Twinklefingers

Tomasz Stanko

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:43:00 -0800

Who is he? Michael Connelly mentions him in his novel Nine Dragons (p. 100).

Tomasz Stańko was a Polish trumpeter who sounded like the ghost of Miles Davis.

Godowsky Chopin Etudes

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:16:58 -0800

Where has this man been all my life?

A mostly new find for me. And I’m lovin’ it. I say “partial” because I have, in fact, played a Godowsky arrangement: his arrangement of Sinding’s Rustle of Spring. It was one of my grandmother’s favorites and mine, too. Fun to play.

But these Chopin Etudes by Leopold Godowsky are off the hook. Grab the 2-CD set from the library and prepare to be knocked out of your socks. I’ve got them performed by Marc-André Hamelin.

Godowsky has two arrangements of etude Op. 10, No. 1. The first is in C major - no worries if played a modest (♩ = 80). He’s marked it 144-176.

The second is in D-flat, for the left hand alone.

Eek!

I second the liner notes: this recording should be listened to in small doses. It’s really beautiful, but overwhelming.

PS: For the patriotic among us Godowsky graced us with his version of the Star Spangled Banner. But the prize has got to go to these Chopin Etudes. What a workout!

Ella rediscovered

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:16:27 -0800

[Yale Joel/Life Magazine/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images]

A new discovery. And not bootlegs. Verve has just release a four CD set entitled “Twelve Nights in Hollywood”. Ella Fitzgerald at her prime singing 76 songs at a small club in Los Angeles, the Crescendo in 1961 and ‘62.

Real recordings never before released. As Fred Kaplan remarks in this NY Times review, “[t]here’s nothing rare about a joyous Ella Fitzgerald recording; the woman exuded joy in nearly every note she sang. Yet the level on these sessions soared higher and plumbed deeper.”

Gary Giddins, the veteran critic and author of “Jazz,” agrees. “This ranks on the top shelf of her live recordings,” he said. “It’s about as good as it gets.”

Why these tapes stayed locked in the vault for nearly half a century — and what it took to set them free — is a tale of a producer’s neglect, a jazz sleuth’s obsession and a string of happy coincidences.

One more for my Christmas list.

Take a listen to some clips from the website.

A return to the big band

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 13:42:51 -0800

Bringing back the Big Band era one lead sheet at a time! This looks like great fun. I often say I was born in the wrong era. I would have loved to have been a young adult in this era, 1920-1940’s. (Yes, I know. It’s a romantic version of that era that I love. Actually living in that period probably wouldn’t have been much fun.) Hats off to Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. Take a look at a video here.

Listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0800

Oliveto has a much more mature attitude than I do. Yes, it is an amazing choir, but I just can’t bring myself to listen to it. At least I’m as consistent as I know how to be. I wish there was a Snopes.com for music and musicians. I won’t even tiptoe into the Wagner quicksand (Listen to it or not? Perform it or not?). I remember when I read that von Karajan was a Nazi sympathizer. At the time the pain was double: there was the Nazi part and there was my self-imposed abstaining from listening to any of his recordings again. Do I miss listening to him? You bet.

You’re more than welcome to try to talk me down from this position. Best of luck.

Lou Harrison and the Muse

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:10:54 -0800

I discovered this delightful site a few weeks ago. I’ve yet to plumb all the archives, but I’m sure they’re filled with tasty treats such as this one. I was at San Jose State University when Lou Harrison was there. I’ll never forget the advice he gave me after he examined my composition for my first Composition Jury (probably 1977): “Never miss your appointment with the Muse.”

I was puzzled for years (sorry, I was more than a bit slow in those days!) as to what Harrison meant. Only later, much, much later, when my “pen” had fallen silent for a decade or so, did I understand what he meant. When I was a student at SJSU, I thought he meant that I was to meet the Muse every day. Well, this only happens in our dreams. Of course it was an impossibility. It seemed a task to tall for a mere earthling to accomplish.

But that’s not what he meant. “Never miss your appointment with the Muse.” All I had to do was show up! Whether the Muse arrived was another thing altogether.

Later, when I was at San Francisco State University, Harrison was honored one evening. I hadn’t seen him in about 20+ years. I waited and waited to greet him. Finally, I got my chance. I shook his hand and mentioned out connection. And then I thanked him for giving me the best piece of advice I was foolish to never keep.

Armstrong and the Jewish connection

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:55:00 -0800

This article, “Satchmo and the Jews”, by Terry Teachout, is well worth reading. I’d known about Satchmo’s “univeralism”, if I can put it that way. So his close friendships across racial and religious lines is nothing new. What’s new is the back story and the details that Teachout fills in for us. Add some more to the “To Read” list: Teachout’s biography of Armstrong (Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong) Louis’ autobiography (Satchmo My Life in New Orleans: My Life in New Orleans) and “Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family”, which is included in Louis Armstrong, In His Own Words: Selected Writings.

Armstrong wrote his memoir of the Karnofskys around the time that black anti-Semitism, which had showed signs of subsiding in the early years of the civil-rights movement, underwent a recrudescence that was fueled by the anti-Semitic statements of such black leaders as Malcolm X. Few prominent blacks were willing to speak out in praise of Jews in 1969. Yet Armstrong actually wanted to publish “Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family,” in which he explicitly attributed black anti-Semitism to envy of the superior achievements of the Jews: “The Negroes always hated the Jewish people who never harmed anybody, but they stuck together. And by doing that, they had to have success.”

Brendel the brainiac

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:00:00 -0800

Poor, one-dimensional me. Who knew? Great pianist, sure. But now I’ve got to track down Alfred Brendel’s essays and poetry. Too intriguing to let this slip by.

This from the Times Online October, 2009:

To describe Brendel as an intellectual is rather like describing Leonardo da Vinci as a good all-rounder. Honoured last week with the award of one of the world’s top cultural prizes, the Praemium Imperiale, he is a man who needs cerebral pursuits like a fish needs water. He’s best known, of course, as one of the finest pianists of our times. But many would say that the only positive aspect of his decision to retire from performing last December, at the age of 78, is that he has more time to write his wry and provocative essays, lectures and poems.

Jay-Z and Foreign Policy?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0800

I’m reading it, but I’m not believing it. An article on the rapper Jay-Z appeared Foreign Policy online mag: Jay-Z vs the Game: Lessons for the American Primacy Debate.

Randall Thompson’s Choose Something Like a Star, from his...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:00:00 -0800

Randall Thompson’s Choose Something Like a Star, from his “Frostiana”. Not the best performance, but a nice You Tube clip nonetheless. My favorite Robert Frost poem.

Opera in movie theaters

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0800

Opera in movie theaters? I do want to give it a try. Live or taped. It wouldn’t matter to me. Too bad all the Met HD shows aren’t free.

Britten B&B

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:00:17 -0800

Book a room in Britten’s childhood home.

ht/Bob Shingleton via Alex Ross

Haydn bookfest

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0800

The Financial Times review books on Haydn. Who knew? The 200th anniversary of Haydn’s death gets a gaggle of books. I’m not a Haydn fan. (The only concert in which I ever fell asleep was during a Haydn Symphony. Does it really matter which one?) But this little tidbit is interesting:

Without those “London” symphonies and the late, quasi-orchestral string quartets, not to mention the two great pantheistic oratorios on English texts, Haydn’s reputation would be that of a minor composer.

Vindication? Quasi-vindication?

Ambiguity award

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:02:56 -0800

From Gramophone Award’s Issue (2009), p. 123:

This is Mengelberg’s broadest Pathétique, a truly tragic performance.

Music in Philosophy Hall

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:02:09 -0800

Oh that we (the Philosophy Department at San Francisco State) could have such a “drawing room”. Sigh. Lovely new Steinway on the left and probably another one that Hochman played. I love that dear, little B-flat Partita of Bach’s. Still working on it after all these years.

The premise of Columbia University’s free Lunchtime Concerts, presented at Philosophy Hall, an intimate reading room ideal for chamber music, is that only one work should be played per program. On Monday, for the first installment of the pianist Benjamin Hochman’s survey of Bach’s six solo keyboard partitas, that work was quite short: the Partita No. 1 in B flat, which lasted just 16 minutes in an elegant, flowing performance.

The political life of Leonard Bernstein

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0800

A review of Barry Seldes’ Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician .

What Seldes must prove, rather, is that Bernstein’s politics should matter to us. For if Bernstein was known as a famous liberal, he is also widely remembered as a fatuous one.

I was not of voting age when most of the political events happened that are detailed in this book. I’ve also got a non-adult sense of Reagan. I met him when he visited my high school in Pasadena when he was governor. He was very tall and wore a brown suit. That’s all I knew of Reagan when he was running for president. This book may be a good read for me, however skewed the author’s views are. I’m grateful for reviews like this that offer another perspective. Here’s a long quote from the end of the review:

And the major thesis of Seldes’ book is that Bernstein’s ultimate failure to produce a great opera or symphony—a failure that haunted his last years—can be attributed to the failure of progressive politics in America. It is in support of this argument that Seldes stirs great undigested chunks of political history into the book: “According to Reagan, government was the real domestic enemy, whereas liberals and progressives argued that his outlook was a cover for proposals to grant tax relief to those in the higher earning brackets and to cut social spending while increasing defense spending.”

Yet Seldes overreaches when he concludes that “Bernstein’s compositional frustration had its roots more in the evolving American social fabric … than in his supposedly limited talents, his idiosyncrasies, his habits, and his psychological dispositions.” … There is, in fact, something rather silly in Seldes’s suggestion that America let Bernstein down by voting for Ronald Reagan. If … Stravinsky…could keep composing through two world wars, surely a composer of similar stature could find a way to flourish in the much less adverse conditions of late-20th-century America. It follows pretty clearly that Bernstein was not a composer of that stature, just as he was not a political thinker or activist of lasting interest. Somewhere between Wolfe’s mockery and Seldes’s reverence lies the affection that Bernstein’s achievement, and his memory, actually deserve.

Dudamel watch

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:02:53 -0800

The hype! The hair! The “dude”!

Along the way the orchestra established a breathless minisite devoted to Mr. Dudamel on its Web site, laphil.com. It features a Bravo Gustavo computer game akin to Guitar Hero and an application that allows the movement of an iPhone to shape music coming out of it. A famous hot-dog stand, Pink’s, put up a banner welcoming him and created a Dudamel Dog (guacamole, cheese, fajita mix, jalapeño peppers, tortilla chips). “60 Minutes” is working on its third segment featuring him.

More White House music

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:02:44 -0800

I missed news of this earlier in November. What I want to know is: When are the Obama girls are going to start music lessons?

Wednesday was classical music day at the White House. The festivities and performances were sponsored by the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, created by executive order in 1982. The first lady serves as honorary chairwoman of the committee, and Michelle Obama, fully embracing that function, has created a White House Music Series.

Joshua Bell was on hand. How about this for being self-effacing:

Mr. Bell, who had worked with a group of young violinists in the morning, gave them an inadvertent and useful lesson that any performer, no matter how accomplished, can get into a jam. Playing a lyrical Cantabile by Paganini for violin and guitar with Ms. Isbin, he mistakenly jumped ahead near the end of the piece, then stopped. “I’ve taken a wrong turn,” he said. He had skipped a couple of phrases, he explained. So he and Ms. Isbin simply ended the piece a little early.

Mr. Bell’s self-effacing demeanor seemed to delight his young listeners as much as his brilliant account of a splashy piece by Vieuxtemps, a virtuosic fantasy on “Yankee Doodle.”

What we need now is a White House Sampler from all the music series held so far (and the Gershwin Prize that went to Stevie Wonder).

The Met gets a gift from aborad

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0800

Wow! $7.5 million. What a gift.

Mona Webster, a lighthouse keeper’s daughter who lived in Edinburgh and died in August at 96, had a love of birds, and warblers in particular — of the human kind. She demonstrated that affection by leaving most of her fortune to the Metropolitan Opera and a nature charity in Britain.

OK. I take back everything bad I ever said about Maria Callas!...

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:11:54 -0800

OK. I take back everything bad I ever said about Maria Callas! Bizet’s Carmen (Habanera).