Domingo: The Marvel

I first saw Placido Domingo at the Met on March 26, 1977--I actually didn't remember the date but used the Met's indispensable online Archives feature to look it up--in Andrea Chenier. I can't say he sang the role with the headlong abandon of some other interpreters, but his sound, with his distinctive baritonal timbre, exemplary legato and hall-embracing power was unforgettable. When I saw his Cyrano a few seasons back I marveled at how well preserved his instrument was and thought that this would no doubt be the last time I heard him live.

And now here it is, 2007, 30 years after I first saw him, and he's still singing, and I'm still getting a chance to hear him. I attended last night's Iphigenie en Tauride, and his voice, if not as supple, is still something of a wonder; he can still bring it when he needs to, he hasn't developed a beat or a wobble, and his musicianship is as strong as ever. So now I am not going to say this is the last time I'll get to hear him live--he will no doubt still be singing in five, ten, fifteen years!

Thank You, ANA Blog

The blog of the Analog Arts Ensemble posted a link to my Stockhausen post, so I want to thank them for their acknowledgment, and welcome any readers who have come from that web site.

Not Since George Szell's Cleveland Orchestra

So says the San Francisco Classical Voice critic of what sounds like an exciting concert by the San Francisco Symphony. Michael Tilson Thomas programmed the rarely heard Lelio by Berlioz, a work that calls for enormous forces, three male singers, even an actor-narrator (here dropped). It was originally written as a kind of sequel to the Symphonie Fantastique. If that isn't enough to make me wish I had been there, there's this:

"The San Francisco Symphony is in wonderful shape these days, but what was so extraordinary was the level of unanimity of phrasing and dynamics. Everyone sounded in perfect sync with all their colleagues. The only other time I have heard an orchestra with that form of cohesion was from George Szell’s Cleveland Orchestra in its heyday."

High praise indeed. The concert also included the Fantastique, which was recorded for eventual broadcast and/or DVD release. Unfortunately, it does not sound as though Lelio was similarly memorialized--a great loss, if true.

Le Pays in Tours

Alberic Magnard's close friend and devoted champion, Joseph-Guy Ropartz, wrote one opera, Le Pays. It's a grim tale of fishermen, one I am curious to hear. According to ResMusica, the Opera de Tours will be performing it next month; there is also, apparently, a recording on the Timpani label.

A Look at Mikrophonie

Musicareaction, mourning the death of a "giant," has posted a video made up of scenes from a rehearsal of Stockhausen's piece Mikrophonie, in which a tam-tam is subjected to various objects while a microphone captures the sounds produced. The video gives a sense of the preparation and precision needed to pull such a work off: the percussionists look like a team of surgeons operating on the tam-tam.

The Hole in Thursday Nights

Hardly a Thursday evening goes by without some part of me itching to tune into George Jelinek's long-running and now defunct radio show "The Vocal Scene." But a good replacement is Andy Karzas's "From the Recording Horn," which airs--and streams--on Chicago's WFMT Saturdays at 4 (central time; 5 in the east). I wish they made it available as a podcast!

Get Your Tickets Now

The Lincoln Center Festival will present Bernd Alois Zimmermann's searing masterpiece, Die Soldaten, at the Park Avenue Armory in July, according to the Times. I think this venue might serve the work better than NYCO's claustrophobic production of several seasons ago; this production, premiered at the RuhrTriennale, was performed originally in the Jahrhunderthalle, a converted gas power plant for the Bochum steel works.

Stockhausen Has Died

I am tremendously saddened to learn of the death of one of the 20th century's greatest composers, Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Stockhausen had an alchemist's ability to transform the base metals of total serialism into music of purest gold; in his hands the pedagogical rigors of the twelve-tone system melted into playfulness and joy.

He was the first living composer whose music bowled me over, for its sheer daring, its mixture of the monumental and the intimate, its sheer aural splendor. It is easy to make fun of his earnestness, his oddball mysticism, his late-in-life musical megalomania. But one should never forget that this was a man traumatized as a child by the Nazis, who euthanized his mentally ill mother. The fact that he could write music of such world-embracing scope is something of a miracle.

About ten years ago or so I was listening to a recording of his marvelous dual-piano work Mantra, about as good an example of his aesthetic as any, and following along with a score I borrowed from the New York Public Library. I noticed some mistakes in the score--not as hard as it seems to detect, given the way the piece is plotted. So I wrote to Stockhausen to let him know. And to my surprise and delight received a response handwritten by him, thanking me for the letter, acknowledging the mistake (the score is full of mistakes, he wrote), suggesting other recordings of the work, and finishing with his famous signature -- Stockhausen.

May his music live long.

Does It Come in a Violin Model?

Gibson invents a guitar that tunes itself. If they had had this technology for the violin when I was a kid, I'm sure I would have practiced more. (Or at all.) (Via ArtsJournal/Music)

A. S. Byatt, the Novel, and the Brain

A. S. Byatt's essay in the TLS on the modern novel's fascination with the body is stimulating--and too short, alas. I hope she considers writing on the same subject at greater length. Essentially she follows Richard Sennett in saying that our habit of forming our sense of personal identity through our sexuality, and hence our bodies, has led to both alienation and narcissism.

Byatt looks toward current neurological research as an antidote to our obsessions, at least where the novel is concerned:

"A novel is made of language, and arouses both feelings and thoughts in its readers, as it should depict both feelings and thoughts in its people and its microcosm. [French neuroscientist Jean-Pierre] Changeux’s descriptions of the cells of the brain and the way they combine and recombine give me a sense of understanding the excitement, the drive, the pleasure, I get out of making worlds with words. We have had a lot of the body as desire, and listened to many professors of desire. There is something else – the human capacity to think, and to make feelings into thoughts. It is a way out of narcissism."

This linking of our new understanding of how our brains work with how we experience art is very much at the core of Jonah Lehrer's rich and beautifully written new book, Proust Was A Neuroscientist, which I reviewed for the Los Angeles Times back in October. Lehrer sees in the work of several artists--among them Proust, Gertrude Stein, Whitman, Stravinsky--anticipations of the model of the brain that is emerging from laboratories and research centers.

Lehrer and Byatt are both on to something: how writers and other artists can be the medium of an understanding of ourselves that science winds up catching up with; and how science can help bring about a new understanding of ourselves, one that can liberate us from treacherous or demoralizing worldviews, and that can open up new possibilities for artists. I am sure we'll be reading more essays and books like Byatt's and Lehrer's.