The Newstead Trio in Concert- 1/28/11

       Friday night, I heard the Newstead Trio, a locally-based piano trio that has performed worldwide. It's easy to sense the ensemble's musical chemistry; they've been playing together since 1993. This was the first concert of a new series presented by the Pennsylvania Academy of Music, an entity which has had a tumultuous past year, but seems to be mounting a resurgence recently.

      Violinist Michael Jamanis and cellist Sarah Male sat at the edge of the "stage" (the altar at Highland Presbyterian Church), evoking an intimate feeling for the performance. Behind them, of course, was pianist  Xun Pan, seated at the church's gorgeous Steinway grand piano. The church was aesthetically and acoustically an excellent performance space, with its wooden altar floor and looming silver organ pipes on the background.

The Newstead Trio during a past performance.

      The program began with Sergei Rachmaninoff's Trio élégiaque No. 1 (in g minor), a single-movement composition which references no specific programmatic event. Composed by Rachmaninoff at age 19, the work is in sonata form. As a very early work by Rachmaninoff, the piano writing is strongest, and was infused with a sense of vigor by Xun Pan. The group's flawless collaboration was complimented by a sense of sublime emotion emitted by the musicians as they performed the mournful 'elegy' of a young composer.

      Before beginning their second piece, Xipi: Themes from Peking Opera, cellist Sara Male seemed to be having difficulty positioning her music on her stand, joking "I've done this before, really." I mention this because the piece was, in fact, written for the Newstead Trio, and they debuted it in 1996. The work, by Chinese composer Ping Jin, pays tribute to the unique Chinese music theatre style of Peking Opera. The piece is based on texture and ambiance, painting a picture through biting, dissonant double stops in both violin and 'cello, which resolve to octaves and are joined by the piano. Jin exploits a huge variety of the available sounds for all instruments. The strings play pizzicato, glissandi, spiccato bowings, and enharmonics; the pianist is required to pluck strings inside the open piano lid, creating a nearly celestial  feel. The piece combines eastern and western music, sounding a bit strange at times, but the Newstead Trio completely owned every aspect of the work with its intense performance.

      The final piece of the first half of the program returned to tonality with Trio-Cornwall, by American composer Julia Smith.  The piece depicts a trip following the Hudson River in New York as it approaches New York City.The first movement, Allegro giusto, evoked the feeling of a pleasant ride through the country, though not with it's bumpy moments, depicted by loud or dissonant interjections. Theme with variations, the second movement, cycled through a seemingly random array of variations; the theme was a relaxed, strolling rhythm which was then transformed into a playful pizzicato variation, a legato minor variation, and a laid-back rumba section. The movement concisely recapped each variation as it came to a close. The final movement, Allegro quasi rondo, opened with a fast, loud theme that was revisited frequently as per the rondo form; the piece closed with a distinct quote from the folk song Old Joe Clark, which cut through the strings in the upper register of the piano. Again, the trio's enthusiastic musicianship and energetic performance brought the piece to life.

      After intermission, the final piece of the concert was Anton Arensky's Piano Trio No. 1 in  D minor, Op. 32, which was reminiscent of Mendelssohn's D minor trio, in spite of the composer's Russian origins. From the beginning of the first movement, the piece flowed like the Mendelssohn, with a very active piano part underneath flowing string melodies. It felt serious, though not sad or somber. The passing of themes from Male to Jamanis in the mid-range of the cello to the low range of violin was seamless; the two players matched each others' timbres brilliantly. The Scherzo-allergro molto followed; it contrasted both the previous movement with its lighter feel, and itself, presenting several distinct themes repeated in various sets. The movement featured many bouncy bowings, executed extremely accurately. Movement three, Elegia-Adagio, returned to the previous sincerity of the work, featuring the muted, distant sound of  the strings, followed by a graceful scherzo-esque section, and finally returning to the poignant elegiac quality of the beginning. The Finale-Allegro non troppo alternated between a boisterous theme with rapid bowings and fierce unisons and a contrasting lyric theme before coming to its climactic ending.

      I can't say enough about the performance quality of the artists; Jamanis plays with just enough edge to his sound keep you wanting more, where as Male balances him with a subdued intensity to her playing. Pianist Xun Pan equals his counterparts in terms of intensity and musicianship, bringing a similar degree of precision and execution to his performance. It's easy to see why the group has played in Carnegie Hall and other venues from London to China. I consider it a privilege to have them in the Lancaster area as the PA Academy of Music's ensemble-in-residence and highly recommend seizing the opportunity to see the Newstead Trio perform.

Party Like It's 1779...in Vienna...

Today is the 255th anniversary of the birth of the great Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart! Better known, of course, as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Cheers!

Here are some ways to celebrate:
-Have a pint of Stiegl- This Austrian beer has been brewed since 1492 in Mozart's birth city of Salzburg.


-Fry up some tasty....liver dumplings? Said to be one of Mozart's preferred culinary delights, check out the recipe here.

It always sounds like Constanze is calling him "Foofie"...

-Once you've had enough beer and fried food, break out the bawdy canons- Many were published with more "appropriate titles" and without words, but the originals were generally thought to be party songs written for friends. You'll find  such gems as "Leck mich im Arsch" (literally "Lick me in the arse"), which was changed to and published as "Let Us Be Glad!" 
Listen to it here- there's just something hilarious about such raunchy lyrics being sung so seriously. Also, enjoy the original text of the "Bona Nox" canon, which I came to know through my theory class and never suspected it was more than an innocent bedtime song. Listen to the Bona Nox canon here.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch Die Zauberflöte and play some piano sonatas. Or maybe I'm just going to watch Amadeus and listen to Phoenix. Don't judge, now.

Pianos in Bad-Ass Places: Part 1

Today I got on Facebook and saw that Performance Today had posted something amazing- this:

Why yes, that is a piano.

With a large bird on it.

Performance art? Maybe. (Actually, probably not. According to Yahoo/National Geographic, the piano was abandoned in its opportune place after a music video shoot.)

But awesome? Yes.

Now of course, it let me to think, "What other things would be more awesome if you were to add a piano to them?"
The result- these: (Click for the full-size image.)

Alcatraz.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of randomly placed musical instruments.

Grand Canyon. And yes, it's a Bösendorfer.

I could probably go on all day with these, but this will do for now...enjoy.

Love the Ones You Collaborate With

Next Monday will be my first collaborative piano gig of the semester. Well, "gig". Now's a good time to introduce my favorite tenor and collaborative artist, my loving boyfriend Steve. He's a music ed/voice major at the university from which I just graduated, so we've been working together for a few years now, but next Monday's master class is the first time we'll actually perform together. (Previous choir directors/vocal instructors weren't all that supportive of non-piano majors accompanying, but Dr. Boyle has been great about it so far.)

Next Monday he'll be singing in the vocal studio's master class; usually the staff accompanist takes care of that, but I'll get to play. We'll be performing the piece that I translated in my first blog post, L'Heure Exquise(text by Paul Verlaine, music by Reynaldo Hahn). We've been working on this piece since last semester, so it should go pretty well.

Not to say collaborating has been all sunshine and roses. Yesterday we were rehearsing Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe and we both ended up getting completely irritated; partly at each other's mistakes and partly because we've been doing the same music since last August, so we're, quite frankly, kind of over it. Maintaining some sense of professionalism and musicianship is sometimes a challenge.  We want each other to succeed, and sometimes it's hard to not get to personal or be too harsh about it. I ended up telling him yesterday, "Look, you can find another accompanist, but you can't find someone else to sing properly in German for you." We ended up in mutual agreement that a week of separation from Dichterliebe would be healthy for both of us.

So far, our musical collaboration has been fun, but hasn't been without its challenges. I'm looking forward to our future collaborations; hopefully, a recital in April and who knows, maybe even grad school auditions.

"Congratulations great success Firebird press." Or, "more reasons that I enjoy reading composers' letters."

After reading 85 pages of Stravinsky correspondences, I've learned several things-

1) Stravinsky had the original ironic mustache.

2) The seemingly most common way to sign letters in Russian translates as "I embrace you."

3) Diaghilev used the phrase "great success" very frequently. (The Russian language uses neither articles nor the verb 'to be' in the present tense, thus translations need a bit of love to make them fluid and logical, or are just left alone for authenticity.)

4) Dalcroze had an almost creepy obsession with Stravinsky: 

My dear friend,

I call you “friend”, although I never see you, but my students know that I love your music, which is “you”, and they love you as I do. I saw you again yesterday and enjoyed seeing you again, for to me you embody youth, ardor, sensibility, and the superb genius of discovery in the –alas- unexplored realm of musical sensation. You probably do not know that your music –which is you- is the subject of almost all of my conversations with my disciples- to a much greater degree than that of Debussy, or especially Ravel. I single out your music because it exposes a state of the soul and a nervous psychic receptivity that anyone concerned with human movement needs to comprehend.(I think you understand me.) I know your scores, I have studied them…I have no reason to reproach myself in your regard. You occupy my thoughts, and I, in every instant of my time, seek to consecrate your thoughts, to scrutinize them, and to deepen them. Moreover, I seek to imprint your ideas, which I understand and love, upon my own [work].

Also, "Man of genius that you are, though, I believe that you could penetrate my secret, intimate feelings, and...my still amorphous attempts at creating an ameliorization of of contemporary ballet..." You can't make this stuff up. Also, ameliorization is not a word; these letters were translated from French so I imagine the author meant "amelioration".

5) After 63 pages, I realized that I was reading Volume 2. Oops.

More to come as I continue reading.

The Semester of Hindemith: A Bit of Musical Immersion

I just listened to 8 minutes of Hindemith concert music...and survived.

Joking aside, though, I really like Paul Hindemith's music, and I have no idea why. I started studying his Sonate for clarinet and piano at the end of summer 2009, and took to it immediately. It wasn't until the end of September when I played it in a master class that I realized, oh, most people don't think this music sounds normal. And upon closer examination, it made sense that people thought it was weird- harmony  based around 4th, 5th, and 2nds, metric dissonance everywhere. The melodies, in a sense, were notes placed with gaping holes in the middle; classically, not melodic at all. But for whatever reason, I plowed on with learning it, playing the first movement for my jury and deciding I'd also play it for music department's annual scholarship competition the next semester.

About halfway through that winter's break, I decided I needed a new challenge for the first movement, so I set forth to memorize it. It was, oddly, one of the easiest things I've memorized. I rewrote the whole thing by hand, memorizing it in chunks and phrases. I played the Hindemith and the Adagio from Mozart's clarinet concerto for the competition that February.(FYI, not perfect enough to win, but having the music memorized definitely won some points since, at least around here, that's not usually expected of instrumentalists.)

The semester went on; I enlisted our staff accompanist to play the second movement of the Hindemith for our department recital hour. I hinted that he might enjoy playing it, he hinted that "Hindemith never was my favorite composer." Touché. (I should add that for the first movement, my accompanist was Dr. Maria Corley, who is a lovely person and extremely talented musician.) That performance went well, but I was by no means done with Hindemith yet.

At this point, in March and April 2010, I was deep into learning the rest of the Hindemith sonata for my junior recital, which made it the perfect material for.....a music history paper. For the second semester of history, our papers were to be analysis-based, so I decided to compare and discuss Hindemith's pre-WWII sonata versus his post-WWII clarinet concerto. This led me to some extremely interesting music history books, my favorite of which being the Selected Letters of Paul Hindemith, edited and translated by Geoffrey Skelton. Up until that point, I had only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of Hindemith's compositional rebellion, finding things like his protest of the twelve-tone row.(He wrote 11- and 13-tone rows, apparently just to be a jerk.) When I started reading the letters, I realized, wow, Paul Hindemith really was incredibly brilliant, and most of all, gloriously snarky.

For example:
June 1917- age 21:
"The trouble with our music is that it lacks music! And all I want to do is make music. I don't care a damn if people like it or not- as long as it's genuine and true."
Sure, a little lofty, but Mr. Hindemith was generally very true to his music. Earlier in the letter he denounced writing in 'old' forms just for the sake of using them, saying that if his work happened to come out that way, great. If not, bugger off.

November 1917:
"My present great ambition is to write [a piece of music] consisting of just three bars, theme, development, coda. Conciseness is the sign of the master!" Oh, Paul Hindemith. Hyperbolic to the extreme.

Another favorite of mine, more of a story than a quote, came from an incident when Hindemith faked a letter to the people behind the now-infamous "Muzak"(heard in elevators everywhere), saying that there was an opportunity for an agreement to broadcast Muzak to America via a Trans-Atlantic cable. Hindemith figured they'd catch the joke right away, but it turned out the Muzak corporation had received his 'proposal' in the middle of real talks with their directors about an English project, adding "added strength to their grandiose plans", as PH said.

In a related letter, he proposed that Muzak be broadcast to/through the deep-sea fish that have the little lanterns, so that they didn't miss out on the glory of Muzak. Completely tongue-in-cheek, he wrote, "As far as all other living creatures down below are concerned, it can doubtless be assumed that, for purposes of musical training, they have at their disposal pianos and other musical instruments from sunken vessels." Since, after all, no one had actually been down there. Ridiculous, but fantastic.

Hindemith also never hesitated to comment on his fellow composers:
- He called Stravinsky's Jeu de Cartes "very clear and simple." But not simple in the sense of an idea being brought to its clearest and best expression, but rather that of just plain simplistic music. "If Igor considers the Schwanendreher[one of Hindemith's major works for viola] important, I fear I can't say the same about his new piece." I particularly liked his thoughts on this, because the first time I heard Jeu de Cartes on the radio, I was playing the "identify-this-piece" game, and thought, hmm, this sounds like Stravinsky, but it sounds way too happy. It was fun to find out I was right, and later to find that I wasn't alone in that thought.

Later, Hindemith commented on Stravinsky's conducting, which I've heard to be questionable, but this sealed the deal- "Igor is a truly mediocre conductor and cunningly avoids any step in the direction of free and spontaneous music making." Ouch.

PH and wife Gertrud, New Haven, CT

Hindemith was quite a character. I understand that he played, or at least attempted, to play pretty much everything he wrote, and was on a mission to write a sonata for every standard instrument. Finally, I give you this picture, also from the Letters book:

Isn't it the most ridiculously charming thing ever? It makes me want to grow old and sit in my living room, playing and writing music all day. I believe that's an alto horn that he's playing.

My semester of Hindemith culminated with the performance of the complete Sonate at my junior recital, an A on my paper, and the eventual finishing of the Selected Letters on my own time. Since then, Mr. Hindemith and I have been on an extended hiatus.







[Tune in next time for "Fall 2010: The Semester of Milhaud":-P Only sort of kidding.]

Live and Local, But Lovable

Tonight I went to see my local symphony, the Lancaster Symphony Orchestra in Lancaster, PA. It brought to mind a few points to weigh in on the ongoing live and local vs. big and HD debate.

View from our box seats.

This month marked one year since the first time I saw the symphony here, and since then, I've seen many master works conducted by their internationally-known director, Stephen Gunzenhauser. However, what really draws me to the relatively small local symphony are the personal connections.

I love getting to the symphony and noticing, ah, Igor, the usual concert master, isn't here tonight...oh, but it's because his trio had a gig in Tulsa, I saw that on Facebook. (My trio played in a master class given by his in October.) Or seeing that a cellist you turned pages for at a recital is subbing tonight. (Who is an excellent musician and has a wardrobe that I'm infinitely jealous of.) You feel like you start to know the orchestra members, but are always intrigued when new musicians appear and get their chance to play.

I love seeing the gleam in the eye of a musician as he or she looks across to one of their colleagues, when you can tell that they're just plain having fun. It makes me smile, and brings me closer to the music.

I loved seeing the communication between Maestro Gunzehauser and Yuliya Gorenman, the soloist for Beethoven's 4th piano concerto. Up close and personal, seeing the music passed back and forth between orchestra and soloist.

Finally, I love the relationship of audience and orchestra that you don't get anywhere but at a live performance- what's the point of clapping at a live broadcast? At a live local concert, I can stand up and applaud, show my appreciation, and join with the rest of the crowd in asking for an encore. (We were rewarded with 2 from Ms. Gorenman tonight; the first movement of Beethoven's Waldstein sonata and then the Liszt arrangement of Schumann's Widmung.)

Now, I'm not saying that none of this can be found in a live broadcast of the world's top professional orchestras. I do plan on catching one of these broadcasts as soon as I can; the highly affordable price to see some of the world's best is hard to pass up. I'll post a comparison of the two as soon as I experience the other.

Pardon my French.

Inspired by this blog post, I set off to translate some of the vocal repertoire I'm currently working on(accompanying, not singing.)

My first thought was to tackle Schumann's Dichterliebe; I've been playing it for months now with only a basic knowledge of the text. However, I have neither studied any German, nor possess a German dictionary. I opted for a less daunting task, "L'Heure Exquise", a short song by Reynaldo Hahn with French text by Paul Verlaine. Having studied French for 3 years of high school and one semester of college, it was far more accessible.

I started by opening up the score, and putting a post-it note over the "poetic" translation, to be referred to only in times of desperate need, a.k.a., if I was completely unable to make sense of a phrase using a dictionary or translate.google.com.

The first phrase drew attention to something I had not been aware of: which word in it was actually the verb.
"La lune blanche luit dans le bois": "The white moon shines in the woods"
Luit is the action word, from the verb luire, to shine. Knowing the function of each word grammatically is one of the first keys to not sounding like an American attempting to sing in French. It seems like my choir/voice teacher constantly points out, "Why are you accenting the word "the"?" Don't just know what the word means, but also know what purpose it serves.

Skipping ahead to the last verse- I've found translation to be even more important in order to understand phrases.
"Un vaste et tendre apaisement semble descendre du firmament": "A vast and tender calm appears to descend from the firmament"
The way this part of the text is set is extremely speech-like, so knowing what you are saying is key to keeping the text from running together.
See the score here.
Listen here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJIz86Mtyek @ 1:25.

Also, paying closer attention to the word 'firmament' brought a new, deeper understanding of the music for me- I found that the English and French words were both the same, so I needed to define it. "Firmament" is "an expanse", or the "arch of the Heavens as described in Genesis." Certainly added a new perspective to a word that I had previously glossed over.

I hit somewhat of a roadblock at the end of this phrase.
"Un vaste et tendre apaisement semble descendre du firmament que l'astre irise".
"Astre" was the easy part ("star"), but "irise"? I resorted to sneaking a peak at the translation on the score and found "que l'astre irise" was translated to "which the orb clads in rainbow colors". Rather grad, but it  made sense, considering "irise" and the English "iridescent", but further examination showed there was no apparent verb form of the French "iriser", save for the passive "to make iridescent". So now I was dealing with translations to words that didn't even exist in English.

Finally, I assembled the text in all three forms to compare- not too bad. (Click to actually read it.)

So, after this epic journey, I have more than enough new information to sit down and find new meaning within this piece, as well as having new ammunition when working with my vocalist, who you'll learn all about later, I promise.

Well, here it is!

The moment I've been waiting for...
My music blog!
Finally, I have a place where I will post my symphony and recital reviews, thoughts on musical ventures, and open up discussion of the musical paths upon which I wander.
Look for upcoming posts to discuss:
- Chamber Music: The Trio Sans Nom (my clarinet, violin, and piano trio) is about to dig into new repertoire. What are we playing? How will we be approaching it?
- Experiences in Collaborative Musicianship: I accompany as much as I can; here will be my adventures working with various soloists, both vocal and instrumental.
-Concerts and Recitals: The small city of Lancaster has its own fantastic symphony, but also look out for reviews/recaps of Baltimore Symphony programs, events in the MD/DC area, and recitals of all types.

Before launching into much else, I should briefly discuss where I stand as a ‘professional’ musician- I use the term loosely, since at this point, it’s sort of a technicality.

I graduated from Millersville University of Pennsylvania in December 2010, earning a BA in music. My main area of study was clarinet, though I played as much piano as possible and also studied some organ and trumpet.

This semester, I will still be in Millersville as I figure out what exactly it is that I want to do from here. I’ll be using this time to keep playing with my chamber ensemble (a clarinet/violin/piano trio), accompanying vocal lessons(well, probably only 1 on a regular basis) and hopefully a recital or two. Oh, and also finding a ‘real person’ job to tide me over until I move on to grad school.

I’m looking forward to an amazing next few months of making music, ‘finding myself’, and sharing it on here.