Carnegie Hall: Daniil Trifonov and Kremerata Baltica Perform Chopin

As part of the Concertos Plus series I subscribe to every season at Carnegie Hall, pianist Daniil Trifonov joined with the Kremerata Baltica on Wednesday evening to perform an all-Chopin program in arrangements by several different composers.

The program opened with the Variations on "Là ci darem la mano" from Mozart's Don Giovanni, Op. 2 (1824) as arranged for piano and chamber orchestra by Andrei Pushkarev.  The work is best known for having elicited from Schumann the famous remark "Hats off, gentlemen! A genius!", but it was his future wife Clara, a virtuoso pianist, who made the most interesting comment on the piece:

"Chopin's Variations Op. 2, which I learned in eight days, is the hardest piece I have ever seen or played till now. This original, brilliant composition is still so little known that almost every pianist and teacher considers it incomprehensible and impossible to play."

Though this was Chopin's first orchestral work, he later preferred to perform the piece without accompaniment.  He showed good sense in so doing.  The orchestra's role is perfunctory and often seems more an encumbrance than anything else.  The best passages are those where the piano plays unaccompanied.

The next work was the Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 8 (1828-1829) in whose performance the pianist was joined by violinist Gidon Kremer and cellist Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė.  This early work is something of an anomaly in the composer's oeuvre that seems far removed from the Romantic miniatures for solo piano that would characterize his later work and win him fame.  At the time the trio was completed Chopin was still a student in Warsaw, a pupil of the composer Józef Elsner, and the work was at least partly in the nature of an assignment.  Its structure and tone are Classical rather than Romantic and hearken back to Beethoven (as well as Hummel).  Some critics have even heard in the adagio sostenuto the influence of Beethoven's Sonata No. 5 in C minor.  Nevertheless, the tone of the work, particularly in the slow movement, is unabashedly Romantic, an indication that even at this early point in his career Chopin was fully able to imbue his music with the force of his personality.  The great problem with the piece is Chopin's lack of experience in composing for strings.  Even though he had assistance in writing those parts, there is never any of the interplay among the strings and piano that one finds in the work of more experienced chamber music composers.   Nevertheless, the work was well received at its premiere.  In his usual hyperbolic style, Schumann wrote of it: "Is it not as noble as one could possibly imagine? Dreamier than any poet has ever sung?"

After intermisson, the musicians returned to perform the Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17, No. 4 (1832-1833) as arranged for chamber orchestra by Victor Kissine.  In contrast to the waltzes or nocturnes, the mazurkas, like the composer himself, were native to Poland and emblematic of its culture.  That the four such pieces comprising the Op. 17 were composed shortly after Chopin arrived in Paris is indicative of the homesickness he felt for his homeland.  Certainly this particular mazurka was filled with a sense of nostalgia and a pervasive mood of melancholy.  It seemed a shame to hear it performed in an orchestral version, however, when so competent a pianist as Mr. Trifonov was available to perform the piece in its original form.

The program concluded with the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11 (1830) as arranged for chamber orchestra by Yevgeny Sharlat.  With the two piano concerti (the E minor was actually the second composed but the first to be published) one comes to the major problem in Chopin's career as a composer.  While a brilliant pianist and unsurpassed in writing miniatures for solo piano, Chopin was unable to effectively compose for orchestra or for any instrument, including voice, other than his own.  His genius lay rather in creating moods within very brief piano pieces, too brief in fact to allow for any development of musical ideas.  Unlike such great pianists as Mozart and Beethoven, Chopin never attempted a symphony or for that matter any orchestral works other than his two concerti.  As one listens to the Op. 11 it what immediately becomes evident is the awkwardness of the orchestration.  One has the strong sense throughout the work that Chopin would have been glad to have dispensed with the orchestra altogether and to have the piano play alone.  Chopin was here complying with a tradition that held it was de rigueur for pianist composers to write their own concerti - earlier this season I heard Trifonov perform his own 2014 concerto with the Mariinsky Orchestra - but he acceded to custom without success.  As for the arrangement by Yevgeny Sharlat, I didn't think it added anything noteworthy to the original score and am not really sure why it was even attempted.

Daniil Trifonov certainly has an impressive technique - and Chopin was the perfect composer with which to showcase his talents - but I do not yet consider him a great pianist.  Still, this was a highly entertaining performance that drew a blissful response from the audience.  And the musicianship was undeniably on a very high level; Mr. Trifonov was ably supported by Mr. Kremer and the excellent Kremerata Baltica throughout the evening.  I do think a bit more diversity in the program, however, would have been most helpful.  Chopin's early works, no matter how much promise they may show, are hardly masterpieces deserving the attention they received here.  And, with the exception of the piano trio, these aren't even Chopin's original works but rather arrangements by other composers.

Juilliard Chamber Music: Beethoven, Arensky, Mozart and Smetana

On Sunday afternoon I went to Juilliard's Morse Hall to hear one of the four recitals given that day.  I hadn't known the program in advance and was happily surprised to find so many interesting works were to be performed.

The recital began with Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30, No.2 (1801-1802).   The violinist was Christine Wu and the pianist Rixiang Huang; their coaches were Julian Martin and Joel Smirnoff.  I had only just heard this same sonata performed a week before at another Juilliard recital and have already posted my thoughts on the music.  As I listened a second time I was once again impressed with the restless energy of the piano part.  It seemed at times in the opening movement that Beethoven could barely hold himself in check as the piano drove relentlessly forward.

The next work was Anton Arensky's Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 32 (1894).  It was performed by Wei Zhu, violin, Jonathan Lien, cello, and Yilun Xu, piano; they were coached by Lara Lev and Jerome Lowenthal.  The Arensky chamber work that's most often performed is the String Quartet No. 2, Op. 35, made famous by the Tchaikovsky variations in the second movement; but the present trio reveals Arensky as a talented composer whose other chamber pieces also deserve a hearing.  Like the quartet, the trio is steeped in Russian Romanticism, an influence made all the more apparent by the elegiac character of both pieces.  While the quartet was a memorial to Tchaikovsky, the trio was dedicated to the memory of Karl Davydov, a friend of both Arensky and Tchaikovsky and a noted cello virtuoso, a fact that may account for the prominence given the cello part throughout the work.  Despite its  elegiac character, however, this is not by any means a dark work.  It contains several beautiful melodies - one haunting theme given the piano in the third movement seems almost a nursery tune - and the scherzo returns to its original meaning of a lighthearted joke with playful outbursts that contrast strongly with the slow movement that follows.

After a brief intermission, the recital resumed with a performance of Mozart's Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat major, K. 452 (1784).  The musicians were Lucian Avalon, oboe, Ning Zhang, clarinet, Soo Yeon Lee, bassoon, Lee Cyphers, horn, and Jun Hwi Cho, piano; the coaches were William Short and Matti Raekallio.  The work is famous on two counts - first for having been the inspiration for Beethoven's Op. 16 that used the same key and instrumentation and secondly for having been, in the composer's own words to his father, "the best thing I have so far written in my life."  One has to take this description with a grain of salt.  After all, no matter how highly he regarded the work, Mozart never again wrote for this combination of instruments.  While the quintet is certainly pleasant to hear and very competently written, it is really a divertimento, even if of the highest quality.  If anything, it is even a bit off balance in the heavy weight given the piano part.  This is understandable, however, as Mozart himself played the piano part at a public concert only two days after the piece had been completed.

The program closed with Bedřich Smetana's String Quartet No. 1 in E minor (1876) titled "From My Life."  The work was performed by In Ae Lee and Yutsuki Beppu, violins, Erin Pitts, viola, and Ayoun Alexandra Kim, cello; the four were coached by Natasha Brofsky and Joseph Lin.  This was actually the most intriguing piece performed on Sunday afternoon.  Smetana's works, with the exception of the Die Moldau section from Má vlast, are rarely performed today even though his operas were held in high regard by such conductors as his fellow Bohemian Mahler.  (Like Mahler, Smetana had had a troubled career as a conductor during which he was persecuted unmercifully.)  Certainly Smetana's Piano Trio in G minor, written after the death of his eldest daughter Bedriska, is one of the most moving works in the chamber repertoire.  The present quartet, composed some twenty years later, is no less personal.  By the time he came to write it Smetana was suffering from the approach of total deafness, the worst affliction that can befall a composer, but in spite of this he managed to somehow continue composing.  The quartet reflects these tribulations in a thoroughly Romantic manner that is deliberately autobiographical to the extent that Smetana described the work as a "tone picture of my life."  The most moving section is the finale.  Smetana wrote: "The long, insistent note in the finale...is the fateful ringing in my ears of the high-pitched tones which, in 1874, announced the beginning of my deafness."

Japan Society: Hasegawa Tōhaku

I went on Friday for the second time to the Japan Society on East 47th Street to see the current exhibit of works, most of them magnificent pairs of folding screens, by Hasegawa Tōhaku, an artist of the Momoyama period.  The exhibit of Japanese art, entitled A Giant Leap: The Transformation of Hasegawa Tōhaku, was only one of several I've viewed in past weeks but was certainly among the most rewarding.

One of the most fascninating aspects of Hasegawa's life was the mystery surrounding his true identity.  Although he was the period's most significant painter following the death of his chief rival Kanō Eitoku, very little was known of his early life.  It was only in 1964 that art historian Tsugiyoshi Doi, then director of the Kyoto National Museum, speculated that Hasegawa might in fact be the same individual as Hasegawa Nobuharu, a much less renowned painter of the same era who specialized in Buddhist iconography.  There were many objections to this hypothesis, however, as there were strong stylistic differences between the two artists.  Most telling was the fact that while Tōhaku was a master at painting on gilded surfaces, an extremely difficult process, there were no known examples by Nobuharu that involved a similar use of this technique.  The "missing link," at least according to documentation provided at the exhibit, is the screen Flowers and Birds of Spring and Summer (ca. 1580) that was only definitively attributed to Nobuharu in 2009.  This dazzling work is the centerpiece of the current exhibit and the basis for its title.

The Momoyama period was one of the most tumultuous in Japanese history as various warlords vied for control of the country; it only ended in 1600 with the decisive Battle of Sekigahara that saw the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate and the beginning of the Edo period.  None of this turmoil, however, is evident in the works of Hasegawa.  His works instead are almost entirely devoted to scenes of nature.  Indeed, his forte may be his highly stylized treatment of trees.  This is readily apparent in the first work one encounters upon entering the exhibit, Pine Grove (c. 1595).  Like the majority of works on view, Pine Grove consists of a pair of six-panel folding screens that when placed end to end extend over twenty feet in length.  The large monochromatic screens take up the entire length of a gallery and are absolutely mesmerizing.  The subject itself couldn't be simpler - a stand of pine trees partially enshrouded in fog.  So artfully has the screen been painted that as one sits and contemplates the ghostly scene it seems to the viewer that trees previously hidden by the mist gradually make themselves apparent.  It's an astonishing illusion.  One of the Society's guides explained to me that the work had been completed shortly after the death of the artist's son.  One can sense the intense emotion behind this tranquil scene as one's eyes strain to penetrate the fog and see the hidden world beyond it.

Another monochromatic work depicts Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers.  The work clearly shows Chinese influences, most especially in the stylization of the mountains at the extreme left of the screen.  As in other works, large portions of the scene have not been painted in but rather left blank to suggest to the viewer a mist covered landscape.  This technique that can be traced back at least as far as Ma Yuan's "one-corner school" of painting in the Southern Song dyansty and is a distinguishing characteristic of Asian painting; it presents a contrast to Western styles in which every inch of the canvas is meticulously painted over in detail.

Herons on Willow, Crows on Pine is yet another example of Hasegawa's monochromatic technique.  At the far left of one set of screens a pair of white herons perch gracefully on willow branches while on the far right of the accompanying set of screens a pair of black crows are shown on the branches of the pine.  The contrast between the birds' coloring and character creates an exceptionally balanced composition.

Also in monochrome are the set of folding screens comprising Cranes and Bamboo.  As soon as I saw this work I recognized the crane on the left hand panel.  It's an almost exact duplicate of the left hand panel of the Kuan Yin triptych by the Chinese artist Mu'chi (Mokkei), one of the finest painters of the Southern Song dynasty.  The documentation accompanying the exhibit suggests that Hasegawa had access to Mu'chi's painting; that certainly seems likely considering the similarity in iconography.  I've always had the highest regard for the Kuan Yin triptych ever since having seen a reproduction many years ago in D.T. Suzuki's Zen and Japanese Culture and it was deeply moving to see that it had also served as a source of inspiration for so great an artist as Hasegawa.

In another gallery were the screens comprising Willows in Four Seasons, a subtly colored study of the trees viewed from summer on the right to winter on the left.  This is an extremley understated work and yet I could not help but feel I was seeing a panorama of the seasons spread out before me.

The pieces I most enjoyed viewing at the exhibit were the brightly colored screens of Willow Bridge wherein a golden bridge surrounded by willows and with a water wheel at one end extends over the Uji River in Kyoto.  This was a favorite subject of Momoyama artists.  Here the twisting trunks of the willows, almost black against the bright gold background, become design elements that snake through the composition and offset the regularly curved diagonal formed by the bridge itself.  The bridge was a famous scenic spot in Kyoto as early as the eighth century when it was first described in the poetry of the Man'yōshū ("Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves"), and its depiction here irresistably brings to mind the world of Genji monogatari during the Heian period.

The exhibit is being shown in two rotations.  The first ended on April 8th while the second continues through May 6, 2018.  Some of the works described above were shown in the first rotation and have since been returned to Japan where they are considered National Treasures.

Juilliard Chamber Music: Dvořák

One of the final performances in this season's Wednesdays at One series at Alice Tully Hall was the occasion for the world premieres of two chamber works that had recently won prestigious awards.  The first was Str1ng Quart3t in More than 2 parts.by Joshua A. Getman that was the winner of the 2016 Gena Raps String Quartet Prize; it was performed by the Argus Quartet consisting of Clara Kim and Jason Issokson, violins, Dana Kelley, viola, and Joann Whang, cello.  The second work was Variations Between the Creases for Piano Quartet by Theo Chandler that was the winner of the 2017 Gena Raps Piano Chamber Music Prize; it was performed by an ensemble consisting of Amelia Dietrich, violin, Lauren Siess, viola, Shangwen Jeff Liao, cello, and Rachel Breen, piano.  Both works were very accomplished; the piano quartet in particular was well structured and contained a wealth of musical ideas. 

The third and final work was the Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor, Op. 90 (1891), nicknamed the "Dumky" for the Slavic musical form that appears throughout the work.  It was performed by the Noree Piano Trio consisting of Lukas Stepp, violin, Yi Qun Xu, cello, and Jeong Yoon Lee, piano.  If in the No. 3 Dvořák had appeared to vacillate between the Bohemian music that had inspired his earliest efforts and the Classical Romanticism of Brahms, he had by the time the No. 4 came to be composed some eight years later managed to reconcile the two.  In the No. 4, Dvořák can be seen returning to his roots with this unapologetic celebration of the dumka and by extension the entire Slavic folk tradition.  The dumka itself is characterized by wild swings between despair and exuberance, and Dvořák made full use of its bipolar nature in all six movements of the trio.  As the composer phrased it:

"It will be both happy and sad. In some places it will be like a melancholic song, elsewhere like a merry dance; but, all told, the style will be lighter or, if I might put it another way, more popular, in short, so that it will appeal to both higher and lower echelons."

And Dvořák certainly did succeed in creating here one of his most popular works.  Its general character is lighthearted and it seems as if a weight had been lifted from the composer's shoulders as he prepared to embark on his journey to New York.  More importantly, in this final piano trio he reaffirmed his belief in the value of folk sources, an interest he would pursue further in the music he wrote in America.

Mannes Orchestra Performs Wagner, Hindemith and Stravinsky

On Monday evening I went to Alice Tully Hall to hear the Mannes Orchestra, under the baton of its Music director David Hayes perform one of the most ambitious programs I've encountered this season.  Two of the works performed, the first and the last, can rightfully be said to have been turning points in the history of Western music.

The concert opened with the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (1857-1859).  After having just heard last week Act II of the opera performed in concert at Carnegie Hall, I now had an opportunity to hear the Prelude that opens Act I complete with its famous "Tristan chord" as well as the Act III Liebestod the concludes the opera.

The next work was the piece I had really come to hear, the Konzertmusik for Wind Orchestra, Op. 41 (1926) by Paul Hindemith.  When one thinks of German music in the 1920's the works that first come to mind are those of Schoenberg and other members of the Second Viennese School. And in 1924, in fact, Schoenberg had completed his own Wind Quintet, Op. 26 that was among the first works to utilize the twelve-tone system.  The problem, however, at least as far as Hindemith was concerned, was that such works had nothing to do with popular German culture but were almost exclusively the province of musicologists.  Hindemith's great interest, in contrast, was in Gebrauchsmusik, that is, music that was accessible to the general public and could easily be performed by amateurs.  He saw his great opportunity to further the cause of such music in the 1926 Donaueschingen Festival on whose committee he served; he accordingly issued invitations to composers to submit works of this type for performance while at the same time writing for it his own Op. 41.  In the event, the Festival failed in its aims when none of the amateur wind musicians who had been invited decided to take part.  It was probably just as well since the pieces that had been written for them, including Hindemth's own, ironically proved too advanced for the skills of amateurs.  The various composers' efforts were not entirely in vain, however, for when they emigrated to the US in the 1930's while fleeing the Nazis, they found American wind orchestras that were much more receptive to their compositions than had been the amateur ensembles in Germany for which these pieces had originally been written.

After intermission the musicians returned onstage to perform Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps (1913).   So fixed a place in the repertoire has this monumental work now attained that it's difficult to believe it could once have been as controversial as its history suggests.  Everyone knows the story of the infamous premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées that ended in a riot, though there were those who claimed at the time that this was a response to Nijinsky's choreography rather than Stravinsky's music.  (Years ago I saw a recreation of the original production staged by the Joffrey Ballet and thought it magnificent.)  What can't be denied, however, is that this was one of the earliest triumphs of modernism no matter that it had its roots firmly in the Russian folk tradition.  Even now, despite its familiarity, there is something deeply unsettling in the savage rhythms that burst out of nowhere and challenge the sensibilities of the audience.  There are very few other works in the repertoire so gripping as this.

Juilliard Chamber Music: Schubert and Beethoven

On Sunday afternoon I went to Juilliard's Morse Hall to hear the first half of a chamber music recital featuring works by Schubert and Beethoven.

The recital opened with Schubert's Fantasie in F minor for Piano Four Hands, D. 940 (1828) performed by Chenchun Ma and Max YiLong Ma.  I've always thought Schubert the greatest composer for the piano, even more so than Beethoven, and this fantasie, along with the late sonatas one of his last works for the instrument, contains some of his most inspired writing.  There is something incredibly poignant in Schubert's final year of life.  He was fully conscious of his gifts, enough to recognize in himself the true successor to Beethoven, and yet he could only look back on a life filled with poverty and disappointment made all the more bitter by the hideous disease that was slowly killing him.  One wonders then at his state of mind when he dedicated the fantasie to his pupil Karoline Esterházy with whom he no doubt intended one day to perform the piece.  (In the event, Schubert eventually premiered the work with fellow composer Franz Lachner.)  It's after all well known that Schubert was infatuated with the youngest daughter of the aristocratic Esterházy family.  According to one source, Karoline once asked him why he did not dedicate one of his compositions to her. "What would be the use?" he said. "All that I do is dedicated to you."  If F minor is truly the key of hopeless love, it was never more so than here.  Not only was Schubert too poor and of too common birth to ever aspire to the hand of an aristocrat, but his terrible disease, whose name even today one hesitates to speak in polite society, put out of reach even the lowest born woman and effectively condemned him to die alone.  Fantasies are wonderful things if there is some hope, however remote, to keep them afloat, but for Schubert there wasn't even that.  The dedication is not so much wistful as ironic, a bitter acknowledgment by the composer that all that remained for him now was death.

The second work was Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30, No. 2 (1801-1802) performed by Julia Glenn, violin, and Angie Zhang, piano.  This is one of those pivotal works - like the B-flat major String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 6 - in which the composer can be seen readying himself for the move from his early Classical style to the Romanticism of his middle period.  Written at roughly the same time as  the famous Heiligenstadt Testament, the sonata clearly reflects the torments of a soul who through the impending loss of his hearing stands to lose everything that held any meaning for him.  As such, the work is filled with drama and is at times almost giddy in its violent mood swings.  This can be heard immediately in the opening movement whose tightly coiled first theme expresses both defiance and despair that in the second movement, marked adagio cantabile, turns into a prayer.  The brisk third movement scherzo seems to belong to another work altogether as if Beethoven had been so distracted by his emotions that he momentarily lost sight of what he was about.  Then in the final movement he recollects himself and returns with a vengeance to the dramatic passion of the first movement.  Throughout the sonata the piano is given as full a part as the violin and propels the music forward with restless energy.  Beethoven is here not only moving in a new direction but developing a new vocabulary with which to give voice to the works that were to come.

Met Opera: Plácido Domingo Sings in Luisa Miller

On Saturday afternoon I wen tto the Met Opera to hear one of Verdi's early operas, Luisa Miller, the 1849 work based on an eighteenth century play Kabale und Liebe ("Intrigue and Love") by Friedrich Schiller.

This was the first time I'd ever seen this opera, but that's not to say it's infrequently performed.  In fact, it's considered one of the most significant of Verdi's early career and according to many musicologists marked the beginning of his middle period when he finally achieved the international fame he so well deserved.  Not that the opera's history was an easy one.  It only came to be written after the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples refused to release Verdi from a contract that had been signed without his consent by his publisher Ricordi.  There followed a series of byzantine intrigues, themselves worthy of an opera, in which the theater threatened to sue the librettist, Salvadore Cammarano, with breach of contract for failure to deliver a finished text.  When Verdi, too honorable to desert his associate, finally capitulated he then found his first choice of subject, L'assedio di Firenze ("The Siege of Florence"), was off limits because it was too politically sensitive for the censors' tastes.  It was only then that the choice fell on Schiller's play that in its turn also required substantive changes in order to avoid the wrath of the censors.  In the end this proved an advantage as it allowed composer and librettist to focus on the love story between  Luisa and Rodolfo to the exclusion of the political elements that had formed the crux of Schiller's play.

As one reads the history of Luisa Miller, one is impressed by the manner in which Verdi sought to accommodate Cammarano.  Certainly, at least as outlined in the Met's program notes, he was far from the imperious composer one usually associates with Italian opera.  The description furnished is worth quoting as it provides a great deal of insight into the working arrangements between composer and librettist:

"Cammarano envisioned an aria for Luisa, a solo quartet, and an aria for Rodolfo, while Verdi wanted a duet for Luisa and Wurm, another for Wurm and Walter, the quartet, an aria for Rodolfo, and 'then something else well suited for the end of an act.' ... After the usual complex negotiations were done, the two men together provided the second act with a chorus; a scena and aria ('Tu puniscimi, o Signore') for Luisa; a recitative, scena, and duet for Walter and Wurm ('L’alto retaggio non ho bramato'); a quartet for Luisa, Federica, Walter, and Wurm ('Presentarti alla Duchessa'); and a scena and aria for Rodolfo ('Quando le sere al placido')."

This season's revival of Luisa Miller - the first in more than ten years - was originally to have been conducted by James Levine.  Following his summary ouster as Music Director Emeritus in December, the thankless task of replacing him was given to Bertrand de Billy, currently chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.  It was in my opinion an unfortunate choice.

In contrast to the conducting, the singing was uniformly excellent.  Soprano Sonya Yoncheva in the title role and tenor Piotr Beczała as Rodolfo displayed real chemistry together.  The latter's Act II aria Quando le sere al placido was one of the performance's high points while Yoncheva's Act III duet with her father La figlia, vedi, pentita was truly touching.  The real star of the afternoon, however was Plácido Domingo in the role of Luisa's father in yet another of his late career performances as a bartione (though he's still listed as a tenor in the program notes).  This true opera superstar had such a commanding presence that he effortlessly stole every scene in which he appeared.

The 2001 production by Elijah Moshinsky was a dingy monochromatic affair.  Why it was found necessary to move the setting from the grandeur of the Tyrolean Alps to the squalor of early Industrial Age England is beyond me.

Carengie Hall: Jonas Kaufmann Sings in Tristan und Isolde, Act II

I've always considered Tristan und Isolde to be Wagner's greatest opera, and on Thursday evening I had an opportunity to hear Act II performed in concert at Carnegie Hall by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of its Music Director Andris Nelsons.

Despite all his talk of "new music," Wagner had always been a Romantic at heart and I firmly believe his affair with Mathilde Wesendonck had far more to do with the creation of the opera's passionate love story than any reading of Schopenhauer.  Even if neither the composer nor the poet acknowledged the liaison openly - both were after all married to someone else at the time - there can't be any doubt that Wagner was infatuated with Mathilde while writing the opera.  Even the most obtuse listener can at once discern that the passages Wagner gives to Tristan are deeply personal and reflect his own emotions.  It is a commonplace that in attempting to give voice to his or her feelings and to impress his muse with the work he has devised in her honor an artist will somehow transcend the limitations of his talent and attain new heights of creativity.  While Schopenhauer's writings may have provided a philosophical grounding for the action of the opera, the intense passions the two lovers feel for one another go far beyond any theoretical expression of human will.

Act II describes the night that Tristan and Isolde spend together while King Marke is away hunting with Melot and his men.  The two lovers' duet becomes a musical expression of their sexual union and is one of the opera's climactic moments.  The treachery of Melot, who leads the king to the guilty pair, is designed to contrast the purity of Tristan's and Isolde's love with the baseness of an individual who allows his desire to corrupt the idealistic regard in which he once held Tristan.  In his treachery he shows none of the remorse Tristan suffers for his betrayal of the king's trust.  But it is really King Marke who is the tragic figure here as he grapples with the pain Tristan has caused him and tries to understand what led his loyal retainer to commit such a crime.

It was inevitable that the opera should be misunderstood by contemporary critics.  Wagner's experiments with dissonance, most famously in the "Tristan chord," opened the way for the music of Mahler and later the Second Viennese School and as such broke with traditional notions of harmony in Western music.  In so doing, the opera only emphasized the differences between Wagner's music and that of Brahms, the Classical Romanticist.  Not suprisingly then the most vociferous critics of the opera turned out to be the staunchest supporters of Brahms, including the critic Eduard Hanslick and the pianist Clara Schumann who described the opera as "the most repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life."  As with most critics, however, it was not only the music but the subject matter of illicit love that the strait-laced Clara found so objectionable.  She continued:

"To be forced to see and hear such crazy lovemaking the whole evening, in which every feeling of decency is violated and by which not only the public but even musicians seem to be enchanted – that is the saddest thing I have ever experienced in my artistic life..."

Clara's moral indignation was echoed in an 1865 review in the influential Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung that read in part:

"We cannot refrain from making a protest against the worship of animal passion which is so striking a feature in the late works of Wagner...  The passion [in Tristan] is unholy in itself and its representation is impure, and for those reasons we rejoice in believing that such works will not become popular... Wagner's music, in spite of all its wondrous skill and power, repels a greater number than it fascinates."

It would be easy to dismiss such comments as no more than mid-nineteenth century prudery, but even as recently as 2012 an article in The Telegraph contended:

"Perhaps that’s a clue [Hans Sach's unwillingness to become another Tristan] to why Tristan and Isolde is both so magnetic and repulsive. We all long for love that defies convention and common sense. Wagner's musical genuis [sic] allows us to indulge in this fantasy – but the lovers are too solipsistic to be sympathetic."

I had no trouble obtaining a ticket to Thursday evening's performance since it was actually part of my Great American Orchestras subscription series, and so I was unprepared for the crowd milling about 57th Street before the performance began while scalpers were everywhere doing a brisk business.  It was only when I saw the program that I realized tenor Jonas Kaufmann would be singing the role of Tristan with soprano Camilla Nylund as Isolde.  Kaufmann, whom I had previously seen several seasons ago in the title role in Massenet's Werther, gave a brilliant performance that revealed the depths of his character's dilemma in struggling to reconcile his love for Isolde with his betrayal of King Marke.  The tenor was in excellent voice even though he paused often between numbers to take long drinks of water.  The two leads were supported by an excellent cast that included Mihoko Fujimura as Brangäne, a woman torn by guilt for having provided Isolde the fateful potion, and Georg Zeppenfeld as King Marke.  The latter was especially impressive in revealing his heartbreak and bewilderment at Tristan's betrayal.  Here was a man who suddenly realized that despite his royal power he was all alone in the world with no friend or wife in whom to place his trust.

The BSO has always been a fine orchestra, but under the leadership of Andris Nelsons it has risen in recent years to even greater heights.  On Thursday evening the musicians did an excellent job not only in supporting the singers but in fully realizing the beauty and passion of Wagner's music.

Juilliard Lab Orchestra Performs Beethoven and Brahms

Earlier this week I attended a performance of the Juilliard Lab Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall, part of the school's Wednesdays at One series.  While these concerts normally last only an hour, this particular one, due to the length of the works performed, continued for some 80 minutes.

The program opened with Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60 (1806).  This is a work that when first heard appears strangely out of place.  If Beethoven's middle period was characterized by his striving in the manner of the Romantic hero to overcome the handicap of his deafness, the turbulence of the No. 3, the Eroica, is much more in accordance with the image of the tortured composer than is the relaxed playfulness of the No. 4.  At least part of the answer may have to do with the work's origin.  Beethoven wrote it as well-paid commission from Count Franz von Oppersdorff with whom the composer was staying after having violently quarreled with his patron Prince Lichnowsky.  The count maintained only a small personal orchestra and this necessarily limited the scope of what Beethoven could hope to achieve.  (The Op. 60 is scored for the smallest orchestra of any Beethoven symphony.)  It may be then that the composer, forced by necessity to write for a classical size ensemble, returned to the forms of his early period but in a not entirely serious manner.  The playfulness Beethoven evinces, most particularly in the final movement, is perhaps an indication that he can no longer approach the models he had learned from Haydn with the same degree of gravity he expressed in his first two symphonies.

The second and final work was Brahms's Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 (1884).  This is not an easy work to appreciate on first listening.  Even when the composer premiered the work in a piano four-hand version for an audience of critics and prominent musicians it was met with a puzzlement so intense that even his staunchest ally Eduard Hanslick famously expostulated  "For the whole movement I had the feeling that I was being given a beating by two incredibly intelligent people!"  How much more frustrated then is the general listener.  At least part of the problem, it must be admitted, lies with the modern audience.  As Brahms scholar Walter Frisch has commented:

"...it [the No. 4] is not a work, like the Second, whose sensuous beauty beckons listeners inside. In his last symphony, Brahms seems to be writing precisely for the kind of cultivated, musically literate listener whose disappearance at the end of the nineteenth century he sorely regretted."

Not that there isn't much for the musician to admire in the No. 4.  It was after all on the basis of the "developing variations" in the first movement that Schoenberg came to see Brahms as a progressive rather than a conservative composer.  Nevertheless, for the non-musician the symphony remains a work whose greatest appeal is to the intellect rather than the emotions.  At this performance its meticulously calculated structure stood in stark contrast to the Beethoven symphony whose music seemed to stream forth effortlessly as it caught the listener in its flow.

There were four diffeent conductors at this concert - Elinor Rufeizen, Jesse Brault, Jane H. Kim and Benjamin Hochman - each of whom conducted a different movement in each of the two symphonies.  All four did an excellent job on the podium and the orchestra itself displayed an impressive level of musicianship throughout the performance.

Juilliard Chamber Music: Mixed Ensembles

I went to Juilliard on Monday evening to hear a program of chamber music simply entitled "Mixed Ensembles" that had been coached by renowned flutist Carol Wincenc.  The program featured works by a number of 20th and 21st century composers, all of them for flute and various combinations of other instruments with a harp featured prominently among them.

The full program was as follows:

• Histoire du Tnago by Astor Piazzolla (second and third movements) for flute and guitar
• Sonate pour flûte and harpe by Jean-Michel Damase 
• Deux Interludes by Jacques Ibert for flute violin and harp
• Sonatine by Maurice Ravel arranged by Carlos Salzedo for flute, cello and harp
• Sextuor Mystique by Heiter Villa-Lobos for celesta, harp, guitar, saxophone, oboe and flute
• City of Lights by Sato Matsui for celesta, harp, guitar, saxophone, oboe and flute
• Trois mouvements perpétuels by Francis Poulenc for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and double bass

All the works were interesting, but the one I thought most deserving of mention was Sato Matsui's City of Lights that was actually given its world premiere at this recital, not an event one normally encounters at a Juilliard student recital.

There was no intermission at this performance; but while the musicians were setting up for Sextuor Mystique Ms. Wincenc, with composer Sato Matsui at her side, took a moment to address the audience.  After first having mentioned that the Villa-Lobos work was a "mascot piece" performed every year, Ms. Wincenc went on to explain that she had asked Ms. Matsui to compose an original work for the same unusual combination of instruments - celesta, harp, guitar, saxophone, oboe and flute.  Ms. Sato then described the inspiration she had found in big cities such as New York that were filled with sights and sounds and that she accordingly had sought to capture a similar "explosion" of light and sound in her own composition.

The roughly ten-minute work was highly enjoyable and, not suprisingly considering the instrumentation with which Ms. Sato had to work, had a truly unique sound with the saxophone at times imparting to it a definite jazz aura.  Even the celesta, hardly ever given a starring role outside Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," was featured prominently and actually given the cadenza to play.

Carnegie Hall: András Schiff - Recital #2

On Thursday evening I went to Carnegie Hall to hear the great pianist András Schiff in recital, the second the pianist gave in New York City in the space of a week.  The eclectic program was built around the works of Brahms but also included so many well known pieces by other composers that the recital became in effect a retrospective of piano works from the Baroque through the Romantic era.

The program opened with Schumann's Theme and Variations in E-flat major, WoO 24 (1854), more commonly known as the Geistervariationen, or "Ghost Variations."  Schumann was, of course, one of the greatest composer of solo piano works, most particularly in the early part of his career when he was courting Clara, herself a virtuoso pianist.  He returned to the genre in the early 1850's; but it is his penultimate attempt, that played here, that has always attracted the most attention since its composition was inextricably linked with the onset of Schumann's psychosis.  Hearing it performed in recital is always an eerie experience.  While the theme is farily generic - in his rapidly deteriorating mental state Schumann thought it had been dictated to him by angels, although it was actually one of his own invention that he had previously employed in his 1842 F major string quartet, Op. 41, No. 2, in his 1849 Liederalbum für die Jugend, Op.79, and finally in his D minor Violin Concerto completed only the year before in 1853 - the variations are notable precisely for their lack of variation.  The first three, in fact, make no modifications whatsoever to the theme.

A curious aside is that Brahms, who only came to know the Schumann's immediately before the onset of Robert's psychosis, years later came to use Robert's theme in his own Variations on a Theme of Schumann in E flat major, Op. 23.  The four-hand piano piece was dedicated to Schumann's daughter Julie, and one wonders what the young woman must have thought upon receiving so macabre a gift.

Appropriately enough, the next work was the first of Brahms's three final pieces for piano - Three Intermezzos, Op. 117 (1892), Klavierstücke, Op. 118 (1893), and Klavierstücke, Op. 119 (1893) - that were interspersed with the works of other composers throughout the length of the program.  All three collections date from the end of Brahms's career.

In the Op. 117 Brahms continued his late exploration of piano miniatures he had previously begun in his Op. 116.  By this time he had more or less retired from composing, or so at least he had insisted in an 1890 message to his publisher.  He found himself unable, however, to refrain entirely from creating new pieces while seated at his piano no matter how brief and ethereal they might be.  The urge to create must simply have been too strong for him to resist.  The Op. 117 consists of only three pieces that have been compared to lullabies, and the first in fact makes reference to the Scottish lullaby "Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament."

The Op. 118, consisting of six miniatures, is another late work and one can hear in it a certain nostalgia and wistfulness; it's as if the composer were pausing to take a look back before attempting to distill within it all that he had learned of music. This is a quiet and reflective work with no virtuoso turns afforded the pianist, and that may be one reason it is not that often performed in recital. The brief pieces are organized according to their own internal logic. After the first intermezzo in A minor, the pieces follow a ternary (ABA) form as well as a set key sequence. The titles are somewhat arbitrary and seem to have been chosen more for their suggestive power than anything else. Brahms was above all a Romantic and this autumnal work is suffused with the spirit of a wanderer who has at last reached the end of his journey.  As such, the Op. 118 is a subdued masterpiece by a great composer at the height of his powers who wishes to offer his audience one last testament before fading into silence.

The Op. 119, made up of three intermezzi (a somewhat generic term when used by Brahms) followed by a rhapsody, was the composer's penultimate work for solo piano. Like those comprising the Op. 118, these short pieces are filled with the melancholy of a man approaching his life's end.  All three collections were published in 1893, only four years before his death at age 65.  But the composer did not here indulge in any nostalgic return to old forms but instead moved forward into an exploration of dissonance.  As he wrote to Clara:

"Every bar and every note must be played as if ritardando were indicated, and one wished to draw the melancholy out of each one of them, and voluptuous joy and comfort out of the discords."

Among the great composers, Mozart was represented at this recital by the Rondo in A Minor, K. 511 (1787).  This short piece, only about ten minutes in length, was one of the finest Mozart ever composed for solo piano.  Like most of his works in a minor key, the rondo is a dark work; but whether it is meant to be tragic or merely pensive (as Vladimir Horowitz once suggested) is open to interpretation.  Certainly, if it is an expression of grief it is handled in a thoroughly restrained, almost stately, manner.

Mr. Schiff is justly famous for his mastery of Bach's keyboard pieces, and the recital would not have been complete without the inclusion of one of the composer's signature pieces - the Prelude and Fugue in B Minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I.  The WTC, whose confusing title has to do with a particular method of tuning keyboards, was written in two parts, the first in 1722 and the second in 1742.  Both were used primarily for pedagogical purposes while at the same time serving as a vehicle intended to showcase the composer's mastery of counterpoint.  In a certain sense, both parts, known as Books I and II, overlapped one another as each presented exercises for all 24 major and minor keys.  In fact, some of the those that appeared in Book I were used again in Book II but transcribed for different keys than in the original.  Chopin later adapted Bach's idea in the composition of his Preludes, Op. 28 which were again written for all the major and minor keys.  While Bach intended the work for the use of his students, and indeed required them to write out all the preludes and fugues in their own hand, each is technically challenging and can only be attempted by an exceptionally skilled pianist.

The recital concluded with with Beethoven's Sonata No. 26 in E-flat major,Op. 81a (1809-1810).  The work's French nickname Les Adieux was given it at the publisher's insistence; but the German Das Lebewohl is what Beethoven himself wrote over the score's first three chords and insisted came closer to the meaning of farewell he had had in mind when writing the piece.  It's not really surprising that the composer, at least at the time, wanted nothing to do with anything French as the piece was begun in May 1809 in anticipation of Napoleon's siege of Vienna.  In fact, the work was dedicated to Archduke Rudolph who was forced to flee with the rest of the Austrian nobility as the French forces approached the city.  It was only on Rudolph's return in January 1810 that the composer completed the final two movements, ending with the joyous Das Wiedersehen ("Reunion").  The sonata thus became one of the few instrumental works by Beethoven to have an extra-musical program attached to it.  Rarely did he display his emotions as openly as he did here.  Along with the earlier Op. 53 and Op. 57, this is considered one of the three major piano sonatas of Beethoven's middle period.

One interesting feature of this recital was that Mr. Schiff performed the entire first half with only the briefest of pauses between pieces. He blended them so seamlessly together that they sounded to the listener like a single magnificent work.  The effect on the audience was mesmerizing.  In the second half, Mr. Schiff again performed the first two works with no substantial pause between them and only stood up for a brief bow before immediately commencing the final work, the Beethoven sonata.

The two recitals taken together constituted a wonderful display of virtuosity.  At the end of the second I felt I had a much greater appreciation of all the works performed but most especially the Brahms miniatures.  Hearing all the late Brahms piano pieces played in sequence allowed me to better follow his creative process.

WQXR/Carnegie Hall: András Schiff - Recital #1

On Tuesday evening, Sir András Schiff gave the first of two recitals in New York City.  I actually attended the second in person on Thursday evening and will soon be posting here my thoughts on that performance.  Thanks to a collaboration between Carnegie Hall and WQXR, this first recital was broadcast live, and between that and Thursday evening's performance I was able to form a better understanding of what the pianist sought to achieve.

At the heart of both recitals were the late piano works of Brahms.  In an interview aired during intermission, Mr. Schiff explained that he had originally planned to perform all these works in a single recital but had felt they were too dark when taken together and needed to be interspersed with pieces of a lighter nature.  Certainly the opening piece, Mendelssohn's Fantasie in F-sharp Minor, Op. 28 (1833), was just such a work.  It's hard to imagine today that Scotland once exerted a strong hold on the nineteenth century imagination, but the novels of Walter Scott and the poetry of Ossian (later determined to have been a hoax perpetrated by the eighteenth century poet James Macpherson) served as inspiration for any number of composers.  In the event, however, Mendelssohn was the only one of them to ever actually visit that country.  A number of works, such as the Scottish Symphony and The Hebrides Overture, resulted from that journey and the Fantasie, originally known as the Sonate écossaise or "Scottish Sonata,"is yet another, not that there's any trace of authentic Scottish folk music in it.  Instead, the work is most often compared to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, the Op. 27, No. 2 in C sharp minor that is subtitled Quasi una fantasia.  Like the Beethoven piece, the Mendelssohn Fantasie represents an ingenious blending of fantasy and sonata elements while serving as a showcase for a pianist's skills.

The next work was Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 24 in F-sharp major, Op. 78 (1809).  This short sonata is not one of the composer's better known piano pieces, but in the hands of a virtuoso such as Mr. Schiff it became a thrilling ten-minute ride for the listener.  It's probably for this reason, rather than any feeling Beethoven might have had for its dedicatee Countess Therese von Brunswick, that the composer always considerd it one of his two favorite piano sonatas.

Mr. Schiff concluded the first half of the recital with the first of the Brahms works, Klavierstücke, Op. 76 (1871-1878) consisting of four capriccios and four intermezzi, forms to which Brahms would return repeatedly in his late piano compositions.  They are pivotal pieces in the Brahms's oeuvre, the first for solo piano he had written since the Sixteen Waltzes, Op. 39 in 1865, and represent a rethinking of the possibilities of his chosen instrument.  Here he can be seen moving away from the concert hall and closer to the drawing room, and the eight short pieces are no longer designed to overwhelm the listener but instead to appeal to the emotions in far more intimate manner.  Personally, I find these works that linger in the memory and convey a touch of melancholy far preferable to the composer's earlier piano pieces.

After intermission, Mr. Schiff returned to the stage to perform the second Brahms work, the Seven Fantasies, Op. 116 (1892).  The work consists of four capriccios and three intermezzi of varying moods but generally of a somber autumnal character as befits the work of a composer nearing the end of both his career and his life.  At this point Brahms has left behind the grandiosity that often marked, and sometimes marred, his earlier piano works, particularly those performed with orchestra.  Nothing could be further from the massive two piano concertos than these simple miniatures that are all the more affecting for their brevity.  Here the Romanticism that had always inspired Brahms takes the form of a lingering backward glance filled with a profound sense of resignation.

The program concluded with Bach's English Suites No. 6 in D Minor (c. 1715-1720).  The English Suites, like the French Overture and Partitas, are collections of Baroque dance suites written expressly for keyboard instruments, most particularly the harpsichord, and are therefore of seminal importance to the piano repertoire.  Each of the six suites begins with a Prelude - in the case of the No. 6 it is in two contrasting parts that closely resemble in form a Prelude and Fugue - and ends with a Gigue while there is some flexibility in the intervening dance movements.  In discussing Bach's music, attention is most often paid to his mastery of counterpoint.  To his early biographer Johann Nicolaus Forkel, however, the most salient feature of the dance suites was their attention to rhythm.  He wrote:

"He [Bach] tried and made use of every kind of meter to diversify, as much as possible, the character of his pieces. He eventually acquired such a facility in this particular that he was able to give even to his fugues, with all the interweaving of their single parts, striking and characteristic rhythmic proportions in a manner as easy and uninterrupted from the beginning to the end as if they were minuets."

Over the course of the first two encores Mr. Schiff performed in its entirety Bach's Concerto nach Italienischem Gusto ("Concerto in the Italian taste"), BWV 971 (1735). The Italian Concerto, together with the French Overture, make up the composer's second book of keyboard exercises, Clavier-Übung II. Another feature these works share is that both the Concerto and the Overture were originally intended for the two-manual harpsichord, a rare occurrence in Bach's oeuvre and one that can cause problems in interpretation when played on a modern piano. In publishing the two pieces together Bach was attempting to contrast for his German audience two "foreign" styles of musical composition. Accordingly, while the movements of the French Overture correspond to dances popular in the Baroque era, such as the sarabande and gigue, the three movements of the Italian Concerto use the markings andante and presto that are more familiar to modern audiences. Bach had already spent a great deal of time transcribing for solo keyboard various works by Vivaldi, and this was his own attempt at a concerto grosso in the style of the Italian master but composed for one instrument alone. Bach held Vivaldi in very high esteem, and perhaps for this reason the Italian Concerto is a more successful endeavor than the French Overture.  In the Concerto one hears a playfulness and lightness of touch not often found in Bach's music.

The third and final encore was a Brahms work that according the announcer, had only "recently been discovered."  Although no title was mentioned, it was undoubtedly the Albumblatt, described in a 2012 Guardian article as follows:

"A two-minute piano piece by Brahms that had lain undiscovered since it was written in 1853 is to get its debut on Radio 3 this month. Entitled Albumblatt, meaning 'sheet from an album', the composition was discovered in the library at Princeton by the conductor and musicologist Christopher Hogwood."

Although an extremely youthful work, in strong contrast to the late pieces performed on the printed program, this was nevertheless a charming melody and provided a perfect end to the evening.

The archived performance is currently available for listening on WQXR's website.

Juilliard415 Performs 18th Century English Chamber Music

On Tuesday afternoon, I walked down Central Park West to hear the Juilliard415 perform the last of its four annual noonday recitals at Holy Trinity Church.  The program was entitled 18th Century English Chamber Music, but this was somewhat misleading as several of the freatured composers were not English at all but rather visitors from other parts of Europe who either made England their home or else had some strong association with the British Isles.

The program opened with the Quintet in D major, Op. 33, No 1 (published posthumously in 1785) for flute, oboe, violin, cello, and harpsichord by Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of J.S. Bach.  In many ways, Bach is the most interesting of the composers whose works were featured at this recital.  He lived an adventursome life, first traveling to Italy where much to the consternation of his family he converted to Catholicism and composed a good bit of sacred music before moving on to London, the city that had attracted so many of his fellow German composers.  It was in London that Bach made the acquaintance of the 8 year old Mozart who in adulthood became a great admirer of Bach's music and often praised it.   During his time in London, Bach wrote several Italian operas as well as orchestral and chamber music.  Such compositions were distinguished by Bach's mastery of the galant style whose sparer textures marked a turning point from the complexities of the Baroque era to the emergence of the classical period.  Bach was also ahead of his time in being the first important composer to recognize the potential advantages of the piano over other keyboard instruments then available.  Sadly, in spite of such achievements, Bach died penniless and deeply in debt.

Next were two selections, the Nos. 7 and 11, from Twelve Sonatas for Two Violins (1747) by William Boyce that in addition to the two violins mentioned in the title also employed a cello and harpsichord as basso continuo.  Although known primarily for his sacred music, Boyce was an extremely prolific composer as well as a virtuoso organist and an esteemed educator.  His sonatas, however, sounded somewhat derivative to this listener; it may have been that he was deliberately playing on the popularity of Corelli's style to make his own works a success.

The Boyce sonatas were followed by Tommaso Giordani's String Quartet in A major, Op. 8, No. 4 (1775).  I had always considered the string quartet genre to have begun with Haydn's Op. 20 in 1772, and I was surprised to learn that there was another composer working with the quartet form at exactly the same time.  Whether Giordani was aware of Haydn's quartets is an intriguing question, but the present piece at least does not seem to have been influenced by the Viennese master.  As the program notes point out, it is much more in the form of the galant style that however advanced it may have appeared at the time now sounds positively archaic when compared with Haydn's revolutionary accomplishments.  Still, Giordani must be seen as an intermediary between the Baroque trio sonata and the classical string quartet to the extent that he assigned separate voices to all four instruments rather than using the viola and cello merely as continuo.  In this sense, these works were a clear advance over the Boyce sonatas written some thirty years earlier.

The next work was James Oswald's Sonata of Scots Tunes (1740) arranged for flute, two violins, viola da gamba, harpsichord, theorbo and guitar.  I have to admit that I had never before heard of Oswald, but I was nonetheless delighted by this faithful adapation of five Scottish folk tunes.- "O Mother What Shall I Do," "Ettrick Banks," "She Rose and Let Me In," "Cromlit's Lilt" and "Polwart on the Green."  One senses throughout the sonata that Oswald had the same deep respect for his folk sources that Bartók was many years later to display for his own country's music.

The recital ended with two movements from Haydn's Symphony No. 104 in D major, Hob. I/104 (1795) in a reduction for chamber ensemble - consisting of flute, two violins, viola, cello, bassoon, bass and harpsichord - by Johann Peter Salomon, the wily impresario who had lured Haydn to London for a spectacularly successful tour and who never missed an opportunity to turn a profit on the music he promoted.  All the same, Salomon was an able violinist - Haydn composed his Sinfonia Concertante in B-flat major at the request of Salomon who then went on to play the solo violin part - and much more knowledgeable when it came to music than most of his English contemporaries.  The "London Symphony," actually only one of twelve that Haydn composed while in England, was a great success and wildly popular with British audiences.  The two movements performed at this recital were the second, a melodious andante, and the finale, a truly exuberant piece of music that shows just how much Haydn was enjoying his time in England.

The same program was performed the next day live on WQXR's Midday Live from the Greene Space; the archived performance should soon be available for viewing on the station's website.

Art Book: Shadowplay Eterniday

Published in 2003 to celebrate the centennial of Josph Cornell's birth, Shadowplay Eterniday is one of the most beautifully designed books I've come across.  It's apparent on every page that the editors and contributors not only possessed great respect for Cornell as an artist but also had a deep personal affecton for him as a man.  It's a loving tribute to the most enigmatic of the Surrealists, an outsider who lived his entire adult life in a middle class home in Queens, New York, probably the most unlikely location on the planet to find an artist of his stature.

Cornell's entire career was something of an anomaly.  There was nothing in his upper middle-class background or in his education that had anything to do with art.  On the one hand he could be viewed as a recluse who had no deep personal relationships other than with his mother and his brother Robert, an invalid who suffered from cerebral palsy, both of whom lived with him in Queens.  And yet paradoxically, while never promoting himself or traveling outside New York, he became a major figure in the art world and during his lifetime had major retrospectives at both the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Though he was much too shy and sexually inexeperienced to have any romantic relationships, he did manage to form friendships with several of the actresses and ballerinas he so admired.

While he also made a number of avant garde films, Cornell is most widely known for his boxes.  These glass fronted displays normally contain a number of disparate elements, most of them taken from the artist's extensive collections of bric a brac that he accumulated compulsively in his wanderings through New York City.  When placed together, however, the assembled boxes become self-contained universes and represent far more than the sum of their parts.  If often playful, they have at the same time far deeper meanings that require a great deal of time and patience to fathom.  Along the way, the use of found objects in the creation of the boxes made Cornell a pioneer of appropriation art and an unlikely confederate of Marcel Duchamp who in his "readymades" also sought to transform everyday objects into works of art.  In fact, Duchamp's idea for the Boîte-en-valise owed much to Cornell who even assisted in the design of the valise itself.

If the contradictory elements of Cornell's life make it difficult to get a grasp on the man himself, there's a quote on page 37 of the present volume that's extremely helpful.  

"'You don't know how terrible it is to be locked into boxes all your life,' he [Cornell] told dealer David Mann, 'you have no idea what a terrible thing it is.'"

This is really key to understanding not only Cornell's art but his life as well.  He apparently saw himself as a prisoner trapped in a strictured environment from which there was no escape much as the actresses and other figures to whom he paid tribute were sealed within the containers he created to hold them.  The boxes thus became a metaphor for his own existence.

Shadowplay Eterniday contains three relatively brief essays as well as a biographical sketch and a bibliography.  The first essay, by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, is a general introduction to the artist's working methods and provides some idea of the scope of his accomplishments.  The second and by far the most interesting, by Richard Vine, traces the influence of Cornell's strongly held Christian Science beliefs on his oeuvre.  The third, by Robert Lehrman, is a collector's musings on several seminal works with which he has long been acquainted.  The real heart of the book, of course, is the catalog of the artworks themselves.  The reproductions are of the finest quality and are sometimes accompanied by details of the pieces shown.  Though Cornell's three dimensional works invariably lose something of their essence when reduced to a two dimensional format, the excellence of the illustrations does go a long way in helping the reader appreciate the complexity and mystery of the originals.

In an unusual touch, the book contains a DVD that "delivers an encyclopediac compedium of the artist's work and source materials, the insights of numerous scholars and critics, access to Cornell's experimental films and interactive opportunities..."