Super Bowl XLIV: Classical 3, Pop 0

If you had power or were able to get somewhere that did yesterday, you may have noticed that the telecast of Super Bowl XLIV, taken as a whole, argued strongly for the superiority of classical to pop music. In favor of the classics, you had:

1. The Rutgers Symphony Orchestra greatly improving Jay-Z and Rihanna’s “Run This Town,” the background of which is detailed here.  (Hat tip for that article to Molly Sheridan.)
2. Hyundai, having read my Grab Bag from December (maybe), leveraged the classix in two ads for its Sonata mid-size sedan. First, Mozart touts the paint job, and then Wolfie returns Beethoven rolls up to show just how classy in general the Sonata is. (At least I think that’s Mozart returning. I feel like a moron for not being able to name this piece, which I recognize. Such is the way of the world. It’s the first Beethoven piano trio, duh.) While these are not the most transgressive or joyous uses of classical music in the world, the first one in particular at least asserts classical music’s primacy as timeless art. (Okay, so the music in the second just wallpapers the narration, and it’s not even a sonata. One out of two isn’t terrible!)
3. Also I forgot earlier (and am thus adding now in a face-saving edit) the Coke commercial featuring “Bolero.” The commercial is pretty dumb, but “Bolero” comes off well. Thanks to the Twittering of Mike Nelson for this addition and the edit above. Nelson’s Twitter name, “Kickassical,” should win major international competitions for Twitter names.

Meanwhile, the show’s main non-Jay exponents of pop music, the Who, laid a giant turd during the halftime show, with off-pitch singing and bizarre repertoire selection. (One of my Facebook friends noted, “Who opens with Pinball Wizard…”; another opined, “Again, good call with the halftime show, NFL. 60% of viewers just said simultaneously, ‘What’s pinball?’”) On the other hand, they had a cool stage with circles and lighting and effects. (It would be awesome to watch a performance of “The Planets” or something else big and orchestrally colorful on such a stage.)

So on television’s biggest stage, classical music ran up the score on pop (unlike at the Grammys, or on SoundScan). It’s a start. WE CAN BUILD ON THIS!

Edited about an hour after posting as noted above.

Tell Me Why You’re Making Me Listen To This

Anne Midgette has been asking some interesting questions about whether people who subscribe to whole seasons’ worth of classical music concerts should have to listen to music that they don’t like (in most people’s cases, any music without hummable tunes; in my case, Bruckner) as part of the deal, and has gotten a bunch of feisty responses. Apparently, many opera and symphony subscribers simply re-up each year and don’t pay too much attention to what’s on the various programs until they get there and are rewarded for their time and money with a decrepit clangor (at least in their eyes). Me, I tend to opt for the programs that feature music I haven’t heard before, but I’m going to offer a suggestion to appeal to people who don’t anyway:

With regard to subscription symphony concerts, orchestras could do a lot for the acceptance of new music by ensuring that the new music has some sort of connection with the other music on the program and explaining that connection.

If you didn’t know anything about classical music, you’d probably assume that the works on a program would be related somehow, in the same way that art museums curate exhibits composed of works that are related somehow. Of course, an average program’s three non-modern pieces don’t normally have any obvious connection, and when they do, programs composed entirely of works by one composer likely outnumber programs with actual themes. But especially if one piece is an outlier in some way, like if you can’t whistle anything in it, presenters should try to connect it with one or more of the less forbidding pieces on the program. The way things happen now, the modern work becomes an island on which the audience is summarily marooned until it ends; people like to feel like they’ve been brought somewhere, not simply dropped off, and they want to know how they’ll get home again.

A special bonus is that, with a connection spelled out, the exercise of listening becomes a learning experience, and while certainly not everyone is going to enjoy a Pedagogical Night Out, enough people do enjoy just said pedagogy that a significant percentage of the audience will enjoy the active effort of finding the common thread. (Also, people like me would enjoy exploring a program with an actual idea behind it, concept-driven as I am.)

I have read numerous descriptions of the orchestral program planning process, none of which I seem to be able to find on the Internet, and I understand that diverse constraints govern the selection of repertoire for said concerts. Nonetheless, if you are making a special effort to select one work from among the many worthy, unfamiliar modern pieces, you might want to make sure that you can explain to the audience why you are selecting this particular work, and what place it has hanging out with Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and whatever other giants it must conquer in the audience’s affections.

This would be easier if more modern music actually sounded like it has a connection to other music in the world, but that’s a different blog post. (And I can’t speak to what opera fans go through when something with a post-1950 musical vocabulary shows up on the date they were saving in hope of a best-loved classic, but I don’t understand much about being an opera fan anyway.)

Wind Me Up, Antoine: Circa 1800, Saturday, January 23, 2010

Paul Hopkins, showing off his period horn to conclude an instrument demo/lecture before the second half of the wind quintet Circa 1800’s program at the Takoma Part/Silver Spring Performing Arts Center at Montgomery College on Saturday night, said that modern instruments will play any note you want as loud as you want, but they sound “monochromatic” to his ears. He and the other four-fifths of Circa 1800 — Colin St. Martin, flute; Meg Owens, oboe; Richard Spece, clarinet; and Anna Marsh, bassoon — gave the audience the period-instrument color it had been missing, in a program of three works designed to trace the genesis of the wind quintet. The Bach Sinfonia presented the concert, and even though Saturday’s repertoire strayed from the Baroque into the Classical and early Romantic eras, the easy-to-enjoy educational mission and high-quality musicianship made the concert fit right in with the Sinfonia’s ethos.

The demonstrations helped the audience understand how the quintet’s composite sound, so rich with shades and savory with unique tangs and aftertastes, came from the five individual instruments. St. Martin’s flute could produce the weak, floaty sound we associated with the baroque flute, but perked up with the application of a key. Hopkins gave a virtuoso demonstration of how to make the natural horn play all the pitches in a scale by putting his hand in the bell of the horn and manipulating the sound. The other instrumentalists gave valuable background on their instruments; even if their demos were not quite as thorough, the instruments sounded vivid when playing.

Circa 1800 expertly blended its members’ sounds, and each instrumentalist played about as well as you can expect on a period instrument in a live concert. (There’s a reason keys were eventually added to the horn; they allow for more accurate and reliable note production, even if the sound itself takes on an overexposed quality.) The enjoyment factor of the performances thus hinged on the quality of the compositions.

Francesco Antonio Rosetti wrote the very first wind quintet, around 1780, and like a lot of first efforts it doesn’t do more than scratch the surface of the possibilities of the form. True, its slow movement has an entertaining false ending in the wrong key, which Circa 1800 brought off with extreme understatement, and Spece had to do some fancy fast clarinetting in the finale, but otherwise not much in the quartet delivered the goods entertainment-wise. The Rosetti did provide a fine opportunity to dip into C1800’s range of tone colors, though, with Owens’ oboe particularly winsome in the first movement.

Proceeding in chronological order, the quintet next played Giuseppe Maria Gioacchino Cambini’s 1802 effort in D minor. This opus opened a few new compositional doors, with the key’s dark harmonies adding a new lustrous quality to the quintet’s sound. The Larghetto established patterns in which one player would drop out as the others carried on, with the instruments changing each time; the regular changes, mated with the unpredictable coloris, had a hypnotic effect. The finale featured some lively rhythms and challenging parts, which Circa 1800 navigated stylishly.

But Antoine Joseph Reicha provided the evening’s main event with his Quintet in E-Flat Major, Op 88 No. 2, written sometime between 1811 and 1820. (The program notes, which at Bach Sinfonia concerts are normally lively and informative without being pedantic, were a little thin on Saturday.) This quintet, part of a set of five that I plan to purchase sometime soon in recorded format for further enjoyment, provided a stiff test for Circa 1800’s virtuosity, and they had the chops to meet it. Marsh’s bassoon gave a stentorian tone to the theme that opened the first movement, but the air of seriousness soon dispersed in some fun variations. Owens got to lead the charge in a catchy, toe-tapping Menuetto that balanced adventuresome development with a well-sprung dance rhythm.

We really got to hear Reicha’s mastery in the last two movements, though. The opening section of the epic “Poco andante” featured no flute at all, rich and impressive, but in the next section St. Martin’s flute had the melody with Hopkins playing soft hunting calls in accompaniment — an ear-tickling juxtaposition, with explorations almost as appealing to follow. The closing rondo had unexpected twists nearly worthy of Reicha’s buddies Beethoven and Haydn, and the zest with which Circa 1800 met the challenge  (and the Reicha in general) elevated the concert from merely pleasant to invigorating. The new sensations from old tone-colors are all well and good, but they shine best when a composer knows how to use that palette.

Semper Hi Fidelity: The Marine Chamber Ensembles, Sunday, January 17, 2010

Tired of paying top dollar for chamber music concerts that sound promising on paper but come across as undifferentiated slabs of same-y colors and dusty repertoire? Send in the Marines! The Marine Chamber Ensembles, which performed in the John Philip Sousa Band Hall on Sunday afternoon, draws their members from the “President’s Own” United States Marine Band, which you may remember as the ensemble that actually played live at President Obama’s inauguration. (Take that, Yo-Yo Ma!) They displayed a similarly intrepid spirit in programming Sunday’s concert, featuring three works by living composers, two intriguing arrangements, and one Romantic rarity, all for the low, low price of zero dollars.

Several of these works held particular appeal for me, which is the main reason why I was so eager to brave the clammy rain and chilly temps to get into the Sousa Band Hall on Sunday. For example, most of Richard Strauss’ music impresses me more than it moves me. The sheer sumptuousness of the orchestration deadens my emotional response, and as far as I’m concerned, almost all of his tone poems are half again as long as they need to be in order to get his point across.

Enter Franz Hasenöhrl’s arrangement of Strauss’ “Till Eulenspiegel’s lustige Strieche” (“Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks”), which shortens the work, reduces it to chamber proportions — clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, double bass — and retitles it “Till Eulenspiegel…einmal anders!” (“another way!” I am not sure the exclamation point is necessary!). On Sunday, Staff Sgt. Douglas Quinzl nailed the famous horn solo that opens the work and played admirably throughout in extremely exposed conditions. Gunnery Sgt. Eric Sabo got a huge fat tone from his double bass, crucial to Hasenöhrl’s conception, in which most of the lavishness of the original orchestration devolves onto the big boy of the string section. This version ain’t gonna displace Strauss’ original in the canon, but it was fun to hear, even if (in the final analysis) I must admit to missing some of the death scene that Hasenöhrl omitted.

Jennifer Higdon’s “Steeley Pause” gave the flutes of Gunnery Sgt. Elisabeth Plunk, Master Gunnery Sgt. Betsy Hill, and Staff Sgts. Heather Zenobia and Kara Santos a hell of a workout, with their cool tones whirling about like dervishes and piling up in close harmonies. It is to the credit of all four flautists that their various tones were precisely rendered, as the audiences would have experienced excruciating aural pain had they not been; instead, “Pause” felt literally like a blast of fresh air, not surprising from the mind of flautist Higdon. The piece also worked as an engaging palate-cleanser between the two bigger, more Romantic works preceding and following; it was a canny decision by bassoonist Master Gunnery Sgt. Roger Kantner, who coordinated the programming.

It may seem odd to have just called something by Peter Schickele “Romantic” — yes, he is that dude who dresses up as Bach’s fictional long-lost son; no, not everything he writes has humorous intent — and yet the autumnal tone and big, passionate melodies of the first movement of his quartet for violin, cello, clarinet and piano certainly put one in mind of Brahms. Gunnery Sgt. AnnaMaria Mottola maintained a lovely, bell-like tone in numerous extended passages at the top of her piano, creating a lullabyish sound as the other instruments murmured warmly. The second movement (marked “Fast, driving”) recalled the American populist sound of Copland, and Mottola in particular shone again, with her more percussive instrument pointing the rhythms. Master Sgt. John Norton’s clarinet got to shine in the “Slow, elegiac” third movement, which had an appropriately aching quality and lots of lovely melodies, before a blistering finale in which Schickele (and violinist Master Gunnery Sgt. Peter Wilson) balanced hoedown influences with his own invention to delightful effect.

The quartet was my favorite discovery of the afternoon, an immediately likable work written after I was born; unfortunately, not a lot of groups can deploy this combo of instruments, but you can buy a recording here.

Two missteps followed intermission. Camille Saint-Saëns’ late wind sonatas fit right in with the French tradition of urbane, charming, deceptively emotive music for winds, and his bassoon sonata is no exception, but Kantner in his role as bassoonist struggled audibly to navigate its high notes and runs. Master Sgt. Audrey Kupples next presented three transcriptions of Romantic pieces for her alto saxophone, with Master Sgt. Karen Grimsey accompanying on harp; the tonal combo delighted the ear, but unfortunately Kenny G has spoiled sax transcriptions of vocal works (for my ears, anyway), and playing Schumann’s “Traumerei” as a legato melody robbed it of some of its heartbreaking suspended quality.

In many of its concerts, the Marine Band sends ‘em out clapping with “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” On Sunday, the chamber ensembles did the next best thing, putting together a brass quintet to play Eric Ewazen’s “Colchester Fantasy.” Enterprisingly, Ewazen named each of the four movements after a favorite pub in Colchester, England, and his writing recalled both the antique heritage of said pubs and the modern-day fun that can still be had in them. The quintet filled the hall with Ewazen’s bright invention, especially in the first movement, “The Rose and the Crown,” where the musicians rambunctiously tossed motives and chords around, and the finale, “The Red Lion,” a high-powered, high-spirited fugue.

Although they never stop performing publicly for long, January is a particularly excellent month to go see the Marines play music; this Sunday and the next one feature the Marine Band and the Marine Chamber Orchestra, both playing similarly intriguing repertoire and varied instrumentation, both concerts just as free (and recommendable) as last Sunday’s. It’s good to know that we can rely on our men and women in uniform to triumph in exotic musical realms where civilian ensembles fear to tread.

I apologize for this review being so late, but at least it’s been late enough that I’m sure this is a DMV Classical exclusive. Yeah, baby!

Solid-Gold Carmen Hits: The National Philharmonic at Strathmore, Saturday, January 9, 2010

Mezzo Kendall Gladen single-handedly elevated the National Philharmonic’s concert performance of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” at the Music Center at Strathmore on Saturday night from pleasant to compelling by playing the title character with her entire body. She commanded the stage physically, standing almost as tall as both her suitors, Daniel Snyder as the officer Don José and Dean Elzinga as the toreador Escamillo, and moving with force, confidence, and purpose at every moment. Not to put too fine a point on it, Gladen is pretty hot as well, and she embodied opera’s most celebrated seductress with flashing eyes, swiveling hips, languorous lounging, and a couple moments when her dress seemed about to malfunction in an attention-grabbing manner.

Happily, Gladen can really sing the part too, with a voice that rises to a clear top, falls to a thrillingly husky low register, and moves lithely in between. Occasionally, she dropped a note or lagged behind the orchestra in a diva moment, but she made lovely noises the whole time, and any temporary slip of control contributed to the overall conception of her character, as deep as it was.

For this was, as noted, a concert performance, and furthermore one that featured only the biggest “Carmen” hits, with Strathmore’s president and CEO Eliot Pfanstiehl providing narration to connect the story’s dots. (The intro text he read referred to presenting only the “best of the best” and described recitatives as making an opera “last until the wee hours of the morning,” which seemed overstatements of the case.) The selections highlighted only the broadest motivations of the characters: Carmen the sexpot, Don José the wavering weakling, Micaëla the innocent peasant, etc., allowing for little subtlety in characterization. It also had the effect of getting the audience in and out in a little under two-and-a-half hours, which I must admit has some appeal for me, even on a Saturday night. (I am getting older, and lamer, every day.)

The stage direction of Chia Patiño helped make the Carmen All-Stars (the Habanera, the Seguidilla, the Flower Song, et al.) as big and compelling as they could possibly be. Patiño, whose other work I have really enjoyed (1, 2), did a whole lot with just some generic costumes (Gladen in flattering dresses, Don Jose in formalwear when with his regiment, etc.), a strip of stage at the front, and some risers onto which the characters could climb (or lounge, in Carmen’s case). Though Gladen, appropriately, had the most arresting moves on Saturday (particularly in the Gypsy Song, where she was shaking it like a Polaroid picture), Snyder wandered around and turned about to emphasize Don José’s indecision, Theresa Santiago moved slowly to make Micaëla’s pleas more plaintive, and Elzinga stood ramrod-straight to make him an object around which the endlessly flittering Carmen could orbit. The interlude in which Carmen sang for Don José was (again, not to put too fine a point on it) damn sexy, making it a shock when the Don heeds the call to return to his precious regiment, with Gladen pouring on some remarkably vivid scorn. (The lack of supertitles did not in any way prevent Gladen from being in constant communication with the audience.)

No one else quite matched the vividness of Gladen’s singing on Saturday either. Still, Snyder has a fine voice and spun out his lines with style, while Santiago ably embodied her character with her pure soprano; both shone brightest in their Act I duet, “Parle-moi de ma mère,” their last renewal of tenderness before the Carmen explosion. Elzinga sounded a little strained at times but belted out “Toreador” with panache, and baritone James Shaffran did solid work took a couple minor characters.

The Nat Phil’s music director Piotr Gajewski kept it all running smoothly, shaping these well-known tunes with few surprises but with affectionate sensitivity. He got a typical pretty-good performance from his orchestra, with occasional lapses in ensemble balanced with moments of eloquence, particularly among the winds. The Nat Phil Chorale was weaker, frequently drowned out by the orchestra and singing without much body or precision when it wasn’t.

Still, one has to be grateful to the National Philharmonic for giving us Gladen; she’s done Carmen a bunch of other places, but not D.C. until Saturday night (as best I can tell). If someone wants to put Gladen in a full-scale production ’round these parts, I’d sure go see it, particularly if Patiño directed. I’d even sit through all those pesky recitatives!

TROY AIKMAN WRITES (PART OF) A CLASSICAL CONCERT REVIEW

“Joe, you just gotta love the adjustments these guys made at halftime, to really pull back on the percussion when they realized it’s just not going to work in this hall, this hall is too live for them to play the percussion like that. Those percussionists have a lot of heart and they want to contribute to the team, and they went out there and played more soft so the balance of the team could be better. And Joe, you just gotta love how those guys want to play as a team and really work to make this performance successful. Joe.”

MY BEEF WITH THE NATIONAL PHILHARMONIC’S NAME

I need to get this out there. I am from Silver Spring, which is in Montgomery County. I am proud of this. The National Philharmonic is a local-level orchestra located in Montgomery County, but rather than take a name reflecting that fact (like the Annapolis Symphony, or the Arlington Symphony, or the Prince George’s Philharmonic), they have for some reason chosen a name reflecting an ambition that is beyond their grasp. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a fine local orchestra, as the Nat Phil is, and even less wrong with being from Montgomery County. Call it the Montgomery Symphony and rep where you’re from.

O.P.P.: Joe Banno for the Post. Mr. Banno knows a lot more about opera than I do.

Grab Bag #1

A bunch of stuff with something or other to do with classical music: a Korean car, an Atlanta rapper, a blockbuster movie, a couple text messages. The “#1″ reflects my earnest hope to do this a few more times.

• I rode home from Detroit on December 20 in the backseat of a Hyundai Sonata, a car whose name has always puzzled me, since in its form one can detect no exposition, development, or recapitulation. Recommending it as a car name is that the word “sonata” sounds foreign in a nonthreatening way, unlike the word “Hyundai,” for better or worse. (Note: I drive a 2007 Elantra and really like it.) Also, to the extent that consumers associate classical music with the automobile in question, the associations are likely to be positive, connoting smoothness and luxury, unlike the potential associations for the “Hyundai Webern’s 5 Pieces for Orchestra.” Nonetheless, it was a spacious backseat in which to ride, and certainly classical fans who are in the market for a midsize family sedan could do worse.

• Here is a song called “Classical,” by ATL rapper Gucci Mane, that will show you what people who know very little about classical music think classical music sounds like. You only need to listen to the first 30 seconds or so to get the idea:

As a fan of both classical music and hip-hop, I am a little embarrassed.

• James Horner wrote the score for James Cameron’s supermegablockbuster “Avatar,” which I saw on Sunday. As expected from this composer, he has pastiched together a bunch of musical elements that have little to do with each other and neglected the opportunity to do anything in terms of establishing a structure. During the parts exploring the life of the native inhabitants of the moon Pandora, he lays on the “world music” percussion and singing so thickly and indiscriminately that it threatened (for me) to snuff out the life of the film. (At one point, he even has a chorus singing “Eywa,” the name of the deity that is spoken approximately 50 million other times during the film. I get it, Hornyboy.)

Horner does make one curious decision, which is to pay homage to Rachmaninov’s First Symphony by stealing its four-note opening motive, orchestrating it identically, and playing it at various grim martial moments during the film. (Chatter on the Internets indicates that this is a Horner signature; I am unwilling to systematically listen to Horner scores to verify.) After leaving the theater, I expounded on this to my moviegoing companion, who asked whether Rachmaninov’s work was in fact also inspired by nine-foot-tall blue aliens, because then the re-use would totally make sense here. Since no such inspiration has been documented, one is left to wonder whether Horner thought almost no one would notice (as has been the case in the past) or was trying to express an esoteric but profound connection between Rach 1 and the subject matter in question. I’m guessing Door #1.

• If you want to get a feel for the possibly fabricated yet totally hilarious adventures of America’s youthful dipsomaniacs, libertines, and narcotics abusers, texts from last night is your go-to resource. Given the vast scope of the site, classical music is touched on occasionally, or at least twice. This one:

Only you could turn Mozart into a stripper song

made me wonder: What Mozart “song” specifically was being employed in this unexpected yet appealing manner? One has to balance the impulse to select music that seems suited for such an endeavor (“La ci darem la mano,” anyone?) with the fact that the most common example of Mozart’s music close at hand for most people is probably “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” which who knows how you use that. (Readers: Which Mozart piece do you think was being used? Suggest in the comments below!)

This other one, which I will not quote here for reasons of taste, inspires less speculation, with one exception: Were the implications of this text followed to their logical end, the blind auditions for string-player positions in symphonies would be totally different.

Go-Go Handel! (Who Did You Call?) Go-Go Handel! (What’s His Name?)

When I am not listening to classical music, often I am instead listening to go-go, the dance music native to, and unique to, the DMV. (I will allow Wikipedia to introduce the music to the curious.) “Okay,” you are thinking, “but your blog is called DMV Classical, so why should your readers care about go-go?” Well, the large institutions of classical music seem all aflutter about what to do to increase audience engagement, and I would venture that no audience excels the go-go audience in its engagement with its chosen music.

Despite near-zero levels of corporate investment, and despite advertising so marginal that even the best listings of go-go concerts are in part compilations of flyers posted hither and yon in the DMV, go-go bands pack houses seven nights a week. Though commercial recordings of go-go have never taken off, bootlegs of live shows (aka PA tapes, even when in CD or .zip form) circulate like beneficial viruses. Partisans eagerly debate go-go issues on the Internet and around town. (Just a week ago, on the Red Line, I heard two young women discussing which of their two high schools had the realest go-go concerts.)

Even nonparticipating residents of the DMV are never far from the go-go swing: Driving, biking, or walking around the city (especially south of Florida Ave./U Street and east of 16th), you will hear go-go music coming out of car stereos, cranked-up headphones, apartment windows, and even (further east and south) at backyard barbeques during the summertime, wafting into the breeze. Palaces of culture like the Kennedy Center, I am guessing, desperately seek such ubiquity in the minds of their target audience.

In addition, since go-go has survived without the commercial recording industry, it is exceptionally well-positioned to survive the precipitous decline of the commercial recording industry (which has, of course, affected classical music more than most genres).

Why go-go? In part, because go-go is amazing music. (If you think I’m wrong, please click on this link. How else can Richard Strauss sound so funky?) But classical music is amazing too (each in its own way, people). So we look further, and we quickly find a clue: The go-go concert experience, the rock of go-go’s continued vitality and viability, encourages and demands — indeed, could not survive without — the enthusiastic participation of the audience. This contrasts strongly with classical concerts, in which the audience often seems to be superfluous to the music-making.

Admittedly, often one will read quotes from classical musicians indicating that the crowd response shapes their performances. Here’s one from Hilary Hahn that I’m including just because I knew where to find it, not because it mentions Twitter and I’m courting Internet memes:

The problem [with tweeting during performances] is that acoustic performers rely on the audience’s attention and focus and can tell when the audience isn’t mentally present. Your listening is part of our interpretive process. If you’re not really listening, we’re not getting the feedback of energy from the hall, and then we might as well be practicing for a bunch of people peering in the window. It’s just not as interesting when the cycle of interpretation is broken.

I believe her, but how the hell can I, as an audience member, tell how the quality and intensity of our attention shapes Hahn’s interpretation? If I stare at her really hard and wish for it, will she use just a little more portamento? Contrast that with, say, a Chuck Brown concert, in which he always takes the time to sing the following, over a beat, to the audience:

Thank you so much for coming out tonight
Tell you nothin’ but the truth, you’re lookin’ outta sight
Show the world what you got, this is your spot
Do it how you wanna because we love you a lot

I’ve been to Hilary Hahn concerts, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t love me a lot! And such love is shown to go-go audiences because it must be given in return — if the audience does not participate in the call-and-response, the whole show sounds totally stupid, like a one-sided dialogue. In fact, engaging in popular calls-and-responses (like “Hold up!” “WAIT A MINUTE!”) is a surefire way to goose a lackluster show, because the audience knows and loves these chants and expects to participate in them.

But there’s more! If being loved and chanting does not meet your need for audience interaction, you can pass to the stage a slip of paper with the names of people in the audience who are celebrating a birthday. The talker will read these names and wish them a happy birthday. You can also make requests through said slips of paper. If you are a frequent attendee at a certain group’s shows, the talker will likely single you out for recognition during a percussion break (“14th Street Crew!”). Here’s a video in which a crankin’ go-go band stops the concert to warn someone that his Impala is illegally parked and will be towed. This is a kind of concern for the customer that classical performers rarely, if ever, show.

You are probably saying to yourself: “But Andrew, no classical concert could ever bring the audience into the music-making experience the way go-go does, with everyone knowing the words and hitting their cues!” And every December, classical music proves you wrong, because this is the one time of year that audiences get to help perform the most popular choral masterpiece known to English-speaking humans: the Messiah.

At the Kennedy Center’s annual Messiah sing-along, for example, people begin forming lines hours before the event, eager to pile into the Concert Hall and join a couple thousand others in singing their hearts out. Past participants have told me of people being turned away at the door. If it’s not the single most popular thing the Kennedy Center does all year, it’s certainly a strong candidate.

Hmmm.

•

Posting is about to get super-sparse for a couple weeks, so I’m going to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy holiday season, including those of you who are already celebrating your specific holiday and those of you who (like me) are mainly celebrating the extra paid holidays coming up. Your attention is my gift (really! I mean it!). Thanks for reading.

Oh, That We Were There…For This Entire Month: The Folger Consort, December 12, 2009

Michael Praetorius composed in Lutheran Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries, way before the modern notion of the “holiday” season and its ideal of cozy, reflexive happiness. His music celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ thus has a tone unfamiliar to us: awestruck, ruminative, severe, filled with wonder. His setting of the words “Mein Herzenskindlein, mein liebstes Freundlein” (“My heart’s child, my dearest little friend”), a vernacular (for Praetorius) refrain for the “Puer natus” text, echoes with emotional abandon and desperation for salvation; his “Magnificat” sounds thrilled and a little scared at the majesty of God and His gift to Mary. Even Praetorius’ famous arrangements and compositions, like “In dulci jublio” or “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” (“Lo, e’er a rose is blooming”), arrest modern listeners in part because their sublimated emotional world is so alien to our modern holiday-season Weltanschauung.

This year’s Folger Consort Christmas program, which I attended Saturday night, focuses on Praetorius’ music, and these concerts, well-planned and admirably performed, would make an excellent tonic for anyone sick of the constant drip of treacle that permeates our Decembers.

The consort teams up with the Cantate Chamber Singers and their music director Gisele Becker for this program, and their general approach (as evidenced in other Cantate concerts (1, 2) I’ve heard) suits Praetorius to a T: Rather than reaching out to the audience to overwhelm them with projected sound and emotion, they concentrate on precision and clarity, trusting that such virtues will draw the audience in. In the close quarters of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Elizabethan Theatre, this works great; the harmonies of “Es ist ein Ros” flickered like a candle’s flame, but the complex double-choir writing in “Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ” (“Praised be you, Jesus Christ”) achieved a natural grandeur.

The artistic directors of the Consort, Robert Eisenstein and Christopher Kendall, had to make some decisions about how to integrate instruments into the production; some of Praetorius’ hymn settings call for instruments in addition to voices, and some can be played on instruments in lieu of voices. Here instruments were used to vary textures as much as possible, ensuring that harmonies that can sound bare to modern ears did not become monotonous.

Eisenstein played viol, violin, and recorder during the concert, and several of the other musicians switched instruments frequently as well. Perhaps most impressive among these was Tom Zajac, whose rounded trombone tone gave a special lift to Praetorius’ extravagant setting of “Wachet auf” (“Wake, awake”), which opened the program. In this showcase, Eisenstein and David Douglass played the Italian-inspired violin lines, zooming up and down and around the chorus’ harmonies. The Cantate folks relished Praetorius’ word painting, making a bustle for “Sie wachet und steht eilend auf” (“She wakes and quickly gets up”) and a proclamation from “mächtig” (“mighty”), while ensuring that the underlying hymn tune shone through all the activity.

Wisely, instrumental works by contemporaries were used to give the audience a chance to breathe between Praetorius’ intense compositions. Zajac gave a cool, stylish solo on the Baroque flute in selections from Johann Hermann Schein’s “Banchetto Musicale,” and Samuel Scheidt’s “Canzon super Intradam Aechiopicam” got peppy recorder playing from Zajac, Stillman, and Eisenstein. Though there were some occasional ensemble snafus and moments of insecurity among the other players on Saturday night, generally the assembled players gave an appealing, subtle spring to their rhythms, and it’s always a treat to hear so many different period instruments in a room small enough that you can appreciate their unique sonorities.

The program’s summit came at its close, with five settings of “In dulci jublio.” In the first, Zajac and Daniel Stillman, who was playing some sort of reed instrument not listed in the program, played a duet that seemed magically suspended in midair, with the tang of Stillman’s instrument balanced against Zajac’s trombone and the two instruments’ lines weaving around each other in mutual support. The succeeding choral settings were arranged in order of increasing complexity, moving quickly beyond the harmonization most familiar in modern times to ever more ear-catching elaborations. (I would have lapped up about five more settings…)

Yet the encore, J.S. Bach’s chorale on the “Wachet auf” hymn tune whose Praetorius setting opened the concert, sounded shockingly modern by contrast in its harmonic warmth, even though Bach was only writing 100 years or so after Praetorius. It only emphasized how distant Praetorius’ music is to us, and how fascinating (and refreshing) a committed exploration of something far away can be.

More performances Wednesday through Sunday! See the Folger website for times.

LUTHERAN PEOPLE LIKE LUTHERAN MUSIC

I was raised Lutheran, and a lot of this concert was like hearing my childhood in a 2-hour program. For example, before the concert I was bothering my seatmate by singing the Lutheran Book of Worship version of “Wachet auf,” which for some reason is not the translation used in the Folger program, probably because it is in no way a literal translation with which you could follow the German text. So I may be a little biased.

Among other interesting tidbits, the excellent program notes provided the information that Michael Praetorius was a son of a Michael and for his entire life thus signed himself M.P.C., for Michael Praetorius of Creuzberg. If he were a rapper, MPC would be his MC name, and he would record a song called “Creuzberg State of Mind,” perhaps with Alicia Keys on the hook. I just like thinking about these things.

Sizzling: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore, December 10, 2009

You might be excused for being a little skeptical about the potential artistic and entertainment value of “Too Hot to Handel,” which brings the indelible melodies of “The Messiah” into the realm of black vernacular music, when you see advertisements like this:

A grabby image, but also emblematic of many of these ventures: A patina of soul sitting uneasily atop an essentially unchanged base of classical, the latter sounding all the more dusty for the contrast. But “Too Hot to Handel,” conceived by the mind of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop and born of arrangers Bob Christianson and Gary Anderson, gets into the bones of “The Messiah.” In line with current scholarship, Christianson and Anderson found plenty of room for solo showoffs, imaginative harmonic recasting, and on-the-spot inspiration. The resulting work sits in the sweet spot of sacred inspiration where Baroque and gospel intersect, with tinges of jazz, blues, and funk on the side.

On Thursday night, Alsop brought the Baltimore Symphony together with the Baltimore City College High School Choir and with pop musicians skilled enough to find that sweet spot as well, and they tore the roof off the Music Center at Strathmore. To every valley should this performance be exalted.

How did Christianson and Anderson marry these styles so convincingly? A hint came in the opening Sinfonia, when the original instrumentation dropped out after the opening flourishes — drummer Clint de Ganon began spanking out a hard backbeat over which the BSO’s brass section unfurled the fugue in swaggering fashion. Though the counterpoint remained pointed, the music focused more on rhythm and how melody played within and against it. The other clear sign came next, in “Comfort ye my people,” where tenor/Broadway veteran Lawrence Clayton sang in true gospel fashion, with freedom to embellish and extend at his whim: The arias in “Too Hot to Handel” belong to the soloists, as they would have in Handel’s day, where vocal superstars drew crowds and operas and oratorios served to some extent as canvases upon which they could make their improvisational mark.

If you make the recitatives and arias into star vehicles, it helps to have stars who can drive them hard, and Clayton certainly did; he gave a rousing swing to “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted,” and, in “Surely he hath borne our griefs,” turned “Surely” from a throwaway assurance into a mantra with his increasingly fevered repetitions. Yet he was joined by equally fine ladies of song. Mezzo-soprano Vaneese Thomas (daughter of Rufus Thomas!) gave me goosebumps with her throaty low note, daringly extended and whipped into a passion, at the end of  the phrase “Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts.” Cynthia Renée Saffron took her goosebump-giving turn with her ecstasy over the words “Wonderful, Counselor” in “For unto us a child is born,” and her turn on a bebop-style arrangement of “Rejoice greatly” had a rhythmic sharpness and command that made the already-swinging melody feel almost dangerously exuberant.

The only weaker numbers smoothed out edges in the original; making “O Thou that tellest good tidings to Zion” into a midtempo ballad removed the preinstalled Handelian swing for no obvious reason, and “But who may abide,” in a similar reconfiguration, lacked a scouring edge, though Thomas made it fairly convincing anyway. Mezzo Kimberly Michaels, who made her BSO debut Thursday after impressing at an open audition, had a little trouble opening up the melodic line at the beginning of “He shall feed his flock,” but that only made it all the more satisfying when she really got cooking at the end.

In the regular “Messiah,” Handel’s counterpoint makes his choruses lift off; in Christianson and Anderson’s hands, an equivalent lift comes from gospel rhythms, which sound perfectly natural when allied to these Biblical texts, and especially when sung by the Baltimore City College High School Choir. They made a warm, clear sound that reached to the rafters in “Glory to God,” but they also could sound incisive and tough; they made you hear the meaning behind the words “an offering of righteousness” in “And he shall purify,” and “He trusted in God that He would deliver Him” had all the sternness it needed.

Emboldened by the addition of a jazz quartet, Christianson and Anderson added some material to show it off; pianist Clifford Carter got to noodle out an evocative solo before “There were shepherds abiding in the field,” establishing the miraculous mood, and Christianson himself laid down some rich, moody solos on his Hammond B3 organ when not playing a traditional continuo role with alert bassist Mike Pope. Alsop ensured that everyone else sounded equally spontaneous while keeping things together and moving; the vocalists showed awareness of how many bars they had to work with, but Alsop encouraged them to keep going when they found something good. (The only complaint about how it all fit together is that the strings were so low in the mix as to be intermittently inaudible, a problem worsened by Strathmore’s super-live acoustics.)

And because Christianson and Anderson simply skipped Part 3, as everyone who has ever sat through the complete Messiah in the concert hall has thought about doing at some point, we ended with the almost universally agreed-upon climax, your favorite and mine, ladies and gentlemen: the Hallelujah Chorus. With the City College high schoolers singing out and swinging hard, the soloists moved to even more impressive feats of melisma than before, and the jazz combo cooking alongside the Baltimoreans under Alsop’s baton, it no longer mattered where this music came from: It was, as Trendy Sunglasses Handel would doubtless tell us, where it’s at.

YES, THERE IS MARGINALIA

Cynthia Renée Saffron is good-looking.

Best name from the Balmer City College high schoolers: Imhotep McClain.

Quickie: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Strathmore, December 10, 2009

We all have heard mixes of genres that start with the best of intentions and end with horribly awkward music. I have heard several dozen of them, as I used to be Jazz Times’ go-to reviewer for anything mixing jazz with classical, and trust me: I know all the ways it can go wrong. So it is my pleasure to report that rarely does a piece take classical materials and slide them into the black vernacular (gospel, jazz, blues, and a hint o’ funk) as adeptly as “Too Hot to Handel,” the “Messiah” transfiguration Marin Alsop, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and a whole lot of pop-music ringers performed at Strathmore on Thursday. Those forces will perform again at the Meyerhoff (yes, in Baltimore) on Friday, December 11 (at 8 pm) and Saturday, December 12 (selections, at 11 am). If you love the “Messiah” but can’t bear the thought of hearing it again this year in straight-up fashion, or if you love both classical and gospel, you should go and see “Too Hot to Handel.” As someone who fits both of those categories, I guarantee* you will not be disappointed.

Fuller review tomorrow as per usual with performances with repeats. Sleep to rest up for a full workday (not writing about classical music) right now.

*Guarantee has no monetary value, but I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.