I'll get back to the new Gandelsman album on the weekend, but for now here is the usual Friday Miscellanea. First up, The Guardian has a preview of the Proms with ‘We hear things no one else notices’: Proms composers on their extraordinary new music:
‘I undo dense, solid knots – and release a living thing’
Thomas Adès
Tell us about your Proms piece … I composed these four Märchentänze (“dances from fairytale”) in 2020, originally for violin and piano, then a year later made this orchestral version. The first movement is a fantasy on the folk song Two Magicians, immortalised by Steeleye Span, about the immemorial generative dance of the sexes. A hushed movement follows, the chant-like tune presented as a round. The third movement, A Skylark for Jane, is an outpouring of birdsong, each individual orchestra member freely echoing the soloist to create an “exaltation” of skylarks. The final dance begins with an energetic elfin theme, and grows into a writhing dance. Many themes grapple, twining around each other like otters, towards a decisive conclusion.
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US SURVEY: 1 IN 4 CONCERTGOERS SAY THEY WON’T RETURN
A recent study by WolfBrown, a California-based consulting firm that conducts market research for nonprofit cultural groups throughout the United States, says that 26% of former orchestra attendees nationwide say they’re not yet ready to resume live performances — and many of these reluctant music lovers may never return to the concert hall.
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The most recent stage in the long history of musicians in exile: Far From Kabul, Building a New Life, With Music and Hope
In Portugal, the Afghans enjoy newfound freedoms. The boys and girls can go swimming together. They can date. The girls can wear shorts and skirts without fear of judgment. The older students can drink alcohol.
But life in Lisbon has also been a challenge. The students spend their days largely inside the military hospital, where they eat, sleep, rehearse, wash clothes and play table tennis, nervous about venturing too far or making new friends. Unaccustomed to Portuguese food, they keep bottles of curry, cardamom and peppercorn in their rooms to add familiar flavors to traditional dishes, like grilled sardines and scrambled eggs with smoked sausage.
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Also in the New York Times a review of a fascinating new album of string quartets: A new boxed set of string quartets by Wadada Leo Smith, an anchor of American experimental music, reveals his sustained engagement with the form.
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Some of the best and most secure jobs in classical music are in orchestras and Van asks the question Are orchestral trial years a fair way of assessing musicians?
On June 3, 2021, Czieharz had won the audition in Wuppertal for the position of Wechseltrompette (meaning that he would be expected to play every trumpet part except principal). Orchestra auditions are incredibly grueling processes. Many fantastic players take dozens, even hundreds, before winning a spot, and it was a major accomplishment for such a young trumpet player to win this one. But the application process wasn’t over. Over a full season of concerts, Czieharz would have to prove that he had what it takes to become a full-fledged member of the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal.
Most jobs come with probationary periods for employees, but the orchestra trial year is an unusually rigorous, fraught process. Job openings in orchestras are rare, so chances are the most recent audition winner will be the only musician on trial. The trial period lasts for at least a season, sometimes longer. Orchestras are not known for their clear human resource structures, and a trialist, as they’re sometimes called, will not receive corporate-style feedback meetings. Instead, they’ll receive hints on their musical performance and social integration in passing, on rehearsal breaks and after concerts. When the trial year is up, all their colleagues—somewhere from 70 to 100 people—vote on the trialist. Not their technique; not their musicality. Them.
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Let's have a listen to that orchestra. Here they are in Richard Strauss' Sinfonia Domestica under conductor Toshiyuki Kamioka:
Never ceases to amaze me that young people attempt to have a career as a classical music performer, e.g. in an orchestra. The stamina, will power and drive needed fall into the super human category. The idea that music can be an avocation does not seem to occur to them. How about insurance, a la Charles Ives?
ReplyDeleteAnd, to boot, the audiences are shrinking (at least in US), as per your citation Bryan.
As a struggling guitar soloist I often envied my orchestral colleagues because, hey, they got a weekly paycheck. It is a special kind of life, to be sure, but a lot of the benefits are non-material.
ReplyDeletemaybe this is already known but Hahn's got a recording of the Ginastera violin concert due out later this year. Paired with the Dvorak. I keep hoping she might tackle the Berg one day ... :)
ReplyDeleteI thought she had already recorded the Berg, but you are right! Maybe she is saving it.
ReplyDeleteSchoenberg, yes. Berg not yet. I liked what she did with the Schoenberg violin concerto.
ReplyDeleteI loved her Schoenberg concerto! Really looking forward to hearing her Berg.
ReplyDeletePatrick, I wonder if the early-20-century insurance business left its employees plenty of time to think about other things and still keep their jobs. Consider how much Wallace Stevens got done; a lot of his poetry was even written while he was on the clock. Today, however, barriers between work and personal life have broken down for many, and under precarity workers feel pressure to perform. So, there is less time for both a conventional career and activity in the art.
ReplyDeleteI think it is rare to combine a business career with a music or other artistic vocation these days because the forms of life are so very different. Just the conflicting use of time and scheduling alone almost rules it out.
ReplyDeleteI might venture that workplace surveillance and production goals are the real problem. here are jobs where they leave enough down time to compose music this I know first hand.
ReplyDeleteThe sticky wicket is that the jobs that "do" leave you that much time tend to be zero mobility jobs in terms of status and income (which I've been okay with) or jobs that include music-making as part of the job requirements (Bach, Haydn, etc). Matanya Ophee used to say that most of the guitarist-composers were soldiers and paper-pushing bureaucrats.
William Deresewiecz wrote in his book The Death of the Artist that producing and publishing in the arts has never been easier and more people can do it than ever before but MONETIZING the arts has become more difficult.
Wallace STevens was a magnificent poet, one of my favorites so writers and musicians who persevered amid humdrum day jobs are inspirations for me. :)