’d never be allowed to read.

Clearly, for whatever reason, our two souls didn’t quite connect that morning. Question: why do some performances grip you; assault you; touch, burn, something raw and searing and elemental deep within you – while others only make you think “hmm, impressive” and nod appreciatively while the bravos are shouted and the bows are taken? I know, I know, music is subjective, even (especially?) at the very highest levels of performance. It’s probably part of the reason I love it so; I enjoy being frustrated by ambiguity. But it’s still mind-boggling to me how I can be in the same room with two other much more experienced listeners and apparently hear a totally different performance.

Now it sounds like I’m coming down hard on a great violinist, which I don’t mean to do. There were elements to her performance that I really liked, too, like the dozens of little details she put into that ethereal opening, and her beautiful yearning shifts. Her technique felt solid, aside from a couple of passages in that beastly third movement where just about everyone struggles. She clearly has the chops. But based on my experiences seeing her last year in-recital, and hearing various mind-blowing Vanskä Sibelius performances over the radio, my pre-concert guess was that the orchestra itself would be the real star during the concerto…and I was right. I wish there had been a solo encore so I could hear how she sounded without having to compete with the orchestra. Maybe she’s just one of those violinists whose strengths are best appreciated in a recital setting.

After intermission came an orchestral arrangement of Clair de Lune. Vanskä has a habit of striding onstage and starting the orchestra before the buzz of the acknowledging applause has entirely dissipated in the hall. I’m not sure if he’s frustrated with audiences taking too long to clap as he comes onstage, or if he’s just that excited to get to the music, or what. That quick transition from applause to music didn’t work so well here; the weird result was that the entrance to Clair de Lune sounded jarring. The orchestra played beautifully (of course), but the arrangement itself struck me as rather cloying. I suppose it didn’t help that I watched Twilight last week and there’s that awful scene where Edward and Bella stand around in Edward’s bed-less bedroom for approximately eight hours while blankly stammering and breathing at each another, before randomly, improbably, bonding over their mutual appreciation for (you guessed it) Clair de Lune. (Note to self: don’t ever watch Twilight before going to see a Debussy performance. It will ruin it for you.) (Actually, just to be on the safe side, don’t ever watch Twilight again, period.)

Erin Keefe had a small solo during the piece, and now seems as good a time as any to mention that she is total dynamite. She approaches her new job with the precision and body language of a chamber musician, and she clearly has technique and musicality to burn. I hope her coworkers love her as much as I do. Halfway through the program I even caught myself imagining how amazing it would be to play in her section, and that has certainly never happened before. I’m itching to see if she can deliver the goods playing a concerto gig. Minnesota Orchestra programmers: get on this.

An arrangement of the piano piece L’Îsle Joyeuse came next. This piece was much more satisfying in orchestral form than Clair de Lune was. What a sweep of elegance and excitement! In the program Eric Bromberger mentioned that Debussy worked on the piece while vacationing with his mistress on the Isle of Jersey. Hmm. I’d heard the story before, but I never would have made the connection between the Isle of Jersey and L’Îsle Joyeuse; it certainly lent a whole new dimension to the defiant, bittersweet exultation that permeates the piece. I love enlightening program notes.

The last work on the program, La Mer, was the highlight of the morning by a million miles. Lushness, color, beauty, everything, and lots of everything. Sweeps and slides galore – touches of gorgeous schmaltz – washes of pure sound, followed by perfectly articulated clarity – astonishing, impossible dynamic contrasts. Phrases of only a few notes had (and I’m not exaggerating) five or more dynamics. Every single phrase was gorgeously shaped, especially in the lower strings; principle cellist Tony Ross in particular was a total standout. The whole concert I was really struck by all the principles, and how they interacted with one another and with Vanskä. For whatever reason, the entire orchestra gave off the vibe of a chamber group, and it was such a joy to watch. Music students: watch and learn.

There was a big moment toward the end of the first movement when a bold brass fanfare soared through the hall, and I felt as if I was on the top of a cliff overlooking a choppy salty sea, hair whipping across my face, coat whipping against the wind, totally absolutely against-all-odds invincible. Right away the tears began to prick at my lashes. Okay, I admit it – the brass made me cry. Not the violins, not the violas, not the cellos…the brass. So kudos to them for making this brass-averse string-player tear up. They were just magnificent. From now on whenever I listen to that portion of La Mer I know I’ll remember the way that the notes surged out above me, and how they so brilliantly, so miraculously, encapsulated everything I felt that morning – the relief of escape, the glory of the ecstasy of sound, the exultation of being in a big bustling city crowded full with interesting people who share my obsessive quirky passions. What a breathtaking experience.

So if you have the chance to see a great orchestra and haven’t yet taken advantage of it, for God’s sake, stop putting it off. Go into the city – find a friend to split the costs – take a very long day-trip – just do it. Find a way to make it happen, because I guarantee you that no CD or DVD or Blu-Ray or state-of-the-art surround-sound system can deliver inspiration with the same intensity that a world-class ensemble like the Minnesota Orchestra can. Trust me on this one.

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Filed under My Writing, Reviews

Tagged as Midori, Minnesota Orchestra, the one and only time I'll ever blog about brass instruments

May 14, 2011 · 9:05 pm

Minnesota Orchestra, July 2010

This was an important review for me. It originally appeared on violinist.com here.

***

So yesterday I went to the last performance of the Minnesota Beethoven Festival featuring the Minnesota Orchestra. After hearing extraordinary concerts by the Miró Quartet and Midori, I confess I didn’t know if the standard of music-making could get much higher.

Well, it did.

Some of you may not be familiar with the Minnesota Orchestra’s work. They don’t get as much buzz as the Chicago Symphony or the California orchestras or the eastern symphonies (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, etc.), but that certainly doesn’t mean they can’t stand comparison with them. Some people consider the Midwest to be an intellectual fly-over zone, where nothing of cultural note or import could possibly happen. Happily the Minnesota Orchestra is proving this perception wrong, and with a vengeance. Over the last few years, especially since Finnish conductor Osmo Vanksä took the podium in 2003, they’ve been stealthily ascending the ranks. They were very good before (I first heard them in the summer of 2003), but something has happened since to make them great. It’s silly to call one orchestra “the greatest in the world” – any number of orchestras in the world could take the prize at any number of concerts, depending on the repertoire, audience, hall, conductor, etc. – but I am happy to say that given the right circumstances, the Minnesota Orchestra has a definite shot at the title. When they appeared at Carnegie Hall in March, there had been a series of concerts there featuring the orchestras of Chicago, Boston, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, New York, Leipzig, Amsterdam, and St. Petersburg – in short, a pretty good sampling of the international orchestral scene. Alex Ross of The New Yorker (author of the can’t-be-missed The Rest Is Noise) wrote of the Minnesota Orchestra’s show that it was “a performance of uncanny, wrenching power, the kind you hear once or twice a decade.” And then, at the end of the review: “For the duration of the evening of March 1st, the Minnesota Orchestra sounded, to my ears, like the greatest orchestra in the world.”

I will shamelessly steal from Mr. Ross and say, for the duration of the afternoon of July 18th, the Minnesota Orchestra sounded, to my ears, like the greatest orchestra in the world.

The program was Beethoven’s fourth and seventh symphonies. The moment they began, I actually remember thinking, well, there goes my review. I knew there would be no way I could write objectively about what I was hearing. If a certain phrase was accented in a way that I particularly liked, or the voices were gorgeously balanced in the last movement, or a brass player had a couple of muddy notes in one measure – who the hell cares about such trivial details in the face of such charismatic, youthful, invigorating music-making? I fought it – trust me, I did – but it only took about twenty seconds to feel the tears dripping down my face. I couldn’t help it. The energy of all those musicians who had worked so hard for all of their lives, all coming together – how many years of study do they share between them? Say there’s a hundred orchestra members, and each has played an average of thirty years. That’s three thousand years of practice at the highest possible level. That’s extraordinary. In what other genre of music do you get to hear three thousand years of practice come to fruition?

I’ll try to remember little bits and pieces to give a vague idea of what it was like, but honestly I was rendered rather speechless. There was power suffused with delicacy – extraordinary dynamic range – palpable commitment on the part of everyone onstage, from the strings to the brass to the woodwinds to Maestro Vanskä – elegance – earthiness – charm – passion. Passion above all else. These musicians were so excited to share their love of the music with us, and the electricity in the hall proved that the audience was just as excited to hear it as the orchestra was to play it. It was such a special feeling to communicate with these extraordinary virtuosos in that intensely personal way. I wish I could tell you more than that – give you more details about what exactly I loved – but I really can’t. I was too carried away by the joy and power of the sound. There is nothing to say except this is the pinnacle of our art. This is why I love music. This is one of the greatest experiences a human being can have.

When the Seventh ended, of course there was an immediate standing ovation, the most raucous of the entire season. The Orchestra actually had to leave the stage to make us shut up. I haven’t seen a full symphony orchestra ever have to do that – chamber orchestras, yes; full symphonies, no.

I went to freshen up in the restroom afterward (even though I hadn’t done anything except sit in my seat and listen, I felt totally disheveled). I felt like the portrait of Beethoven on the cover of the festival program. And while in the restroom I saw – gasp – musicians. With violin cases. And much to my astonishment, these virtuosos looked like – gasp again – normal people. I was too starstruck to say anything to them, which is silly. I actually found myself squealing when a violinist walked by on the way out to the car. I seriously sounded like a preteen girl watching Justin Bieber go by. I know that I can talk to them; they’re not going to bite. But I would have had no idea what to say. “You were really good”? Um, no. Not nearly enough. “This performance is one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever been to in my life and you have totally reinvigorated and affirmed my love of classical music?” No, too coherent; I’d never be able to think of that in time. “Ahhhhggghh”? No, I think we’d all agree that screaming in delight at orchestra musicians is verging on creepy. Well, I’ll have to resort to thanking them online. Hopefully some member of the orchestra will read it and understand the profound awe and gratitude I’m trying to convey. [ Editor’s note: :) ]

You know how some people idealize baseball players? And root for their favorite team? And know all the members of the team by heart, and their stats? Yeah. I may live in Wisconsin, but the Minnesota Orchestra is my home team.

It was, needless to say, a perfect closer to the Minnesota Beethoven Festival. Next year for the season finale they’re playing Beethoven’s Ninth. I almost fear going. If I go out of orbit for the Fourth and the Seventh, what am I going to do for the Ninth? Well, I can’t help it. I love this music and I feel an intense bond with the players who bring it so magnificently to life for me. If I decompose and melt into a puddle on the floor they will just have to mop me up. Three cheers for the un-friggin’-believable Minnesota Orchestra. If they ever come to your neck of the woods, I have nothing to say to you except: GO.

I have learned more from these three concerts I attended this summer at the Beethoven Festival than I have in a very long time. My love of music is more passionate than ever. Here’s to world-class music making at a world-class festival in a world-class state. Words can’t describe how much I’m looking forward to the years of happy music-making ahead of us.

Postscript – At least one reviewer agrees me! Here’s the review of the concert from the LaCrosse Tribune, in which the writer claims this is one of the greatest orchestral concerts he has ever heard.

Midori, July 2010

Here’s another review from last summer that was originally published on violinist.com in July of 2010: Midori at the Minnesota Beethoven Festival. Here’s the link to the first part and the second part. (I split it in half because it ended up being so long. Oy!)

***

Tuesday afternoon I made the ninety-minute drive to the Minnesota Beethoven Festival in Winona, Minnesota, to see Midori in recital.

I remember the first time I ever heard Midori, many years ago. I was watching the Arts Channel – a collection of classical music videos pumped through a local television station over lunch – and saw this.

Needless to say, I stopped chewing. This is still one of my favorite performances of all time. I eventually found the disc of the rest of the concert at a second-hand shop. It was my first introduction to the lovely ebullient Strauss sonata, Debussy’s dreamy Beau soir, and Ernst’s wildly difficult Last Rose of Summer. These performances alone made me a big fan. But over the years, as I heard more and more snippets of Midori’s biography, I became even more impressed. She is a UN Messenger of Peace, she is passionate about many other things outside of music (she has a master’s degree in psychology), and she is committed to playing for audiences in smaller towns that might not otherwise have had the chance to see an artist of her caliber. Ever since writing an essay on the history of female violinists and the life of the first great female violinist, Wilma Norman-Neruda (shameless self-promotion; click here to read it), I have been thinking about the role that women have played in our beloved art, especially over the last hundred years since Wilma’s death. To me, seeing a woman like Midori – who is both a tremendous artist and a well-rounded human being – is more than just seeing a great musician; it is seeing a fulfillment of what those women a hundred years ago aspired to. Midori is taken seriously not as a woman violinist, but as a violinist, period, and she can do it all while pursuing the things that fulfill her not just as a musician, but as a human being. We’ve come a long way.

The concert was held in the 900-seat Somsen Auditorium at Winona State University, a surprisingly intimate hall from 1924. After some remarks from the artistic director, the stage door opened and out came Midori. She is a very tiny, very delicate looking woman – I read after the concert that she is four-eleven, and that sounds about right – but despite her size, she was clearly in charge from the minute she walked out onto the stage. She flashed a warm, welcoming smile at the audience before raising her del Gesu to her chin and beginning the fourth sonata of Beethoven.

She plays in a way that I would never advise a beginning violin student to emulate – she scrunches her shoulders for emphasis, and her scroll is usually pointing to the floor. I have always wondered how she and others who play in such an unnatural position (like Bell, Vengerov, Chang, etc.) don’t hurt themselves; it seems as if practicing that way for hours a day for years on end would take a great physical toll. But it obviously works for her, so I’m not criticizing. Her sound – at least as I heard it from the front row of the balcony – was clear, classic, elegant, beautiful, but maybe a bit small, and focused at the center of the hall, as opposed to extending out to the sides. It may have been the repertoire, or the acoustic of this particular stage, or my seat in the balcony, or that I am used to an unnatural violin-piano balance on recordings, or any other number of things; I don’t know. But even if it wasn’t a particularly large sound, it was always an exceptionally beautiful one. She brought a great deal of detail and character to the Beethoven, alternating between elegance and passion and fury, especially in the last movement with all of its rapid shifts in character. She was warmly applauded, and the buzz of the crowd below the balcony stepped up a pitch after she was finished.

The next piece on the program was the Ravel sonata. I have loved it for many years and I consider it to be a very dear musical friend. (Isn’t it funny how we often feel as affectionate toward beloved pieces of music as we do people?) I’ve never heard it live before. As we were waiting for Midori to return to the stage, I had a fleeting thought of how unnatural it is to know a work solely from recordings. Don’t get me wrong, I love recordings – without them, I’d never know the Ravel sonata, period – but I wonder what Ravel would have thought of me loving this work so dearly for so many years, without ever having heard it live. About the time that Ravel composed this piece, he was becoming very interested in the possibilities presented by recordings, so perhaps he wouldn’t think it strange or odd at all, but I never feel as if I really know a piece until I can be in the same room in which it’s being brought alive. Living in a place where I can see relatively few live performances of classical violin music, it’s so vital for me to stay connected with the performance side of the art, both as a listener and as a violinist. Analysis of the score – comparing recordings – reading biographies of the great composers: those things will only get you so far. A vital portion of the appreciation of these great works has to be done in a concert hall, in hearing them as they were originally intended to be experienced.

Midori wrote the program notes for the Ravel. Apparently this sonata was written for Hélène Jourdan-Morhange, a highly-regarded French violinist born in 1892. She asked for a concerto but got this sonata instead. (A Ravel violin concerto! Can you imagine?) I had always heard that Ravel was never one for romantic attachments, but, Googling about a bit, it seems that he may possibly (emphasis on the possibly) have had unrequited feelings for Hélène. There are even rumors that he once asked her to marry him, and she turned him down. At the very least, they were extremely close friends – they shared many interests, including a deep mutual affection for cats – and although she was not able to premiere the sonata due to arthritis, it was written for and dedicated to her. (Ravel seems to have been inspired by female violinists; Hélène also premiered his violin/cello duo and his lovely little violin and piano piece Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Faure – and of course Jelly d’Aranyi was the inspiration for Tzigane.) So even seventy miles away home and from my project of researching the great female violinists, I was given a new lead to follow up. Who exactly was this Hélène Jourdan-Morhange? What was she like? Who did she study with? What violin did she play? What kind of relationship did she really have with Ravel? Why when I Google her does her name appear to have been lost to history, even though she is the dedicatee of a major piece that most every violinist knows and loves? How could we as a community of violin-lovers have possibly forgotten her?

Midori’s performance of the first movement kept reminding me of water – water in a brook, ripples in a pond, rain trickling from eaves, puddles, waves, lakes… I’m not one for seeing visual imagery when I listen to music, so it was a very strange, very magical experience. There wasn’t much vibrato, and the shifts were clean and lean. If you have heard Midori’s Carnegie Hall recording (I’m thinking of the shifts in The Last Rose of Summer, and Milstein’s Chopin transcription in particular), you’ll know right away what I’m talking about. Once and a while she would really dig into a slide, anticipating that second blues movement. And as it should, everything felt like it was leading up to that glorious endless bow at the end of the movement. As the piano quietly wrapped up the theme beneath her, you could feel the audience collectively leaning forward. Even after the sound had died away, she stood motionless and left her bow on the string, giving us permission to linger in that achingly gorgeous sound-world for just a few more precious seconds. Funnily enough, it turned out that one of my favorite parts of this concert were the silences – the parts of the performance where the sound slowly died away and my attention was drawn out of the music toward the awed, appreciative reaction of the other concertgoers.

Then came the blues in the Ravel’s sexy, sexy second movement. Is there a more blatantly erotic movement in the violin-piano literature? If there is I’ve yet to hear it. Now that I have read that Ravel may have had some kind of attraction to its dedicatee, this movement…takes on a new significance, shall we say? I had never thought of this sonata as a love-story before, but dayum when I listen to it now… What a dialogue between the violin and the piano. All of those lilting arco lines on the fiddle – the slow slides – those gutsy, suggestively strumming pizzicatos… And then that blazing third movement, a meshing of violin and piano, ending in a brilliant unified ecstasy… There is that famous quote by Ravel that basically says that in this sonata he wanted to explore the differences between a violin and a piano, rather than minimizing them as other composers had in their violin-piano sonatas. I highly doubt he was also thinking of emphasizing the fundamental differences between men and women, but oh, it would have been so interesting if he had. It quickly becomes tempting to imagine this as a composer’s naughty daydream, with Ravel on the piano and Hélène on the violin.

Midori really sunk her teeth into the blues. Lots of slides, lots of swing in the snappy pizzicato parts. It was just delicious to hear. And she simply took everybody’s breath away in the third movement’s perpetual motion. Every single one of the flurry of the notes came clear and strong and graceful, even toward the end when the low notes on the G-string start coming into the picture, where some performers have a tendency to start blurring the sound. During the last few measures it sounded as if her del Gesù was about to go up in flames. Apparently during the sonata’s lengthy gestation, Ravel wrote to Hélène that he didn’t think it would tire her hand too much. Hopefully that was before this last movement came into being, because looking at the score, I can’t imagine a much more demanding exercise for the left and right hands alike. The audience loved it, and a few people even gave a standing ovation.

At intermission, I eavesdropped in the women’s bathroom – the best place for any classical music critic to get an unbiased review – and heard someone say, “She’s so good, she tires me out!” While waiting for me, my companion at the concert overheard another woman saying, “I sure wasn’t expecting that blues movement – but I loved it!” Indeed.

After intermission came Mario Davidovsky’s Duo Capriccioso. Before the performers came onstage, the resident piano lackey came out and disassembled the part of the piano underneath the music stand. So it was clear from the beginning that this was not your typical violin-piano duet. The piece was filled with a variety of novel violin and piano techniques, including – you guessed it – pizzicato inside the piano. It was interesting, to be sure, but at times I felt as if it was just a series of tricks. Gripping and atmospheric tricks, to be sure; but tricks nonetheless. I need to find a recording of the piece and listen to it a few times before passing final judgment; works that I’m not thrilled about at first hearing often later reveal previously unheard depths once I become more familiar with the score. Once again, Midori was committed to her performance a hundred percent. This music was obviously close to her heart and she was thrilled to share it with us, and that alone made me want to work as hard as I could to understand and appreciate it.

The last piece on the program, the Brahms third sonata, was actually the reason I wanted tickets for this concert in the first place. I instantly connected with this piece the first time I heard it, and to this day it’s still my favorite Brahms sonata – although, once again, like with the Ravel, I have never heard it performed live. The first recording I ever heard of it was David Oistrakh’s, with Vladimir Yampolsky on the piano. For some pieces, I don’t have a favorite recording; I’m happy with a wide variety of interpretations. With others, I find a recording that I fall in love with, and all subsequent versions feel a bit…wrong in comparison. The Oistrakh Brahms third is one of those recordings that I have completely and totally fallen in love with, and no other performance of the Brahms third satisfies me in quite the same way. Oistrakh’s warmth and sincerity fits in so perfectly with this intensely personal piece, and the slightly muffled sound quality of the older recording is just the icing on the cake.

No performance was going to live up to that one of Oistrakh’s for me, but Midori’s rendition was still very, very special nonetheless. In the first movement she brought a searing tone and a real rhythmic pulse, especially on those string-crossing passages that Oistrakh tended to linger over. Unfortunately there were moments, especially in the lower register, when her sound seemed to disappear into the piano texture. But this is nit-picking. It was extraordinarily beautiful and masterful playing.

The second movement was a real highlight of the entire concert. Finally hearing it live convinced me it must be one of the most beautiful things ever written for the violin. Midori left more space in between the notes than Oistrakh, to beautiful effect. Those yearning upward stretches in the violin – the whispered double-stopped thirds at the very end… As the music came to a gentle close, one could feel the silence just throbbing in the hall. And amazingly enough, that feeling didn’t release even after she finally took the bow off the strings; it lasted as she went into the third movement presto. That was pretty special. I’m quickly learning how an audience’s response is just as much of a part of the performance as what an artist does onstage. In a great performance, it really is a conversation without words.

Midori exploded through the double-stops in the last movement. Her sound, although always pretty and striking, remained a little bit small for my tastes, but once again, this is a nitpick. She obviously felt this music very deeply, and by the time that glorious F-sharp toward the end of the final movement – one of my favorite single notes in classical music – any reservations I might have had over a small tone were forgotten. I felt giddy with the beauty of Brahms, and that’s the definition of a great performance, right there.

There was a lengthy standing ovation. Finally she came, set the music-stand aside, and re-tuned. The del Gesù was being a tad picky and the crowd began to giggle. Finally she was satisfied and turned back to the audience. “We will play Souvenir of Moscow by Wieniawski,” she said. I wasn’t familiar with the Souvenir but the glorious thing about Wieniawski and Sarasate and Vieuxtemps is that you don’t really need to be familiar with them to fall in love with them. All those pyrotechnics – all that character – all the slides and various bow strokes… Talk about pieces that were written to be performed, as opposed to recorded! When she set the music stand aside and launched into those opening chords from memory, her sound totally changed. For the first time that night, I could firmly identify that instrument as a del Gesù, without a doubt. The sound just screamed stereotypical del Gesù – rich, throaty, a tad gritty, especially in the lower half. None of those characteristics were traits that I associated with Midori’s playing before, either in her recordings or during the rest of the recital. Was it the flashier repertoire, or the fact she was now playing from memory, or another reason altogether? I don’t know, but I heard a definite difference. As her fingers flashed up and down the fingerboard, I couldn’t suppress a wry smile as I remembered that Wieniawski had played a concert with Wilma Norman-Neruda in Moscow, and, after picking a fight with a general when he tried to convince the audience he was the better player, was ordered out of the city. I haven’t been able to find when the Souvenir was written, but it has an early opus number (6), and I wonder if it was after this little altercation?

In my twelve years of playing, I had never heard a great violinist take on one of the great showpieces live. Let me tell you, the difference between a live performance of Wieniawski and a recorded performance is the difference between fried chicken and tofu. There is an element of spice, personality – even danger – that is totally absent from a recording. One knows that in a recording, the strings will never break, and the performer will never have a memory lapse, and they will always hit each and every note each and every time – that kind of thing. But there are no such assurances for live performances. The audience teams up psychologically with the player in the hopes that he or she will make it through the piece unscathed. That bond is an incredibly powerful one, and for the first time I really began to understand emotionally what made these traveling Victorian virtuosi so beloved by their audiences. Nowadays these “parlor pieces” are considered light fare, musically suspect, not serious enough, but they are such an important part of our art, and they are received so enthusiastically by audiences, that I personally don’t think a recital program is complete without one. I would have been delighted to see one in the main body of the program.

As you can imagine, the subsequent applause and whoops and hollers just about brought the house down. She came out to bow again and again, ever gracious. She was greeting people in the lobby afterward, and I got her autograph and a picture. Her writing was just as bold and confident as her onstage manner.

Now whenever I listen to that beautiful recording of the Chopin Nocturne from Carnegie Hall, I will remember the sweetness and delicacy and beauty of everything I heard Tuesday night. There is simply nothing else in life like seeing a great violinist play a live concert. Absolutely nothing at all.

Except…maybe seeing one of the greatest orchestras of our time playing two Beethoven symphonies. Which is what I get to see tomorrow, when the Minnesota Orchestra takes on the fourth and the seventh in the closing concert of the 2010 Minnesota Beethoven Festival.

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Filed under My Writing, Reviews

Tagged as Midori, Minnesota Beethoven Festival

May 14, 2011 · 8:14 pm

Miró Quartet, July 2010

Just because I like to have everything in one place, I’m going to post a series of reviews I wrote last year.

This is a review I wrote in July 2010 for violinist.com after I attended a concert of the Miró Quartet at the Minnesota Beethoven Festival in Winona, Minnesota. The original review can be read here.

***

Some violinists dream of debuting at Carnegie Hall. My wildly improbable violin-dream consists of organizing The Greatest Summer Music Festival of All Time ©. Whenever I’m stressed out and in need of distraction, I throw wild impractical idea upon wild impractical idea until I have my own personal Tanglewood or Ravinia or Aspen going on in the back of my brain.

I had the basics of my fantasy worked out by the age of thirteen. I would place my festival south of the Twin Cities in one of the charming rivertowns along the Mississippi River. All of these towns – Hastings, Red Wing, Maiden Rock, Stockholm, Lake City, Wabasha, Alma, Winona – are gorgeous little undiscovered gems along the necklace of the river, crammed bluff to bluff with stately old houses and shady streets. They would be the perfect spot for a summer festival, right between Minneapolis and Chicago. (The Minnesota Orchestra once contemplated building a summer home south of the metro before Sommerfest came into existence, so it’s not a new idea.) I would set it in July, smack-dab in the middle of the summer, and it would last for at least two weeks, with three concerts a week. I’d have at least one concert free and outdoors and open to the public. The rates otherwise would be awesomely reasonable. I’d scout out the greatest venues, acoustically and aesthetically. The festival would feature primarily chamber music, but I’d bring in the Minnesota Orchestra for the festival opener or closer; I haven’t decided yet which. (Um, Osmo Vänskä and I are still talking it over…in my mind.) And this is the best part – I will somehow gain access to the greatest classical artists of our time, and for some reason, they will come. They will love my festival. They will clamber to be a part of it. So to sum up this strange dream, I want to be the sober person dressed in black who comes up to the microphone before every performance, politely reminds people to turn off their cell phones, and points out errors in the program notes before ceding the stage. It’s a pretty strange dream to have. Especially for a thirteen-year-old.

So you can imagine my total shock when I heard about the Minnesota Beethoven Festival in Winona, Minnesota. It goes from the tail end of June to the middle of July. Each concert is held in a lovely venue, ranging in size from a tiny 1912 high school concert hall to modern middle school or college auditoriums. It lasts for a little over two weeks, with three concerts a week. The tickets are $25 a concert for an adult, $17 for a student. There is one orchestral pops concert outdoors, free of charge. All concerts are in beautiful Winona, two and a half hours south of the Twin Cities. The Minnesota Orchestra closes every season. And the greatest classical artists of our time clamber to come to it. This year alone they are featuring Midori, the Miró Quartet, and Yo-Yo Ma, among others. And they only began in 2007. The only problem is, I’m not the sober person dressed in black who politely reminds people to turn off their cell phones. Well, maybe I can still start my own festival someday. In the meantime I’m more than happy to take the two hour drive to Winona to see some world-class music.

I went to my first concert of the season on July eighth – the Miró Quartet playing three Beethoven quartets, the last of which was the 13th quartet, which features the massive Grosse Fugue. (Several months ago, the day single tickets came on sale, I tried to get tickets to see Yo-Yo Ma, but their website crashed thirty seconds into the ordering process. I barely got tickets for the Miró and the Minnesota Orchestra. Such is the price of having such a great festival: audience demand is huge.) The concert was held in the lovely St. Cecilia Theater, which is a high school auditorium from 1912 that seats maybe 150 people. I was high in the balcony in the back and I only had a partial view, so my tickets ended up being half-price ($8.50 for a student). Thankfully some of the people who had bought tickets never showed up, so right before the concert started the audience shifted toward the center of the balcony so we could see better. By the time the concert started, I had a wonderful view of the cellist and violist, and if I craned my neck I could see the violinists.

From the very first downbeat, I was reminded all over again of the most important facet of performing with others: communication, communication, communication. Watching the Miró was just a master class in communication. They were all extremely comfortable with the repertoire, and so they were free to watch each other just as much as they were watching the notes on their stand. A quick breath – a lift of the eyebrows – a gentle sway or bow – an almost imperceptible turn toward the audience – all of the subtle little actions that help an ensemble stay in tune and in time.

Their Beethoven was warm and intense, smooth and golden, with just a bit of welcome grit in the lower strings. The sound came in waves, especially in the second quartet on the program, the Serioso, with each dynamic marking beautifully and exactly followed, so that nothing was flat or featureless. I am a firm believer that one of the first things that separates a professional sound from an amateur one – aside from good intonation – is dedicated observation of dynamics. And the Miró is sure dedicated to their dynamics. Their fortes came clear up to the top of the balcony, and their pianissimos made everyone lean forward and hold their breath. By the time each movement ended, the whole hall went up in a sound of rustles and coughs; everyone had been dead silent through the performance, and we all felt pinned to our seats, unable to move, until their bows came off their strings. That is always the sign of a great performance – when nobody dares cough or shift position or even breathe, for fear of disturbing that sacred connection between performers and their audiences.

Ten or fifteen years ago, when I knew nothing about the violin, I bought a random CD with a string quartet on the front, because I thought string quartets were pretty and would be nice background music (!). Just to serve me right, the cosmos decided to grant me a disc of Beethoven’s opus 130 (!!). Although it has its pretty moments, the opus 130 quartet is decidedly not background music. After I bought the disc I listened to it a few times but when the track came to the Grosse Fugue, I pressed the back button. I just could not handle it. Thankfully I’ve learned more about music since then, and I’m to the point now where I love violent cacophony, especially in chamber music. So I was eager to really experience and appreciate this piece in-person, after snubbing it so many years ago. I was not disappointed. The opening to the Fugue – those wrenching chords and rhythms that sound just as shocking and contemporary as anything Shostakovich or Prokofiev ever wrote – were delivered by the Miró with all the intense honest drama they deserve, with no hint of showiness or melodrama. As I was sitting there listening to this enormous masterpiece being so splendidly and beautifully interpreted, I got the clichéd “Beethoven chills” that every music-lover gets at some point in their listening career. It was just so incredibly moving to think of him writing out this tangled beast of a score, even though he would never hear it. Did he have any inkling that two hundred – and probably three hundred, and four hundred, and five hundred – years down the line, people would come together at concerts like this one and hear it? And more than hear it, love it? Because surely he knew that it would take many years for this to be fully appreciated, if it would ever be appreciated at all. I am well aware this is not a new or remotely original thought, but it still retains its power, and I know it always will.

It was one of those performances where a few minutes before the end, you could see women across the audience slowly set their purses down on the floor and tuck their programs into the side of the chair. Everyone was just waiting for that final note to erupt so they could jump to their feet, and they didn’t want their purses or programs to be in the way. And jump to our feet we did. I doubt that hundred-year-old auditorium has heard a more enthusiastic ovation. The quartet returned to the stage again and again, all smiles, and as an encore we heard the slow movement from the last piece that Beethoven ever wrote – the string quartet op 135. Which of course got me to having chills all over again. It was just the perfect counterpoint to the fugue, and a wonderful way to end a concert.

I came out into the warm night air totally invigorated and inspired, overwhelmed with gratitude to the Miró and Beethoven and the Minnesota Beethoven Festival. As I got into the car, I thought about how excited I was to rush home and experiment with dynamics. I think that may be the definition of a great performance: one that makes you want to rush home and experiment with dynamics.

I don’t have much time, though, because Tuesday night I’m heading out to see Midori! I’m counting down the days.

So if you live in the upper Midwest – Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, St. Paul – next year, you might want to consider coming to Winona. This is a festival that is on its way up in the world, and I can definitely see it taking its rightful place with the great American chamber music festivals. I feel so privileged to watch it take shape. It’s chamber music at the highest possible level – and isn’t that what summer is really all about?

***

The Miró Quartet kindly mentioned this review on their own blog on 13 July. Read that here.

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Filed under My Writing, Reviews

Tagged as Minnesota Beethoven Festival, Miro Quartet

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Category Archives: Reviews

Review: Minnesota Orchestra and Erin Keefe in Beethoven, July 2012

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Review: Minnesota Orchestra and Midori in Britten, Sibelius, and Debussy

Minnesota Orchestra, July 2010

Midori, July 2010

Miró Quartet, July 2010

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