Paul Jacobs gave a recital in the Organ Recital Series in Davies Symphony Hall today, almost exactly a year after his previous one, and in reviewing what I wrote then (here), I can say that this one was much more successful, although there were startling similarities at the very beginning and the very end.
This recital started with the Elgar Sonata in G Major, a long and multi-colored piece. There is the stately, oh-so-Brittania opening, elegant soft passages, and happily overcooked cadences, amidst orchestral textures that require an organ and an organist with great resources. Jacobs' opening was more spritely than stately, and the similarity with last year is that in such a dry acoustic as Davies, you need the lush sounds of Elgar to last longer. The triplets in the very second bar were so quick and detached that we barely had a chance to hear them before they were gone. Things warmed up, happily, after that.
Jacobs explained that the Bach Trio Sonatas, one of which followed the Elgar, were unusual compositions for the organ in giving independent lines to the right hand, the left hand, and the feet. Think of a string trio, two violins and a cello, each playing a separate line, each as difficult as the others, and nicely interwoven. Now imagine one person having to play all three such parts, and you have some idea of the complexity of the Bach Trio Sonatas for Organ. They're a delight for the audience but something of a terror for organists. Jacobs mentioned that Bach had written these pieces as instruction pieces for his son Wilhelm Friedrich, and he surmised that given the difficulty of the pieces, he must have detested his son.
Difficulties notwithstanding, Jacobs played the three-movement work with exceptional clarity. In my mind, this was the highlight of the concert. The Trio Sonatas are well known to fans of Bach organ music, but I heard new things in these old works, and that's the best part of concert-going. (If you never hear anything new, you might as well just listen to your recording at home.)
Jacobs ended the first half by returning to Elgar, playing the ultimate Elgar warhorse, Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, a "favorite" at graduation ceremonies, which is to say, hardly an actual favorite piece at all. (At a graduation ceremony I attended recently, there was no band, and they simply played a recording of this brief piece, over and over and over...) I'm not sure why Jacobs programmed it. Coming after the Bach, I thought it took us from the sublime to the ridiculous, but it provided a pre-intermission chuckle.
The second half included three rare pieces, all by women (rarer still). The Suite for Organ by Florence Price ("the first African-American woman to gain prominence as a symphonic composer," according to the program notes) was written in 1940. It contains four delightful movements, strongly reminiscent of French Romantic composers, structurally familiar (including a fughetta), but with more than a few jazzy elements. The program notes say, "The closing broaches the boundaries of Gershwin." That's one way to put it. Suffice it to say that it's easy to hear Gershwin's approach to the African-American tradition of song in this work, but perhaps only because we know Gershwin so well.
In an odd but brilliant bit of programming, Jacobs concluded the program by interleaving the final two pieces, Nadia Boulanger's Trois Pieces and three of Jeanne Demessieux' Transcendental Etudes: the first movement of the Boulanger, then the first movement of the Demmesieux, then the second Boulanger, and so on. The Boulanger pieces are slight but beautiful. Boulanger, a titan of music teaching for generations of composers, wrote very little, preferring to promote the music of her younger sister Lili, but these pieces are well worth hearing. I was especially moved by the two-part canon, and Jacobs played it with great charm and affection.
The movements of the gentle Boulanger alternated with the terrifying Etudes of Demissieux. To say that these pieces are difficult would be an understatement, and just watching Paul Jacobs manage the wild, non-stop sixteenth notes in the pedal was enough to make you stop breathing. I knew of Demessieux from her recordings of Franck, but I had no idea that this "crazy woman," as Jacobs described her, had written such brilliant tours de force. Jacobs played the opening Etude at breakneck speed, risking but averting disaster at every turn.
It is worth mentioning that Jacobs played this entire recital without a score. A half-hour Elgar piece requires an astounding memory. One might expect to memorize the Bach or the short Elgar piece, but memorizing the rare pieces of the second half would defy nearly any musician. As Jacobs mentioned in his remarks from the stage, much of the task of organ-playing is the sheer management of the overwhelming mechanical details of this most elaborate of musical instruments. This particular instrument has five manuals plus pedal, 147 ranks, and a dazzling array of couplers, which link the divisions of the organ, and pistons, which turn on and off arbitrary sets of stops. Organs vary from hall to hall. Jacobs spent many hours programming the instrument for a two-hour recital, and yet he navigated his way through the hundreds of changes as if it were his home instrument. We heard one recital on this series last year, by an organist with a typically impressive biography, who had not done her homework. She had two basic settings, loud and soft, and her technique was only so-so, resulting in a performance totally lacking in nuance and color. In the hands of a master like Paul Jacobs, the Rufatti organ in Davies can do amazing things.
In a bizarre twist, Jacobs played the exact same encore as he did last year, the A Minor Fugue, BWV 543, and unfortunately, it was played in the same way: with increasing speed and volume, resulting in cacophony. As I wrote last year, he should leave that approach to Bach to Cameron Carpenter. But apart from that one unhappy moment, this was a brilliant recital, and I hope Paul Jacobs returns every year.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Louis Lortie, March 12, 2011
Pianist Louis Lortie played an "immersion" concert this evening: the 12 Etudes, opus 10; the 3 New Etudes, Op. Posth.; the 12 Etudes, Op 25; and for an encore, the Nocturne in D♭, Op. 27 No. 2; all by Chopin. With such a program, one discovers both differences and similarities: the vast differences in size, length, and complexity, and the surprising similarities between pieces written years apart, particularly those in the same key. Most of these pieces were quite familiar to me, while others seemed (and may well have been) new to me. In that sense, the concert was a success. I came away with a renewed appreciation for a great composer.
I really like Lortie. I've seen him play a few times before in San Francisco, but only in Davies Hall with the Symphony, and he always struck me as a pianist's pianist: incredible technique but not flashy, wearing tails but no sequined LL on the lapel. I was eager to hear this recital.
But things got off to a bad start, due to overpedaling, which turns even the best playing to mush. The pedal is there for a reason, so how much is too much? The best way I can explain it is in terms of information theory. Using the pedal is like removing the spaces between words. IfIwriteawholesentenceortwowithoutspaces,itgetshardtoreadbecauseyoucan'tquicklytellwhereonewordstopsandthenextonestarts. Now, sometimes that's OK. If I write hellooooooooooooooooothere, it doesn't matter precisely how many o's I used, because it's just an acoustic effect on one word' the extra o's provide no new information. Likewise, if I write thegiantswontheworldseriesthegiantswontheworldseriesthegiantswontheworldseries, what you understand is one message, repeated several times; there's no new information with each repetition. Call it a "lexical arpeggio." If I write abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, you see one alphabet, not 26 individual letters; it is the lexical equivalent of a chromatic scale.
So the idea is that when there is a lot of information, you need the acoustic space between the bits in order to hear it. Lortie used such heavy pedaling in the first half that we lost the substance of the music, and all that remained was the superficial aspects, typically very fast and often very loud. For some audiences, that's all they want, but my impression of the audience at this concert, sponsored by Chamber Music San Francisco, was that they're a little more sophisticated and wanted more -- or less.
Not everything in the first half (the Opus 10 etudes) was mush. My favorite piece in this half was the Etude No. 9 in F Minor, with lightning-fast runs played pianissimo and secco, without pedal. Indeed, I've heard very few pianists who can play pianissimo as well as Lortie, and it's such an exciting moment because the audience suddenly goes quiet, almost leaning forward to hear better. Fireworks are exciting, but so are anti-fireworks.
While I remain mystified that Lortie had such a lead foot for most of the first half, things got better in the second half, and I could just revel in the beauty and skill of his playing. The Etude in G# Minor, Op 25 No. 6, was my favorite in this half. It was dazzlingly difficult, like most of the program, and maybe I was overwhelmed by it because, in part, it was unfamiliar. The monster piece of the set was the Etude in B Minor, Op. 25 No. 10, but here I felt that Lortie reverted to the dark side of the force. On the other hand, if I had the technique to play like that, I might just succumb to the temptation to let loose. When you got it, flaunt it. Overall, this was a memorable concert, flawed though it was.
I wonder what modern composers, or performers for that matter, think about MIDI devices. In particular, Yamaha makes a grand piano that's outfitted with a MIDI interface, so that you can hook it up to a computer that tells it which notes to play, when, how long to hold each note, how to pedal, and so on. There is no limit imposed by ten fingers, and there's nothing to prevent the piano from playing as fast as its action will allow. I'm sure that there's a MIDI score for some of the Chopin preludes, so what would we do with this? There's no reason to suppose that it would have to sound "mechanical"; you could introduce as much variation in tempo and dynamics as you liked. Perhaps you could bootstrap this process by taking an actual recording, or even a piano roll like the ones Rachmaninoff made. Then you proceed to tweak it so that it sounded just the way you wanted it. You could even define some variations, perhaps random within certain limits, to prevent every performance from being the same.
My point is that very few people have the time, energy, talent, perseverance, and hands to play Chopin as well as Lortie plays, while relatively many people could use a computer to work on a MIDI performance. I did not handwrite this article in Times Roman for you, and while it is not as visually beautiful as a great calligrapher and a great typesetter could make it, it's pretty good, courtesy of a computer. If I were a youngster just starting to learn to play the piano, and I faced a choice between spending hours every day, for the rest of my career, practicing scales and playing the same repertoire over and over, versus learning how to use a computer to construct a performance, I think I would do the latter. Moreover, that's what I would encourage a kid to do today. This isn't possible for singing, or even tuba-playing, but I think it is possible for keyboards.
It's not that one shouldn't spend one's life practicing the piano. There are enough people on the planet that we can spare a few thousand to do this -- or almost anything else. For example, consider an Olympic diver. Is there anything more bizarre than spending a significant portion of your waking life, in your physical prime, jumping into a pool of water, over and over? It's not evil. It's far less useful, for pure entertainment, than learning to play the piano; even bad pianists can lead happy crowds in song. But divers do something that we consider beautiful, however brief, and diving is an abstraction, a quintessence, of something anyone who ever jumped into a pond can understand. There aren't enough divers in the world that it costs anything important. So why not?
Compare that to people who spend their lives preparing to wage war with the folks who live on the next hill because, well, they live on the next hill and must therefore be done away with. Now that is evil and a waste of a life. In some better, parallel universe, we would spot people with this tendency, take away their weapons, and hand them -- tubas.
I really like Lortie. I've seen him play a few times before in San Francisco, but only in Davies Hall with the Symphony, and he always struck me as a pianist's pianist: incredible technique but not flashy, wearing tails but no sequined LL on the lapel. I was eager to hear this recital.
But things got off to a bad start, due to overpedaling, which turns even the best playing to mush. The pedal is there for a reason, so how much is too much? The best way I can explain it is in terms of information theory. Using the pedal is like removing the spaces between words. IfIwriteawholesentenceortwowithoutspaces,itgetshardtoreadbecauseyoucan'tquicklytellwhereonewordstopsandthenextonestarts. Now, sometimes that's OK. If I write hellooooooooooooooooothere, it doesn't matter precisely how many o's I used, because it's just an acoustic effect on one word' the extra o's provide no new information. Likewise, if I write thegiantswontheworldseriesthegiantswontheworldseriesthegiantswontheworldseries, what you understand is one message, repeated several times; there's no new information with each repetition. Call it a "lexical arpeggio." If I write abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, you see one alphabet, not 26 individual letters; it is the lexical equivalent of a chromatic scale.
So the idea is that when there is a lot of information, you need the acoustic space between the bits in order to hear it. Lortie used such heavy pedaling in the first half that we lost the substance of the music, and all that remained was the superficial aspects, typically very fast and often very loud. For some audiences, that's all they want, but my impression of the audience at this concert, sponsored by Chamber Music San Francisco, was that they're a little more sophisticated and wanted more -- or less.
Not everything in the first half (the Opus 10 etudes) was mush. My favorite piece in this half was the Etude No. 9 in F Minor, with lightning-fast runs played pianissimo and secco, without pedal. Indeed, I've heard very few pianists who can play pianissimo as well as Lortie, and it's such an exciting moment because the audience suddenly goes quiet, almost leaning forward to hear better. Fireworks are exciting, but so are anti-fireworks.
While I remain mystified that Lortie had such a lead foot for most of the first half, things got better in the second half, and I could just revel in the beauty and skill of his playing. The Etude in G# Minor, Op 25 No. 6, was my favorite in this half. It was dazzlingly difficult, like most of the program, and maybe I was overwhelmed by it because, in part, it was unfamiliar. The monster piece of the set was the Etude in B Minor, Op. 25 No. 10, but here I felt that Lortie reverted to the dark side of the force. On the other hand, if I had the technique to play like that, I might just succumb to the temptation to let loose. When you got it, flaunt it. Overall, this was a memorable concert, flawed though it was.
I wonder what modern composers, or performers for that matter, think about MIDI devices. In particular, Yamaha makes a grand piano that's outfitted with a MIDI interface, so that you can hook it up to a computer that tells it which notes to play, when, how long to hold each note, how to pedal, and so on. There is no limit imposed by ten fingers, and there's nothing to prevent the piano from playing as fast as its action will allow. I'm sure that there's a MIDI score for some of the Chopin preludes, so what would we do with this? There's no reason to suppose that it would have to sound "mechanical"; you could introduce as much variation in tempo and dynamics as you liked. Perhaps you could bootstrap this process by taking an actual recording, or even a piano roll like the ones Rachmaninoff made. Then you proceed to tweak it so that it sounded just the way you wanted it. You could even define some variations, perhaps random within certain limits, to prevent every performance from being the same.
My point is that very few people have the time, energy, talent, perseverance, and hands to play Chopin as well as Lortie plays, while relatively many people could use a computer to work on a MIDI performance. I did not handwrite this article in Times Roman for you, and while it is not as visually beautiful as a great calligrapher and a great typesetter could make it, it's pretty good, courtesy of a computer. If I were a youngster just starting to learn to play the piano, and I faced a choice between spending hours every day, for the rest of my career, practicing scales and playing the same repertoire over and over, versus learning how to use a computer to construct a performance, I think I would do the latter. Moreover, that's what I would encourage a kid to do today. This isn't possible for singing, or even tuba-playing, but I think it is possible for keyboards.
It's not that one shouldn't spend one's life practicing the piano. There are enough people on the planet that we can spare a few thousand to do this -- or almost anything else. For example, consider an Olympic diver. Is there anything more bizarre than spending a significant portion of your waking life, in your physical prime, jumping into a pool of water, over and over? It's not evil. It's far less useful, for pure entertainment, than learning to play the piano; even bad pianists can lead happy crowds in song. But divers do something that we consider beautiful, however brief, and diving is an abstraction, a quintessence, of something anyone who ever jumped into a pond can understand. There aren't enough divers in the world that it costs anything important. So why not?
Compare that to people who spend their lives preparing to wage war with the folks who live on the next hill because, well, they live on the next hill and must therefore be done away with. Now that is evil and a waste of a life. In some better, parallel universe, we would spot people with this tendency, take away their weapons, and hand them -- tubas.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Jenny Lin, February 27, 2011
In an intriguing program, pianist Jenny Lin selected five Preludes and Fugues this afternoon from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 and surrounded each with a pair of Preludes and Fugues from Shostakovich's Opus 87. The story is fairly well-known: Shostakovich heard Tatiana Nikolayeva play all 48 of the Bach Preludes and Fugues (Books 1 and 2) in 1950, and suitably inspired or challenged, wrote his own set of 24, one in each major and minor key. So interleaving the Bach and Shostakovich in a performance has a certain appeal. Will we hear more than a superficial connection? A lot has to do with the particular choices in each Shostakovich-Bach-Shostakovich trio, and Lin's choices worked quite well, with neighboring pieces in nearby keys, sometimes nearer than you might think. The Bach E minor Fugue, for example, ends on an E major chord, so going directly into the E major prelude of Shostakovich was easy on the ear.
So was Ms. Lin's playing. She came out on stage looking cool, calm, and collected, making eye contact with the audience (unlike some players), and sitting comfortably at the keyboard, all of which puts the audience at ease. It would be inaccurate to call her playing "relaxed"; "completely confident" would be better, and considering that this was her debut recital in the Bay Area, that was a good sign. I especially enjoyed the clarity with which she brought out inner lines, even in the thick of 4- and 5-voice textures.
The transitions were sometimes illuminating, but not always. Exiting the Shostakovich C major fugue, which contains only white notes and therefore keeps a certain simplicity, and entering the Bach C major prelude, with its white-note arpeggios (for 5 bars, anyway) seemed not to be a 200-year jump at all. On the other hand, following that with the Shostakovich A minor prelude, played at breakneck speed, seemed jarring, despite the harmonic connection. (A similarly troppo presto tempo seemed to derail the Bach E Minor fugue for a few bars.)
One naturally thinks of the influence of Bach on the Shostakovich pieces, but the performer must also consider the effect of Shostakovich on the Bach. For example, the Bach pieces are often played with varying nontrivial amounts of ornamentation, mordents and trills and grace notes and so on, whereas the Shostakovich is not, so if you're juxtaposing them to bring out their similarities, you would likely play the Bach fairly straight. Lin did that, except in the C# minor prelude, where the ornaments seemed overdone, even though they would be mild for most Bach performances.
(Actually, the older I get, the less ornamented I like my Bach. An ornament draw attention to a note, and some performers get so carried away that the ornaments cease being the icing on the cake and become the cake itself. That wouldn't be an issue for, say, Couperin. I heard a brilliant concert earlier this month by Juho Pohjonen, who played pieces from Couperin's Fourth Book for Harpsichord, followed by Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, where the point was to highlight the difference between the original and the homage, and moreover, where the icing really is the cake.)
The Bach C# minor fugue is a grand, stately affair, one of my favorites, and stylistically, it is closer to the Shostakovich D minor double fugue than to the A Flat major or D Flat major preludes that surrounded it. Similarly, the Bach D major fugue, with its flight of quick 32nd notes followed by slow, dotted eighths, is closest to the Shostakovich B Flat minor fugue, with similar figures. That may be the strangest piece in the entire Shostakovich Opus 87: one might call it "dreamy," following no discernible rhythm. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a fugue, Western civilization's most structured art form, as such a free-flowing piece. In this enlightening performance, it suddenly occurred to me that this fugue sounds like bird calls: they're all the same melody, but they're completely asynchronous and tonally unrelated. It's not every piano recital of Bach or Shostakovich that reminds you of Messiaen.
So was Ms. Lin's playing. She came out on stage looking cool, calm, and collected, making eye contact with the audience (unlike some players), and sitting comfortably at the keyboard, all of which puts the audience at ease. It would be inaccurate to call her playing "relaxed"; "completely confident" would be better, and considering that this was her debut recital in the Bay Area, that was a good sign. I especially enjoyed the clarity with which she brought out inner lines, even in the thick of 4- and 5-voice textures.
The transitions were sometimes illuminating, but not always. Exiting the Shostakovich C major fugue, which contains only white notes and therefore keeps a certain simplicity, and entering the Bach C major prelude, with its white-note arpeggios (for 5 bars, anyway) seemed not to be a 200-year jump at all. On the other hand, following that with the Shostakovich A minor prelude, played at breakneck speed, seemed jarring, despite the harmonic connection. (A similarly troppo presto tempo seemed to derail the Bach E Minor fugue for a few bars.)
One naturally thinks of the influence of Bach on the Shostakovich pieces, but the performer must also consider the effect of Shostakovich on the Bach. For example, the Bach pieces are often played with varying nontrivial amounts of ornamentation, mordents and trills and grace notes and so on, whereas the Shostakovich is not, so if you're juxtaposing them to bring out their similarities, you would likely play the Bach fairly straight. Lin did that, except in the C# minor prelude, where the ornaments seemed overdone, even though they would be mild for most Bach performances.
(Actually, the older I get, the less ornamented I like my Bach. An ornament draw attention to a note, and some performers get so carried away that the ornaments cease being the icing on the cake and become the cake itself. That wouldn't be an issue for, say, Couperin. I heard a brilliant concert earlier this month by Juho Pohjonen, who played pieces from Couperin's Fourth Book for Harpsichord, followed by Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, where the point was to highlight the difference between the original and the homage, and moreover, where the icing really is the cake.)
The Bach C# minor fugue is a grand, stately affair, one of my favorites, and stylistically, it is closer to the Shostakovich D minor double fugue than to the A Flat major or D Flat major preludes that surrounded it. Similarly, the Bach D major fugue, with its flight of quick 32nd notes followed by slow, dotted eighths, is closest to the Shostakovich B Flat minor fugue, with similar figures. That may be the strangest piece in the entire Shostakovich Opus 87: one might call it "dreamy," following no discernible rhythm. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a fugue, Western civilization's most structured art form, as such a free-flowing piece. In this enlightening performance, it suddenly occurred to me that this fugue sounds like bird calls: they're all the same melody, but they're completely asynchronous and tonally unrelated. It's not every piano recital of Bach or Shostakovich that reminds you of Messiaen.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Rafal Blechacz, February 20, 2011
Rafal Blechacz is a 25-year-old pianist from Poland with a long list of awards, and he is particularly known for his Chopin. His recital this afternoon at Herbst Theater, sponsored by Chamber Music San Francisco, had lots of Chopin but started out with the "9 Variations in C Major on Lison dormait" by Mozart, "L'isle joyeuse" by Debussy, and the Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 8, by Karol Szymanowski. The Mozart is a 20-minute work, pretty, but surprisingly lightweight for the 22-year-old Mozart, well into his maturity. Blechascz' playing was crystal clear; if anything, he made it sound too simple for a recital. It reminded me of the time I heard heard Arkdai Volodos play a Schubert piece, a strange choice for someone with keyboard-crushing technique and repertoire.
The Debussy was brilliant, perhaps a tad fast, but a pleasure to hear. The Szymanowski was the major work on the first half. Written when he, too, was 22, the 30-minute work sounded less to me like Chopin (an influence on much of Szymanowsky's music) and more like Godowsky: richly harmonic, and pianistically grand-scale. The opening movement ends with such a flourish that some members of the audience started applauding; Blechacz even acknowledged it by standing and taking a bow, which was unusual. The piece is in C minor; the second movement is in A-flat major, but there are ominous low C's near the end, reminding us of where we came from, and where we will return in the final movement. The cheery third movement alternates between E-flat major and B major, but the fourth movement has us back in C minor, and with a grand, exciting fugue. Near the very end, there's a full-keyboard glissando, leading to a bright conclusion in C major, which is where this recital began. The last few bars are a little odd: trills in both hands slow down the action, when the scale of the piece would seem to demand something simpler, bigger, and louder. But Blechacz did a wonderful job with this unfamiliar piece, and was richly applauded.
The second half began and ended with two of Chopin's four Ballades, in G minor and F Major. In between there were two Polonaises, Op. 26, and four Mazurkas, Op. 41. (The 4th, in A-flat Major, was incorrectly listed as A-flat minor.) I know the Ballades well, but the Polonaises and Mazurkas were new to me. However, they sounded rock-solid, old-hat here, and one understands why this pianist has done so well with Chopin: it's in his blood, of course, but it's also in his head, his hands, and his heart. I actually found the F Major Ballade a little rushed and pedal-heavy for my tastes, and I've seen lesser pianists crack under the strain of this piece. Perhaps Blechacz will approach it differently in ten years' time, when there's less pressure to dazzle with sheer technique and more time to savor the richness of all one zillion notes.
Blechacz played two encores, one by Chopin (I should know which one it was -- it has themes that also appear in one of the Piano Concertos), and one probably not by Chopin (Haydn?). The pianist, who's young, tall, and handsome, was very popular with many of the younger members of the audience, who had to be reminded by the series director not to take photos, to film the entire concert (I've seen that done in Herbst), to send text messages, to watch the Simpsons, "et cetera." From my seat upstairs, I'm also noticing that the ubiquitous smartphones, with their brightly lit little screens, are now joined by iPads, with their brightly lit large screens. Fortunately they were dark during the performance. Unfortunately, there were a couple of ringing phones and a lot of coughing, but the pianist played bravely on.
I look forward to hearing Blechacz again.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Paul Jacobs, Davies Symphony Hall, January 30, 2011
Paul Jacobs returned to Davies Hall to give a recital on the Ruffatti organ. I saw his previous performance here in 2009, and I was amazed at how good he made the instrument sound. It's a tricky organ to play well. The acoustics are fairly dry, so when you're playing big, noisy French Romantic pieces that were composed for echo-y churches, you have to adjust your playing, and linger on some of those chords.
Jacobs started the program with a piece by one of his teachers (Weaver, Fantasia for Organ), and he also played a piece by a pianist-friend at Juilliard (Oquin, Reverie). I wasn't crazy about either piece, but it's not polite to comment on pieces by friends and teachers, so I'll say no more about those, although I do support bringing new pieces to audience's attention.
The program opened with the Weaver, and was followed by Sweelinck Variations on "Mein junges Leben hat ein End." Jacobs got to display lots of the color that this instrument can provide, as he moved from variation to variation. Jacobs requested that there be no applause after that piece, and he segued directly into the Bach Fugue in G Major, BWV 577, the "Gigue" Fugue. He played this at breakneck speed, which showed off his hand-eye-foot coordination but made a total mess of the music. It's the way you play a piece you can't stand (any more) but which you play because the crowd likes anything that's familiar, loud, and fast.
The Reger Inferno Fugue at the end of the first half fared no better. After explaining that this was a double fugue, and playing the two subjects, Jacobs launched into the piece, and again, there was so much noise that it was hard to hear anything clearly, even the second theme we have been primed to listen for.
I have a theory: Just as Davies has a reverberation limit, it also has a decibel limit. Beyond a certain volume, you can't make anything louder, or if you try, it's just static. I've heard massive concerts in Davies: Mahler's Eighth, the concert version of Mlada with 200 singers in the Symphony Chorus, a 400-person choir at the Chanticleer Youth Festival in 2010, and others. (I haven't tried anything with serious electronic amplification.) They all seem to top out at some point. The same is true for organ recitals here, and for note-heavy stuff like Reger, it's easy to exceed the limit.
As much as I failed to enjoy the first half of this concert, I was ready to forgive everything in the second half, where Jacobs played one work, the Durufle Suite for Organ, Opus 5. Ah, finally! He slowed down the tempo so that we got to hear all the notes and appreciate how the music developed. The Prelude is, as Jacobs mentioned, very sad, and we got The Full Lament on this one. The middle movement, Sicilienne, was wistful, and the solo stops came in handy. The final movement, Toccata, was brilliant and blaring where needed, but not overdone. This piece was worth the whole concert.
Jacobs played an encore, the Bach A Minor Fugue, BWV 543, which he played because "we hadn't heard enough Bach." Unfortunately, this was like the other Bach: a race to the finish line, seriously accelerating to the end, where he added a jarring A Major chord. All the subtleties of this piece were lost. It's not as if Jacobs were trying to play in the style of Cameron Carpenter, who does outrageous things but with a musical purpose. This was supposed to be legit Bach, even with the bravado suitable for an encore, and it wasn't.
There's one more concert in this year's organ series in Davies, on April 3rd, when Jane Parker-Smith plays Franck, Guilmant, Langlais, and Widor: some of those big, noisy French Romantic pieces. Let's hope she gets enough practice time in the hall to understand that this is not St. Eustache, or even Grace Cathedral.
Jacobs started the program with a piece by one of his teachers (Weaver, Fantasia for Organ), and he also played a piece by a pianist-friend at Juilliard (Oquin, Reverie). I wasn't crazy about either piece, but it's not polite to comment on pieces by friends and teachers, so I'll say no more about those, although I do support bringing new pieces to audience's attention.
The program opened with the Weaver, and was followed by Sweelinck Variations on "Mein junges Leben hat ein End." Jacobs got to display lots of the color that this instrument can provide, as he moved from variation to variation. Jacobs requested that there be no applause after that piece, and he segued directly into the Bach Fugue in G Major, BWV 577, the "Gigue" Fugue. He played this at breakneck speed, which showed off his hand-eye-foot coordination but made a total mess of the music. It's the way you play a piece you can't stand (any more) but which you play because the crowd likes anything that's familiar, loud, and fast.
The Reger Inferno Fugue at the end of the first half fared no better. After explaining that this was a double fugue, and playing the two subjects, Jacobs launched into the piece, and again, there was so much noise that it was hard to hear anything clearly, even the second theme we have been primed to listen for.
I have a theory: Just as Davies has a reverberation limit, it also has a decibel limit. Beyond a certain volume, you can't make anything louder, or if you try, it's just static. I've heard massive concerts in Davies: Mahler's Eighth, the concert version of Mlada with 200 singers in the Symphony Chorus, a 400-person choir at the Chanticleer Youth Festival in 2010, and others. (I haven't tried anything with serious electronic amplification.) They all seem to top out at some point. The same is true for organ recitals here, and for note-heavy stuff like Reger, it's easy to exceed the limit.
As much as I failed to enjoy the first half of this concert, I was ready to forgive everything in the second half, where Jacobs played one work, the Durufle Suite for Organ, Opus 5. Ah, finally! He slowed down the tempo so that we got to hear all the notes and appreciate how the music developed. The Prelude is, as Jacobs mentioned, very sad, and we got The Full Lament on this one. The middle movement, Sicilienne, was wistful, and the solo stops came in handy. The final movement, Toccata, was brilliant and blaring where needed, but not overdone. This piece was worth the whole concert.
Jacobs played an encore, the Bach A Minor Fugue, BWV 543, which he played because "we hadn't heard enough Bach." Unfortunately, this was like the other Bach: a race to the finish line, seriously accelerating to the end, where he added a jarring A Major chord. All the subtleties of this piece were lost. It's not as if Jacobs were trying to play in the style of Cameron Carpenter, who does outrageous things but with a musical purpose. This was supposed to be legit Bach, even with the bravado suitable for an encore, and it wasn't.
There's one more concert in this year's organ series in Davies, on April 3rd, when Jane Parker-Smith plays Franck, Guilmant, Langlais, and Widor: some of those big, noisy French Romantic pieces. Let's hope she gets enough practice time in the hall to understand that this is not St. Eustache, or even Grace Cathedral.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Chanticleer: Out of This World. September 17, 2010
This was the opening concert in San Francisco for Chanticleer's 33rd season. There are two new singers this year. Casey Breves is a soprano, and just graduated from Yale. I met him at the auditions back in February, and I saw him again in April, at Yale, soon after he had gotten the offer from Chanticleer. Mike Axtell is a new baritone/bass. I met him in 2009 at the "Chanticleer Summer Camp" (officially the Summer Choral Workshop at Sonoma State, where 80 singers get together with Chanticleer, arriving on a Wednesday and performing a concert on Sunday). Anyway, both new singers are excellent, as you might imagine.
The theme for the concert, Out of This World!, provided a convenient excuse to sing anything having to do with stars or heaven, which includes just about everything that Chanticleer is likely to sing. I was expecting a "difficult" concert, but when a concert starts with Palestrina (Mary is assumed into heaven), there's nothing to worry about.
I'd forgotten the music of Francisco Guerrero, so I was unprepared for the beauty of the motet Hail, Queen of Heaven. I really hope they record this piece.
I checked my iTunes collections, and I have two other Guerrero motets there, one of which is the beautiful Virgen sancta, which opens with a soprano solo. I have two recordings of it, one from Chanticleer, recorded in 1990, and one from Clerestory, recorded 19 years later. The soloist is the same in both: the always-wonderful Chris Fritzsche.
Next, they launched into four madrigals, beginning with a pair of Monteverdis: Sfogava con le stelle, a piece that I learned long ago, and Ecco mormorar l'onde. The third madrigal was Fuggi dolor by William Hawley, which I've heard them sing several times recently. The fourth was written by Mason Bates, a well-known local composer and DJ, awash in well-deserved accolades these days. It is part of his Sirens song cycle, commissioned by Chanticleer last year. (He had a larger piece in the second half of the program. More anon.) After Bates' madrigal, they sang Britten's Hymn to Saint Cecilia, a piece I also learned long ago, when I sang with the Pacific Master Chorale down in Orange County. The Britten is a strange and difficult piece. The chords change at the drop of a hat (what key are we in now?), and with notes in the extreme high and low ranges, it's sometimes difficult to know whether the singers are still in tune. The text is by Auden and wanders far afield of Cecilia, the patron saint of music. I liked it, but that's only because I learned it. I think it would be hard to hear this for the first time, even reading the words, and get much out of it. Example: "O law drummed out by hearts against the still / Long winter of our intellectual will." Um, right. Got it.
The first half concluded with a Schumann piece for double chorus and what may be Chanticleer's new signature piece, Mahler's Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. This is one of the Rückertlieder, arranged for chorus by Clytus Gottwald. It is a slow, luscious piece, with the richest of harmonies. It's very sad (roughly, I've had enough of the world). It's very difficult to sing well. Those rich sonorities come at a price: miss one little half step, or tuning, and we're off the rails. I've heard Chanticleer sing this piece many times. The first time was with Frederika von Stade as a soloist, accompanied, as it were, by Chanticleer. The original version was for solo and piano, but most people know it in the arrangement for soloist and orchestra. It was a signature piece for Janet Baker. Von Stade's performance was wonderful, and I remember that before she took her bow, she acknowledged the singers, particularly the sopranos, who were singing notes far above hers. Such a gracious lady.
The second half of the concert took a more literal view of being out of this world, starting with Kirke Mechem's Island in Space, which starts and ends with Dona nobis pacem, surrounding a text by an astronaut, Russell Schweichart, and another, far less interesting text, by Archibald Macleish. Schweichart observes that from his viewpoint aboard Apollo 9, there are no borders on the Earth, just a small, beautiful planet. The best line: "You realize that on that small spot is everything that means anything to you: all history, all poetry, all music, all art, death, birth, love, tears, all games, all joy -- all on that small spot."
Then we heard a large-scale piece by Mason Bates, Observer in the Magellanic Cloud. This was, in some ways, the centerpiece for the concert. The "observer" of the title is not a person but a satellite that sees, from a zillion miles away, Maori tribesmen, who are chanting to the satellite's own galaxy. The piece starts with electronic beeping, the sound of the satellite, which sets the pulse for the piece. The singing alternates between the satellite and the Maori tribesmen. In the middle, there's a tribal "dance," where the guys walk around in a circle. Shades of A Village Wedding. Let's just say that dance is not their forte. Indeed, walking is not their forte.
I liked the Bates piece very much, and it was a polished performance, although the singers told me that it was fiendishly difficult to learn. They spent about 16 hours rehearsing it before recording it earlier this summer.
The last section of the concert had four "popular" pieces, starting with Steve Barnett's arrangment of a Harold Arlen song, Out of this world, followed by Gene Puerling's arrangement of Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars, both of which Chanticleer has performed before. Then came the surprise: a piece billed as "indie rock." It was Cells Planets by Erika Lloyd, whose original performance with her group, Little Grey Girlfriend, you can hear on the Web. I listened to that, and it reminded me of Joni Mitchell, not my favorite stuff. But this arrangement, by Vince Peterson, was completely different. The backup band was replaced by voices, obviously, and the solo was given to the new soprano, Casey Breves, who has a perfect pop sound (albeit a couple of octaves up). He was clearly in his element, and I can just imagine that he must have been in this situation many times: a soloist surrounded by a chorus of really good male singers, namely, the Whiffenpoofs, Yale's most famous all-male singing group, and now the eleven other singers of Chanticleer. It was a star turn, and it brought the house down. The last piece, called Change the World, featured tenor Ben Jones. I don't remember hearing him sing a solo before. He has a very nice voice, perhaps a little too sotto voce for the situation, especially following bravura Breves, and the song is nothing to write home about, but I hope we get to hear more of Ben. In his pre-Chanticleer life, Ben was a featured singer in Beach Blanket Babylon, so he, too, should be comfortable in a solo spot.
There was an encore, of course: Joe Jennings' arrangement of Walk in Jerusalem. Matt Curtis had the first solo, but Brian Hinman took all the others -- by storm. Brian has a trumpet of a voice, loud when he needs it, but always clear and distinct, even in quiet passages. He has a long, plaintive solo at the beginning of Michael McGlynn's Agnus Dei, from two years ago, and that's one of my favorite bits from all their recordings. The piece itself is way too long; it should stop about one minute after the solo is done. It gets lost in pretty chords, alas, after the edgy beginning. Brian's solo is stunning because he brings out a sadness in the words that I had not understood before: Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. But think of it this way: O God, I'm so sorry for making such a mess of my life. Have mercy on me.
A second encore was required for this eager Friday-night audience, and we got Straight Street, with little solos from Eric Alatorre and Cortez Mitchell, about three octaves apart.
I went back and heard the Sunday performance. Some years ago, when I lived in the South Bay, I decided that I would never see another Chanticleer concert just once. They usually do two Bay Area performances, so it wasn't difficult to hear them twice. When I moved to San Francisco two years ago, I stopped going to their South Bay performances, so I did hear some concerts only once, but I've returned to my senses. The reason I like hearing it twice is that they may sing something that is unfamiliar, not recorded (by them, at least), and unlikely to show up at another local concert, anytime soon. That first Mahler performance, with von Stade, echoed in my head for, what?, six years until they finally started doing it again, sans soloist. The Guerrero piece in this program may vanish, too, so it was good to catch it a second time. At the Sunday performance, they replaced the two Monteverdi madrigals with a pair by Marenzio, and we got to hear a different quartet sing them, including the new baritone, Mike Axtell.
All in all, I thought this was an auspicious beginning for the 33rd season. Sometimes the opening concert is a little rocky, especially when there are new singers on board. But not this time. This group is solid. Go hear them. Twice, even.
The theme for the concert, Out of This World!, provided a convenient excuse to sing anything having to do with stars or heaven, which includes just about everything that Chanticleer is likely to sing. I was expecting a "difficult" concert, but when a concert starts with Palestrina (Mary is assumed into heaven), there's nothing to worry about.
I'd forgotten the music of Francisco Guerrero, so I was unprepared for the beauty of the motet Hail, Queen of Heaven. I really hope they record this piece.
I checked my iTunes collections, and I have two other Guerrero motets there, one of which is the beautiful Virgen sancta, which opens with a soprano solo. I have two recordings of it, one from Chanticleer, recorded in 1990, and one from Clerestory, recorded 19 years later. The soloist is the same in both: the always-wonderful Chris Fritzsche.
Next, they launched into four madrigals, beginning with a pair of Monteverdis: Sfogava con le stelle, a piece that I learned long ago, and Ecco mormorar l'onde. The third madrigal was Fuggi dolor by William Hawley, which I've heard them sing several times recently. The fourth was written by Mason Bates, a well-known local composer and DJ, awash in well-deserved accolades these days. It is part of his Sirens song cycle, commissioned by Chanticleer last year. (He had a larger piece in the second half of the program. More anon.) After Bates' madrigal, they sang Britten's Hymn to Saint Cecilia, a piece I also learned long ago, when I sang with the Pacific Master Chorale down in Orange County. The Britten is a strange and difficult piece. The chords change at the drop of a hat (what key are we in now?), and with notes in the extreme high and low ranges, it's sometimes difficult to know whether the singers are still in tune. The text is by Auden and wanders far afield of Cecilia, the patron saint of music. I liked it, but that's only because I learned it. I think it would be hard to hear this for the first time, even reading the words, and get much out of it. Example: "O law drummed out by hearts against the still / Long winter of our intellectual will." Um, right. Got it.
The first half concluded with a Schumann piece for double chorus and what may be Chanticleer's new signature piece, Mahler's Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen. This is one of the Rückertlieder, arranged for chorus by Clytus Gottwald. It is a slow, luscious piece, with the richest of harmonies. It's very sad (roughly, I've had enough of the world). It's very difficult to sing well. Those rich sonorities come at a price: miss one little half step, or tuning, and we're off the rails. I've heard Chanticleer sing this piece many times. The first time was with Frederika von Stade as a soloist, accompanied, as it were, by Chanticleer. The original version was for solo and piano, but most people know it in the arrangement for soloist and orchestra. It was a signature piece for Janet Baker. Von Stade's performance was wonderful, and I remember that before she took her bow, she acknowledged the singers, particularly the sopranos, who were singing notes far above hers. Such a gracious lady.
The second half of the concert took a more literal view of being out of this world, starting with Kirke Mechem's Island in Space, which starts and ends with Dona nobis pacem, surrounding a text by an astronaut, Russell Schweichart, and another, far less interesting text, by Archibald Macleish. Schweichart observes that from his viewpoint aboard Apollo 9, there are no borders on the Earth, just a small, beautiful planet. The best line: "You realize that on that small spot is everything that means anything to you: all history, all poetry, all music, all art, death, birth, love, tears, all games, all joy -- all on that small spot."
Then we heard a large-scale piece by Mason Bates, Observer in the Magellanic Cloud. This was, in some ways, the centerpiece for the concert. The "observer" of the title is not a person but a satellite that sees, from a zillion miles away, Maori tribesmen, who are chanting to the satellite's own galaxy. The piece starts with electronic beeping, the sound of the satellite, which sets the pulse for the piece. The singing alternates between the satellite and the Maori tribesmen. In the middle, there's a tribal "dance," where the guys walk around in a circle. Shades of A Village Wedding. Let's just say that dance is not their forte. Indeed, walking is not their forte.
I liked the Bates piece very much, and it was a polished performance, although the singers told me that it was fiendishly difficult to learn. They spent about 16 hours rehearsing it before recording it earlier this summer.
The last section of the concert had four "popular" pieces, starting with Steve Barnett's arrangment of a Harold Arlen song, Out of this world, followed by Gene Puerling's arrangement of Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars, both of which Chanticleer has performed before. Then came the surprise: a piece billed as "indie rock." It was Cells Planets by Erika Lloyd, whose original performance with her group, Little Grey Girlfriend, you can hear on the Web. I listened to that, and it reminded me of Joni Mitchell, not my favorite stuff. But this arrangement, by Vince Peterson, was completely different. The backup band was replaced by voices, obviously, and the solo was given to the new soprano, Casey Breves, who has a perfect pop sound (albeit a couple of octaves up). He was clearly in his element, and I can just imagine that he must have been in this situation many times: a soloist surrounded by a chorus of really good male singers, namely, the Whiffenpoofs, Yale's most famous all-male singing group, and now the eleven other singers of Chanticleer. It was a star turn, and it brought the house down. The last piece, called Change the World, featured tenor Ben Jones. I don't remember hearing him sing a solo before. He has a very nice voice, perhaps a little too sotto voce for the situation, especially following bravura Breves, and the song is nothing to write home about, but I hope we get to hear more of Ben. In his pre-Chanticleer life, Ben was a featured singer in Beach Blanket Babylon, so he, too, should be comfortable in a solo spot.
There was an encore, of course: Joe Jennings' arrangement of Walk in Jerusalem. Matt Curtis had the first solo, but Brian Hinman took all the others -- by storm. Brian has a trumpet of a voice, loud when he needs it, but always clear and distinct, even in quiet passages. He has a long, plaintive solo at the beginning of Michael McGlynn's Agnus Dei, from two years ago, and that's one of my favorite bits from all their recordings. The piece itself is way too long; it should stop about one minute after the solo is done. It gets lost in pretty chords, alas, after the edgy beginning. Brian's solo is stunning because he brings out a sadness in the words that I had not understood before: Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. But think of it this way: O God, I'm so sorry for making such a mess of my life. Have mercy on me.
A second encore was required for this eager Friday-night audience, and we got Straight Street, with little solos from Eric Alatorre and Cortez Mitchell, about three octaves apart.
I went back and heard the Sunday performance. Some years ago, when I lived in the South Bay, I decided that I would never see another Chanticleer concert just once. They usually do two Bay Area performances, so it wasn't difficult to hear them twice. When I moved to San Francisco two years ago, I stopped going to their South Bay performances, so I did hear some concerts only once, but I've returned to my senses. The reason I like hearing it twice is that they may sing something that is unfamiliar, not recorded (by them, at least), and unlikely to show up at another local concert, anytime soon. That first Mahler performance, with von Stade, echoed in my head for, what?, six years until they finally started doing it again, sans soloist. The Guerrero piece in this program may vanish, too, so it was good to catch it a second time. At the Sunday performance, they replaced the two Monteverdi madrigals with a pair by Marenzio, and we got to hear a different quartet sing them, including the new baritone, Mike Axtell.
All in all, I thought this was an auspicious beginning for the 33rd season. Sometimes the opening concert is a little rocky, especially when there are new singers on board. But not this time. This group is solid. Go hear them. Twice, even.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Oregon Shakespeare Festival, August 10-14, 2010
Every year, I go with friends to see plays at the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. There are two performances a day, a matinee at 1:30 pm and an evening performance at 8 pm. There are three theaters, one of which, the outdoor Elizabethan stage, has performances only in the evening. The cast and the audience would melt at a matinee; it can get very hot here in the summer.
About half the plays are by Shakespeare. Some of the rest are world premieres. Some of those will probably not be seen again. Some, like the drawing-room comedies, are hardy perennials.
In any given week, there are usually 9 plays on the boards. We arrive on Tuesday afternoon, after a 6-hour drive from San Francisco, and we see 8 plays, back to back, which takes us through the Saturday matinee. We have a big blowout dinner on Saturday night and then drive back on Sunday.
Since we can't see all 9 plays, we have to choose which one to skip. That's often hard, and sometimes we make the wrong choice. Two summers ago, we chose Our Town at the Elizabethan Theater instead of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the larger indoor theater, the Bowmer Theater. It was the wrong choice because we all disliked Our Town, and seriously wondered why this play is ever done at all. And we heard that Midsummer was fabulous. I came back in October, on a day where I could see my favorite Shakespeare play from that summer, Coriolanus, at a matinee, and Midsummer in the evening. It was indeed fabulous, literally and figuratively.
Here are notes on the plays we saw this summer (written as the week went on).
Tuesday night:
Henry IV, Part 1 (or as I like to say, Henry 4.1, to be followed by 4.2 and 5.0). I liked this play; my friends mostly didn't. With rare exception, the acting is always outstanding here, but sometimes the production, or direction, or even the play itself, leave something to be desired. John Tufts plays Prince Henry (to become 5.0), or Hal as he is called here. In Act I, he's the prodigal son, hanging out with low-lifes, indeed, some truly revolting low-lifes, much to the chagrin of his father (4.1). I like Tufts, a CMU graduate. For one thing, he's tall, dark, and handsome (well, that's three things), and that helps but it's not nearly enough to get you lead roles here. While he often plays leads in some plays, he, like everyone else, plays bit parts in other plays. I first remember his as Romeo at the Elizabethan, which Christine Albright as Juliet. Both talented young actors, they made the young lovers seem entirely credible, and the bedroom scene was steamy indeed. He played one forest Fairies in that fabulous performance I returned to see. The production was done in 80's disco version, complete with singing, and an incredibly enthusiatic audience, decades younger, on average, than the crowd that shows up in August.
Wednesday matinee:
Hamlet. The title role is played by Don Donohue, who is a brilliant actor and perhaps the most popular actor in Ashland. The performance begins while the audience is still noisily filing in, with a scene just after the funeral of Hamlet's father: a casket, many rows of chairs, and only one person left: Hamlet. As the other chairs are all put away, only one is left. Then Hamlet leaves, the lights dim, and the play begins. This is done in modern dress; Hamlet wears a jacket, a skinny tie, and sunglasses.
The play-proper begins on the walls of the castle. The guards are in camouflage, with lights attached to their automatic weaons. There are security cameras on the walls, blinking, turning, producing a Big Brother effect. The Ghost of Hamlet's father is barely visible in a flickering lighting effect, but he gradually becomes more corporeal. The one aspect of this production that I disliked was the use of Howie Seago, an actor who is deaf, as the Ghost. He and his family communicate using American Sign Language. In fact, the family use ASL even when talking to each about the dead king. In his conversations with the Ghost, Hamlet speaks most of the Ghost's lines, translating for us. But he doesn't translate everything, and there are long sections where they are conversing, but we, the audience, are left wondering what they're talking about. For me, this derails the action of the play, the same way it would have if the Ghost had been delivering his lines in, say, Danish. I think this choice is hyper-politically correct, and they've done this in other plays, again with Mr. Seago. The worst was in Our Town last year, where everything stopped dead when Seago had lines to deliver.
But that was the only failing in an otherwise terrific performance. The fatuous king, his queen (whose motivation seemed unclear here), and a terrific trio of Polonius and his kids. His famous lecture to them before Laertes goes back to college ("Neither a borrower nor a lender be...") was moving and funny. Just before Laertes can escape, his loquatious father has yet one more thing to say. His words of advice are well known to the kids; they recite it with him in perfect teenage exasperation. Richard Elmore, who has "bluster" down pat, has found a perfect role in Polonius. More surprising was Susannah Flood as Ophelia: energetic, bright, and lots of fun, unlike your typical spaced-out depressive, so that when she does her mad scene, standing on chairs, removing bits of clothing, we are as astonished as the family.
Hamlet has all the best lines, of course. Donohue makes the most of the wit and sarcasm. I'd forgotten how funny this part of the play can be, with barbs and puns a-flying. And no one can deliver those lines better than Donohue. The physical part of his acting is also flawless and inspiring at the same time. Although this portrayal is unlike any I'd seen before, it seemed so natural that I can't imagine it being in any other way. I'd seen Hamlet done here years ago, and all I remember was that it seemed interminable and I couldn't wait for it to end. To be fair, that performace was in the outdoor theater, and they may have not cut as much, if any, from the script as they did here (two small scenes, I heard); also, I may have been cold. This Hamlet was in the chronically over-air-conditioned but otherwise comfortable Bowmer Theater. (In the sweltering heat of Ashland in August, you see crowds in shorts, T-shirts, and sandals, but many of them are carrying coats that they will don for the theaters.)
I came up to Ashland back in February and saw this Hamlet (you can't see this production too many times), Pride and Prejudice (which I saw again this time), and A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which Act II is the long dialog between Brick and Big Daddy. The scenes in Brick and Maggy's bedroom, especially the opening where Brick starts out in the shower, may have been the most visually arresting, but it was the argument of Act II that made this piece truly memorable. Two actors, Danforth Cummins as the hunky, broken son, and Michael Winters as the angry, blustery father who loves him, made you forget the fancy set. It's for moments like this, and almost any scene with Dan Donohue, that we come to Ashland, year after year.
(Here's the rest of the schedule. I hope to have time to add comments about these, too.)
Wednesday night, at the Elizabethan Theater:
The Merchant of Venice.
Thursday matinee, at the New Theater.
Ruined.
Thursday evening, at the Bowmer Theater:
Throne of Blood.
Friday matinee, at the Bowmer.
Pride and Prejudice.
Friday evening, at the Bowmer:
She Loves Me (a musical).
Saturday matinee, at the New Theater:
American Night.
About half the plays are by Shakespeare. Some of the rest are world premieres. Some of those will probably not be seen again. Some, like the drawing-room comedies, are hardy perennials.
In any given week, there are usually 9 plays on the boards. We arrive on Tuesday afternoon, after a 6-hour drive from San Francisco, and we see 8 plays, back to back, which takes us through the Saturday matinee. We have a big blowout dinner on Saturday night and then drive back on Sunday.
Since we can't see all 9 plays, we have to choose which one to skip. That's often hard, and sometimes we make the wrong choice. Two summers ago, we chose Our Town at the Elizabethan Theater instead of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the larger indoor theater, the Bowmer Theater. It was the wrong choice because we all disliked Our Town, and seriously wondered why this play is ever done at all. And we heard that Midsummer was fabulous. I came back in October, on a day where I could see my favorite Shakespeare play from that summer, Coriolanus, at a matinee, and Midsummer in the evening. It was indeed fabulous, literally and figuratively.
Here are notes on the plays we saw this summer (written as the week went on).
Tuesday night:
Henry IV, Part 1 (or as I like to say, Henry 4.1, to be followed by 4.2 and 5.0). I liked this play; my friends mostly didn't. With rare exception, the acting is always outstanding here, but sometimes the production, or direction, or even the play itself, leave something to be desired. John Tufts plays Prince Henry (to become 5.0), or Hal as he is called here. In Act I, he's the prodigal son, hanging out with low-lifes, indeed, some truly revolting low-lifes, much to the chagrin of his father (4.1). I like Tufts, a CMU graduate. For one thing, he's tall, dark, and handsome (well, that's three things), and that helps but it's not nearly enough to get you lead roles here. While he often plays leads in some plays, he, like everyone else, plays bit parts in other plays. I first remember his as Romeo at the Elizabethan, which Christine Albright as Juliet. Both talented young actors, they made the young lovers seem entirely credible, and the bedroom scene was steamy indeed. He played one forest Fairies in that fabulous performance I returned to see. The production was done in 80's disco version, complete with singing, and an incredibly enthusiatic audience, decades younger, on average, than the crowd that shows up in August.
Wednesday matinee:
Hamlet. The title role is played by Don Donohue, who is a brilliant actor and perhaps the most popular actor in Ashland. The performance begins while the audience is still noisily filing in, with a scene just after the funeral of Hamlet's father: a casket, many rows of chairs, and only one person left: Hamlet. As the other chairs are all put away, only one is left. Then Hamlet leaves, the lights dim, and the play begins. This is done in modern dress; Hamlet wears a jacket, a skinny tie, and sunglasses.
The play-proper begins on the walls of the castle. The guards are in camouflage, with lights attached to their automatic weaons. There are security cameras on the walls, blinking, turning, producing a Big Brother effect. The Ghost of Hamlet's father is barely visible in a flickering lighting effect, but he gradually becomes more corporeal. The one aspect of this production that I disliked was the use of Howie Seago, an actor who is deaf, as the Ghost. He and his family communicate using American Sign Language. In fact, the family use ASL even when talking to each about the dead king. In his conversations with the Ghost, Hamlet speaks most of the Ghost's lines, translating for us. But he doesn't translate everything, and there are long sections where they are conversing, but we, the audience, are left wondering what they're talking about. For me, this derails the action of the play, the same way it would have if the Ghost had been delivering his lines in, say, Danish. I think this choice is hyper-politically correct, and they've done this in other plays, again with Mr. Seago. The worst was in Our Town last year, where everything stopped dead when Seago had lines to deliver.
But that was the only failing in an otherwise terrific performance. The fatuous king, his queen (whose motivation seemed unclear here), and a terrific trio of Polonius and his kids. His famous lecture to them before Laertes goes back to college ("Neither a borrower nor a lender be...") was moving and funny. Just before Laertes can escape, his loquatious father has yet one more thing to say. His words of advice are well known to the kids; they recite it with him in perfect teenage exasperation. Richard Elmore, who has "bluster" down pat, has found a perfect role in Polonius. More surprising was Susannah Flood as Ophelia: energetic, bright, and lots of fun, unlike your typical spaced-out depressive, so that when she does her mad scene, standing on chairs, removing bits of clothing, we are as astonished as the family.
Hamlet has all the best lines, of course. Donohue makes the most of the wit and sarcasm. I'd forgotten how funny this part of the play can be, with barbs and puns a-flying. And no one can deliver those lines better than Donohue. The physical part of his acting is also flawless and inspiring at the same time. Although this portrayal is unlike any I'd seen before, it seemed so natural that I can't imagine it being in any other way. I'd seen Hamlet done here years ago, and all I remember was that it seemed interminable and I couldn't wait for it to end. To be fair, that performace was in the outdoor theater, and they may have not cut as much, if any, from the script as they did here (two small scenes, I heard); also, I may have been cold. This Hamlet was in the chronically over-air-conditioned but otherwise comfortable Bowmer Theater. (In the sweltering heat of Ashland in August, you see crowds in shorts, T-shirts, and sandals, but many of them are carrying coats that they will don for the theaters.)
I came up to Ashland back in February and saw this Hamlet (you can't see this production too many times), Pride and Prejudice (which I saw again this time), and A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which Act II is the long dialog between Brick and Big Daddy. The scenes in Brick and Maggy's bedroom, especially the opening where Brick starts out in the shower, may have been the most visually arresting, but it was the argument of Act II that made this piece truly memorable. Two actors, Danforth Cummins as the hunky, broken son, and Michael Winters as the angry, blustery father who loves him, made you forget the fancy set. It's for moments like this, and almost any scene with Dan Donohue, that we come to Ashland, year after year.
(Here's the rest of the schedule. I hope to have time to add comments about these, too.)
Wednesday night, at the Elizabethan Theater:
The Merchant of Venice.
Thursday matinee, at the New Theater.
Ruined.
Thursday evening, at the Bowmer Theater:
Throne of Blood.
Friday matinee, at the Bowmer.
Pride and Prejudice.
Friday evening, at the Bowmer:
She Loves Me (a musical).
Saturday matinee, at the New Theater:
American Night.
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