West Side Story, Part Uno
In a graceful Third Act move, librettist and director Arthur Laurents decided to stage his massive hit West Side Story in a less candied-up version for a post-9/11 New York. Grit returns, and the new Masterworks Broadway recording certainly captures that—commencing with an open throttle reading of the prologue replete with racial epithets in two languages! The opening track had me, mostly because even though I know this score inside and out (not only from the film but also the Original Broadway Cast) I heard a few new things in this extra-sharp and seriously caffeinated version. (Whoever orchestrated the opening, Bernstein or Sid Ramin or Irwin Kostal, was wise to have the low string chug, and this is something I’ve never heard before.) Bernstein took a lot from Stravinsky, no secret, and this recording makes no attempt to mask that but rather embraces it.
Much flap is being made about the fact that many of these songs are in Spanish—“I Feel Pretty” becomes “Me Siento Hermosa” and “A Boy Like That” is rendered as “Un Hombre Asi.” While fascinating—and appropriate—this is not the interest of this recording. More fascinating is conductor Patrick Vaccariello’s choices of tempo in both of these songs, which are much slower than my addled memory recalls, certainly a choice. The former becomes grander, the latter more weighted and ponderous, both excellent notions. But what it proves more than anything is the flexibility of this score—Bernstein’s music (like that of any great composer) can weather multiple interpretations and still shine. Like any piece of great music, a new recording—especially one this careful, this sonically gorgeous, and this elegantly sung—serves only to make us love the piece more.
I do have to mention one performance specifically (for now; I will write more, and hopefully have a chance to see it!) and that is I really loved Matt Cavenaugh’s Tony. He sounds like I’ve always imagined Tony (neè Romeo) to be: young, a hapless preener, lost but earnest. Yes he can sing, but even on record he pulls off the character. Not easy to do.
Purchase The New Broadway Cast Recording of WEST SIDE STORY
Schizophrenia and Me
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In the last few days I’ve been listening to a slightly older Sony release—Danny Elfman’s Serenada Schizophrenia, which I actually think is quite wonderful. First, the selection of John Mauceri to lead the charge is really perfect, ingenious even. He is the conductor who did such amazing work at the Hollywood Bowl for years, so he really knows that moment where concert music and film music intersect, even overlap. I used to thrill to the Bowl concerts when I was young, a great time to hear bits of The Rite of Spring crossed with little chunks of, say, Franz Waxman. The Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto plus Picutres at an Exhibition with the inevitable fireworks. All wonderful.
As to Elfman’s piece, I love—LOVE—the Prokoviean insistence of “Pianos,” the first movement, and the gorgeous lushness of the subsequent “Blue Strings.” And Elfman’s signature “haunted house” sound is never more apparent than in the movement “A Brass Thing.” I think he’s got a stunning gift for pacing (this is what one learns when working with films, I think, how to make your music match quickly shifting moods, and there’s few better at it than he), knowing when to drift off into la-la land and how to get back to the potent stomp from where one came. And minor keys were never more playful, even whimsical, save maybe for the odd Hungarian Rhapsody.
What to me is most accomplished about this piece is its constancy—his idea of the menacing ostinato continues to arrive and depart throughout the entire work, which means that, while some would say he’s thinking filmically (if that’s a word), I would argue that he’s thinking symphonically, considering a narrative that for once has nothing to do with swelling scenes but rather only to do with itself. The great film composer who built these ideas into the pictures (and I’m talking about everyone from Bernard Hermann to Franz Waxman, Miklos Rosza to Elmer Bernstein) were taking their cues not from the movies, but from Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Copland (who were themselves fine film composers as well). This is Elfman’s tradition, and he is unafraid to wade in deep.
I suppose one of the great compliments one pays to a film composer is that the music goes unnoticed, so hewn to the film it is. I’ve never bought this (does the score to Psycho not play? Do Hermann’s amazing opening moments of Citizen Kane just read as pure story? Does even the work John Cale did for American Psycho come off as pure wallpaper?) and now that Elfman does not have the ballast of Burton behind him to lend his spookiness a visual component—which tends to be the only component that most people, even very cultured people, understand at all—we can bring him to the fore and evaluate him for what he actually does. And that is to create music that has such a strong profile, such an insistent and individual “sonic fingerprint,” that his name is destined to be one of those “esques” composers will be annoyed by for generations. He’s got a style, he sounds like himself, and those are two things a lot of contemporary composers cannot boast.
I hope a lot of orchestras take this piece up, I really do. Its worth it.
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Serenada Schizophrana is available at Amazon.com
Elizabeth Watts, Schubert Lieder
This disc has been perched high atop a massive pile for some time because I keep hearing amazing things about this young British soprano—that and I cannot seem to get enough of Schubert’s lieder these days. So finally, middle of the night, I decided to put on Schubert Lieder specifically to hear my insomniacal anthem “Nacht und Träume.” And forgive my constant amazement at all I survey but WOW! From the opening lustrous chords (deep credit to Roger Vignoles piano) I felt—cliché alert—as if I were in a warm bath. And Watts’ first long tone matched perfectly the deep-in-the-keys tone of the lush opening. I was sold. And like I tend to do, I just keep listening to that one track over and over.
What has always made a good Schubert song for my money is a certain kind of emotional nudity. I’ve always thought Art Songs were to opera what chamber music is to the orchestra: in one mode, we get to see (hear?) a composer at their most public, their grandest, their most overt and in-the-world; in the other, we get the quiet whispers, the complex, nuanced thoughts, the difficult-to-pin emotions. One mode requires distance, the other asks your ear to be pressed to the speaker or for you to be listening from mere feet away. Schubert wrote a lot of all kinds of music, from the hugest symphonies (the “Unfinished”!) to operas to string quartets (the G major! Or the quintet in C with the extra cello!), but it is in his songs—especially songs like this one—that we get to know the private man (and he was private). So for me, the great lieder singer is not necessarily the great opera singer any more than the great soloist may not be the best at chamber music. Now I suspect opera is where someone like Watts makes her living and attains her visibility, but from this one track (and I may be wrong here) it seems like she gets her greatest satisfaction from the Art Song.
As to the record, I am positively certain that there are other gems on this disc, but I’ve not made it there, not yet. I will, to be sure, but for now I’ve got this one on repeat. It will stay there for a while, I have a feeling…
You can purchase Elizabeth Watts’ Schubert Lieder here.
Fleisher’s Ravel
Do you ever have that experience where you go to a concert and hear a piece of music performed, and for days after that is the only music you can hear? I’m there now. I went to Alice Tully Hall the other night to hear pianist Xiayin Wang perform a piece by my friend Sean Hickey, and one of the other works on the program was Ravel’s “Albordora del Gracioso” from Miroirs. It’s a devilishly difficult work of many moods and damn near impossible to assay—unless, of course, you play like Ms. Wang! She can do anything. I was bowled over.
So now I’m home and listening to Fleisher play the same work (on my Essential Leon Fleisher compilation) for probably the 30th time since the concert a few days ago. Masterful, of course—they both capture something essential in Ravel aside from negotiating the seemingly insurmountable technical difficulties. There’s a side of every Ravel piece just soaked in the idea of play, of, dare I say, fun, that both nail. I had the advantage (and this is always true) of seeing (hearing?) Wang play live versus simply listening to Mr. Fleisher on my stereo, but one can imagine his live reading being just as thrilling, equally engrossing and even equally showman-like.
And, how shall I put this? I’ve been accused of stealing from this piece more than once. Should I deny? And now that I am into my 31st listening, will the problem worsen? Probably, because this is music I’ve soaked in not only by listening (Ravel is perhaps my favorite composer, and his piano output my favorite sub-sector of his work) but by my own deeply feeble attempts to play it. Thank God there’s my Fleisher recording to show me the way. And on the 32nd listen, it just gets better and better.
Buy The Essential Leon Fleisher Here
More Thoughts on Tiempo Libre
When I first wrote about Tiempo Libre here, I thought it was a novel project for them, and thought their paean to J.S. Back came out of the fact that they were acting as a “backup band” for James Galway. It made sense: here was one of the great classical music performers of our time who wanted to “cross over” (I know, I know, it never fails to make us all think of some truly bad ideas) and so he could play the Bach and the band could do the multi-culti handiwork behind him. Well, as usual I was not exactly right, and now that the group has their own record sans Galway, it is clear that this is no dread “crossover,” any more than Villa-Lobos is dread “crossover” and I say thank God for that. No, this is just plain cool, and my own narrow idea about it—the Westerners bring the Western music, and the locals from South of the Border bring the local flavor and somehow it all meets in the middle—is spot-off and for this I am glad.
Clearly this is a group who loves Bach, so much that they have to have him, but have him their way. I always remember a quote from American Composer Charles Ives, who said that the only reasonable reaction to a piece of music was another piece of music; I’ve put this often into practice in my own work, taking things I loved deeply and making my own piece from them (or sometimes things I loathed deeply but wanted to understand the appeal), getting inside music the way I knew how, by making music.
So fear not, crossover haters, this is not John Denver duetting with Placido Domingo or the latest opera star trying desperately to sing Pop music from a bygone era (and Ms. Fleming, I am by no means referring to you, in case you read me avidly). This is not even genre-leaping or border-crossing or boundary-decimating music. It’s just one awesome set of musicians responding to some music they find to be awesome, and when you listen to it that way, its not only soulful and fun, but also a weird and wonderful kind of spiritual communion. Not between cultures but rather between people and their different ideas of music. Keeps the flow going, this kind of thinking, and mystic-project-ness aside, I just think the record is tremendously appealing.
For more information on Tiempo Libre visit: For more information on Tiempo Libre visit: www.TiempoLibreMusic.com
Click here to purchase Bach In Havana
Allow Me to be the Last…
…to heap some praise on the Cuban group Tiempo Libre! I’ve really been enjoying their new record Bach in Havana, as much as I did their record with super-flautist James Galway a few months back. Like Villa-Lobos before them (who wrote a whole series of pieces called Bachianas Brazilieras), they fuse music they love—that of J.S. Bach—with that of their own native culture and I have to say the mix is vivid and fascinating. The first track, their take on the C-minor fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier is a spirited conga on that sacred text, followed by a cha-cha(!) on the D Minor sonata. Joined by saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera, they tour through Air on a G String (a Bolero), the Gavotte from French Suite No. 5 (a Son, which they say “…is to Cuban music what sonata form is to classical music”) and the First Cello Suite; joined by another saxophonist, Yosvany Terry, they turn their focus on the Minuet from the Second French Suite and the famous Minuet in G.
I think my favorite track is called “Olas de Yemaya” in which they fuse a Batá (which is a ritual playing of drums to invoke powerful Afro-Cuban deities) with the C Major Prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Its something a little masterly, to take this delicate little opener to one of the greatest pieces ever written and put it through its pan-cultural paces with a certain reverence but also an equal willingness to knock it around a little bit.
The whole record is infused with this same have-at-it spirit, never meant to mock Bach but also knowing that the music is there, will not go away, and can therefore withstand this excursion. And without getting too lofty (ok, maybe a little), the whole spirited outing feels like one of those things that redefines the very idea of what sacred is or can be, on its own terms. Bach, for example, is one of the great composers to ever walk the planet—few, if any, would disagree with that—and so often his music is treated with art-defying reverence because when one is making art one has to be unafraid of the deepest and most sacred—what’s more, one actually has to be comfortable trafficking in same. So here comes a red-hot group of Cuban musicians, who love Bach but set out to do it on their own terms, in the way that is sacred to them. The result is not only another look at Bach, but a peek into another culture, and that culture’s definition of sacred. And clearly, if they do advance any kind of thesis (which I suspect is not their intent, but allow me one moment), it is that Bach can certainly take it, and has something to say to a culture quite different than the one for whom his music was intended. I’ve never much agreed that music was some kind of universal language, because music is spoken in more dialects than any other art form, but I do believe one culture’s music can help it to be understood.
But, as usual, I digress. Mostly, though, this is a really cool album!
For more information on Tiempo Libre visit: www.TiempoLibreMusic.com
Click here to purchase Bach In Havana
Revelations and Amazements in the Key of C
I cannot believe that in the whirlwind of my week (where I had a huge concert in New York dedicated to my own music) I neglected to mention the absolutely profound experience I had at Carnegie Hall last week when Terry Riley and (a whole lot of) friends performed his seminal work In C. My instincts here are to rave like a fanboy because it was one of the more remarkable experiences I’ve had in a hall (and I’ve had some good times in halls). Words fail a little in seeing the piece, oddly, as it might have been meant to be when written: a true communal experience. There the composer was, seated amid what had to be well over a hundred souls, leading the charge (with Kronos as the kind of musical motor), swirling amid the sounds of So Percussion, the Young People’s Chorus of New York, Philip Glass, Oswaldo Golijov, Mark Stewart, Dan Zanes, Stewart Dempster, Morton Subotnick, and many many (many many…) more. It was less like being at a concert and more like touching history.
Purists will of course quibble (but don’t they always) with the “rehearsed” nature of the piece—there was even a conductor, of sorts, Dennis Russell Davies holding up signs at moments. Originally the work, in a much smaller ensemble, is built to be one big improvisation (hippie-style!) but with such a mass onstage and such expense gone to in order to arrange said mass, a little order seemed to be in order. I liked the flow—it was a very different experience than the five different recordings I own (my favorite of which being the one Sony and Carnegie Hall recently reissued which remains definitive in my head because it was my first and most abused, listened to over and over in its previous incarnation) and isn’t that the point? That every time one hears In C, one has a different experience?
I loved the way Mr. Russell Davies paced things—there were striking moments for Kronos, for the Young People’s Chorus, for So Percussion—because it allowed a somewhat symphonic element to govern the piece. Highs, lows, contrasts, climaxes, all there, well built and gorgeously executed. The night ran near two hours and seemed nowhere close, and whomever had the brilliant idea to project the one-page score on a large screen behind the dense sea of performers ought to be knighted—it worked like the proverbial charm. Suddenly toes could tap and heads could bob, but also those who could read music and knew the argument of the piece could see it in full-flower and understand its intended nuances. I already had a heap of respect for Mr. Riley and especially this piece of his, but now I’ve got more.
Most touching, though, was the sheer humanity that dripped from the stage. How incredible was it to see Philip Glass, who obviously learned much from Riley the guru, sawing away as a sideman? Or how thrilling to see the members of the Young People’s Chorus onstage with many four or five generations older at least? In the end, the together-we-shall-prevail ethos of the piece played spectacularly—all were together, all were there not just to celebrate a master but an age, an idea, and the very spirit of music.
“Phone Rings, Door Chimes, In comes…”
The sixties were of course an absolutely wild time of weird change and complex feeling. I missed it all (being born five days into the seventies), but in listening to Company I can only imagine. It must have been terrifying—Rock music, those high-volume gyrations of the Dionysian youth, was everywhere, including on Broadway, which was then still the land of Rodgers and Hart, Lerner and Lowe. I know that Hair devastated Richard Rodgers, who when seeing it (in 1976) knew he was finished, that his beloved Great White Way (which loved him back, to be sure) was headed elsewhere, but six years before a show called Company opened at the Alvin Theatre, that must have raised more than a few eyebrows. Even listening to this re-released cast recording (in slimmer packaging—who doesn’t prefer those sexy little cardboard sleeves?) which opens with an insistent and rather dirty electric guitar, it is hard to imagine how aficionados of musicals must have felt. And the show goes on from there—there’s sex with multiple partners, the smoking of marijuana, a (gasp!) couple in the midst of divorce, and even weirder, a man who is turning thirty and is not yet married nor does he show any signs of getting married. Imagine.
Yes, Company has aged and not exactly well. For one thing, the notions of New York that it has (cocktail parties on the Upper West and a whole chattering class) are as vanished as its principal idea of a man being a feckless bachelor simply by entering his fourth decade unmarried. But what a glimpse into a vanished era, like Network on Broadway. It now reads as a strong, driving, emotionally complicated period piece. The rock music is always there (hard, the above-mentioned opening; or soft, in songs like “Someone is Waiting” or “Poor Baby”) which, when mixed with more standard B-way fare (“Getting Married Today”, “The Ladies Who Lunch”) and songs that entertain both genres while defying them both somehow (“Another Hundred People” or “Being Alive”) is positively electric. And while it is not credited with being the show that changed Broadway (now a place of mediocre musicals fashioned out of bad films or tours through the catalogues of pop music icons with thin storylines weaved within) it certainly must have been one of the quieter shots-heard-round-the-world.
Sometimes the Old is New
Last night I received a really fun box in the mail, a whole stack of Sony Broadway musical re-issues. Records I knew and loved as a kid—soundtracks to Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Company, A Chorus Line, Bye Bye Birdie—in slick space-saving cardboard packaging. I suspect I’ll be writing about them after listening—a thrilling, long-overdue stroll down memory lane. But just seeing the covers (they’ve been retained, which is nice, back from when covers on records actually meant something) caused me to look back in the proverbial Prousitan rush over a lot of portions of my own life. I could practically taste the opening pages of Company (I remember spending two whole rehearsals trying to teach actors the first two pages), the song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” from Cabaret, the terrifying Fruma Sarah’s dream sequence in Fiddler, the touching “What I Did for Love” from Chorus Line (the anthem of the dispossessed who toil at something despite overwhelming odds, financial troubles, rejection from the culture and even years of deep-set spoken or unspoken disappointment from one’s family—in other words, my song!) and a lot of other tunes that continue to mean the world.
There will be more on this.
Also in the box was Tiempo Libre, who accompanied James Galway on a previous record and are now back and on their own with their special swinging Bach readings which I tend to love.
A good day.
Best of the Best: Vladimir Horowitz Edition
I had some bad information about Vladimir Horowitz, not being spectacularly familiar with his recordings (I prefer Claudio Arrau, but that’s just between us). One was that he was a heavy-handed player who opted for volume over nuance, which, as I listen to The Essential Vladimir Horowitz I discover the opposite is true. His aching and slow-calm reading of Schumann’s “Träamerei” proves me wrong there, so painfully slow and darkly nuanced. I also thought he was a relentless snob (photos of him at Studio 54 aside) with little sense of humor. This disproven by his hilarious variations on Carmen and his high-cheek take on “Stars and Stripes Forever,” which actually had me giggling aloud. So, once again, how wrong I was (and once again how easy these compilations make it to just dip into the more brilliant aspects of a single composer or performer and go later to get other recordings to augment one’s new-but-cursory understanding).
I think, though, it was his moody and broad performance of Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre that had me. So plush, so dark, so spirited. I love this piece, now I love it even more.
But then again, maybe it was his charming rendition of Debussy’s “Serenade for the Doll.” Or perhaps his sprawling portrayal of Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude. No, I know, it was his profound “Pathétique.” No, no, it was his crisp and brilliant Scarlatti. His Shumann “Arabeske.” Oh hell, the whole disc is really great, and what did (do?) I know?