To some, Frederic Rzewski might seem like a composer full of contradictions. His music, after all, includes minimalist and quasi-serialist works as well as collage-type pieces. For example, we all discovered during the pre-concert chat with series producer Ara Guzelimian that Elliott Carter has been a long time friend and mentor to Rzewski. I was surprised. But Kyle Gann, in his essay to the program “Never Second-Guessing Rzewski,” notes “It is typical of Rzewski that he has refused to be limited by even the humanist realist aesthetic that he created. Like Stravinsky, he has shown contrarian fearlessness about walking away from styles his music has made popular. ”
When asked about music and politics, Rzewski stated “Music really can’t be political … theater, perhaps, can be.” And in works like Attica (1972), Spots (1986), and the newer Natural Things (2007) you can see how he brings music and theater together–beautifully. Attica, the earliest work performed, consists of a repetitive tonal sequence set against the intoned narration “Attica is in front of me” (a quote, according to the liner notes, taken from the statement of Richard X. Clark, one of the prison uprising’s organizers). While an extremely moving and beautiful work, I’m afraid that unlike most of the audience–and Times reporter Allan Kozinn–I was not as impressed by Stephen ben Israel’s narration (he was the work’s original narrator). I would be curious to hear of other reactions to ben Israel’s performance, as it was abundantly clear to me that I was absolutely in the minority on this.
I was only acquainted with Rzewski’s piano works before this concert, and it was wonderful to see he treats other instruments. I absolutely loved how he uses the human body as an instrument. For example, in Natural Things (commissioned by Opus 21), Rzewski has the string players breathe and/or sigh as they play glissandi. He also has the performers clap and stamp, creating a choreography, which then becomes part of the music, and use their voices creatively–talking, whispering, layering dialogue contrapuntally. I found his use of non-musical objects refreshing and fun: cans, a megaphone, and even a basketball in Spots. (Does anyone know if both Spots and Natural Things were both orchestrated by Richard Adams, composer and founder of Opus 21? I know they mentioned he had arranged one of the pieces.)
For my taste, I did not care for the 2008 piano work War Songs. It seemed more like a work-in-progress to me, and one which didn’t yet have an emotional center.
Finally, I was somewhat baffled by the instrument set up for a work I dearly love, Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, which Rzewski and Stephen Drury performed in a two-piano arrangement from 1980. I asked Jed Distler about this in an e-mail, and he assured me that it was “arbitrary.” If that is the case, and the set-up was meant to cut down on the time moving other instruments out of the way, I think it didn’t serve this arrangement well. Usually with two-piano works, pianos are arranged closer together so that both artists can communicate in some fashion. Clearly, the sonorities called for in Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues would make a very close arrangement of the instruments impractical. However, the pianos were so far apart, it seemed as if both players had to guess at each other’s breathing. I’m also not sure the arrangement gave them the sonic quality they sought. Any thoughts from others who attended the performance would be welcome here.
On a different, but related note: We’ve gotten a lot of wonderful comments about pianist Ralph van Raat’s recent Naxos recording of The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (Naxos 8559360). However, many people have requested the timings for all of the variations. Ralph sent them to me in an e-mail last week, and they are pasted below:
Timelist Rzewski’s People United… Theme (0.00-1′35″)
British violinist Chloe Hanslip has just recorded two violin concertos by the 19th century French violinist and composer Benjamin Godard. Except for one very popular movement, these concertos have been largely unrecorded.
Naxos sets that oversight right with these sensational performances.
UNABRIDGED VERSUS ABRIDGED. It is a discussion as old as audiobooks.
It is partly about simple commerce – unabridged audiobooks can seem high priced, though the hours fly by. But it is also about convenience: I think there is still a place for abridged texts, for not everyone wants to listen to twenty-eight or thirty hours of a novel.
However, I am glad to say that the advent of downloads, and a greater appreciation of the full work, has seen the audience for unabridged texts on audiobook grow.
This has resulted in trips down memory lane for me, because I find that not only are we doing novels which we did in abridged form in the early years of Naxos AudioBooks, but we are recording them, often, with the same actors – though sometimes a new voice takes up the baton.
It is a coincidence that we are releasing new unabridged recordings of these masterpieces with the original readers, but in both cases, the abridged recordings were the first to introduce us to readers who have featured regularly on Naxos AudioBooks in the decade and more that followed.
To The Lighthouse was the first recording we made with Juliet Stevenson, and I well remember her coming into the studio with the script and putting it on the table. I glanced down and saw that there wasn’t a mark on it. Of course I knew she knew the book, but I wondered quietly to myself, ‘Crumbs, is she going to sight - read Virginia Woolf?’
I need not have worried. Ms Stevenson read as consummately as it sounds on the CD, not once… NOT ONCE making an error over who is speaking, though occasionally one needs to be halfway through a sentence before the context explains clearly who it is.
When I asked her afterwards, she explained that she rarely marks a script. ‘I don’t need to… I just seem to remember when I prepare it,’ she said. That was in 1995, and I still recall her words.
Her reading had a profound effect on me because the subtlety of her presentation made Virginia Woolf come alive to me in a way she never had on the page, and she went on to do the same with many other works, including many of the Jane Austen novels and evenLady Windermere’s Fan.
It is ten years on and more since that first day and I was intrigued to find out if the decade would make a difference.
I am glad to report that the answer is an emphatic no. There is a slightly more leisurely tempo which is required from an unabridged reading, but the ebb and flow of event, enquiry, inference and surprise remains the same. Why, I have to ask myself, did we wait so long to ask Juliet Stevenson to do the full version?
And the same applies to Garrick Hagon’s Tom Sawyer. When I presented the abridged version to the sales team in the mid-1990s, I played the opening, with Tom’s aunt expressing all her frustration with the boy she loves regardless of the exasperation he causes her. The salesmen were entranced by the voice of the aunt which opens the book, and Tom’s little ploy which allows him to slip past his persecutor without feeling the weight of the switch.
Garrick Hagon has read many books for Naxos AudioBooks since then, including the unabridged Huckleberry Finn, Classic American Poetry and Classic American Short Stories. He has become one of the leading American voices living in the UK (though actually Canadian by birth) and spends as much time directing audiobooks as acting (he is Philip Pullman’s preferred director!) – he directed our unabridged multi-cast versions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books.
Once again, the luxury of having the unabridged text to work with (and what a wonderful text) meant that Garrick could take time with the humour and rumbustious fun… and as musicians know, you can take time without going more slowly!
This month also sees a third unabridged version of a major classic novel which we did in abridged form years ago. Anna Bentinck presents Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and it took her back to the familiar world (for her) of the English West Country.
Finally, there is more unabridged work from marathon reader ‘War and Peace’ Neville Jason, who continues his Arthurian saga care of T. H. White.
Unabridged recordings do take more time… but one savours them all the more.
Little did I know that I had the makings of an Opera Fanatic — well, I’ve discovered that I do. I found myself watching the DVD version of The Opera Fanatic(the VHS version of this film has been available on Zucker’s Bel Canto Society website for some time; the DVD version is being released on Arthaus Musik at the end of May) with absolute fascination (twice now, probably a third time by the time I’ve finished this blog entry), despite the fact that Stefan Zucker (purportedly the highest tenor according to the Guinness World Book of Records and generally an annoying enfant terrible) is thoroughly outrageous and, in some cases, shockingly rude to an absolutely extraordinary grouping of true Divas. The chutzpah (not to mention bad taste) of asking legendary mezzo-soprano Fedora Barbieri about the sexual proclivities of mezzos boggles the mind, but then again, she offered—or threatened—to spank him for his naughty question. (Maybe there IS some truth to this rumor she so passionately denied?)
The Opera Fanaticis partly about Zucker’s quest for the answers to a question which cannot really be answered or quantified: what makes a singer thrilling and a performance moving? But it also is, in part, a memorial of his late mother, a soprano named Rosina Wolf, whose memory he evokes several times during the film. Most of all, however, it is about a group of great singers, many of whom have been forgotten (a few probably don’t even hit the radar for some younger opera-goers), and some whose careers were eclipsed by La Callas and Renata Tebaldi. However, one thing these larger-than-life women have in common can be put very simply: Star Power.
And that Star Power is wonderfully present in this film. Years after her career had ended, soprano Leyla Gencer still could demand that she be interviewed at La Scala (they acquiesced); Marcella Pobbe, a wonderful soprano from the 1950s, was suspiciously difficult to pin down for an interview time; yet another Diva was concerned that her maid would need to come twice (before and after the interview).
And some of the meetings went less than swimmingly. Poor Madame Pobbe, when the interview finally took place, fumed at Zucker’s questions (she called him “stupid”). He prodded her with queries like “What was the highest note you ever sang?” Her disdain was palpable, but not for reasons one might think. She wanted Zucker to properly introduce her and to explain her place in opera history first (DIVA). She did, eventually, answer the question about the note (in case anyone cares, it was a high “D” in Carmina Burana, with Zubin Mehta conducting). She was equally ticked off when questioned about canceling her 1959 MET engagement to sing Elisabetta. The cancellation was due to a quarrel with her then lover the great tenor Nicolai Gedda. She blamed Rudolf Bing for the incident. Heard that story before…
But despite occasional fits of pique due to scheduling mishaps and other issues, many of these singers offered fascinating insights into opera, character, and the art of singing. The luminous mezzo-soprano Guilietta Simionato, known for her riveting vocal portrayals of characters like Carmen, Azucena, and Eboli, among many others, spoke almost poetically about proper breath control: “… the cavity [mask] projects upwards or sound doesn’t rise. With the breath you have to make a circle. It’s not that the high note is a point of arrival. The breath has to raise it up and then bring it down again, that way the notes come down like pearls.” A clip from a 1961 Cavalleria Rusticana[OA0983D] showed her in absolutely gorgeous voice. But perhaps the most telling moment from her interview was her confession when asked what she would have done differently with her career: she said, almost without hesitation, that she would not have become a singer. She suffered greatly, and it took almost two decades for her to get her due as an artist. I, for one, am glad she was not given that opportunity.
Another legendary soprano Magda Olivero commented that “you must find the character inside. Every word, every note has to rise from the inside and go forward to the audience.” She clearly understood what that meant, as evidenced by a superb 1960 Tosca excerpt. She also talked about the difficulties for sopranos in Act II of Tosca, which she described as a soprano-killer.
Anita Cerquetti (a personal favorite) — who is a longtime cult figure among vocal folks for her astonishing voice, very short career, and yes, the funniest record covers in just about all opera history (except for the late British Wagnerian Rita Hunter) — had some interesting comments about opera performance: ” A singer cannot be compared to an actor. The singer has to sing. He has to stay motionless. When he sings a romance, he cannot walk up and down the stage, otherwise the voice shifts. A singer has to be an actor through his gestures, through his face, through his arms and hands, through his voice.” Now, I won’t mince words here, Anita is and was a very large lady (NO comments here, she was) and probably didn’t or couldn’t take a lot of stage direction (just a guess). Motionless is a bit, well, odd even for me. And, let’s face it, much has changed in opera productions since these women graced the stage. There is far more emphasis on physical acting now for example. But some of what she says makes sense: a singer is not an actor in the traditional sense. If anyone watched the MET broadcast of Il Trittico last season, the most moving aspect of Barbara Frittoli’s performance was her portrayal of the character of Suor Angelica, which she achieved almost entirely through her facial expressions and simple physical gestures. In my opinion, her singing was nothing special. And had I been in the opera house instead of at the movies, where I could really see what she was doing with the role, I’m not so sure I would have been so moved.
For me, there is something special about this entire era of singing which quite frankly, harkens back to a time when the voice reigned supreme and when singing conveyed such emotion that even on a bad day, it had, well, “soul.” (Just to clarify: there are many, many current singers I absolutely adore and couldn’t do without. But I must confess to a certain love of singers from the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.)
In addition to the great singers of the 1950s and 1960s, the film also goes a further back into opera history and devotes some time to the great Gina Cigna, who actually was French and born in Paris in 1900 (she died in 2001). Cigna came from a much earlier era than the other singers portrayed in the film and was 96 when Zucker went to visit her. She said, “If you don’t know how to breathe, you don’t know how to sing….Opera has lost spontaneity, beauty and freedom.” Her interview was very short as she was so very frail, but just her presence and the excerpts of her glorious voice were enough for me.
I’ve left off quite a few singers profiled in the film, for which I apologize. But if my word count is correct, I’m over 1000 words. Watch the film instead. It is really a film about soul, something which these Divas all have in abundance. (The Opera Fanatic, a film by Jan Schmidt-Garre, Arthaus Musik, 101813.)
An introduction to the theatre music of the great English composer Henry Purcell, in a new CD featuring the Aradia Ensemble under the direction of Kevin Mallon.
Purcell is still one of the most popular of all composers, and his music has been copied or borrowed by everyone from Benjamin Britten to Michael Nyman.
To listen to the episodes from the respective Podcast you will need to have Adobe's FLASH player installed. Please use Adobe's web page to choose the appropriate version to install for your platform.
UNABRIDGED VERSUS ABRIDGED
It is ten years on and more since that first day and I was intrigued to find out if the decade would make a difference.
Entries (RSS)