Footnote composers fight back!

One of our societies ills is the Best Seller Syndrome, most people figure if it -whatever "it" may be is popular than it must be good to great. What isn't popular isn't worth reading, watching or hearing.

On the Piano this Sunday one of the best known Russian composers from their golden age; Anton Arensky. A pupil of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, Arensky's music is informed, lyrical and dramatic. What else do you want from an artist? He was director of the Imperial Choir, one of the plum positions in Russia at the time and spent his free time composing, conducting and concertizing. His music charmed audiences back then and it still works!

Find out about the Virtues of Arensky this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC and KTXI when we hear his dramatic Piano concerto and sample some of his music from his Suites for two pianos.

host, Randy Anderson

Wagner's Cosmic Family Drama

Each of the operas (okay, "music dramas) of Richard Wagner's “Ring Cycle” has a certain focus and nature of music characterization. “Das Rheingold” is a fairytale of gods and mythic figures in which mortals figure hardly at all. “Siegfried” is a coming of age story about a boy becoming a man through struggle and realization, communion with nature and an encounter with a woman; “Götterdämmerung” is a tragedy that begins in brief hope and darkens finally into global conflagration. “Die Walküre” is the most human--its focus is an extended family whose success or dysfunction, reconciliations and conflicts begin as domestic squabbles. 

In a house that was never really paid for, after a business deal with giants, who are informed they didn't read the fine print and sets in motion abduction and murder, a family is under siege. The types are universal: a father who is both loving and unfaithful , a wife , both jealous and malicious with whom he endlessly argues; a daughter headstrong and rebellious; rival siblings - the whole nine yards of the most popular television drama raised to cosmic conflict. At the heart of the drama is a dispute about the fate of a young couple, Siegmund and Sieglinde. They are in love , but she is already married (and they may be more than kissing cousins...)  and the question that all the world argues is is love stronger than tradition, than contracts and oaths, familial obligations. Fricka, the wife says no, Wotan the husband says yes, but tradition and law dictate that this cannot be. In the balance hangs the fate of the whole world.

For many opera lovers and concertgoers this is the most beloved and familiar of all Wagner's works. Its melodies, leitmotifs and theme-complexes are the stuff of cartoons, radio advertisements, orchestral renditions and piano transcriptions, movie music and recital encores. A stormy orchestral prelude sets the scene, then in rapid succession comes “Winterstrume wichen dem Wonnemond” and “Du bist der Lenz”; the “Ride of the Valkyries”; the pleading “War ist so schmalich,” and finally the piece du resistance, "Wotan's Farewell.” 

 

Leb'wohl du kuhnes herrliches Kind!

Du meines Herzens heiligster Stolz!   

Leb'wohl! 

Farewell, you dauntless, glorious child!

You the chief pride of my heart.

Farewell!

For daring to disobey him, Brünnhilde is deprived of her immortality and put into a deep sleep, but as an act of pity and love, Wotan surrounds her with a ring of fire which only a great hero can breach. Will they ever be reconciled? Will the lovers Siegmund and Sieglinde find true love? Will the heroine Brünnhilde ever escape her prison of fire and be rescued by a handsome Prince?

  

To find out, please tune in this Saturday at 11 a.m. to the Metropolitan Opera's presentation of Wagner's “Die Walküre,” here on KPAC and KTXI.

--Ron Moore

Souvenir

No doubt our town has lots of places to get a memento - from the Alamo to Fiesta and everything in between, San Antonio certainly does quite well with knick knacks and souvenirs!
This weekend, you can have a wonderful souvenir from Camerata San Antonio - a string sextet which is a musical postcard from Peter Tchaikovsky when he spent time in Florence:


Hear Crossroads this Thursday, Friday or Sunday!

Book Review: "Reflections"

French Music Evolves... Again
By Randy Anderson

Maurice Ravel found himself in a position that most artists can relate to. He knew he could create something of value, but at the time Claude Debussy's music was carrying all before it and Ravel wasn't interested in being part of the Debussy parade. The question was could Ravel carve out a place for himself in French music?

In Paul Roberts' new book "Reflections - the piano music of Maurice Ravel" we get a blow by blow account of Ravel's journey from being yet another talented pianist who wanted to compose to one of the leading lights of French Art and someone who's music was now inspiring the aging Claude Debussy - and we get this step by step transformation one keyboard work at a time.

In my radio program The Piano I often try to link the listener in a psychological way to the music by relating what the composer was going through at the time of its composition. Some artists are quite biographical in their works and Roberts gives us a good idea of the psychological landscape Ravel inhabited while creating each piece of music. He reports from letters, on friendships and poetry, normally the symbolist poets that inspired generations of French artists from the mid - nineteenth century through to the Second World War. The author reveals insights from pianists that studied with Ravel and what he passed on to them, such as the initial vision of Ravel provided by the great pianist of the mid twentieth century, Robert Casadesus who passes on what the composer said of his La vallée des cloches (the Valley of the bells) that it was not one bell sounding in a valley but of a metaphorical valley of buildings; this is Paris at noon when all the churches in earshot started ringing their bells and the sensation of those reverberant sounds - some loud and others far away overlapping and filling out the minimalist melodies that Ravel gives us. This is comprehension far beyond a mere translation of the works title.

One brutal insight into Ravel's personality comes out in Roberts' introduction to the book. Ravel had strong views on the people who played his music. He wasn't interesting in having his music - interpreted. In an argument with Paul Wittgenstein the one armed pianist that commissioned Ravel's Concerto for the Left-hand, the performer was defending his re-writing of some passages as saying "Performers music not be slaves" to which Ravel retorted "Performers ARE slaves"; to Ravel literal slaves to the notes and the intent of the composer.

Maurice Ravel was one of the most closed mouthed artists of the day and while you can gain insight into the composer's personal life by reading "Reflections" one will get a better idea of Ravel by reading the new crop of biographies - in English that Roberts recommends in the books preface, like a new biography of the composer by Roger Nichols as well as his "Ravel Remembered".

This is one review copy I will keep and refer to in my up coming programs on the piano music of Ravel. Paul Roberts is just about the perfect writer for this task, a concert pianist and an expert in French music he also wrote "Images" about the piano works of Claude Debussy and after that thorough grounding brings us to that second peak of the French musical landscape in the twentieth century, Maurice Ravel.

Russian with a French accent?

Everyone speaks with an accent of some sort. There are those with a keen ear that can place a person with a great deal of accuracy.

Accents in speech yes, but in music? I remember hearing some recordings of one of my favorite composers Alexander Scriabin and the effect of the music was blunted somehow. It was if the accent - the idiom wasn't correct. Maybe it was because the pianist was English and all the Scriabin I had heard was by pianists born in Russia. On the Piano this Sunday two pianists with French backgrounds, Alain Lefevre and Francois-Frederic Guy,  play music of Russia - music of Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff to be precise. You can check for accent authenticity on the Piano this Sunday afternoon at 5 on KPAC and KTXI.

host, Randy Anderson

Marketing Classical

There are some great ways to show an orchestra, and interest young people.  Here are two recent examples, both from Europe!
First, the Czech Phil:

And this hilarious one from France!



Would ninjas help you attend the San Antonio Symphony?

Where the Ring Begins

                                                                  

The story is told of a reading at a hotel in Switzerland that went on for hours as Richard Wagner attempted to acquaint his friends and supporters with an idea drawing on Norse and German mythology, it was called Siegfried's Death .

 

At the end of the marathon recitation the feedback began.The general consensus was that it was all very interesting, but finally very confusing. It was, they sadly reported too vague and tenuous. It was impossible to tell how Wagner got from point A to point B. Who are all these people and gods, how did they meet, interact and develop, not to mention this sad affair and cataclysmic end? It would be necessary they all agreed ...to well, fill in the blanks.

 

Musicologists and historians seem to agree that the earliest sketches and ideas for the monumental Ring date from as early as 1850. Siegfried would not reach (the then non-existent) Bayreuth Festspielhaus for its' première until 1876. The quarter century interval would be a methodical and titanic creation of the complete "back-story". As Thomas Mann said what distinguished the nineteenth century was it's uniting of the epic and the detailed. Like War and Peace, the series novels of Balzac and Zola and the London canvas of Dickens the Ring is music's attempt to offer the whole story of life, death, creation, love and everything in between. In a sense, as Jacques Barzun points out, Darwin and Wagner had very much in common, to present a totalized vision of life and the world.

 

Beginning with an orphan who does not know his father and whose mother died in childbirth he is a 'wild child '. Brought up in the forest by an unscrupulous stepfather, Mime, who hopes to use him to acquire a great fortune guarded by a man - dragon. Then he is to be poisoned. After forging the fragments of a sword (his only patrimony) to the music in which we glimpse his superhuman potential he before embarks on a search for love and knowledge :

 

  

                      Nothung! Nothung ! Neidliches Schwert !

 

                             Was mustest du zerspringer ?

 

Nothung ! Nothung! Coveted Sword!

     

Why did you have to break?

 

I am fusing the splinters in the crucible. 

 

He will kill the dragon, free himself from servitude breach an impassible wall of fire, acquire a magical ring and discover the mystery of love from a woman who will prophetically tell him that, "I have loved you before you were born !"

 

Tune in this Saturday at noon for the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Wagner's Siegfried at noon, here on KPAC and KTXI.                                                                               

        

by Ron Moore

Very Ethel and very good!

Ethel

I receive a lot of music each week. Yesterday was no different, and I was quite happy to get the latest from the string quartet Ethel, called Heavy. It will be released next Tuesday, April 24th in all the major outlets. I think you should check it out - whether you love or hate chamber music, and even if modern, living music isn't your thing.
When I opened the envelope, I thought, did they make a 45rpm record?! The packaging is large, about the size of the older lp, but no, it is unique, with a full length cd enclosed from Innova Recordings. Listening, I wondered, do composers write pieces that sound like Ethel, or does Ethel find music that sounds like their style? Don Byron's Second String Quartet is classic Ethel - mesmerizing, lyrical and hip. Motor-rhythms and crunchy sounds delight in this fun "Four Thoughts on Marvin Gaye."

Heavy - Innova 820

John Halle and John King provide modern sounds with electronics, drones and amazing ensemble from Ethel. Two of the Bang on a Can founders, Julia Wolf and David Lang are well represented with "Early That Summer" and "Wed" - surely to be taken up as other quartets hear these delightful readings.
Kenji Bunch joins Ethel as violist for "String Circle" - and it stands as a real charmer on the disc, again, asking "Does it sound this way because of Ethel, or was it chosen and sounds Ethel-y?" "Round"ing out Heavy is Marcelo Zarvos' "Rounds" - someone to look for in new music, it has a light sound and touch that could go far!
Whether you are an "Ethelhead" or just want something to make you smile, Heavy should be on your iPad or other listening device - it is on mine, and won't be leaving anytime soon!
- John Clare, host in the afternoons & of Classical Spotlight

PP in music 2012

Congrats to Kevin Puts, who is honored with the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music!
"Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts," commissioned and premiered by the Minnesota Opera in Minneapolis on November 12, 2011, a stirring opera that recounts the true story of a spontaneous cease-fire among Scottish, French and Germans during World War I, displaying versatility of style and cutting straight to the heart. Libretto by Mark Campbell (Aperto Press).
Host John Clare spoke with Kevin this afternoon about winning the award:



Also nominated as finalists in this category were: Tod Machover for "Death and the Powers," premiered by the Boston Modern Opera Project in Massachusetts on March 18, 2011, an inventive opera that uses electronic music as it explores a dying billionaire’s attempt to transcend mortality through technology, raising significant questions about human existence. Libretto by Robert Pinsky (Boosey & Hawkes); and Andrew Norman for “The Companion Guide to Rome,” premiered on November 13, 2011 in Salt Lake City, Utah, an impressive musical portrait of nine historic churches, written for a string trio but sometimes giving the illusion of being played by a much larger group, changing mood and mode on a dime (Schott Music).

This year's committee consisted of Chuck Owen, distinguished professor, University of South Florida, Tampa (Chair); Jeremy Geffen, director of artistic planning, Carnegie Hall, New York, NY; Jennifer Higdon*, composer and faculty, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, PA; Steven Smith, music editor, Time Out New York and freelance contributor, The New York Times; and Kenny Werner, jazz pianist, composer, author and composition faculty, New York University.

Fiesta

This week we'll talk with Troy Peters about the San Antonio Symphony Fiesta concert on Classical Spotlight. But did you know the symphony has a Fiesta Medal? The new Symphony Fiesta Medal has an image of their Music Director Sebastian Lang-Lessing conducting (seen left with the picture that inspired the medal.)
Check out this link for a history of Fiesta, and according to the VisitSA.com: "Fiesta medals and pins are an integral part of the celebration. Maybe because San Antonio is a military town? Numerous organizations create medals to sell or give away each year, with the goal being to collect as many as you can. King Antonio XLIX is credited with starting the tradition in 1971, when he put 200 royal coins on ribbons and distributed them at Fiesta events. If you have an opportunity to shake hands with Fiesta royalty, you may be lucky enough to have a medal slide into your palm."