Leben und Schicksal

According to Sign and Sight, a new translation of the complete version of Vassily Grossman's masterpiece, Life and Fate, goes on sale in Germany. It's a chance for me to say that this book is well worth reading--its more than 1,000 pages rush by, thanks to Grossman's narrative gifts. It also has some of the most unforgettable scenes and characters I have ever encountered in literature, and the comparison some make between it and War and Peace is completely deserved.

Visualizing Hansel

Lorenzo Mattotti gets it: his beautiful, scary, mystery-laden images inspired by Hansel und Gretel are on view at the Gallery Met, which teamed up with New Yorker cartoonists to mount an exhibit in connection with the Met's new production. Mattoti's images capture the story's sense of foreboding, and the wide-angle perspectives make the viewer feel small, childlike, and vulnerable. The New Yorker web site has an online slide show of the drawings and paintings from the exhibit. Edward Koren's and Jules Feiffer's contributions are also atmospheric and not merely decorative, but Mattotti seems to feel about the story the way I do.

Popularity Contest

According to StatCounter, my most viewed post is the one about Anu Tali. Not sure what that says ...

Reviving Friedemann

The enterprising folks at Naxos have embarked on a complete set of recordings of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach's son Wilhelm Friedemann. The first volume is out, and it's a real treat. It includes 12 feisty and playful polonaises (in contrasting major and minor keys), a beautiful sonata which reminded me a little of Scarlatti, and an A-minor fantasia that oscillates between courtly grace and passionate outburst. Robert Hill captures all the twists and turns of the music on a delightfully untwangy fortepiano, which deftly undercuts any tendency toward sentimentality that might creep in. I greatly look forward to the next volumes in the series.

A Bad Idea Returns

I received the December Opera News over the weekend, and was reminded by the cover image of Philip Langridge, that once again the Met will be camping up Hansel und Gretel by having the witch played by a tenor. I suppose there are those who find this kind of thing wicked and great fun, but it adds a layer of silliness to an opera that is already misunderstood. It's my firm belief that Hansel und Gretel is not at all for children, that it's beyond their capacities to appreciate. Hansel und Gretel indulges, it is true, in any number of superficially sentimental gestures, from the Sandman and the Fourteen Angels to the wood spirits and so on. But the strategy is one of purposeful regression: it is meant to take us back into the world of our childhood, of primal fears and naive beliefs. Without this tug of memory and nostalgia, the shattering, cathartic finale, in which the lost children are returned to life and to their parents, is ineffective. A drag-queen witch only breaks the spell.

However, one compensation will be the magnificent Christine Schafer, just about the finest Lulu I ever heard, as Gretel. And, as mentioned earlier, a chance to sample Vladimir Jurowski.

G & T Is Growing

According to StatCounter, this blog is experiencing a healthy upward trend in visitors. Last month, October, the first full month for which I have statistics, StatCounter recorded 183 unique visitors. For the first two weeks of this month there have already been 134 unique visitors. Returning visitors are up, too. I know that these numbers are not always accurate, but whatever the actual counts, the trend is most likely still there. Thanks to all for visiting my blog!

Orchestral Maneuvers

Greg Sandow makes an important point about the Berlin Philharmonic (and by extension most non-American orchestras): they move when they play: "You can see the violinists putting their entire bodies into many bow strokes. You see them bend forward, then swing their bodies back. The basses were especially dramatic."

That kind of passionate intensity is striking when encountering the Berliners. And something of a trademark. There's a story that during the Karajan years the orchestra was trying to decide on new chairs, and the decision hinged on the comfort of the backs of the chairs. To which one longtime member of the ensemble said, "Since when has a Berlin Philharmonic player needed the back of his chair?"

But what's shocking is the contrast to American orchestras, so often slouched back on their seats, looking bored to the point of somnolence. Sandow thinks this comes from how they're taught: "Classical musicians are taught not to move. I've heard that from my Juilliard students. Their teachers tell them not to move when they play. It's undignified, they're told, it's not artistic."

Sandow believes the Berlin sounds better because it moves. That may be. I don't know. I do know, however, that their energy and passion come through, and American orchestras might want to consider the example.

Off-Topic: Why Jagr is Great

I don't think this photo from Wednesday night's Rangers-Devils game is from the moment I'm thinking of, but at one point during the game, Jagr was all alone in the Devils' zone while his teammates where shifting. He had five guys in red sweaters swarming around him. And he somehow managed to hold onto the puck.

Doing Haydn Right

Over at San Francisco Classical Voice, Michelle Dulak Thomson praises the new attention Haydn's vast oeuvre is getting. I love the way she describes how interpreters are approaching this magnificent music, capturing its playfulness and wit:

"But it’s more than that — it’s the way players are increasingly approaching Haydn today, with a degree of intensity and alertness and specificity quite incompatible with 'letting the music take care of itself.' Often the first thing you’ll notice in such performances, interestingly, is that the players are making much of Haydn’s humor. They will point up the famous outright 'jokes' with glee, they’ll add insinuating or flippant or mock-tragic inflections at whim, they’ll seize on a prominent leap or an unexpected repetition or a quirky rhythm as an occasion for horseplay. I’ve heard sheer high spirits take over an ordinarily sober-minded ensemble to the extent that the players seemed determined to one-up each other in plain clowning around."

It's this kind of high spiritidness that informs Bernstein's famous readings of Haydn symphonies. I'm glad to know so many musicians are finding ways to communicate this quality.

Crazy Eights

In honor of a recent performance of Philip Glass's Eighth Symphony, David Bratman of San Francisco Classical Voice has a lively and surprising round-up of other symphonies with that number. Sure, he includes Beethoven, Schubert, and Bruckner. But how about Kurt Atterberg, Havergal Brian, and Vagn Holmboe?