not the only critic

Lisa Irontongue has alerted us to the existence of a whole institute for (classical) music criticism - you know it's classical because they don't specify what kind of music; we classicists are that arrogant - um, next week.

Wow, I should go. This is the profession I've fallen into, and have practiced for ten years now, though I'm conscious of my status as a lowly practitioner of it. I might learn something from all the renowned names in the field who will be speaking.

This is not the sets of all-day series of presentations that the Stanford "Reactions to the Record" symposia are - and, by the way, I should mention that there's another one of those coming up in April. I suspect the famous guests will be spending much of their time closeted with the student fellows, and the rest of us will have to be content with a few public events.

There's a keynote speech by Anthony Tommasini - not the name on the participant list I most respect, but oh well - on Wednesday, and panels on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. I hope to go to all of those.

Then four of the critics are giving the pre-concert lectures to concerts by different ensembles on Thursday-Sunday. Plus, they're holding an "Everyone's a Critic" audience participation, whereby audience members are invited to submit reviews of those concerts, with a prize to be given for the best on at a ceremony on Monday morning.

I'm going to skip out on all of that, though. I wasn't planning on attending any of those concerts, and none of the programs particularly excite me. I'd have to study up on most of the repertoire to be able to write competent reviews, which I'm not going to do without surety of being paid. Plus I'm not sure whether, as technically a professional in the field, I should be eligible for an audience prize. And most of all because the deadlines are too tight. I'm not a journalist by training, and a 9 AM deadline after an evening concert is way too soon for me. I might dash off a brief comment on LJ when I come home at night, but never when I've come from so far away as SF or Berkeley, and 9 the next morning is about when I'm ready to think about starting my review.

I have, however, started thinking about some of the issues in my own concerns about the work I do that I hope this institute will address, and I may write about those later.

concert review: Symphony Silicon Valley

Ah, I went down to San Jose for a concert on Saturday. Dined at Louisiana Bistro, which was brand new the last time I was there, in January. As before, the appetizer (1, crab cakes; 2, catfish nuggets) was far superior to the main (1, "jambalaya" - so called, but it wasn't; 2, gumbo). There are better places right across the street; I may not be coming back.

SSV now has at least two items on my list of Best Performance of This Work I Have Ever Heard: a Sibelius Second from a dozen years ago, and now Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. This work never had much of a profile for me, but now it's etched in all its finery. Just fabulous. Here's my review.

There was just one thing that annoyed me. The pre-concert lecturer thanked her audience profusely for the sacrifice we were making by skipping the game to be there. For me, it was no sacrifice, and probably not for most of the others. This wasn't even the concert, after all, but the optional lecture for no added cost. Sports fans, this is why us non-fans seem so irritated by sports: this general cultural assumption that the World Series (or, worse, because it goes on so long, the Olympics) is The Most Important Thing In The World to everybody. I don't mind giving a cheer for the local team in your comments section, just to be polite and join the festivities, because it's your own enthusiasm you're sharing, you're not trying to enforce it. It's when people assume that everyone has it that it puts my bridle up.

concert review: Master Sinfonia

Daniel Glover is a local pianist who plays concertos with many of the smaller orchestras hereabouts. In previous encounters, I've found him fluent but rather dull and characterless. So I'm pleased to be able to say that I liked his rendition of Dohnányi's Variations on a Nursery Song. Good thing, as I was reviewing it and could therefore show genuine enthusiasm.

I got to talk with him in a group at the post-concert reception, where he mentioned deliberately plonking out the main theme with two forefingers to make it look and sound as childlike as possible - after which, in the first variation, the piano part becomes highly challenging and exposed. He said he'd never heard the piece in concert except when playing it himself, and jokingly asked if any of us listening wanted to take on the following day's matinee for him. I said, "Well, I'll do the main theme."

(No kidding: that's about the extent of my piano skills. I play a few themes with my left hand - though I'm right-handed, my right hand isn't dextrous enough to play the piano - except for a couple (Joplin's "The Entertainer" and Tom Lehrer's "The Irish Ballad") which I play with two forefingers.)

Also got to compliment composer Jeremy Cavaterra on his Monterey Suite. Good tonal tone poem work with enough structure that it doesn't devolve into hack film music. We need more music like that.

how to reach someone

1. Write to the e-mail address you used when you last contacted him several years ago, and which is still listed on the web page you then got it from.

2. Get a bounce message.

3. Since it says, "mailbox temporarily disabled," figure it may be one of those storms that periodically hits every e-mail provider.

4. Wait a few days.

5. Repeat step 1.

6. Repeat step 2.

7. Search him on Google. Fortunately he has an unusual name. After some searching, find a likely address. Be no more than momentarily confused by the same street address appearing in various sources with the names of two roughly adjacent (from your own dim knowledge of the area) cities.

8. Do a supplementary search with his name and various forms of the place name and find a profile from the online bulletin board you know he's active in, confirming that he does indeed live in that part of the world.

9. Do an online phone directory search for his name and address. Find a phone number.

10. Call the number.

11. Get a disconnect intercept with no forward.

12. Search Google with the address. Discover from a real estate website that he recently sold the house.

13. Find no clue online as to his new address. Briefly consider looking up the phone number of the old house's new owner, to ask if they know.

14. Do, however, find another e-mail address for him. Write to that.

15. Repeat step 4.

16. Google the e-mail address and find it associated with another web page that hasn't been updated in far longer than the web page from step 1.

17 (should probably have been step 3). Write to the one person you know who is in communication with him on the bulletin board from step 8 and ask for help.

18. After a decent interval, receive an e-mail with a) yet another e-mail address, and b) an offer to ping him on the bulletin board.

19. Take option 18a.

20. Repeat step 4.

21. Take option 18b.

22. After a decent interval, receive reply to e-mail. Hallelujah!

concert review: San Francisco Symphony

Guest Christian Zacharias conducted and played solo piano in a rather eclectic concert:

Two high classics, Mozart's D-minor piano concerto, K. 466, the darkest of the set and one with a particularly exquisite slow movement, making it essence of Mozart; and Haydn's Symphony No. 93, one of the most genial and witty of his London symphonies, making it essence of Haydn.

Two 20C American works, Copland's Appalachian Spring Suite, from the third and greatest of his Americana ballets, making it essence of Copland; and Morton Feldman's Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety, an unusual Feldman piece insofar as it lasts only about five minutes instead of more like two hours, making it an introduction to Feldman for the impatient or short on time, which is not the way to get to know Feldman, and for that reason this piece will probably drive anybody not already grooved into Feldman's idiom crazy, consisting as it does of ninety repeated "cuckoo" sounds.

For various possible reasons more likely to be me than the music, I found the performances adequate rather than inspiring, despite the enticing repertoire.

concert review: St. Lawrence Quartet

My review tempered the expression of my feelings. This was a sandwich of a concert. The outer parts were great masterpieces, magnificently put across. The inner slice ... was not.

Performers keep having this idea that they can uplift some worthless new piece by pairing it with the great monuments of the past. I've noted this before. It doesn't work that way - not unless, perhaps, the new work really is as great as its company, and the average new work isn't going to meet that standard. (Pairing it with secondary old works might come out better.) Instead, it only magnifies the gap.

Even the composer knew better. Speaking before the music, he expressed unease at being sandwiched between Haydn and Schubert, and he was right to be uneasy. It did him no favors, and I left feeling even more uncertain whether he deserved any.

Tolkien trivia

A Tolkien reference that it took me enough effort to track down that I wanted to write about it, but which turned out to be so mindbogglingly trivial that I couldn't bear to do so here. It went straight to the Tolkien Society blog, where they might appreciate it.

women named "Junior"

Cecil Adams tackles the question, Why are girls and women not given the title “Junior,” “II,” etc.?

First he says it rarely happens, and then he gives a few examples of when it does. But his examples are mostly not very good ones. Winifred Sackville Stoner, Jr. - yes, that was the name she was known by. Not some of the others.

FDR's wife and daughter, both legally Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, are only distinguished as "Sr." and "2nd" in legal documents. The mother was known as Eleanor, as everyone jolly well knows (and possibly because her mother's name was Anna), and the daughter was known as Anna, so in general usage, even before Anna's marriage, there was no possibility of confusion.

Dorothy Fuldheim's daughter the professor, I don't know how she was referred to before her marriage, but she bylined her Ph.D. thesis Dorothy Fuldheim Urman. Unfortunately, she died a couple years later, so that's her only publication I could find.

Nancy Sinatra is sometimes called "Jr." in news stories, but I don't believe she's ever used the addition on her albums.

Here's a datum to add to the list. I have a friend who is known to her family as June, not because her name is June - it isn't - but because she has the same first name as her mother and is hence a Junior. In bylines and to her friends she uses her legal name, which is Edith, but without a "Jr." appended, not that there'd be any likelihood of confusion anyway.

five concerts in five days

Yes, the fall concert season must really be rolling if one can do that. And so I did. From the ridiculous to the sublime, in roughly that order ...

Saturday, South Valley Symphony. Bargain-basement community orchestra that plays at a 2-year college on the far side of Gilroy. I went all the way down there for the opportunity to hear Tchaikovsky's First, which doesn't come one's way very often. Parts of it were tolerable, especially the slow movement which had more melodic effect than some professional performances. Good job by 16-year-old pianist Henry Smolen on the Saint-Saëns Second Concerto. He couldn't do light and fleeting, which this concerto really needs, but he didn't drag or sludge for an instant.

Sunday, Saratoga Symphony. But this is the amateur group that sits at the true bottom of the local barrel. I've heard them before, but I still might go if it's something enticing, though I'll barely recognize it. This time they cheerfully and genially massacred Nielsen's Second, though they did quite decently with some dances by Grieg (including the one that Allan Sherman lifted "I Can't Dance" from), and a gaseous clarinet concerto by the sub-Mozartean Bernhard Crussell, with, again, a competent soloist, Adam Pease. Apparently kicked out of their Saratoga ecclesiastical venue, they're now playing in a tiny church in Cupertino.

Monday, London Philharmonic Orchestra. On to the professionals. Visiting orchestra at Davies in the City, which I couldn't resist for the program of Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody and Shostakovich's Eighth. Led by Vladimir Jurowski, they took a crisp, jaunty way through the Rhapsody, with soloist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet contributing punchy thumps. The Shostakovich was less chipper: the long adagios meandered listlessly, while the climaxes exploded. I've heard this symphony played more interestingly, but never louder. Clear, cool platforms of sound from the orchestra, though. A buzzing piece of soundscape by Magnus Lindberg completed the program.

Tuesday, Harmony for Humanity. Stanford's annual Daniel Pearl memorial concert, in honor of the journalist murdered in Pakistan in 2002 - he was a Stanford grad and music-lover. A student ensemble with the members of the St. Lawrence Quartet as section leaders played a Telemann oboe concerto and a Bach cantata. Memorial Church's echoing acoustics were fine for the strings and oboeist James Austin Smith, not so good for baritone Kenneth Goodson. In between, St. Lawrence cellist Chris Costanza played a Bach suite from down on the main floor, where most of the audience couldn't see him or, as it turned out, hear him.

Wednesday, San Francisco Symphony. Thin audience for a program of good stuff from the 1930s. It wasn't until I got there that I remembered that I'd heard guest conductor Stéphane Denève lead the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances before, with the LA Phil six years ago. I didn't like his technique of abrupt and erratic tempo changes much better this time, though the orchestra sounded great. Britten's Violin Concerto I hadn't known, so I can't say what Denève did to it, though the weird orchestration was again fascinating, and soloist Isabelle Faust kept on top of everything. Denève led the Barber Adagio as if to show that the music had been proceeding inaudibly for quite some time before the piece started, and continued after its conclusion also.

Columbus Day

Yes, Columbus discovered America. It was his coming here that directly led to the awareness of the continents by the rest of the world. The Vikings, if they were here at all, didn't do that, and the previous inhabitants kept the place to themselves. In science, you can find whatever you like in the laboratory, but if you don't publish first, you're not the discoverer, and you don't get the Nobel Prize.

As for the deplorable things that Columbus and his successors did, all of us who live here except those solely descended from those previous inhabitants are the beneficiaries of that, so while we can deplore it, as we should, denouncing its practitioners root and branch doesn't look too good on us. Considering the state of the world, our descendants won't look too kindly on us, either.

So let us celebrate, by the relentlessly logical procedure of closing the post offices, preventing me from mailing packages to B's sister and niece until tomorrow. I will give my thankfulness that the auto repair shop is not closed, and was able to repair and reinstall the flat tire I got yesterday on the freeway: exciting times.

Hobbling on my spare tire over there, I saw a nice indication of the ethnic dominance of this area in the form of front yard signs for school board and city council candidates named Chang, Zhang, and Huang.