OK, so The New Yorker didn’t print my letter complaining about the omission of Harbison’s opera from the list of stage and film adapatations of The Great Gatsby that appeared in a recent Rebecca Mead article. (Read my original post here.) But they did print a letter mentioning another omission: Mead failed to note that comedian Andy Garcia Kaufman (thanks for the correction, Carl!) used to read from the book as part of his stage act in the early 1970s. Andy Kaufman, or one of the the best operas to premiere in my lifetime, which do you think is more deserving of mention?
Month: October 2010
Rasputin found alive outside Paris
I just learned that Rasputin, an opera by my U Penn colleague Jay Reise, will receive its French premiere this December 4 and 5. According to the press release, the piece wil be done at the Opéra de Massy, just outside Paris. The production will be that of the Helikon Opera which staged the work in Moscow in 2008-2009. It’s a striking production, involving giant Fabergé eggs as part of the set - see image at left. The director will be Dmitry Bertman and Konstantine Chudovsky will conduct. Nikolai Galin will sing the title role.
The piece was commissioned by Beverly Sills for the New York City Opera a number of years ago. I attended the original production and remember it as a powerful piece. This is the third time the work is being done, which is two more times than a lot of operas, and speaks well for the piece’s viability.
I’m not sure if the following story if true or not, but my understanding is that Jay chose the topic partly at the suggestion of George Crumb, who pointed out that since lots of opera singers keep singing after they appear to have been killed, Rasputin, who, according to legend survived multiple attempts on his life, would be the perfect character for an opera.
Dr. of MusiQology on Jason Moran
Mit Kraft
From the Reading Journal #3 (napkin edition)
“Do you remember our voyage to Rio? Your cold on the boat? My fear of catching it? The rehearsals which gave you so much trouble with the English tenor who trembled with fear and gave himself confidence by beating time with his score? Our lunches and dinners at the Copacabana? The evening at the G’s (the garden with the huge palm trees. It’s now the Argentine embassy at Rio)? The variegated chorus-singers? The heat? The pineapples? The seafood at night? Your way at table of putting your napkin on your head, like a turban, when the orchestra was playing (and what an orchestra!)? The scent of the East in the air? Your way of saying to me ‘She has a bad character…’?”
- from a letter from Victoria Ocampo to Igor Stravinsky, quoted in volume 2 of Stephen Walsh’s biography of the composer, entitled Stravinsky: The Second Exile: France and America, 1934-1971. Read Thomas Merton’s correspondence with Victoria Ocampo in this volume.
Gunther interview
Head right over to Do the Math for a massive interview with Gunther Schuller - in two parts, plus supplementary documentation.
Friday night playlist, 20th/21st century piano music edition
I am currently teaching a composition seminar on piano music, and have been or soon will be spending time with these discs:
Multiplicities: ’38 - Blair McMillen, with Sachiko Kato. Corigliano (his Chiaroscuro for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart); Joan Tower, Frederic Rzewski, Charles Wuorinen, John Harbison, William Bolcom. An attractive program; important composers, but pieces that are not so well known.
Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus - Pierre-Laurent Aimard. It won’t make me forget Peter Serkin, but this is one amazing recording.
Tristan Murail: Complete Piano Music - Marilyn Nonken. A retrospective of this (post-)spectralist composer, encompassing music from 1967 to 2003.
David Rakowski: Etudes, Vol. 1, 2, 3 - Amy Briggs. Endless compositional inventiveness; passionate, grooving pianism.
Morton Feldman: Triadic Memories - Marilyn Nonken. Get the DVD version, with footage of Marilyn discussing the piece, and a performance (audio only) uninterrupted by the need to change discs.
John Adams: Road Movies - includes pianists Nicholas Hodges and Rolf Hind playing the solo and duo pieces, plus John Novacek and violinist Leila Josefowicz in the title piece.
Powerhouse Pianists - Blair McMillen plays Biscardi, Hyla, Moe, and Gosfield; Stephen Gosling plays Tsontakis, Townsend, Nancarrow, Tower, Rakowski, and Zupko.
Roger Sessions: Sonatas # 1 and 3; Ralph Shapey: Mutations, Mutations II, 21 Variations - David Holzman. Dauntless advocate for big modernist masterpieces (Wolpe’s Battle Piece; Martino’s Fantasies and Impromptus, Pianississimo) Holzman is back for more with the Sessions Third Sonata, and Shapey’s 21 Variations, plus smaller works.
Boulez: Third Sonata; Wuorinen: Second Sonata - Jeffrey Swann. One of my favorite Wuorinen pieces - scintillating piano writing, intriguing formal scheme. Quite a bit more interesting than that other, more famous piece on the disc.
New Waltzes for Piano - Eric Moe. Dammit, it isn’t fair that Eric should be such a fine composer, and such a fine pianist. Here he revisits pieces that were written for a C.F. Peters anthology of waltzes from a few decades ago, with some recent pieces added as well. Music by Biggs, Peterson, Helps, Imbrie, Moe, Karchin, Wuorinen, Tower, Euba, Caltabiano, Krauze, Sessions, Gordon, Kohn, Glass, Hyla, Babbitt, Zahab, Harrison, Rosenblum, Thomson, and Cornicello.
William Duckworth: The Time Curve Preludes - Neely Bruce. Minimalist miniatures - post-minimalism, really. Two recordings are available; Neely Bruce gets a hard sound that sometimes sounds more like a plucked instrument than a piano; Bruce Brubaker plays more “beautifully”, but I prefer the crisp directness of Neely’s reading.
In older repertoire: Murray Perahia’s Bartok recordings are available on one CD; Nonesuch has reissued Paul Jacob’s Debussy recordings, including the Etudes, Images, and maybe the Preludes (is this the same as this?); my favorite Concord Sonata is Gilbert Kalish’s, again a Nonesuch reissue.
(This marks a new personal best in number of links in a single post.)
