I don't find a lot of what Ted Gioia writes to be very interesting, but he came up with a good one today: Google Thinks Beethoven Looks Like Mr. Bean. Well, no, that is another exaggeration, but from the evidence Mr. Gioia assembles it is certainly the case that Google is massively falsifying historic images of composers. This certainly doesn't look like Mr. Bean--but it looks even less like Beethoven:
This is what Beethoven actually looked like, from a contemporary portrait:
Follow the link for some more ridiculous images. What really and truly shocks me is people are still using Google? I switched to DuckDuckGo at least ten years ago. They aren't perfect, but at least they aren't insane.
Here is the "Tempest" Sonata for Piano with Maria João Pires:
The story is that classical musicians are afraid to, or forbidden to, improvise in performance. While there is certainly some truth in that, it is actually a bit more complicated. Through the 19th century the concept of the musical "work" became more central and along with that, the sacralization of the "score," the realization of the work. In the presence of a great musical work, the "Hammerklavier" Sonata by Beethoven, for example, what pianist would have the temerity to throw in a few improvisations?
But alongside this are a number of older traditions. In early music performance, for example, the improvisation of ornaments and rhythmic alternations is not only common, but encouraged. And we have a recent recording that takes that tradition up to the time of Mozart's piano concertos: A Pianist Who’s Not Afraid to Improvise on Mozart
“When Mozart wrote his concertos, they were a vehicle for his skills,” the pianist and scholar Robert Levin said by telephone from Salzburg, Austria — Mozart’s hometown — where he teaches at the Mozarteum University. “He was respected as a composer and lionized as a performer, but it was as an improviser that he was on top of the heap.”
Levin, 76, has long argued that Mozart, as a player, made up new cadenzas and ornaments in the moment. And he has sought to revive that spirit of improvisation in a landmark cycle of the concertos on period instruments, a 13-album project begun more than 30 years ago with the Academy of Ancient Music, led by Christopher Hogwood.
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On An Overgrown Path gives us a few things to think about: Tribalism is ruining classical music. After trashing Slipped Disc, for, well, being trashy he goes on:
There are many other well-meaning but nevertheless damaging examples of tribalism in classical music. Some time back Proms audiences were cited as the best in the world. Today attending a BBC Prom is like attending a football match. The tribe of fans cheer on the home team - the performers - at every opportunity. It doesn't matter if the home team musicians are playing well, averagely, or just plain badly; the fans cheers them anyway, usually between movements. While over at BBC Radio 3 the once-respected network has committed harakiri in a futile battle for the Classic FM tribe.
These are just a few examples of tribalism based on the prevailing erroneous assumption by classical brand marketeers that their target audience is a homogeneous tribe of affluent young people who have the attention span of gnats and turn into pumpkins if they are parted from their mobile phone for more than two minutes. This is just nonsense: there is no single mass market tribe for classical music. The classical audience always has been and will always continue to be a granular group of individuals with differing but overlapping tastes.
On the plus side he says that there is very little they can do to damage the product:
The transcendental genius of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and their peers across the ages
Thinking about opera as burying or at least challenging the status quo may seem antithetical to its nature. Yet opera always fares best when it goes against the grain: flaunting resistance to the beauty standards erected by mass media; fitting uneasily, if at all, with the rapid demands of the attention economy; feeling completely out of place with how we consume other art.
For every composer affirming authority in their work, opera’s history offers counterexamples: creators so committed to establishing a new world order in sound that they resisted all conventions and invented their own instruments, their own ensembles or their own theaters. Opera often appears to ratify the reigning ideology, but the art form is most exciting and viable when it is a subversive act.
Well sure, but the reason it has to be supported by an elite is that opera is the most fantastically expensive art-form ever.
Picture yourself at a classical music concert, enveloped by the sweeping melodies of Beethoven or Brahms. As you listen, you may not realize that your heart rate and breathing are subtly syncing with those of the people around you. A new study has shown that the shared experience of live music creates a remarkable physiological bond among audience members, revealing the profound impact of music on the human body. The research has been published in Scientific Reports.
However:
However, the timing of inhalations and exhalations did not show significant synchronization, suggesting that while the music had a powerful effect on the audience’s overall physiological state, it did not induce the kind of precise, rhythmic breathing often seen in activities like singing or chanting. “We found repeatedly that respiration rate becomes synchronized, but not the breathing-in and breathing-out,” Tschacher said.
Interestingly, the study also revealed that different types of listening experiences were associated with different levels of synchrony. For example, participants who reported being emotionally moved by the music were less synchronized with the rest of the audience. On the other hand, those who focused on the structure of the music—such as its melodies, rhythm, and harmony—or who paid close attention to the sounds of individual instruments, showed higher levels of synchrony.
So, not much in the way of actual results. Coincidentally, I did a little research of my own during a number of concerts at Salzburg. I know that I tend to physically respond while listening to music even though I try to minimize it during concerts so as not to disturb my neighbors. Some of it consists in mild nodding in time, movements of my hands in sympathy. Sometimes it is akin to the movements of a passenger's feet while in a car driven by someone not entirely in control--you know those times where you search for a brake pedal! So I often feel, especially in piano and guitar concerts, as if I do have a physical participation. So, during the Salzburg concerts I repeatedly surveyed the other audience members to see if I could discern anyone else also making physical responses. I looked at hundreds of people and didn't notice anything. The only people making these kinds of physical movements were the performers. I guess I'm weird.
While at first glance a Chinese orchestra may look similar to a Western orchestra, they are different as chalk and cheese. The string make-up (‘Huqins’ in Chinese orchestras) comprises the Eco-Gaohu (they look like bowed banjos), the Eco-Zhonghu; the Eco-Erhu, the Eco-Gehu and the Eco-Bass Gehu. Musicians play specially manufactured Eco-Huqins (the Gaohu, Zhonghu, Erhu, Gehu and Bass-Gehu are created without the traditional python skin) which have been in use by the HKCO since 2009, while the bright sound of Chinese woodwind instruments and brass invokes ancient Oriental ceremony. Celina Chin (Celina Chin Man Wah), executive director at HKCO, explains: ‘It dates back to the Chou (Zhou) and Tang dynasties, there was already a very big orchestra, nearly 1,000 people, especially for the King.’ For Chin, the HKCO sound is ‘just like a cosmopolitan image of Hong Kong; the instruments are traditional Chinese, but the sound is international.’
There will be no further updates to Finale, or any of its associated tools (PrintMusic, Notepad, Songwriter)
– It is no longer possible to purchase or upgrade Finale in the MakeMusic eStore
– Finale will continue to work on devices where it is currently installed (barring OS changes)
– After one year, beginning August 2025, these changes will go into effect:
– It will not be possible to authorize Finale on any new devices, or reauthorize Finale
– Support for Finale v27 or any other version of Finale will no longer be available.
For a limited time, users of any version of Finale or PrintMusic can purchase Dorico Pro for just $149 (retail price $579).
I don't know anything about Dorico Pro, but I guess I will give it a try. I have spent over 25 years learning how to use Finale, but I guess I can simply continue to use it on my current devices.
* * *
Let's start with Robert Levin and Mozart:
Here is the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra:
My favorite Beethoven piano concertos are Friedrich Guida with the Vienna Philharmonic, but this is pretty good too:
Now that I'm back home and have recovered from jet lag and a bad cold and caught up with work, I can contemplate this year's excursion to the Salzburg Festival. This is the third festival I have attended, though I was a student at the Mozarteum in the 1980s and attended a few concerts.
Inevitably this year was less of a sheer thrill than the first one in 2019 or the second in 2021. This is partly due to exposure and partly due to some internal chemistry I am still thinking about. I am a more seasoned festival-goer now, of course. I can find my seats and I know my way to the various venues and I have a smattering of understanding of the Salzburg bus system. So now, I guess, the problem is deciding which concerts to attend--eight months beforehand! The operas are nowadays the big show at Salzburg and it is always a bit of a crap-shoot--unless you have insider knowledge. I made one good choice, Don Giovanni, and one bad choice Der Idiot. Mind you, the critical consensus went the other way, which is not that important. Two of the concerts I most wanted to attend, Currenzis' of the Matthew Passion and the Berlin Philharmonic, were both outside of the time-span I was allowed. I did not choose a couple of operas that might have been very exciting, the Prokofiev for one. But I think I covered the piano recitals quite well--I saw six out of the eight major recitals.
I'm not sure of what I feel about this year's festival--that might have to wait a couple of months. But I can say that the Vienna Philharmonic doing Bruckner was an experience of a lifetime and the piano recitals by Levit, Sokolov, Aimard and Volodos were transcendental. The De profundis by Arvo Pärt was deeply moving and the production of Don Giovanni was absolutely delightful. Some of the other concerts felt more like work than pleasure.
Just for fun, here is Pierre-Laurent Aimard playing a Ligeti etude:
...what irreducibly constitutes good art as such? Or rather, what is the ultimate source of value or quality in art? And the worked-out answer appears to be: not skill, training, or anything else having to do with execution or performance, but conception alone ... Conception can also be called invention, inspiration, or even intuition.
--Clement Greenberg, Art International, 1962
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This is kind of fun: composer Samuel Andreyev tries to see how well Grok understands the concept of music notation:
Art that loses touch with the resources of beauty is bound to be sterile. But it is also true that striving self-consciously to embody beauty is a prescription for artistic failure. This may seem paradoxical. But, like many of the most important things in life, genuine beauty is achieved mainly by indirection. In this sense, beauty resembles happiness as it was described by Aristotle: it is not a possible goal of our actions, but rather the natural accompaniment of actions rightly performed. Striving for happiness in life all but guarantees unhappiness; striving for beauty in art is likely to result in kitsch or some other artistic counterfeit.
The trick, for viewers as well as artists, is not to lose sight of beauty but to concentrate primarily on something seemingly more pedestrian — the making of good works of art. The best guides to this task are to be found not in the work of this season’s art-world darlings but in the great models furnished by the past.
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Critic Jay Nordlinger paid a visit to Salzburg and reviewed one of the Mozart Matinees: Mozart in the morning.
On Saturday morning, Manze conducted the Mozarteum Orchestra in an all-Mozart concert at the Mozarteum. Is that enough Mozart for you? (There never is, really.) The program began with the Six German Dances, K. 509.
As he prepared to give the downbeat, Manze looked like he was thinking the following thoughts: I can’t wait to get started. I can’t wait to hear and conduct this music. We are the luckiest people in the world to be doing this. Manze delights in music-making, as few do.
Does this have an effect on an orchestra (and an audience)? Certainly.
I attended two of the Mozart Matinees in the Großer Saal and had the same impression: all the performers, and especially the conductors, were very happy people, really enjoying what they were doing. But I didn't find the hall especially hot! Like all the venues apart from the Collegium church, it is air conditioned, though minimally.
Giacinto Scelsi died in 1988, aged 83. Virtually unknown for most of his life, his music had been discovered and much of it performed for the first time only in his last 10 years, when his works suddenly became influential on both sides of the Atlantic – American experimentalists such as Alvin Curran, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown were among his admirers, as were the French spectralists, especially Tristan Murail and Claude Vivier. The mystique that surrounded Scelsi added to the allure of his music – a self-taught composer who was born into the Italian nobility, he refused to have his photograph associated with his music and regarded himself as a messenger from another world. His intense later works were often confined to a single chord or pitch that was subjected to microtonal inflections and all manner of textural variation.
I have an earlier disc of Scelsi's music on my shelf, on the recommendation of a composition teacher, but I have to say I have never found it very appealing. Of course, I suppose it doesn't have to be.
It almost feels cruel to single out anyone from the cast of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s “The Idiot,” the greatest triumph of this year’s festival. With Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s spirited baton in the pit, and fearless singers onstage, Salzburg has given this rarity the showing it has needed to take hold in the operatic canon.
Beyond the leading trio of singers, though, the Australian mezzo-soprano Xenia Puskarz Thomas repeatedly asserted her presence on the vast stage of the Felsenreitschule as the confidently idealistic Aglaya. Bogdan Volkov, as the protagonist Prince Myshkin, flinched in her presence, and it was easy to see why. Thomas, a member of the Opera Studio at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, has a small frame but a big sound that easily soared over Weinberg’s thick orchestration, in monologues of exasperation, flirtation and rage delivered with the skill of a seasoned actor.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is leaving the San Francisco Symphony because the board won’t pay for his programming.
That’s widely known.
In the next few days the board will seek city permission to go ahead with a makeover of Davies Symphony Hall, with a projected cost of $100 million.
Sack the best gardener, build a better garden shed.
This tends to confirm my suspicion that firing Salonen wasn't really about the money at all. Which would you prefer: great music in a mediocre hall or mediocre music in a great hall?
What makes a great Bruckner conductor? “That’s a very difficult question,” Honeck explains, “because technically, from the baton, how you beat, Bruckner is very easy. It’s not like Stravinsky’s Sacre or Mahler. The same is true for Mozart.”
On the page, indeed, Bruckner looks pretty straightforward. There aren’t complex time signatures and rapid changes of tempo. But pacing those tempi can defeat many. “You have to understand that the tempo comes automatically if you understand the context in which it was written, the spirituality that was in the man and his music and to understand that spirituality. If there is contrapuntal writing, like a fugue, then understand that the second theme in the fuga is also important, the counterpoint is important so you must give it a life; if you take it too quickly, then you have a problem. The same is true with the folk music, you have to know which tempo or in which kind of style it was played.”
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I suppose we can kick off the envois with Manfred Honeck conducting Bruckner:
Why not some Mozart? Here are the aforementioned German Dances:
I could not help noticing that this year, and in all recent past years I am aware of, there were no classical guitar concerts at the Salzburg Festival, nor was there a guitar class. When I attended in the late 80s, there most certainly was a guitar class presided over by Pepe Romero and he also accompanied soprano Teresa Berganza in a performance of the Siete canciones populares españoles of Manuel de Falla though I don't recall the venue. Let's look at some other major festivals:
Lucerne Festival: lots of piano, especially Igor Levit, lots of orchestras and lots of violin. I looked at the first six pages of concert listings and no guitar
Verbier Festival: in the chamber music series there are lots of violinists, cellists and pianists, but no guitarists
I'm not going to search all of the European festivals. There are, of course, guitar specific festivals such as this one:
Guitar festivals always seem to feature a competition. This fulfills two purposes: it attracts a lot of guitarists and it sustains the belief that the only real problem in the guitar world is that classical guitarists are not as technically proficient as pianists. This is likely less true than it used to be. In any case, what we see is that the guitar is excluded from the mainstream music festivals and pushed off into its own ghetto. Is it because guitarists are poorer technically and musically? That may be true. But what I suspect the real problem is that the guitar repertoire that really attracts a broad audience consists of about a half-dozen pieces. Sitting in the smaller venues at the Salzburg Festival I asked myself, which guitarists playing which repertoire could be guaranteed to fill any of these halls. And no names came to mind.
Perhaps the real problem is not technique, but composition.
“We in this classical music industry sometimes wonder what we’re doing in this bubble,” he said. “But this tells us that it actually matters that there’s a symphony orchestra in a town. We are the good guys, in the cultural side of things. We are constructive forces of society, and it’s nice to be reminded of that.”
So, what now? Within five minutes of the announcement that he was leaving San Francisco, Salonen had the first of many job offers. At the moment, he’s not interested in taking on another orchestra, but there are many other ways to remain active. He is working on a horn concerto for Stefan Dohr of the Berlin Philharmonic, and he is considering writing his first opera.
Chase said that Salonen’s ideas for the field are “more porous and ultimately more powerful than institutions”; there’s a possibility that his work as a freelancer could evolve into something more project-based, with orchestral partners worldwide. When he was at the Soho House in Stockholm, he told Benkö, the interviewer, that it was kind of odd to see his old classmates start to retire.
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Here is economist Tyler Cowen's list of his favorite classical performances. Not many surprises. Lots of Bach and Beethoven but just Don Giovanni from Mozart.
Beving and Melnyk are two figures in a huge musical phenomenon unfolding on the fringes of classical music. It can be heard on film and TV soundtracks, adverts and call-centre hold music, and behind that trickledown lies an enormous number of albums, singles and playlists by pianist-composers now attracting more listeners than most big names of classical piano performance. Did you think Yuja Wang, the 37-year-old Chinese phenomenon, was one of the most famous pianists in the world? Think again.
Beving, Melnyk and similar artists work in a solo piano soundworld sometimes known as “ambient” or “neoclassical” or “postminimalist” – although categories aren’t really its thing. As one fan put it to me with a hint of impatience: “It’s all just stuff, you know?” And this particular stuff is about soulful simplicity. A stripped-back aesthetic. Quiet melancholy. It is a world of arpeggios and gentle undulations, of atmosphere rather than athleticism.
Set in the 17th-century Danish court, this is the story of Peter Claire, a young lutenist who arrives from England to join the royal orchestra. Atmospheric, tender and gripping, Tremain explores the extraordinary power of music through her language. Melodies have a “strange and haunting sweetness”, and notes are “carried, as breath is carried through the body”.
As the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, Lasker-Wallfisch is one of the most forceful and eloquent witnesses still living. More than that, she embodies a lost way of being—the intellectual spark of German Jewish culture before Hitler. With her shock of white hair, ruddy face, and exacting eyes, she looks twenty years younger than she is. She is mordantly funny. She speaks in epigrams and aphorisms. She has no patience with sentimentality or stupidity. An unrepentant smoker, she intersperses her remarks with well-timed drags on a cigarette. Her voice has descended at least an octave since 1945. The word “indomitable” might have been invented for her. She is perhaps the most awe-inspiring person I have ever met.
I have to agree: one of the most awe-inspiring people I have ever known was also a survivor of Auschwitz.
He felt wronged by the public and his fellow composers, who even when they admired him didn’t know what to do with his music, or his personality. Wagner wrote that Berlioz didn’t trust anyone’s opinion, and seemed to enjoy isolation, dooming him to “remain forever incomplete and perhaps really shine only as a transient, marvelous exception.”
Berlioz had faith that his time would come, though. By his estimate, things would pick up for him if he could just live to 140. He made it to 65.
But he wasn’t wrong. After his death, in 1869, some of his works, like the “Symphonie Fantastique,” became firmly entrenched in the canon, and he is the subject of this year’s Bard Music Festival, which begins on Aug. 9. Still, two weeks’ worth of concerts and panel discussions, as well as a companion collection of essays, can only begin to capture the breadth of Berlioz’s artistry.
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As a tribute to this still-neglected composer, let's have three pieces by Berlioz for our envois today. First, the Symphonie fantastique:
Next, Harold en Italie, a symphony/viola concerto based on a poem by Byron:
Finally, Roméo et Juliette, a dramatic symphony based on the Shakespeare play:
Wanting to see this concert in particular was the reason I stayed a few extra days. I have had a special appreciation of the Vienna Philharmonic since I owned a box of discs of the Beethoven piano concertos with Friedrich Gulda--their string sound just seemed out of this world. I have heard them in Shostakovich Symphony No. 14, but that is just for strings and percussion (and voice) so I wanted to hear them in a larger work.
The Vienna Philharmonic is a private club and the members of the orchestra make all the decisions regarding artistic and management matters. They were founded in 1842 and are essentially the same members that are in the Vienna State Opera orchestra. Riccardo Muti has conducted them for fifty-four years, to great acclaim. I make all these points because I am a firm believer in the importance of tradition in the arts. The Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Riccardo Muti playing Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 (written between 1884 and 1890) is a rare opportunity to hear tradition in one of its most powerful incarnations.
Before the concert: two harpists tuning and a double-bass player practicing
The Symphony No. 8 by Bruckner requires a large orchestra. By my count there were fifteen first violins, twelve seconds, twelve violas, ten cellos and eight double-basses. There were triple winds (i.e. three clarinets, three flutes, three oboes and three bassoons). Also lots of brass: four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, four Wagner tubas (doubling on French horn), five French horns, oh, and three percussionists. Here they all are:
Acknowledging applause
The Vienna Philharmonic doesn't really do encores, so Maestro Muti had time to ask virtually each member of the orchestra to stand individually--including the very dynamic tympani player.
It was a great concert and I am very glad I stayed. I came close to tears in the slow movement which I really never do. The problem with being a professional musician for much of your life is that you become jaded and isolated from the immediate impact of a great piece of music. So I tried to just let myself respond. This is a terrific piece and they played it with real intensity. If we needed an example of the fruits of Western Civilization, this concert would certainly do.
Wow, this is amazing. I just came from this concert, which was at the matinee hour of 11am and the Festival has already placed it on YouTube. It was put up three minutes ago! Enjoy!
(One caveat: in my opinion you really can't record a large orchestra in a way that feels anything like actually being there in the hall. For example, the tympani sounds really feeble in this recording, but in the hall they were thunderous.)
Last night was the last piano recital of my trip and the young French pianist, born in 1997, delivered a powerfully virtuoso performance. Here is the program, already including the two encores, the second of which I actually recognized.
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Rhapsody in B minor op. 79/1
FRANZ LISZT
‘Chasse neige’ from Études d’exécution transcendante S 139/12
‘Vallée d’Obermann’ from Années de pèlerinage I (Suisse) S 160/6
BÉLA BARTÓK
Rhapsody op. 1
INTERVAL
SERGEY RACHMANINOFF
Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor op. 28
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
‘Chaconne’ from the Partita No. 2 in D minor for violin solo BWV 1004
Version for piano (left hand) by Johannes Brahms
ENCORE
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS
Theme from "Samson and Delilah" (Nina Simone Version)
MAURICE RAVEL
Jeux d'eau
What was so interesting to me was that he chose to end the program with the least virtuosic piece: the Bach Chaconne. Not to say that it does not require considerable technique, but compared to the rest of the program, it is technique on a simpler level. But it was still the most powerful piece on the program proving once again, that aesthetic strength does not lie in either virtuosity or complexity.
Kanterow was much enjoyed by the audience who leapt to their feet in a standing ovation. He is, as has been said elsewhere, not only a virtuoso powerhouse, but also a poetic one. In 2019 he was the first French winner in the history of the International Tchaikovsky Competition.
Acknowledging applause at the Haus für Mozart
Walking out of the concert last night I suddenly realized that the Festival could actually put on three different operas simultaneously as the Haus für Mozart, as well as the Felsenreitschule and the Grosse Festspielhaus all have the facilities to put on a full-scale opera--and in fact do, every year. Not sure there is anywhere else in the world where three separate opera houses can all be found in the same block...
Salzburg is both an historical monument, a cultural center, and a modern city and it is interesting how they manage to harmonize all those things. They preserve everything they can, from historic buildings (I ate in a restaurant that opened in the 1300s, a bierstubel using the recipe from 1621 and a hotel that opened in 1407), to cultural traditions.
They have a very efficient bus system with many routes, passing by every fifteen minutes for most of the day. You can buy a bus ticket from a machine right at the bus stop. This is a high-trust society: there is no barrier to entry--in other words, you can just get on the bus and most times you will ride for free. BUT, every now and then a "controller" will board the bus and ask to see everyone's ticket. During the festival, if you have a ticket for a concert that day, you can ride for free--I tested it. But if you don't have a valid ticket, there will be consequences! Someone behind me got caught the other day, but I don't know what happened as a result. A fine? The busses are all air-conditioned. As are the concert halls! Also, every concert hall has a buffet area where, before the concert and at intermission you can get little snacks:
Smoked salmon, dried beef and an orange juice
I usually just get an orange juice, but they have champagne, Prosecco, Sekt, and various cocktails--Aperol Spritz is a favorite.
Salzburg is a lovely city. Here is one of the most popular views: the Mirabell Palace (built for a mistress of the Prince Archbishop in 1606), looking over the gardens to the Hohensalzburg fortress:
Mirabell Palace and gardens
Zooming in for a view of the fortress
All of Austria looks like a gigantic park because everything is green--it's like a big lawn. And the reason is, it rains every couple of days. Here is a view of the Hohensalzburg fortress five minutes before a thunderstorm. Looks just like Dracula's castle!
Last night was one of my favorite concerts of the festival. Russian pianist Arcadi Volodos gave a terrific recital in the Großer Saal of the Mozarteum.
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Piano Sonata in A minor D. 845
INTERVAL
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Davidsbündlertänze (Dances of the League of David) op. 6
FRANZ LISZT
Hungarian Rhapsody in A minor S 244/13
Version by Arcadi Volodos
ENCORE
SERGEY RACHMANINOFF
Lied “Hier ist es schön” op. 21 Nr. 7
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Moments musicaux, D. 780
Nr. 3 f-Moll. Allegro moderato.
ERNESTO LECUONA
Malaguena
ANTONIO VIVALDI
Sicilienne (Transkription von J. S. Bach, BWV 596)
Again, the helpful elves of the festival have added the four encores to the program. The only one I recognized was, of course, the Malagueña of Lecuona in a wildly virtuoso arrangement.
The first half consisted entirely of the Piano Sonata D. 845 of Franz Schubert and it was quite likely the finest performance of a Schubert sonata I have ever heard--my seat-mate thought the last movement was a bit too fast, though. Volodos played with complete control, both technical and expressive. The tone was liquid and melting with a wide dynamic range. He is one pianist who is not afraid to both explore the quietest pianissimi as well as shake the rafters with a full-blooded fortissimo.
This was followed by the Davidsbündertänze of Robert Schumann which I haven't heard in quite a while but again, it was a masterful performance rich in lyric grace and in muscular assertion. I'm afraid I drifted off in the Liszt as I tend to when there is an excess of virtuosity. But I was fully alert for the four encores the audience demanded. The Großer Saal is an excellent venue for a piano recital as it is so much more intimate than the big halls on the Karajan-platz.
I attended Volodos' recital at the 2021 Salzburg Festival and my comment was quite similar:
He is a magician at the keyboard, with astounding command of the finest shades of dynamic and color. He often creates mystic atmospheres of texture with finely delineated pianissimi and is a master of the pregnant pause. He rarely resorts to fortissimo and it is more effective for that very reason.
On that occasion he played in the Haus für Mozart, a hall twice as large as the Großer Saal. Here is a photo from last night:
Arcadi Volodos in the Großer Saal of the Mozarteum
You might have noticed, I am only numbering the days there are concerts, sometimes I have a day or two free. This concert was one of the Mozart Matinees that they hold every Saturday and Sunday during the festival. By "they" I mean the Mozart Stiftung or Foundation, a somewhat separate organization. I ordered a ticket for this concert as the featured soloist was supposed to be Regula Mühlemann whom I have listened to quite a bit on YouTube. She had to cancel due to illness and the replacement was the American soprano Emily Pogorelc. The conductor was Roberto González-Monjas with the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg. Here is the program:
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Ballet Music from the opera Idomeneo K.367
Passe-pied
Gavotte
Passacaille
Chaconne
Pas seul
Ilia's aria “Se il padre perdei” from Idomeneo K. 366
Ilia’s recitative and aria ‘Solitudini amiche‘ — ‘Zeffiretti lusinghieri‘ from Idomeneo K. 366
INTERVAL
From Thamos,König in Ägypten K. 345 (336a) – Choruses and Entr’actes to Gebler’s drama
No. 2 Interlude (Maestoso – Allegro)
No. 3 Interlude (Andante)
No. 7a Interlude (Without tempo indication)
No. 5 Interlude (Allegro vivace assai)
Aria ‘Schon lacht der holde Frühling‘ K. 580
Aria ‘Voi avete un cor fedele‘ K. 217
Recitativo and Aria “Bella mia fiamma” - “Resta, o cara” for Soprano and Orchestra, K. 528
An excellent opportunity to hear unusual repertoire. The orchestral pieces were played with a lot of energy and grace. González-Monjas is an excellent young conductor with real command of Mozart. I have to say that while the soprano was a fine singer, I did miss hearing Mühlemann. Still, it was a treat to hear all this repertoire that we usually don't see on concert programs. Mozart arias have to be some of the most challenging repertoire for up and coming sopranos.
Acknowledging applause
Luckily there is a clip on YouTube of Ms Pogorelc singing the final aria from the concert.
There are lots of things to love about Austria: excellent alpine milk, a myriad of sausages, beautiful landscapes:
Salzkammergut
The Salzkammergut is a mountainous region next to Salzburg with sixty lakes! What I find the most amazing is that the whole countryside looks like a park. Here, in the foreground, you can see a couple of open fields that look like freshly mown lawn. Well, every open area looks exactly the same, like they have a thousand gardeners manicuring them every day. But no. This is, I suppose, ideal lawn country because it rains about every other day. The only manicuring I saw was performed by some healthy looking cows, munching away.
The food is excellent--mind you, I may be biased because I like Austrian food. Mmm sausages, wienerschnitzel, potato salad, wheat beer, bring it on!
Austrians are very nature oriented and it seems to be working. On a day trip the other day I saw wild deer in a meadow as well as some swans looking for a handout:
Two swans on Hallstattsee
You can see why so many composers liked to spend their summers working in a little cabin by the lake.
Looking far younger than his years, Russian pianist Evgeny Kissin gave a warmly received concert Wednesday evening in the Haus für Mozart. Here is the program, which the elves at the Festival have updated to reflect the three encores he played:
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonata No. 27 in E minor op. 90
FRYDERYK CHOPIN
Nocturne in F-sharp minor op. 48/2
Fantaisie in F minor, Op. 49
INTERVAL
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Four Ballades op. 10
SERGEY PROKOFIEV
Piano Sonata No. 2 in D minor op. 14
ENCORE
FRYDERYK CHOPIN
Mazurka in C-sharp minor, op. 41/1
SERGEY PROKOFIEV
Two Pieces from "The Love for Three Oranges", op. 33
March
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Waltz in A-flat major op. 39/15
A fine evening that was characterized by a youthful enthusiasm and a rich, dark tone. Though he also had a lovely singing legato in the high register. I had interesting fellow audience members on both sides. A Swiss woman said that the concert was "all heart." On the other side, three gentlemen from Spain also loved the concert. They are ardent music-lovers on their way to Bayreuth to take in some Wagner. After the concert I ran into a young man from South Korea who said the concert left him in tears.
It was a very successful concert and yes, full of heart. I thought the Beethoven was a bit wayward in its phrasing, though. For me, the best was the Brahms Ballades and Waltz encore.
Evgeny Kissin acknowledging applause
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Very abbreviated miscellanea today. First, some photos. This is a pop-up marketplace that appeared across from the Mirabell Palace Thursday morning. Lots of good stuff:
Any music AI generator is only as good as the data it’s trained on. These systems require a vast amount of data, and a model trained on a biased data set will reproduce those biases in its output. Whose voices are included in that huge crate of music, and whose are left out? Today’s AI models are liable to exclude vast swaths of music, especially from musical traditions that predate recording technology and come from non-Western origins. As currently designed, they are more likely to produce stereotypical sounds within a genre or style than they are to produce anything peculiar, let alone innovative or interesting. Generative AI systems have a bias toward mediocrity, but transcendent music is found on the margins.
That is a pretty fair take on it--and it illustrates why music AI generation is likely of very little interest.
Such deceptions surface occasionally in classical music, enabled by the field’s fetish for name dropping, prestige, and aura. In 1964, an English lunch-lady-turned-musician named Rosemary Brown began claiming that the ghosts of composers past took control of her hands while she was playing the piano. She “dictated” new works by Bach, Brahms, and Rachmaninov, and conversed with Beethoven, to widespread credulity. (Ludwig had “obviously taken the trouble to learn English since he passed over,” she clarified.) In 2007, the pianist Joyce Hatto was exposed for having plagiarized some one hundred critically acclaimed recordings from other performers; in one instance, a reviewer panned the exact same recording when it was marketed under a different name. In 2014, Mamoru Samuragochi, a deaf composer known as “Japan’s Beethoven,” was revealed to be neither deaf nor the composer of the music that he released. (That Samuragochi was not Beethoven’s musical heir was apparent earlier.)
Well, sure Classical music ennobles bullshit, but so does, oh, I dunno, the world of finance and investment, crypto currency, literature and, wait, every other field of human endeavor. The difference is, when someone is bullshitting in the world of crypto, people lose billions of dollars, but in the world of classical music, mostly people just feel silly. Well, sure, it seems unlikely that the ghost of Beethoven would dictate new works to Rosemary, but she seemed like such a nice person.
Jan Brachmann writes in the FAZ: ‘When Bogdan Volkov, as Prince Myshkin, sits alone on the huge stage of the Felsenreitschule, staring into the darkness around him and singing in a half-voice, childishly bright: “What a breathless, strange day. Everything rushes and flickers before my eyes,” then you can feel what Weinberg’s music has captured about this character from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel: it gains clarity about the world by becoming quiet in the midst of the noise.’
Shirley Apthorp writes in the FT: ‘There are times when you leave the opera house unable to speak. When the combination of text, music, motion and imagery reaches a level of such complex perfection that you can’t find words for the way you feel.’
My opinion was rather different.
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Now let's have an envoi. Kissin playing Brahms. Here are the Balladen op. 10 from earlier this year:
