Newest Music

Last evening after the NYCO's Carmen, I tried to join my friend, clarinetist Michael Norsworthy for the Met Orchestra chamber concert of Babbitt, Carter, Harbison, and Stravinsky. Nothing better to get the Bizet matinée out of my ears. Alas, it was sold out. While Michael and everyone else in Weill Hall enjoyed their new music, I walked around trying to bide my time until the concert was over so we could have dinner together. I headed over to Fifth Avenue and walked into St. Thomas Church for an organ recital. It turned out to be a great stroke of luck.

Ansgar Wallenhorst performed Liszt's Fantasy and Fugue on the Chorale “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam” followed by an extensive improvisation. It may have been 20 minutes or more, I quite lost track of time, the music was so brilliant. He brought forth colors from the instrument that were strangely delicious, seductive, and mysterious. His use of harmony and tonality were at once communicative and challenging. Soft dynamics were especially affecting with sounds shaded timbrally by nearly silent notes moving in and around others. Lowest possible notes were more felt than even heard. High twitters and sound specks seemed to come from unseen birds visiting the upper sanctuary. Through quiet accretion, he created new aural landscapes. As the improvisation moved to its conclusion, Wallenhorst layered repetitive galloping figures to build excitement. Responding fanfares resounded between the front and back of the church and in a dramatic rush of notes the work came to an end. If he had played more, I would have stayed all night.

Throughout the performance I thought of the singularity of this experience. This music, never heard before or since was being lavished on us. Like a life, it was the expression of one distinct personality, and because it is of no value or use alone, it became our shared delight.

"Metro Mandala" 2007 by Gayle Tanaka

This small work by Gayle Tanaka is a photograph under a solid crystal dome, three inches in diameter and about two and a half inches tall. It is clever, charming, and, to me, irresistible. Below is an image of the photograph and a picture of all the "mandalas" on a table in the the gallery show.

Noise, and the rest

When I showed up in the pit of the State Theater tonight for NYCO's performance of Cav/Pag, piccolo player, Kathleen Nester, asked me, "Did you see your blog mentioned in The New Yorker?"

Extrapolation, enthusiasm, etc.

The mention was oblique, but it was there. Click here to count the ways. This self-publishing venture has changed my life in ways little and big and the attention Maestro Ross has given my little corner of the blogateria has been meaningful.

In fact, here, the many are united. No one is blogging about classical music for the wrong reasons! We love it. We love to play it, we love to hear it, we love to write it, we know, oh how we know, our lives would not be as rich without music. We want everyone to love it the way we do, and so, we write, and we self-publish.

I remember playing the 2nd oboe part to Brahms' second piano concerto with the Northwestern Symphony Orchestra when I was a high school student. In Brahms I first heard the promise of something larger than small town Michigan where I grew up. I followed that promise to Juilliard and New York City.

Extrapolation, enthusiasm, etc.

Tonight at dinner between matinée and evening operas, my friends—civilians—talked about their upcoming vacations. I don't take vacations. I have a day off every few months, no more than a handful a year, really, but what would I do with time away from music. A musician's life is full of questions, strains, uncertainty, and utter splendor. There are riches unaccountable by accountants. There are secrets musicians know.

The very best ones will share.

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"To A Friend Contemplating Her Biography Of Hawthorne" by Richard Howard

“We were not, it is true, so well acquainted
at college, that I can plead
an absolute right to inflict
my ‘twice-told’ tediousness
upon you; but I have been glad of your
success in literature,
and in more important matters.”
What had been—

what could have been, I wonder—
“more important” to Hawthorne, sequestered for
a dozen years in Salem,
struggling to make himself a writer? And for
his initially cautious
correspondent, the fatally fluent
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
savoring the first of those dread successes:
for him, too, could there have been
matters more important than literature?

And then of course I wonder
about you and me—about all of our tribe,
whom Montaigne identified
without contempt as la gent écrivassière,
secreted so managably,
as luck would have it, in this apprehensive
and inadvertent city—
whether it is something of the same kind
that, every dreaming midnight
and every waking dawn, glows (glowers) for us
like the radium on our clocks:
matters more important than literature.

Wolfgang Rihm "Jagden und Formen" Reviewed in the New York Times

Click here to read the review.

Rihm's music has scampered around in my head since last week, hunting for forms, chasing, searching. Maybe I'm the one chasing its form, hunting its secrets. Pamela Drexel, a friend and Helicon board member who was in attendance, specifically mentioned the virtuoso chase between English horn and viola (played by my friend since Juilliard, Daniel Panner). Other Helicats in attendance were sculptor, Ryo Toyonaga, and board member, Karen McLaughlin.

Excerpt (of some personal interest, ahem) from the Times review by Allan Kozinn:

"Several times a lone English horn rises from the sonic maelstrom to sing an attractive, jaunty melody before the chaotic chase figures reclaim the foreground. Elsewhere sustained melodies, almost buried at first, wrest attention from the pandemonium."

"Jeffrey Milarsky led the Manhattan Sinfonietta in an energetic performance that . . . was the picture of ensemble virtuosity."

(But who played the English horn?????)










More: Later today, Helicon board member, Karen McLaughlin and I tried to extract an excerpt of the Rihm review for my bio. Something along the lines of: "Hailed by the New York Times as ' . . . lone . . . attractive, jaunty . . . ' and ' . . . almost buried . . . ,' English hornist, James Roe, was praised for his ' . . . chaotic chase . . . ' and ' . . . pandemonium . . . '" Run for the hills!!!

Helicon's 23rd Season

Symposium LXXXIII - 14 October 2007
Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven

Mark Steinberg, violin
Myron Lutzke, ’cello
Pedja Muzijevic, fortepiano

Mozart Violin Sonata, K. 454
Haydn Piano Trio in C
Beethoven Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 1, No. 1

Helicon's 23rd season opened last evening with our 83rd Symposium. Mark, Myron, and Pedja brought so much alertness, poise, and sheer joy this performance, it was the ideal way to begin the season. They all took great chances last night, nearing the quietest end of the dynamic spectrum, at times barely whispering. And then, as in the final movements of the Haydn and Beethoven trios, they performed with full boisterous exuberance. Rod Regier's Walter fortepiano is really a masterpiece of an instrument, and Pedja played it with utter assurance. It is easy to say that Albert would have loved this concert, and it's true.

Here are some pictures taken by Joe Hsu.

What are days for?

Hours disappear each day, slipping through my fingers, rolling down the stairs.

I've planned Albert's memorial concert at Juilliard (and it will be quite wonderful), tomorrow is the opening Symposium of the Helicon season, next week is the Rihm concert at Miller Theater, tonight I sight-read principal oboe in Carmen with the NYCO, and tomorrow morning I play the funeral of another friend who's taken his leave this fall.

A thousand details attended to does not balance the scales. Grief is neither measurable nor containable. Loss is only and always loss and nothing can take the place of the missing.

My phone feels heavy in my pocket these days, dead weight waiting for a call. Incoming, outgoing, there is so much left I wanted to say—so much I hoped to hear.

The unaswered question is simply, "How are you?"

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Days by Philip Larkin

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

By Heart

In 2003, a favorite pair of actors, Marian Seldes and Brian Murray performed an evening of one-acts, titled "Beckett/Albee." There were three monologues by Samuel Beckett before intermission (Not I, A Piece of Monologue, and Footfalls) and a one-act play for both by Edward Albee after (Count the Ways). It was a thrilling and confounding evening, thrilling because of the virtuoso performances and confounding because of the obfuscating density of Samuel Beckett's texts. Seldes and Murray were interviewed by Leonard Lopate on his eponymous WNYC program (a favorite companion while I make reeds) and spoke about learning the difficult, non-narrative Beckett monologues. To speak their lines as personal utterances of their characters required intensive preparation, both physically and mentally. At times, they explained, the body was more dependable than the mind. Their preparation began with phonetic repetition until the inner structure revealed itself and gave them something to hold on to, and eventually, something to say.

That interview and their performances comes to mind while I'm learning the thorny music of Wolfgang Rihm for next week's Miller Theater concert. At first the notes on the page seem a snarl, quite outside the narrative vernacular of Western music. Learning this material requires repetition to just get the music into the body. Albert Fuller talked about confronting the organ works of Messiaen as a young man; none of the finger patterns were familiar to him. I find the same with Rihm. Yet as the body begins to accept the music, the mind does seem to catch up. Rihm's rhetoric is persuasive, and through repetition, the music moves from notation, through the body, and then into the mind. Finally, it comes out with inner motivation. This process is basically the same when learning a work of Bach or Mahler, however the extreme demands of Rihm's musical language make the inner workings of preparation more pronounced.

This morning while making coffee, I was a little surprised to find myself singing one of the most puzzling passages over and over to myself. My unconscious was learning the music by heart, even away from my instrument.

Over the edge

Over the edge of the orchestra pit, I mean. The musicians are there every show, it's the audience that's different. We look and enjoy the various interesting and odd people who assemble facing us, we facing them.

Yesterday before the 1:30 matinee of Don Giovanni at the New York City Opera, a mother and her son of about 8 years old, walked into the front row of the State Theater. The look on the boy's face as he surveyed the orchestra pit was one of such wonder and anticipation. Eyes wide, mouth agape, he quickly turned to his mother as if to say, "You mean I'm going to experience ALL of THIS???" and his gaze shot back to the pit.

Their seats were dead center right behind the conductor. When David Wroe walked in for his bow, the boy became even more excited, so close to the center of attention. With the opening chords, he lifted from his seat, and spent the whole overture leaning over the conductors shoulder, eyes darting between baton and musicians. It's just how I would have reacted.

On the M104 going home, I thought about how vital and important this performance must have felt to him. It felt that way to me, too.

"Bist du bei mir"

WQXR 96.3 FM in New York City will play Albert's version of "Bis du bei mir" from his "Bach for Harpsichord" CD today at 12:40 p.m. They will program additional performances by Albert Friday in the late afternoon. (Thank you Hester Furman.) For an MP3 of the broadcast, click here.

This is from Albert's program notes:

"The group closes with another prayer, one for companionship at the end. This prayer, Bist du bei mir, was sung by Hugues
Cuenod countless times in concerts that he and I gave together. In remembrance of those magical times when I accompanied him, varying my figured-bass realization as we improvised together, I have made a transcription of this vocal work for harpsichord alone. In it are gathered the feelings of melodic and accompanimental spontaneity that Hughie and I enjoyed, along with some of the tender feelings that guided us along our way." --- Albert Fuller

Recorded: 20-22 April 1992, The Presbyterian Church, Rye, NY
Harpsichord: Thomas & Barbara Wolf

albertfuller.blogspot.com

I've added two important tributes to the Albert Fuller site.

For the article by musicologist, David Fuller, click here.

For a letter by pianist Graham Johnson to Albert's friend, the tenor Robert White, click here.

If you would like to add a tribute or picture or other item, please send it to heliconnyc@aol.com.

Albert Fuller, Conductor and Champion of Early Music, Dies at 81 --- Allan Kozinn, New York Times

I give my 100th blog posting to a guest author, Allan Kozinn, whose sensitive obituary appears in today's New York Times. Many of us around the country and around the world, stayed up tonight to read it the moment it was published online.

I thank Mr. Kozinn for writing such an important, insightful, and nuanced tribute. Please read it here.

The New York Sun obituary is here.

The Juilliard School's notice in the Times is here.

The Helicon Foundation's notice in the Times is here.

A blog remembrance by a Helicon Member is here. Thanks sohj!

Photo by Christian Steiner

ALBERT FULLER 7/21/1926 - 9/22/2007

My dearest friend and mentor, Albert Fuller died at home this morning around 10:30. His friend Patrick Rucker was with him and so his last moments were spent being touched by someone he loved and who loved him.

His flame, which shown so brightly and illuminated so much for so many, became a flicker and then quietly and calmly went out. His light, however, remains radiant.



Helicon's notice in the Times.

Joshua R. Marks, "Honest Landscapes, VI"

This summer, while up at Saratoga Springs with the New York City Ballet, I visited the Tang Museum at Skidmore College and was pleased to discover the work of Joshua R. Marks. Joshua is trained as a sculptor and works also in photography. His work deals with perspective, size, vantage point, and plays with the expectations surrounding these elements.

In the Tang exhibition, hung six photographs in large frames made by the artist. The series was titled "Honest Landscapes" and I was immediately drawn to them. The subject of these landscapes, I came to realize, was New York City pavement, shot so close (inches from the ground) that the image could read as either immense or tiny, near or far. Manipulating elements of focus, the artist further affected viewer's perception of perspective. What were we seeing, a mountain or a tiny rock?

Visiting the works over the course of my two-week stay, I came to see that the beautiful, but quizzical frames told their own story. They suggested the interior wall and passenger window of an airplane with perfect details: the sloping concave shape, the color, and especially the representation of the window through which we see the photograph. Not only is the window's shape perfect, but there are two panes of glass (plexi, actually) with that tiny pinprick one finds near the bottom of such windows. The illusion is masterful without being over-done. In fact, the sculptural elements are in many ways, more realistic than the image contained within. The "Honest Landscapes" exist both as sculptures and photographs, blurring perspective, size, and proximity, in a conceptual whirl. What would it mean to look out a airplane window and see mountains rising—at once tiny and enormous—only inches above the Brooklyn pavement? In these works, Marks combined visual beauty with technical polish and conceptual slight-of-hand, even the title plays into the conceit. By accreting layers of illusion, he created six very strong works.

I contacted the artist to find out whether the works might be available. They were, and the process of choosing between the six was exciting. I even involved my parents in the process on their visit to Saratoga for my 40th birthday. It was a sight, the three of us, rushing around the exhibition, comparing, looking, talking about the works. Though I had to choose but one, I could imagine a space where all six might be shown in a row, taking the airplane window illusion to new heights. (Any collectors with big spaces reading this?)

I chose the sixth in the series, and when the Tang show ended, I paid a visit to Joshua's studio in Brooklyn. His wife was there assisting, and we three spent the better part of an afternoon talking and looking at Joshua's work. Totally delightful. They even drove me back to Manhattan with my new piece, talking about opera most of the way back.

I've tried to photograph the work to show its frame. I'm not sure I've succeeded, but I hope you get an idea.

Joshua R. Marks

"Honest Landscapes VI" 1/10, 2007
Photograph in sculptural frame by artist
Image: 11" x 14.5"
Frame: 34.5" x 29" x 1.5" - 3"
Artist studio, Brooklyn, NY 2007
Exhibited at The Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, Summer 2007

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More: Joshua's work is currently being featured at "Whitney Art Works Gallery" in Portland, Maine.

ALBERT FULLER

The Albert Fuller blog is taking shape, with pictures, stories, lectures, press, writings, and recordings. If you'd like to participate, please send an email to heliconnyc@aol.com and we'll get you involved.

photo by Christian Steiner

Wolfgang Rihm "Jagden und Formen"

I'm taking a practice break from several hours hard work on some particularly gnarly music: Jagden und Formen by Wolfgang Rihm. In three weeks we start rehearsals for the US premier of this hour-long chamber symphony. The concert is Thursday night, 18 October, as part of Miller Theater's dynamic, "Composer Portraits" series. I'm playing the solo English horn part and, well, it is very difficult. (My neighbors must think I've lost it . . . I began practicing this morning with the poised 1st oboe part to Don Giovanni which I'm playing tomorrow at the NYCO matinee. The post-lunch repertoire is of an entirely different stripe.) I love Rihm's music. His rhetoric is powerful, and utterly persuasive. His mastery of harmony, timbre, and counterpoint keep the ear riveted.

Repetitive practice of the sort I've been doing today, integrates the mind and body, dispersing the music throughout muscles first, and then brain. In fact, the body processes certain material faster than the mind can. Its athletic adeptness beckons the brain to catch up. (Jock to the nerd: "Come on, let's play ball!") Learning to let the mind trust the body is one of the great lessons of practicing.

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Below are the first two of an eight-page passage with
the English horn playing the principal line.
It begins one beat before bar 161 and
clips along at eighth note = 144.

Albert Fuller

Writer, violinist, and film-maker, Paul Festa brought together a group of Albert Fuller's former students, to create a blog of Albert's writings, public lectures, and music. I will contribute, as will an international cast of those who, through the years, gathered in his large music room, "The Rendez-vous Lounge." In that space, music—and life—radiated with more intensity than anywhere else, and the most precious thing any of us possessed was our own creativity.

Moab Music Festival

Last year at this time I was playing at the Moab Music Festival, Michael Barrett and Leslie Tompkins' wonderful month of chamber music in one of America's most arresting settings. No oboes this year, so I'm in the pit of the State Theater rather than crossing the Colorado on horseback. But I did wear my Moab hiking shoes today when I walked the two miles from West 106th to Lincoln Center for the dress rehearsal of New York City Opera's "Opera For All" opening night gala. The terrain was less challenging than what I encountered in Utah, but Central Park West is, in many ways, its own reward.

I wrote the following remembrance for the festival's winter newsletter.

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One Sunday morning last November, I got a call from Michael Barrett asking me if I might like to perform in the Moab Music Festival the first two weeks of September 2006. He told me who the other musicians would be and the musical programs and I instantly said yes. The music, masterpieces of Bach and Mozart, and the musicians, the finest in the country, were incentive enough, even with no understanding of what Moab itself would add to the equation.

Of course, it takes a long time to get from Manhattan to the the desert. Grand Junction’s tiny airport with its taxidermic bears and wild cats already felt like the “frontier” to me, but it was the final leg by car where I came to realize just how powerful and perfect a setting Michael and Leslie had found for their chamber music festival. It was a Sunday evening, and as I drove, the rocks and river made their first indelible impression on me. Lit with the violet shade of sunset, I began to see how utterly different this place was from any place I had ever been. And not only was it different, if you were open, it might just change you. Words like splendor, immense, and awe can merely describe the penumbra of Moab’s natural beauty. The wonderful novelist David Mitchell in his most recent book “Black Swan Green” wrote that “if the right words existed, then music wouldn’t need to.” As I was to learn, Moab, like music, escapes descritption by words and is best experienced in the body.

My first week was given over entirely to the music of J. S. Bach; for musicians, he is our Shakespeare. The morning after our Grotto concert I woke up at sunrise. It was my first day off since arriving, and with strains of Bach’s Wedding Cantata in my ears, I set out to see Moab. I had my virginal hiking gear purchased in town and plenty of water, sunscreen, and a Moab Music Festival hat. I was ready. I had a vague idea of finding some petroglyphs on the other side of 70 that I had read about, but basically, I was open to whatever might suggest itself. I turned up 128 for the first time, the morning light clear and bright. The Negro Bill Trail Head was the first thing to strike me, so at about half past seven, I started my first hike. For those of you who have been going to Moab for years, I hope you can still remember your first moment of enchantment there. This was mine. I had no expectations, only an openness, which was met with a rush of sensations as strong as any I’ve experienced. From the vast to the minute, my eyes breathed in the changing terrain in gulps, like a swimmer coming up for air after a long dive. My feet felt hungry to move in the landscape. At one point I sat on a flat rock in the middle of the stream and listened and looked. I felt such amazement that music, which had brought me to so many places around the world, from Tokyo to Paris to Peru, had somehow also brought me here, to this canyon and to this stream. Moments like these are what a life is built around.

Of course the genius admixture of great music, virtuosic performers, and immense natural beauty was demonstrated again and again throughout the festival, but there was one moment which for me crystalized it entirely. It was during the last of the Grotto concerts. The program included Mozart’s sublime quintet for piano and winds, which begins with three majestic chords, E-flat major, B-flat major, and back to E-flat. Michael’s inspired plan was to demonstrate the echo made by the canyon before playing the entire work. So when the audience was seated, we played each chord, waited for the echo to return to us several times, and then played the next and the next. The effect was extraordinary, like distant bells ringing out Mozart’s harmonies. After the demonstration, we begin our performance. Towards the end of the Adagio introduction, it began to rain and we took cover to wait for a change in the weather. At that point a woman walked up to me and said, “You know, I came all the way from Brooklyn for this concert.” “Well,” I answered, “ I came all the way from the Upper West Side.” We laughed about the chances of meeting so far from home. She then reached out and gripped my right arm and looked me directly in the eyes. “When you all played those chords and the echo came back . . . “ Here her voice broke and tears wet her cheeks. “I’ve never experienced anything like that in my whole life.”

Neither had I.

Brentano & Mozart

A friend who reviews for Fanfare and IRR showed me his recent cache of assignments. Nestled within Reinecke Symphonies and Sigfrid Karg-Elert piano music, was a July 10, 2007, Aeon France CD of the Brentano String Quartet playing Mozart, the Quartet, K. 464, and Quintet, K. 593, with Hsin-Yun Huang, viola.

The Brentanos gave their first performance of K. 464 at Helicon's 70th Symposium, May 16, 2004, so it was a pleasure to hear how their performance had grown. This CD is pure delight, I listened to it on and off all day.

When in need . . .

If you find yourself a caregiver in New York City for someone facing end-of-life issues (a loaded phrase, I know, I know . . . ), I can tell you from personal experience the following organizations are vital and more helpful than I could have expected.

Alzheimers Foundation
Visiting Nurse Service of New York
Partners in Care

Remember, you're not alone.

The Helicon Foundation's 23 Season

This October, The Helicon Foundation opens its twenty-third season. Three themes unite our Symposiums next year: Music in Culture, The Development of the Keyboard, and The Voice of the Violin.

We explore music’s relationship to the wider culture through its influences in the other arts and technology. Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” which Pedja Muzijevic plays in December, is an obvious example. Inspired by the drawings and watercolors of Victor Hartmann, Mussorgsky created a moving tribute to their friendship within a musical portrait of the artist. The natural world and the contemplative inner workings of religious faith influenced the music of Heinrich Biber in his Sonata Representiva, and The Mystery Sonatas, which Colin Jacobsen performs in February. Poetry is the inspiration for Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), which closes our season. In this first instance of a tone poem in chamber music, Schoenberg vividly represents the narrative of the two lovers in Richard Dehmel’s poem of the same name. Our opening Symposium features one of Europe’s greatest pre-electronic technological triumphs, the fortepiano. In this case, musical needs influenced technology, as musicians and composers pushed builders for increasingly sophisticated instruments and an expanded sonic palette. The music on this program was written around 1800, and ushered in a century of rapid evolution in piano development, leading to its dominant position in Western art music.

This season features five different keyboard instruments. In the music of Biber, we will hear both the harpsichord and organ. Our own amazingly versatile, Pedja Muzijevic will play the fortepiano in the first Symposium and the modern grand piano for “Pictures.” I am excited to announce a Helicon Special Event that takes the theme of keyboard instruments to its grandest heights. Robert McCormick, the young organ virtuoso and Music Director of St. Mary the Virgin here in New York City, has agreed to give Helicon Members a private concert on what is one of the finest organs in America. He will introduce the various registers of this king of instruments, and then play pieces showcasing its remarkable powers.

Finally, we look at the voice of the violin through its expressive evolution over three centuries of music. Each of our four violinists this season, Mark Steinberg, Jennifer Frautschi, Colin Jacobsen, and Vera Beths is an artist possessing a strong, individual personality, and an important voice in the music world today. In works of Mozart, Beethoven, Prokofiev, Biber, Brahms, and Schoenberg, we will hear the distinctive voices of the violin in its widely expressive potential.

Helicon Members enjoy proximity to virtuoso performances, insightful programs, vibrant social interaction, and immersion in music’s most intimate world. If you’d like to be a part of this exciting season, please email heliconnyc@aol.com or write to: The Helicon Foundation, Inc., 27 West 67th Street, New York, NY 10023, and we will send you Membership materials.