PAUL TAYLOR @ LINCOLN CENTER - Performance Review 2012.03.20

PAUL TAYLOR @ LINCOLN CENTER

Tues. Mar. 20, 2012

There are days when all that should be, converges.

After a long bout of busy-ness, I finally found myself with a fortuitous evening free, to see Paul Taylor Dance Company perform in their debut at Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater, formerly known as the New York State Theater and home to the New York City Ballet, and until this past season, the New York City Opera (whose departure has led to an ongoing bitter dispute between that company's musicians and their management). It has been a very long 15 years since I was first thrilled by the Paul Taylor Company, at City Center, as a wide-eyed freshman violinist-with-dancer-roommate at Juilliard, and I was utterly excited to revisit those vivid memories tonight.

On a budget, as always, I had been alerted to the possibility of affordably attending, courtesy of the Lincoln Center box office "Atrium Discountix" email efforts, at home in the new David Rubinstein Atrium on Broadway and 63rd Street. The Atrium is a beautiful public space, converted from a climbing wall to a classy destination with tables and chairs and wifi-zone and regular concerts and lush vegetation purifying the air and gloriously creeping up the walls. I always enjoy visiting it - but in the end only the expensive tickets were on sale, which still left them somewhat expensive for me, and so I bought my ticket directly from the Koch Box Office, where a $12 student rush ticket transported me to one of the best seats in the house: F4, - sixth row from the front, in the center left of the orchestra section. With even more joy in this serendipity, I began to chat with my very sweet seat neighbour, an about Paul-Taylor-aged gentleman who, as I would learn, had been the company's first manager.

As a musician, one of the things that had drawn me to this performance was the music: a suite of tin-pan-alley ragtime, Poulenc's Gloria, and Bach's Brandenburg Concertos #6 and #3. In particular, I was curious what Taylor would do with the Bach, so familiar to us all.

The dancing and the choreography were, to my appreciator's eye, superb. Though my only claim to any dancing knowledge is watching some ballet growing up, and attending my beloved Juilliard roommate's many performances during her studies and later with Martha Graham company, I can discern just as every audience member call feel when a piece and its dancers can hold thousands of people spell-bound, rapt, entranced and enthralled by the thread of what is unfolding onstage. There is a hush in the theater as thousands of breaths are held, and it is sublime; we are all in the moment. It is what we all strive for as artists, and it was exquisite tonight, particularly in the third piece, the Bach, titled "Brandenburgs", in which the dancers have beautiful solos, and extend themselves, twirling to the fullest, in their forest green. The choreography wove a stunning counterpoint through the concertos, enhancing Bach's lines, and also his capacity to go on and on and on, in some moments bordering on humourous caricature with signature Paul Taylor gestures of fun, but catching itself while still joyous and rejoining the celebration. It was so wonderful, I hope I can return tomorrow, though I fear life may get in the way.

The second piece, Poulenc, titled "Beloved Renegade", takes the titles of its movements from writings of Walt Whitman, and deals with death among us. The choreography as well as the costumes played with the idea of statues, and the motifs of fate, and inevitability wove their way through it, yet alongside the with the happy obliviousness of youth. The piece and performance were again breathtakingly beautiful, and as my seat-neighbour said to me, "Death is portrayed so much more beautifully than it really is". Is that so? But if in death we find the memory of life, perhaps our hearts carry on as art can. The music is gorgeous also, and it was beautifully sung and played. But by whom I do not know, as the programme does not list which recording was used.

Unless you are a member of local 802, perhaps you will think, "Recording?? But isn't the music live?"

Alas, no.

My neighbour and I conversed about this, as a result of my saying to him I had last been to see the company perform 15 years ago, and when he looked a little shocked, then told me he and the company go way back, I thought I'd better explain that my long hiatus is solely that I attend more concerts than dance performances, since I am a musician (and I'll admit to being flattered that he'd thought I was a dancer; which musician wouldn't be!) As the lights were dimming before the 1st piece, he said that he could understand my hiatus if I were a musician, and he'd tell me later why.

All through the first piece, the ragtime "Oh, you kid!", though I enjoyed its boisterous energy, and heard many understanding chuckles in response to its humour, I was bothered by the recorded music. It was out of tune, it seemed to come from just one side of the stage, the sound quality was decidedly tinned, and, by virtue of being a recording, it was thoroughly inflexible. There would be no responding to a dancer's mood tonight, no allowing the audience to clap a little more for an especially well-communicated solo. I felt as though I'd visited a gourmet restaurant, but was eating my fine entrée accompanied by shredded inorganic ice-berg-lettuce and plastic-bottle fat-free ranch dressing. A large part of this event was far removed from being "in the moment". 

The disparity between the two also led me to meditate on the one-way-street of non-communication between the dancers and the "musicians", and how we respond to electronic media in a world filled with technology today - accepting the old recording, a snapshot of the musicians-of-then, as something to communicate with, as we accept the written medium, the electronic translators of the telephone, then VOIP, email, chat - as stand-ins for meeting in person. Which can be very useful, and all, but will never be quite the same thing. I found this atmosphere rather high-school-musical-on-a-budget-esque, though the dancers were doing a wonderful job of pretending the music was alive. (With lesser-quality performers, I'd wonder, can't they tell the difference?)

My neighbour informed me that of course, the dance company would love to have live musicians, of course it's better, the quality can't compare. But, it would increase the budget by nearly a third.

As I am a card-carrying member of local 802, and heard about the protests not to use live musicians, I can sympathize the counter-attitude that, well, funds to hire musicians should be raised. At the same time, I am aware of the strength of the musician's union, and that union wages would result in the musicians being paid more than the dancers, and of the high expense a union orchestra would create. Furthermore, as much as I appreciate the union's quest to achieve fair pay for musicians, there are surely situations in which the pre-decided "fair pay" would genuinely kill the job - as perhaps in this case - and I don't see the sense in killing jobs, particularly during a recession. It would be more helpful to focus on creating jobs. At the risk of jeopardizing the image of my pro-union stance, I would consider it fair pay for musicians to be paid about the same as dancers in dance performances (the dancers work harder for the job, but musicians are responsible for acquiring instruments in addition to education and technique). Furthermore, I for one would find it thrilling to play the repertoire in a chamber-ensemble version, which certainly would be possible with at least the Bach and the ragtime from tonight. (The Poulenc is more expansive and the use of choir in addition to orchestra would make it more difficult, though not impossible, to replicate in a chamber version.) Small ensembles would work well artistically with the small size of Paul Taylor's company, and certainly would sound better than the canned version. As grateful as I am for union-scale orchestral work when it comes, I also much prefer the artistic freedom and excitement of one-on-a-part playing, in which what I do matters as much as what the dancers do. (I am aware of being far from alone in this sentiment.) I'd be willing to shorten my coffee break for the increased artistic freedom and the sense that my work really matters. (Not to mention how thrilling this kind of collaboration can be between musicians and dancers, as many other Juilliard alumni recall from their days there, and now from collaborations with other dance companies, such as Mark Morris, that explore the chamber music genre).
Am I making a sales-pitch here? - Sure, why not?

A flip side to the question of what-kind-of-music to play with dance, which I discussed with my neighbour, is whether music should ever be played without dance ... what should one look at, in a concert? Since music is not really about the musician - how does one let one's imagination wander? I confided that I can sympathize with this question; I have had the associative imagery at, particularly orchestral concerts, of looking into a see-through glass dishwasher, seeing how the gears turn and all. It happens to be a life-long dream, since I saw my first see-through glass dishwasher at the age of six, to own one someday, but that is another story.

In the end, as much as the quality of tonight's music bothered me at the beginning, the superb dancing and the choreography pulled me into its world, enhanced by well-placed lighting design and striking costumes, so I too could stop paying attention to the music's shortcomings, and thoroughly enjoy my evening. As I sensed from the rest of the audience - our standing ovation was sincere.

Now that I'm done writing my review, can I make it there again tonight??

Concert Review: Budapest Festival Orchestra with András Schiff at Carnegie

The problematic part of writing a review, is that the problematic parts might take much longer to explain than the non-problematic parts. (As a result, I will structure the remainder of the review in pyramid style (or inverted-pyramid, if one prefers that terminology), as opposed to this outset and rather than chronologically, with the peak up top, to emphasize the overriding highly enjoyable evening.)

In tonight's concert at Carnegie Hall, by the Budapest Festival Orchestra with conductor  Iván Fischer and piano soloist András Schiff, the highlight for me, or the part which I found myself responding to with an unconditional "yes", was the first piece after intermission, Béla Bartók's luminescent third piano concerto. As Jack Sullivan explains in Carnegie's extensive and excellently organized programme notes, this piece was one of the great masterpieces Bartók wrote in the final years of his life, along with the Concerto for Orchestra, the Sonata for Solo Violin, and the unfinished viola concerto. Its characteristically Bartókian Hungarianness is suffused at times with moments of near Bach-chorale-like treatments of tonality, a sort of revisiting of the youthful Bartók who sprang from a tradition of tonality, at the same time leaving the question, What now? (The piano gives comments to this question, in Hungarian.) It is a beautiful, melodious, and exciting concerto, and Schiff played it gorgeously - it is clearly dear to his heart, and it was evident that he knows it inside out, evident from more than just his playing it by memory - I felt I could immediately understand it, as though I could speak Hungarian, even though this was my first time hearing the concerto live.
I would have liked to hear this piece directly before intermission, when the atmosphere to give a well-deserved standing ovation could be present, and the bravos could spill into the buzz at intermission. Nonetheless, the programming of the evening was interesting precisely for its non-standard format: overture - piano concerto, intermission, piano concerto -symphony. The double-concerto made the evening a workout for Schiff! (And, if one considers that, by playing the Bartók's first piano concerto, and then his third piano concerto, he'd by default also played a second concerto, it might be tempting to count three ... )
Bartók's first piano concerto was written twenty years before the third, and is entirely more percussive and primal - the programme notes mention "barbarism" and "cataclysm". Bartók wrote it for his own tours, at a time when he was still strong enough to play it. Despite the coolness of its classical concerto form, the percussive material's explosive verve leaves a sudden and immediate impression, less broad than that of the overarching third concerto. It is also played less than the third, and Schiff used the music for it (detracting nothing from his effective and impressive performance), employing a page-turner whose skin-baring formal black attire matched that of the orchestra's other women, perhaps a signature of the group's look.
The evening's first piece was Schubert's overture to "Die Zauberharfe". The orchestra's seating was an interesting touch: a row of basses brought up the rear behind the winds, who dispersed across the back of the stage. A solo quartet of strings and winds stood before Fischer, and the second violins were opposite the firsts, allowing for play with antiphony. The overture was a good length for taking in novelty, and appreciating the resultant clarity in sound, of the thought and energy that went into these decisions, along with the adjustments the orchestra members had to make to be comfortable playing far from one another, only rarely at the cost of togetherness.
The final piece, however, Schubert's songful and "most Mozartean" fifth symphony (written in 1816 when he was just nineteen), is, while almost unbearably touching, also fraught with the elements that make Schubert potentially deadly to performers. It is full of nuance, and it extends. It plays with major and minor in the subtlest but most pregnant of ways - is one to laugh, or to cry? - in some passages almost every note is fate's weighty hinge to either a joyful flight or a vale of tears. To slough over this is to miss the point, no matter how many hinges there are -  it's as though glossing over a teenager's emotionality with "never mind, his hormones will sort themselves out eventually". The second movement began to acquire this feeling, having too much idle forward direction; by contrast, the third lacked the feeling of its given tempo, Allegro Molto. I found my mind wandering away from the music and to the philosophical question, "Is 'Allegro Molto' a structural element in the symphony, and thus explicable in structural terms, or is it a state-of-being of the performers, and as such possibly intangible"? The players were clearly putting a great deal of energy into the movement, as was evident in the sound, which was vibrant though too rough for my taste, but still the music struck me as slow and dull. As if to confirm my impression, my seat-neighbour, clearly a newcomer to classical concerts (engaging in flash-photography during the performance before being advised that it's not allowed), left at the end of the movement. It strikes me that, for Allegro Molto to sound as such in character, in this movement it may need to be executed as "Presto", in the sense that it needs to be felt in 1, rather than 3, or even better, in 4-bar phrases. This is not a stretch given that Beethoven had by 1816 composed many scherzos, in place of the obligatory menuet movement, that are usually played (and indicated) at such tempos. Why is this movement not titled "scherzo"? Perhaps it is not meant to be a joke, its import serious as a menuet, though the tempo no longer danceable. The fourth movement is an "Allegro Vivace", and here Fischer picked up the pace again, though indulging in excessive and odd rubatos when transitioning between sections. I wondered if it had anything to do with the seating of the orchestra and the difficulties in communicating imposed on the players by the seating- the basses and cellos scattered at strategic places throughout the rest of the strings, for a more homogenized blend. Indeed, their togetherness as sections, in this expanded chamber-music setting, was impressive.
Fischer delighted the audience when, giving in to the three curtain-calls, he asked (in Hungarian) whether the orchestra should play Bartók or Schubert as an encore. The audience calling out alternately, he put it to a vote, which gave quite a bit more noise to Bartók than the Schubert, but enough to Schubert that they played both anyway. The Schubert was first and very short - a German dance - which one?? - and most clearly performed in Hungarian: the first beats were greatly emphasized with both dynamics and rhythm, no longer as a rubato, in which time is taken as a liberty, but as a decided change in style, which aberration the second violins, in continuous eighth-notes, amazingly adjusted to seamlessly. Schubert did live in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the connection may make intellectual sense, though it was certainly a stretch musically.
The last two Romanian Folk Dances of Bartók rounded out the evening, with the extra players for it tumbling onto the stage as it had already begun - and a magnificent, spirited ending it became.

Concert Review: Frank Peter Zimmermann and Enrico Pace play Bach Sonatas in Avery Fisher Hall

FPZ  2011.10.12

     Tonight, violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann and pianist Enrico Pace performed six Bach sonatas for violin and harpsichord, BWV 1014-1019, in Avery Fisher Hall. These sonatas were written during Bach's prolifically-instrumental Cöthen period, which also produced the six sonatas for solo violin, and the Well-Tempered Clavier. They feature an expansion of chromaticism that came out beautifully in the slow movements tonight: the duo let the harmonies melt into the ethereal (just as they should), leaving the audience hanging on this golden thread, fully spellbound, and utterly silent. There were many beautiful moments of supple phrasing - the repertoire is staple for the performers, and they have found the freedom inherent in the music.
     The acoustical issues of playing this programme in the monstrous Avery Fisher Hall, were probably best illustrated by the amusing moment at the end, when, following a standing ovation, Zimmermann announced his encore in a very baroque dynamic, and all that could be heard where I sat, towards the rear of the orchestra, was something about "sixth". He had already raised his violin to start playing, when a woman from the back called out, in characteristically speak-one's-mind New-York style, "Sorry?"
     A wave of chuckles rippled forward through the audience; when it reached him, he replied, tongue-in-cheek, having clearly not heard what she'd said, "By Bach" (It was to the merriment of those who could hear it.)
     Being guilty of the following myself, I can perhaps especially appreciate the oddity of performing Bach in the 21st-century still in the mid-20th-century tradition. History, and the great recent developments in Historical Performance Practice, tell us that these pieces were not composed for giant concert halls (even if seating tonight was only on the orchestra and 1st-tier levels), that the baroque violin was much quieter than the modern one, and that the flamboyant grand piano (strikingly setting the stage tonight), would have been a plucky harpsichord instead. If we listen to the radio, we are highly likely to have had opportunity to hear it in this version, and it takes a moment for the ear to re-adjust to what those of us old enough to know cassette tapes remember from then. Occasionally, I was bothered by Zimmermann's use of vibrato, which, though normal in the 20th-century tradition, bent the pitch sufficiently for me to wonder if Bach's keen ear for pitch wouldn't have considered it so much as to be entering alternate tunings than well-tempered, a sort of trill in ill-tempered tuning. Likewise, I wished for a gentler E-string, one that when played open, would be more reminiscent of a wispy bird than a bright-faced cell phone (on which vibrato was a welcome softening). Nonetheless, since the concert had to be in Avery Fisher Hall, due to it being part of Zimmermann's residency this year with Avery Fisher's resident New York Philharmonic (though many wished that, if 'twere to be a large hall in New York, it might have been Carnegie) - the setting highlighted why the instruments have developed the way they have: to project. I also don't think that Bach would have minded a change in instrument to suit the venue, especially considering the programme notes' explication that the sonatas' titles' in the first source leave some wiggle room in instrumentation: "Six sonatas for obbligato harpsichord and solo violin, with the bass accompanied by a viola da gamba if you like". The acoustics were further enhanced by a very visually-appealing wooden screen behind the performers, though unfortunately Pace benefitted from its amplifying resonance more than Zimmermann, who of course stood further from it.
     As those gorgeously mesmerizing moments of phrasing showed, there is certainly value in this way as well. And being heard is a good thing too, though maybe not as funny as not being heard. $35 can be a prohibitive ticket price to musicians and students, and, considering that I didn't hear the first half, but rather was very fortunate to find a kind person with a complimentary ticket and "stub in" at intermission and hear the second half, I'm quite sure indeed that I preferred hearing it!

Claudia Schaer, Musician

Amused, bemused?
Keep demure!

because - cause - purpose. A fragmented poem suspended in time - an ode‏

between
"woher" und "wohin"
"whence" and "whereto"
"why" and "wherefore"
"because" and "in order to":

simply,
"a cause".

Bridging
"causation" and "purpose",

remaining external
or becoming external for "the cause" is the external, the "it" of "i (did/do/will) cause it" -

it's the crest of the wave of past present future
and the link between us four-dimensional creatures and our three-dimensional ideas.

Take the A Train - or, Best Nine Dollars to Date

[Published in Strings Magazine and Chamber Music America, Spring 2006]

To Whom It May Concern;
or,
Dear Diary,

This evening, on the 42nd -street A-train platform, at midnight, returning to Manhattan from Long Island, I found myself rather weary and in the usual NY stand-offish mode induced from seeking privacy in thick crowds. I had nearly fully concentrated on my pumpkin muffin, except for a few strains of music seeping in from a busker some ways down the platform. A few more notes... Bach? the G minor solo violin fugue? here? sounding so good? and on...some extremely resonant instrument sounding like an organ?? After a brief internal struggle, to which only the soon-disappeared muffin was privy, gregariousness won over jaded attitude, and I followed my curiousity, passing by a fellow former Juilliard student and his girlfriend on the way to the source of the Bach. (To be precise, the Juilliard alum may well have still been in school; do the DMA students ever graduate?!?)
As it turned out, the musician was a guitarist, and the resonance, of course, was the subterranean concert hall buskers revel in for permutations of 8-minute intervals. My own train was running at 20-minute intervals at this hour, and the guitarist, having just played the last chord, sensed my presence with the musician's instinct for another musician, and returned my joking accusation of "You stole my repertoire!" with "There's plenty for two"! The conversation continued, fully in public, with him wanting to know if I was Russian, saying I looked so; I replied non-sequiturially, "Must be the Canadian in me". He repeatedly urged me to take out my violin. "Here?" "Now?" "But I'll have to go when my train's coming." I have no idea what actually induced me to do it, nor what induced me to NOT get on my train, which of course arrived the second I had put my shoulder rest on the violin. Certainly it wasn't snobbery, and certainly he was eager to play together; on what reasoning I'm not sure, as I hadn't delivered a press kit, nor a demo recording, nor had I even run my casual footwear by Juilliard's career advisor for professional approval.
In any case, I was not at professional level, for when choosing what to play, he suggested all the standard gig repertoire, which, unfortunately, I have always done my utmost NOT to memorize.
So we played the beginnings of things, and on anything I remembered we sounded rather better than decent, but I felt a bit silly at how much was escaping me. Yet being in good shape, and having spent all morning practising the other two Bach fugues, the C major and the A minor, I really wanted to play something more substantial. He hadn't wanted to play the G minor fugue together, but, out of other ideas, I just began to play it anyway. I hadn't practised it earnestly since my teens, and I have no idea where it came from. Next thing I knew I was completely enmeshed in it - now I know where the term "by heart" comes from! No thought was spared for how I executed any part of it, I simply played it - and probably more sincerely than if I had practised it alongside the other fugues today.
I was dimly aware that a large crowd had gathered, and that a few rowdy kids were standing too close (later someone told me that they had been trying to distract me, and that they would have been in big trouble with the crowd had they succeeded).
The guitarist played the last chord with me, and people clapped heartily when we finished. They left large tips, and as I hastily sprang onto my just-arrived A-train, several of my new fellow-passengers asked in detail what I had played, wanting to download it from I-tunes or buy a CD. One man had just lost his job today, and even though he was confident he could find another one tomorrow, he said it had helped him to hear me. A woman said that she had skipped the previous train to hear us, and that she had been deeply touched by the Bach, and that she now intends to practise the flute again, a joy she'd abandoned when going to college for a different field. For my part, I too was deeply touched that so many people had had such strong and beautiful reactions to my spontaneous memory-test, and from these conversations, it seems apparent to me that classical music in its most exuberant form, not watered-down or pandering-to-a-lower-common-denominator, has a huge potential place in society, and I would say a very much-needed one too.
Without moralizing, the moral for me of the story is: sharing a love is more fun than being jaded! It also can earn one a completely unexpected $9 from a gracious potentially-Russian guitarist who played on 42nd street at midnight on the A-train platform on October 21st a.m. Definitely comparable to similarly-earned cashews in first class on a trans-atlantic flight, n'est-ce pas? What's next, pinot noir?
(P.S. Does anyone know how to go about re-finding the gracious potentially-Russian guitarist who played on 42nd street at midnight on the A-train platform on October 21st am?)
P.P.S. What in the world do you do when you've forgotten the word "thesaurus"?
P.P.P.S. Lest my subway career go down the tubes ... ?