concert review: Modesto Symphony

And what concert program attracted me to Modesto, a two-hour drive away? Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony, a glorious choral-orchestral work that you don't get to hear very often. This was, I think, my fourth live performance of it, and I've been seeking them out.

I was clued in as to what this slightly esoteric selection was doing occupying a whole program in Modesto (they didn't play anything else) when conductor David Lockington walked on stage and, on opening his mouth to deliver some pre-concert blither, proved to be British.

It was a workmanlike performance. The orchestra was certainly adequate at the very least, as were soprano Amanda Hall and baritone Philip Cutlip (that's a terrible name for a singer). The large chorus, the orchestra's own supplemented by chorales from the local state university, was so oriented towards a welling of sound and away from diction that I couldn't make out where we were in the libretto even with the words open right in front of me.

Perhaps because of that quality in the chorus, Lockington, like Andre Previn in his recording of the work, tried to put the focus on the orchestra. The problem was that, unlike the chorus, the orchestra was slightly undersized, so that didn't really work.

As long as I was there, I decided to attend the afternoon concert of the senior and junior youth orchestras too. Good string intonation for lower-tier youth groups, but they need work on the sound quality, which seemed to be coming out of a fish tank. The senior orchestra lacks a trumpet player this year, which made it a puzzling mistake to program Copland's "Hoe-Down", a piece depending on one. The adult ringer who played the part was absolutely terrible, miles worse than any of the high-school students surrounding him.

Both concerts were held in the larger of the two theaters at a sumptuous new CPA downtown, named (of course) the Gallo Center for the Arts (well, this is Modesto). Out on the street I found a historical placard commemorating the American Graffiti cruising route. There are also street signs reading "No Cruising," sic transit. Between concerts I went out to the west side, the shadier side of town, to have some really good bbq ribs for dinner, another reason it was worth the while to go to Modesto. There is good bbq in Northern California, you just have to travel way out into the periphery to find it.

opera, a touch of it

Lisa Irontongue wants everyone to buy a ticket to the SF Opera production of Berlioz' Les Troyens. A 5 1/2 hour opera based on one of the most boring books I've ever read? Not for me, thanks.

But, while it's true that "opera" is not much more enticing a word to me than is "5 1/2 hours" or "boring", there are some things operatic I'll attend. I've already proven my devotion to the greatest of all opera composers, Sir Arthur Sullivan, having been to productions of two of his lesser-known operas this year alone; and tonight I was more than pleased to attend, at Stanford, a piano recital of a few arias and duets from a new legal opera, Scalia/Ginsburg, by composer and lawyer Derrick Wang.

I'm glad I took the trouble to go. It was so clever and witty and erudite, both musically and (in its libretto) legally. The law is based on precedent, right? Well, Wang composed based on operatic precedent, with quotations and pastiche all over. To tell their backgrounds, Ginsburg sings a Mozartean aria for her favorite composer; Scalia's, for his Italian ancestry, is based on Puccini. (Voice from the background: "Puccini's too good for him!") Wang said he was initially inspired by Scalia dissents which read to him like Baroque rage arias: full of strong emotion exposed on the surface, and firmly rooted in the 18th century. So he gets one of those too.

concert review: Symphony Silicon Valley

A choral concert from SSV afforded me finally an opportunity to hear Rachmaninoff's The Bells, a work I'd long been curious about but had never listened to. It was quite impressive, with all that dark Russian drama. And I reviewed it.

I was sorry that the new also-inspired-by-bells choral work that was going to be premiered at the concert got cancelled. The announcements made about this were rather unclear as to the reason for the cancellation; I got my information from private sources. A mischievous imp suggested that I should review it anyway. I know this composer's music: I could work up a plausible fake description. I could even say that it sounded less "potato-drenched" than the Rachmaninoff. (Would anybody get that reference?) I ignored the imp, of course.

Really important news that didn't seem appropriate for the review is that the private parking lot across from the California Theatre has abandoned its policy of charging a flat $10 for parking on event nights. Now they charge $5/hour, which means that if you arrive in time for the pre-concert lecture at 7, by the time you get out at 10 you'll have been there for just over 3 hours and get charged $20. You also pay on the way out instead of in, so you'd better hustle or else wait in a long line.

On the good side, my editors have finally decided to spell Rachmaninoff's name the way he wanted it.

On the other, the concept that the music is set to the words rather than the other way around was added by the editors in the process of recasting a sentence. Please don't hurt them.

out librarying

Spent Friday visiting libraries, in some cases re-visits, to solve nits on the Tolkien bibliography. This required much driving around. I left UC Santa Cruz for UC Berkeley - 80 miles, one mountain range, and two congested urban areas, at 2:30, which turned out to be way too late. Had to circle around to avoid the congestion in Santa Cruz where several roads squeeze into one to become the freeway. At 4 pm I was stuck in heavy traffic still 30 miles from my destination.

This is where I started dodging logistical bullets. I thought, "I could take BART," the urban rail system. I could get to the station in ten minutes, the infamously-full parking lots would be starting to open up by now, and it'd get me to Berkeley in an hour.

Well, no. BART was suffering a systemic meltdown that day. After ten minutes of the electronic boards continually announcing that a Richmond train (the one I wanted) was due in 4 minutes, a train pulled in. It was going to Daly City (which the boards said wasn't due for 20 minutes). This was the wrong direction, but I got on anyway. Only long-standing knowledge of local geography enabled me to pull this off: I got off at West Oakland, switched back to a Pittsburg train on the opposite track (also the wrong direction), since that was what was arriving in profusion, got off at Rockridge, and took the bus to Berkeley. The bus worked fine.

I got to the library at 6 pm. I couldn't help feeling that, despite traffic, driving would have been faster. However, either way, I'd arrived after the privileges desk, which issues stack passes to the unaffiliated*, had closed for the day. The circulation desk had no authority to let me in. However, the staffers were willing to go fetch the one book I desperately needed, and let me use it at the desk. Bless you, kindly staffers.

Fortunately, also, I've learned to take a flash drive with me on university library visits. Photocopiers are on the way out. Scanners are in, darkly.

There wasn't enough time to get over to the City for the concert that evening, even if I had skipped dinner, so no review of the SF Conservatory's production of Albert Herring from me. So I stopped off at Top Dog for a linguiça (their best product) on the way back to BART. By this time the arrival announcements were just contradicting each other, like the parking announcers in Airport, but the trains were running normally.

*Yes, I could join the alumni association and get stack privileges that way. But that's the only thing the alumni association offers that I'd want, and I've never had trouble getting access from the privileges desk.

damp squib

The results of the British general election are something of a disappointment for outside observers who like to watch the British living through interesting times. Instead of another tightly hung parliament, the Conservatives actually took a majority, which means no need for the Liberal Democrats, or anyone else, to immolate themselves further on the altar of coalition. (Five years harnessed with the Conservatives has now lost the Lib Dems 85% of their seats; another five years like that and they'd be left with only one seat, probably Orkney and Shetland.)

So, no delicate negotiations, no malignant (from the Tory pov) Scots looming over everything, just another straightforward John Major-style government. And that comparison is probably apt, because the Conservative majority is only 5 seats, possibly 6 if they take the last one still undeclared at the moment (St. Ives, previously a Lib Dem seat: probably waiting for the Scilly Isles boat to get in). But Major had a majority of 11 seats in 1992 and still lost his majority entirely, through by-elections and other attrition, over the course of that parliament. Now that the Conservatives have no-one to blame but themselves, will this be high tide for them, with erosion to follow again?

political earthquake in Canada

Oil country gets more types of earthquakes than the literal kind caused by fracking. Recent news makes anything that could happen in the UK election today into a relative snore. In Canada - a country prone to political earthquakes, where the rules of party balance that have held sway for decades may be suddenly swept away - they've had what may be their biggest political earthquake ever, and on the provincial level. The NDP just took Alberta.

I cannot emphasize enough what a big deal and what a surprise this is. Imagine if Bernie Sanders had been elected Governor of Texas; that's about the closest equivalent. Not only does it overturn all the rules of Albertan political culture, but it also means that, for the first time in living memory, the tar sands will be under the control of politicians who believe that stewardship of the planet means something other than sucking all the oil out of it.

concert review: Benvenue House Music

It's called "chamber music" for a reason, folks, so I went to hear some in a chamber. The chamber was the living room of one of those attractive and cozy old houses in Berkeley, this one a few blocks south of the UC campus. About 30 people, and one white cat, gathered around, most on folding chairs, pretty much filling up the adjacent front parlor and foyer facing the musicians in the main room. Those not near the front couldn't see very well, but nothing impeded the listening.

The music was three trios for clarinet, cello, and piano, spanning approximately the course of the 19th century: Beethoven's early Trio in B-flat, Op. 11, of 1797; Glinka's Trio pathétique in D minor, of 1832; and Brahms' late Trio in A minor, Op. 114, of 1891. What made this survey particularly interesting was the use of instruments of the kind played at the time each work was written. Tanya Tomkins played the same - gut-stringed, naturally - cello throughout; that instrument didn't change much during that period. But the other two musicians both actually collect period and period-reproduction instruments, and showed off their wares.

Small as the house was, it actually had room for four pianos - flush up against the walls - as well as the audience, and we heard three of them. Eric Zivian played first a reproduction of a 1795 fortepiano for Beethoven, then one of an early modern piano for Glinka. Then we all turned our chairs around to face the parlor, where he took up a modern Steinway for Brahms. Each successive instrument was more powerful, hardly needed in this tiny space, and to keep the Steinway tamed the lid was just slightly open, propped on a medium-sized book.

Eric Hoeprich, we were informed, owns more than a hundred antique clarinets - well, they take up less space than pianos. His three were all antique wooden clarinets. Unlike the piano's, the clarinet's sound didn't change much over the century, but increasing sophistication of the mechanisms allowed players to perform more complex and chromatic music, which the composers took advantage of.

They also took advantage of the piano's increasing range. Zivian pointed out that both Glinka and Brahms delighted in the far end notes unavailable to earlier composers. The thunderous lowest note on a modern grand is an A, the tonic note of Brahms' trio, and don't think he didn't use it to deepen a few chords down to the bedrock.

The sound of the pianos underlined the difference in style of the pieces and the performances. The 1795 fortepiano gave a lively and crisp sound to the Beethoven. Tomkins used a little portamento, expressive sliding of notes, in the Adagio. The richer bell-like sound of the second piano emphasized the Romantic soul the players brought to Glinka. And, with Zivian's Steinway as anchor, to the Brahms the musicians brought additional measures of both grace and passion. Hoeprich plays a cool, restrained clarinet, appropriate for this civilized chamber music. All three works were given charm and beauty in these performances, as well as their own individual character.

This concert was the last of the season for Benvenue House Music, which has been running these house events for several years now. The same folks are starting up a new festival this July, the Valley of the Moon Music Festival, with three weekends of concerts at the concert hall of the Hanna Boys Center in Agua Caliente, near Sonoma, and additional winter-season concerts at the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University. As with the Benvenue concerts, the principle here is to play 18th and 19th century chamber music on the original instruments of each composer's day (or reproductions thereof), in an intimate chamber setting. Sounds good, and worth taking a trip to Sonoma for - not to mention those of you who live near there anyway.

buried in bibliography

So now I'm buried in compiling the last bit of work for the Tolkien journal, the annual bibliography of work in the field, this time covering 2013. We have a former grad student who does the first pass through the databases and thus accomplishes much of the grunt work, and then I go through and add more detail. Lots more detail. 2013 was actually a light year in the field (2014 was much heavier), but I spent all of yesterday - apart from one nap, and cooking and eating dinner, from 4 am to about 10 pm - doing online searches for the bibliography, and I'm still not quite finished with what I can do at home. Next step is to look up stuff I need to check up on in online catalogs of libraries, and then go to the libraries, where also they have numerous additional databases I can't check at home. I'm supposed to be done by the end of the week, but I'm not sure that will happen.

The challenge is trying to miss as little as possible - easier if you know the tricks of the trade, such as important publications in the field that tend not to get indexed online - but of equal concern to me is the artificial boundaries set on inclusion. One of these is advertised in our title: we only cover English-language material. But with books published recently collecting translations of papers by Tolkien scholars from countries like Italy and Poland, it's obvious that we're missing a lot. Other artificial limitations are not so specified, and I'm surprised we haven't been called on them. Maybe just nobody is paying attention to what we list. But ever since the advent of the web, the traditional concept of a comprehensive bibliography has ceased being viable, and we may soon get to the point where subjective judgment of the value of the intellectual content may be the only way to put on the limits necessary to create a useful list.

I try not to worry about this too much. I'm just trying to get a lot of work done here.

and more

After seeing Gilbert and Sullivan's The Grand Duke, I've taken to finding bits of it on YouTube, not an urge I had after previous encounters with it. Here's the overture, professionally played. (The first theme is the chamberlains' march that I mentioned earlier.) True, I now have the advantage of having heard the whole opera well-performed, but isn't this charming and tuneful? Sullivan doesn't sound tired out or phoning it in to me.

Having taken my visiting LA friend to Moe's Books in Berkeley, a return visit he'd long craved, I came out forsooth with a few books myself, one of which is a detailed account of Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union speech, with which he essentially launched his presidential campaign in 1860. (It's a great speech, full of fisking of Stephen A. Douglas and snarky rebukes of Southern misapprehensions of Lincoln's political positions, proving these phenomena wasn't invented by the Internet.) Being as detailed as it is, one thing the book lists is competing cultural events also going on in New York the day that Lincoln spoke. Some of them were musical, so I reported this to B. You could go hear Jenny Lind give a recital, or you could attend a performance of a then-popular opera called Martha (it's by an otherwise-forgotten composer named Flotow), starring a 16-year-old soprano sensation ... and B. burst out with the name before I could ask her to guess it. Before you click on the link, can you?

musical theatre review: The Lamplighters

The Grand Duke, or, The Statutory Duel, is the last and least of the 13 extant Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. It's the least performed, anyway. I've actually seen it three times, from different troupes. Of the previous productions, one was pretty enjoyable, the other was not. Now I've seen it from the Lamplighters, and it was as good as anything this venerable and often first-rate band has ever done. This was the last performance, so I'm sorry I can't send you to see it. I went over to Lesher in Walnut Creek for this one, so that I could meet up with friends from LA who'd come up for it. It was worth their trouble. We were transported with delight.

A ponderous comedy about a theatrical troupe trying to take over the government of a small German principality, The Grand Duke features a man whose attempts at scheming lead him to find that he's acquired contractual obligations to marry four different women at once. That everyone gets satisfactorily and conventionally paired off at the end suggests that there are a lot of characters to keep track of.

One key to making The Grand Duke work is to cut it. The better of the earlier productions was cut pretty severely. This one was cut moderately: several additional verses to songs, a couple whole numbers, and lots of dialogue went out. It still lasted 160 minutes with intermission.

The other key is simply strong and energetic performances. Everybody here threw themselves into it with enthusiasm, the three principals particularly so. Light baritone Chris Uzelac turned the thoroughly unlikeable Grand Duke Rudolph into a comic masterpiece, fretting and fussing all over, and, when he dives into the court fountain to retrieve his hat, contorting his legs around absurdly as Rudolph desperately tries to attract help from another character obliviously soliloquizing. The powerful low soprano Jennifer Ashworth regally strutted as the theatrical prima donna Julia, giving a parody of operatic mugging as she demonstrates how she'd play a jealous Grand Duchess. Robby Stafford as Ludwig, the company's leading man who becomes interim Grand Duke, was less dim and fatuous than I've seen the part played, but made up for that with vivid stage presence and an enormously strong voice.

Staging was completely fluid, and I particularly liked the formal entrance march of the chamberlains, who used passages of strong beats in the music to stop marching and hop in place instead.

Everybody else was good too, and another key was the instrumentalists down in the pit. The 20-person orchestra was so together that it sounded bigger, and conductor Monroe Kanouse had real mastery of the music. It's not top-drawer work of Sullivan's any more than it is of Gilbert's, but in these hands all the songs were at least pleasant, none felt tiresome or superfluous, and some were even slightly catchy. In general it was as good as any other lesser Sullivan works I've heard, which means better than any other operettas I know.

During the run, the Lamplighters recorded it, and when it's released it'll be for sale here. You'll miss the acting and staging and pacing, and the delighted audience reaction, but the songs will be as well-performed as they possibly could be.