concert review: California Symphony

And yesterday, it was the turn of the California Symphony, with a program featuring three American works from the 1920s and 30s, the period that gave birth to serious Americana in classical music.

The biggest hit on the program was Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. No simple pianist to play the solo part, we had a jazz trio, the Marcus Roberts Trio. Roberts on piano made up his own part for the solo piano sections, but when playing with the orchestra he stuck with what Gershwin gave him. This reminded me of the limits Peter Jackson faced in how far he could depart from what Tolkien gave him. The bassist and drummer stuck in their oars from time to time. The encore was something barely recognizable as "I've Got Rhythm."

Samuel Barber's compact Symphony No. 1, not often played. (Conductor Donato Cabrera suggested it's too short to conveniently anchor a program.) Big hearty performance this time.

And William Levi Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony, exceedingly rare: championed by Stokowski but hardly ever played by anyone else. Everyone's on Florence Price these days as the African-American composer of the period, and William Grant Still gets an occasional look in, but Dawson is mostly still forgotten. Although some of his tunes here are genuine Black spiritual melodies, there was nothing that I recognized, and unlike Price's his music doesn't otherwise have that distinctly Black ethnic quality. It was nice but a little overlong and not as striking as I'd hoped.

three concerts and an art museum

I've been out the last three nights attending the Pivot Festival, which is an annual new-music event in SF's Herbst Theatre. This year the curator is Gabriel Kahane, who is a singer-songwriter (mostly with piano) who's also a classical composer. The SFS performed a mixed-genre song-cycle/oratorio of his last year. I don't find Kahane's songs very appealing (unlike, say, Vienna Teng and Richard Thompson), but I do like that he does classical work, and I really wanted to hear the performers he'd brought in to collaborate with at Pivot: the Attacca String Quartet, whom I first heard at Menlo when they were starting out two decades ago, and Roomful of Teeth, the avant-garde a cappella vocal group which came to attention a decade ago when a piece written for them by one of their members, Caroline Shaw, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Shaw, who is still with the group, has gone on to become a leading young composer of instrumental as well as vocal music, and a favorite of mine.

For the first concert, on Wednesday, the Attacca interleaved the movements of Ravel's String Quartet, which they played in a soft and pillowy manner, with the movements of a heavier and more emphatic quartet by Paul Wiancko, the new cellist of the Kronos Quartet, and some songs by Kahane, which he sang at the piano with obbligato accompaniment by the quartet. The Attacca also played a quartet by Kahane, a succession of a variety of postmodern styles: traditional modernist, minimalist, pointillist, spectralist ...

For the second concert, on Thursday, Roomful of Teeth sang several works, one of them by Caroline Shaw, with abstract piping sounds of various kinds. Some were a cappella, some had light accompaniment. Some were wordless, but if there were words they were completely unintelligible. The last and longest piece, however, was a song cycle by Kahane, Elevator Songs, which was more conventional in style and worked somewhat better. The songs were written for the individual members of the group. Most were serious and not easy to make out the words of, but a couple that were intelligible were deliberately funny and quite amusing in performance.

The third concert, on Friday, brought in both groups and reverted to Wednesday's interleaving style, alternating Roomful of Teeth singing the movements of Shaw's Pulitzer-winning Partita with keyboard pieces by François (and Louis) Couperin crisply arranged for Attacca by Kahane. The alternation of entirely contrasting styles turned out to be quite refreshing, and this evening, by far the best-attended, was also the most successful musically.

One afternoon before the concert, I ventured into the Asian Art Museum two blocks away at the recommendation of Lucy H. to see the exhibit of notoriously cutesy¹ Japanese artist Takashi Murakami's entirely contrasting monsters. Some, with giant bulbous heads and rows of huge pointed teeth, reminded me of drawings I'd made as a child, and of course there was a Godzilla wreathed in flames, but the most impressive was a mural maybe 50 feet long featuring, among other weird things, knots of a dozen wrestlers each, clad only in loincloths, their limbs and hideous heads all entangled, watched by a cluster of observers with various odd features like pumpkin heads, long rope-like necks, and so on. Murakami's work is of course closely akin to manga and anime, and the captions say his strongest Western influence is Francis Bacon, but this mural made me wonder if he's seen any Hieronymus Bosch, because the impact was very similar.

1. He's the guy who does flowers with little faces on them surrounded by multi-colored petals. Some of these showed up in the background of the works with the big-teeth monsters.

concert review: The St. Lawrence something

I made sure I was awake and alert not just for the Sacramento Philharmonic concert I attended last Saturday evening, but for the two-hour drive home at 10 pm. What I hadn't taken into account was that I was to review a concert for SFCV the following afternoon. I don't think I had entirely succeeded at banishing grogginess by that time, but I succeeded in absorbing enough to write a review anyway.

I'm not entirely sure what the name was of the ensemble I heard on this occasion. This series used to be the St. Lawrence String Quartet, but now just three of them are carrying on since the fourth died. The concert promoters usually call them just "The St. Lawrence" now. The concert program billed it as the Stanford Chamber Strings, which I hadn't heard of before but which on checking turned out evidently to be a student ensemble, except that this time the three St. Lawrence players acted as section leaders. But after two pieces with this grouping, the three principals joined a pianist for Schumann's quartet for 3 string instruments and piano. So, mixed offering, I guess.

state of the primary

Most of the news reports I've seen on the New Hampshire Republican primary simply say "DT won" and leave it at that. And of course that's how his people are spinning it. But that's no reason for everyone else to follow suit. Only one report I've seen - and now I can't remember which one - pointed out that he won only 54% and Haley got 43%. That's surprisingly low for a supposed triumphal march to the nomination, and shows that Haley is right that the race is still on. (Remember, too, that DT got only 51% in the Iowa caucuses, despite their being biased highly in his favor; his statewide win proves only that his support was evenly spread geographically, not that it was universal.) Though if, as seems to be in the offing, Haley loses South Carolina, her own home state, that probably will be the end of it.

At this point, with few delegates chosen, it's a game of expectations. It's possible to lose while winning: that is, to win so anemically that it shows weakness rather than strength. This was proven dramatically by the NH Democratic primaries of 1968 and 1972. Perhaps nobody else remembers these, but I do. In 1968, President Johnson running for re-election won 50%, and insurgent challenger Gene McCarthy 42%. That was so remarkably high for a challenger against a supposedly impregnable leader that the message was that Johnson lost, even though technically he won. And you could say the same of Haley against DT - if you wanted to. In 1968, Johnson dropped out of the race three weeks later: that's how bad his win was for him.

In 1972, again it was expectations. Ed Muskie was the leading candidate, he came from the neighboring state of Maine, he was expected to sweep NH. He got 46%. George McGovern, out of nowhere, got 37%. McGovern was the big news of the night, and that began the sweep that got him the nomination.

One poll says a large percentage - maybe half? - of Haley voters in NH wouldn't vote for DT in November. That sounds doubtful - the urge to rally round the nominee is strong once the finals are close - but it does indicate a weakness, in November if not in the primaries. We can only hope.

concert review: Sacramento Philharmonic

This is the other orchestra of which the Oakland Symphony's Michael Morgan was music director until his death three years ago. But while Oakland still hasn't appointed a permanent replacement, Sacramento has. As of this season, their "Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor" is Ari Pelto, an American of Finnish descent. Sacramento seems to be doing well for itself: attendance is bursting the bounds of its very spacious venue, and as of next season they plan to give each concert twice, as San Jose does (Oakland doesn't).

I've been at one time or another to several orchestras in the Central Valley, but this event on Saturday was my first concert in Sacramento. Pelto arranged for a concert with a couple of my not-often-heard favorites, and I couldn't resist, despite the long drive and, as it turned out, the rain.

The program's main piece was the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto. The soloist was Michelle Cann, whom I remember from some Silicon Valley Music Festival concerts a few years back. She's matured into a powerful soloist with a way of putting legato smoothness even into the "tolling bells" opening of this concerto. Due perhaps to the very wide shape of the auditorium, the piano sound dissipated and didn't focus well, so Cann didn't always dominate over the (quite large) orchestra as she should have. But the liveliness of her performance was outclassed by the encore: she began Rach's Prelude in C-sharp minor with slow gravity, and then suddenly switched to an ultra-fast jazzed-up version, making free with rhythm and emphasis. Heuwell Tircuit would have hated it.

In a pre-concert talk, Pelto said he wanted Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite to reflect the irony and farce of the movie it's arranged from, and I thought, how refreshing. Music sources used to claim (falsely) that the movie had never actually been made, and now here's a conductor who's seen it. (As have I.) It was light and energetic, with some of the solos almost hinting at the same kind of freedom with rhythm that Michelle Cann took in her encore.

And lastly, Sibelius's Third, his most understated but most beautiful symphony. This again was a light-toned performance, feeling fragile in its careful charm.

I was very happy with all of this, and yes it was worth the trouble I took to get there.

pretty damn gone

In memory of Peter Schickele, concoctor of P.D.Q. Bach, here are my favorites of old P.D.Q.'s choral works: one carol, one madrigal.

concert review: San Francisco Symphony

This was going to be an MTT concert, but he's been frail and ill enough to decide to reduce his two-week residency to one. He'll be here next week to conduct Mahler, but I won't be here to listen to it. The podium for this week was handed over to Dalia Stasevska, whom I heard last season conducting Sibelius.

Wearing what looked like a white lab coat with black splotches all over it, this time she led Dvořák's New World Symphony in an exciting, pile-driving performance of the old warhorse. In the first movement, an ultra-slow mysterioso introduction jumped into a ringing clarion call of the main theme, and finishing up with a whip-snap stretto coda. The Largo underplayed the music's sorrowful side and was punctuated by shattering fortissimo explosions, I bet you forgot they were there because they're not usually this dramatic. And so forth all the way through, with plenty of expression in tempo and volume and a lot of typically dazzling SFS playing.

Along with it, Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto with Seong-Jin Cho, whom I've also heard before. He managed to be both crisp and lyrical at the same time, while the orchestral playing was more sedate than in the Dvořák. But both piano and orchestra were brilliantly colorful, and that was the main virtue of the performance. Cho's encore was one of Liszt's soggy Petrarch sonatas: you take what you can get.

Overall a good show, and I'm glad I got to this one.

a thought

John Garth asks, Was Queen Margarethe's abdication inspired by her reading of ... Tolkien?

We know she read and liked The Lord of the Rings: as princess she drew some illustrations of it and sent them to an admiring Tolkien; some were later published in an edition of the book.

John compares the abdication to the voluntary death of Aragorn in "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen"; a closer parallel as not involving death, though perhaps unknown to the Queen if she never went on to read Unfinished Tales, not published until after her accession, is the earlier monarchs of Númenor, who laid down the scepter voluntarily before being enfeebled by age. (John mentions the later kings, who clung to life and power until they died unwillingly.)

One particular parallel to Aragorn is that he tells Arwen, "Eldarion our son is a man full-ripe for kingship." Also the case here. King Frederik is obviously in the prime of life to serve in the formal post of constitutional monarch. I wish him and his country well, and the former Queen a happy retirement. Maybe she'll now have time for some more artwork.

quoting Howard Waldrop

Who just died a couple days ago, a science fiction writer of an unsurpassed combination of erudition and weirdness, author most notably of "The Ugly Chickens," surely one of the greatest SF stories ever, and surely the greatest ever in which the science was ornithology, and a story with an unforgettable bite in its ending.

I heard him read stories a couple of times, but only personally met him once, when we discussed the merits of hot pickled okra over the con suite buffet at the Austin Corflu in 2007. Not the sort of conversation I have every day though perhaps Howard did.

Curious readers can find a sampling of his nonfiction in the form of his columns preserved in the archives of Infinite Matrix.

When Barack Obama faced Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries, I found myself with appropriate quotes for both of them. For Obama, I had Mike Royko telling his readers to calm down and not quiver and quake at the prospect that Harold Washington would be elected Mayor of Chicago. And for Clinton, this by Howard Waldrop from another strange future-apocalyptic reversion-to-stereotypical-tribal-behavior story:

"My brothers!" he began, so I figured he would be at it for a long time. "We seem to spend all our time in Council, rather than having fun like we should. It is not good, it makes my heart bitter.
"The idea that a woman can get a hearing at Council revolts me. Were this a young man not yet proven, or an Elder who had been given his Service feather, I would not object. But, brothers, this is a woman!" His voice came falsetto now, and he began to chant:
"I have seen the dawn of bad days, brothers.
But never worse than this.
A woman enters our camp, brothers!
A woman! A woman!"
He sat down and said no more in the conference.
It was my turn.
"Hear me, Pullers and Stealers!" I said. "You know me. I am a man of my word and a man of my deeds. As are you all. But the time has come for deeds alone. Words must be put away. We must decide whether a woman can be as good as a man. We cannot be afraid of a woman! Or can some of us be?"
They all howled and grumbled just like I wanted them to. You can't suggest men in Council are afraid of anything.
Of course, we voted to let her in the contest, like I knew we would.
Changes in history come easy, you know?

- Howard Waldrop, "Mary Margaret Road-Grader", 1976

yeah, I read it

Woody Allen, Apropos of Nothing (Arcade, 2020)

Woody's infamous autobiography. I didn't find it anything like the unreadable wad described in most negative reviews; in fact I had trouble finding it on the library shelf because it was far shorter (392 p.) than the giant tome the reviews had implied. It's also - for the most part - interestingly written and it swims along energetically. There are no chapter breaks, but Woody is always clear when he's changing subjects, especially when he enters into or leaves a digression, the more so as many of these involve jumps forward or backward in time, but there's no confusion about where or when you are.

The exception is the long rant against the molestation charges, which is flat writing on top of everything else. It's as if he suddenly switched gears and became a lawyer. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a lawyer ghost-write those parts. The sophisticated arguments are especially surprising coming from a guy who likes to paint himself as being as naive and innocent as some of the characters he plays in movies.

We can specify that molesting 7-year-olds and dating 17-year-olds are entirely different kinds of creepy behavior, and that a man would do one does not at all imply he's likely to do the other, but he can't deny the one. He doesn't give exact ages, but he says Soon-Yi was in college before he started dating her, hence presumably over 18. He implies that Stacey Nelkin was under 18 when he started dating her when telling the story, but later in the book says she was not underage. (This denial is apparently false.) His constant awareness of the hotness of any woman of an age where this can be measured has dismayed some readers, but that's just standard hormonal straight male mindset. Woody insists that when he's making a movie, his mind is purely on the movie and he doesn't try to date his actresses, but apparently that doesn't apply if he's already dating them, or maybe in some other situations ...? It's not entirely clear.

But to the charge that he's a mature man who dates unnervingly young women, 17 or not, his defense is that there were only two of them (he says he never dated Mariel Hemingway, they were only friendly outings: he says nothing about her claim that he intended them to share a room on his proposed trip to Paris), and most of his dates have been his own age. As a justification, that reminds me of an old dirty joke which will perhaps come to mind if I refer to it as the "Seymour the bridge-builder" joke.

Even weirder is his explanation for not casting Black actors in his movies. He trots out his civil rights and "some of my best friends are" credentials, and says the casting works out as it does because he just has to go on his instincts. Has it not occurred to him that his casting instincts might be a wee bit racist? Try imagining a story with Black characters in it, Woody, and then see what happens.

Another strange thing is his name. He started out his career by sending jokes to newspaper columnists, and then when he saw one in print with his (original) name on it, he suddenly felt horribly embarrassed about the possibility of people he knew seeing it. So he needed a pseudonym, fast. But what is the point of having that as a shield if you don't use it as one? He adopted it as his new name, he began to live his public life under it, it doesn't protect him from being identified as the guy with that name at all.

Well, not all the book trips you up like that, and there are some interesting stories about the ideas behind and the making of his movies. He pays warm tribute to Mia Farrow as an actress. But what most interests me is Woody's view of his own talent. Later on in the book he does list talent as among the reasons he's been successful, but towards the beginning he discounts it. He says outright that his success has been simply due to luck, nothing more. A little later he describes himself churning out reams of material for comedy television, and he treats that as just a reasonable task. It doesn't seem to occur to him that not everybody can do that. That fits in with something I've noticed elsewhere: that people often don't think they're talented, they think that what they do is easy. It's only when they notice that most people can't do it that it might occur to them that they think it's easy because they have a talent for it.

Woody Allen has a talent for comedy. He has less of a talent for channeling the likes of Ingmar Bergman, and he has no talent for self-introspection.