Imani Winds

My alma mater presented a woodwind quintet called Imani Winds.  A woodwind quintet is a traditional ensemble with exactly the makeup of players you see illustrated.  And yes, a French horn is not a woodwind.  There is composed repertoire for this ensemble, but mostly they played arrangements.  The members left to right are:  Mark Dover, Brandon Patrick George, Monica Ellis, Jeff Scott and Toyin Spellman-Diaz. 

This concert had a theme:  The Beauty of Strife.  Artworks that came to us through war and political conflict.

Nkosi si di Leli by Enoch Mankayi Sontonga, arranged by Valerie Coleman is the South African National Anthem.  There is no note for this interesting piece because we all are familiar with the strife in South Africa.

Le Tombeau de Couperin [the tomb of Couperin] by Maurice Ravel is arranged by Mason Jones from the orchestral version of this piece.  Ravel is responding to the deaths of his friends in WWI by attempting to create a French suite such as Couperin might have written.  We heard 4 of the movements.

Quartet No 8 by Shostakovich is arranged from a string quartet by Mark Popkin.  We heard 5 movements.  It was explained from the stage that this work has a unifying theme.  Just as Bach wrote a piece using his name as a theme [BbACB], Shostakovich made a theme of his initials DSch [DEbCB] which appears through the work.  This work was composed from his reaction to the bombing of Dresden in WWII.

"Gift of Life" from Wanderings by Derek Bermel is concerned with conflict and cultural merging in Jerusalem.  It has a certain Klezmer quality.

Traditional Spirituals arranged by Valerie Coleman is "Steal Away" and "Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit" arranged for woodwind quintet.  We all know that these come from the period of American slavery, but what I didn't know was that they sometimes contained instructions on how to find the underground railroad leading to freedom.

Wapango by Paquito D'Rivera is originally for woodwind quintet and is a Mexican dance by a composer from Cuba.

I have listed this all out because of what a wonderful program it was.  Classical recitals are seldom this lively and fascinating.  We ended with an unknown encore with singing, including a little audience participation singing.  I loved it all.  I tried to find out what Imani means but failed.

Ravel and Falla at the San Francisco Symphony

I went to the San Francisco Symphony last night to hear:

Charles Dutoit conductor

Ravel Alborado del gracioso 

Falla Nights in the Gardens of Spain
       Javier Perianes piano

Ravel L’Heure espagnole

• Isabel Leonard mezzo-soprano (Concepción)
• Jean-Paul Fouchécourt tenor (Torquemada)
• John Mark Ainsley tenor (Gonzalve, a student poet)
• Jean-Luc Ballestra baritone (Ramiro)
• David Wilson-Johnson baritone (Don Iñigo Gomez)

Dutoit is a Swiss gentleman who specializes in French Music, in this case Maurice Ravel.  The orchestra was large, including 7 percussionists for both Ravel pieces, but not huge.  This concert is for those who love the true and the faux Spanish in classical music.  Ravel liked very much to aim for non-French ethnicity, and not always in pieces with orchestra.  It seems to work pretty well in these pieces.

Sandwiched in the middle is the real Spanish piece by Manuel de Falla.  It had an impressionist sound very much like the pieces that surrounded it.  I've never seen it played before and was somewhat confused by the arrangement of players that put a grand piano in front as though it were a piano concerto, and then presented a piece where the piano is only marginally an individual voice.  Most of the time you couldn't hear him.  Then the pianist came out and played an encore.  I don't know what it was.  The encore wasn't very loud either.

I came for L’Heure espagnole which I had only heard before in piano accompaniment.  It was a lovely piece, beautifully played and sung, but with a few odd features.  Such a big, completely exposed orchestra dominated the singers more than I prefer.  

There were surtitles.  I think perhaps an unstaged opera, well almost unstaged, should not have this, particularly when the words we are seeing tell us this is a slapstick comedy with lots of sight gags and nonsense.  I suppose the orchestra is too large to attempt more serious staging.

The singers all seemed well suited to the French music.  I might like to experience this on a real stage, but it would be necessary to pair it with another opera, perhaps L'enfant et les sortilèges.  It could even use these same singers.

Asie

I am continuing in my obsession with French music.  The Germans are square and dynamic throughout their musical history.  Even when they borrow heavily from the Italians, the result is formal and serious.  The Italians are lyrical and emotional, concentrating their emotions into the joy of beautiful singing.  But what exactly are the French?  They always seem to obscure the form, sublimate the emotion, sanitize the phrasing, lift the poetry, do everything in their power to render the ethereal.  Their feet seem hardly to touch the ground.

On my iPod are four versions of Ravel's Shéhérazade, so I have made them into a playlist which I can listen to while walking around the park.  In the order of the soprano's first name:

The version by Régine Crespin and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, directed by Ansermet, from the album Berlioz: Les Nuits D'Ete; Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade; Debussy; Poulenc: Songs are on what has been called one of the 100 greatest recordings of all time.  Those who prefer Régine are probably of the conservative, classical bent.  She is a singer who sings large and keeps her eyes fixed on the horizon.  She expresses at the level of whole phrases, or perhaps even larger expanses.  This is not Italian music--slides are only occasional. She is exquisitely French in all her aspects.

The version by Renée Fleming and the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, directed by Alan Gilbert, from the album Poèmes is given very much the Fleming treatment.  Each single note is a unit of expression.  She scoops and slides in a delicate way, but nevertheless she does it frequently.  This version is for lovers of Renée Fleming who will find it very rewarding.  She intimately lures you in.  In fact, this may be the expressive purpose of everything she does.  The contrast with Crespin is complete.

The third set is Susan Graham with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, directed by Yan Pascal Tortelier, from the album Poèmes de l’amour.  She slides only occasionally.  Why talk about that?  I'm not good with the adjectives thing.  When you've put together a string of adjectives, what do you really have?  She is the only mezzo in the set, but manages simultaneously a dark color and a light interpretation.  I think this is one of her gifts.  She does it all with her heart.

Last is the version by Victoria de Los Angeles with the Orchestre de la Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire, conducted by Georges Pretre, from the album The Fabulous Victoria De Los Angeles.  I've always loved the way she sings French.  She has fallen out of favor with modern listeners, possibly because of the lightness of her voice, but I still love her.  She is the easiest to understand and slides in a gorgeously subtle way.  I could listen all day. 

Am I required to pick one?  Only one of these ladies actually is French, and she produces the straightest, driest interpretation of the four.  Her eyes are on the skies.  Each has a lot to offer, but my heart belongs to Victoria.  There are many more on YouTube.
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Computer Opera

You've all seen pictures projected on scrim at the opera house. This has been going on since Edison invented the light bulb and maybe longer. Now I have seen an opera where the entire set is a giant computer screen, like something Steve Jobs would use for a presentation. It was beyond my wildest imagination.

The opera is Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, sung in Hungarian and presented by the Berkeley Opera. Wow! There's no pit in the Julia Morgan Theater, so the orchestra sat behind the computer screen and the two singers -- Paul Murray as Bluebeard and Kathleen Moss as Judith -- worked in front. They kept contact with the invisible conductor through video monitors.

I'm actually getting to love this opera, sort of Bartók's own Pictures at an Exhibition. The seven doors open one by one and Bartók's music aurally portrays each scene. The drama lay primarily in the computer art playing on the screen behind the singers. From the outside the castle presents as giant ice blocks. Inside we see the damp stone walls Judith describes. Then fabulous half realistic / half abstract pictures show us what is behind each door as the music progresses from torture chamber, to armory, to treasury, to garden, to sweepingly vast and deserted kingdom, to an ocean of tears, and finally to Bluebeard's past three wives. Created by Naomie Kremer from photographs and computer manipulation of images that bleed and transform before our eyes, rather like a kaleidescope, it was a film to match Bartók's wonderful music, a visual treat.

What does it all mean? Does Bluebeard kill her? Are the other three wives dead? Does the presence of blood everywhere indicate death? Is Judith just there out of curiosity, or does she really love him? Or is it merely a ménage à cinque. The ambiguity is not resolved.

I was less satisfied with the performance of Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells: A Lyric Fantasy in Two Parts) which came after. The boy, sung by Misha Brooks, seemed to be having trouble controlling his voice. It may be starting to change.

The production is very complicated and didn't always hang together. It involved ballet, puppets, and singers who stood along the side of the theater while the dancers created the visual aspect. There were frogs, a squirrel, cats, a bat, a dragonfly and a giant mama. Mama scolds the boy who then throws a tantrum and tears up everything in sight. I suppose the two parts are the scene inside the playroom where boy makes mayhem and the later scene out of doors where the animals get their revenge.

Behind the dancers and puppets is the same computer screen where some of the action is played out and atmospheres are created. I felt the artistic vision was less complete and less satisfying than Bluebeard.

Measha Brueggergosman

Measha Brueggergosman is a fascinating young woman with a publicist and a biographical film produced by the CBC in her native Canada. She appeared on Sunday afternoon at Hertz Hall on the Cal Berkeley Campus in a Cal Performances concert in a huge 'fro and a long red dress that puddled on the floor around her feet. Her bare feet. She says her shoes pinch, so she doesn't wear them. I was going to suggest that there are probably Converse All Stars in her size.

However, we were interested in the singing, and were drawn to the fact that she had programmed Ravel's Schéhérazade in a piano reduction. This is a huge piece to bite off. Could she do it?

And the answer is yes. The piece makes a much better impression in its orchestrated form--after all, Ravel is a master of orchestration as well as beautiful writing for the voice. But in Measha's voice it is perfection. She is a lyric soprano with a gorgeous tone and an exquisite legato. Kiri's legato was not better than this.

The entire program was designed to show off this carefully crafted legato: Hahn, Ravel, Wolf, Montsalvatge and Bolcom, all from about 1890-1945. I cannot think that I have heard a more beautiful legato.

What is the path forward for such a gifted young woman? She complains that in opera there are too many variables. I suppose it's possible to have a concert only career, but even Cecilia Bartoli occasionally appears in opera.

This style of legato, what I have elsewhere called a Strauss legato, is most prominently found in the operas of Richard Strauss. Why so carefully create a Strauss technique when you have no intention of ever appearing in his operas? (I do recall a bare-footed Elektra.) She has already done Schéhérazade and The Four Last Songs--this I would like to hear--so what is left?

I find her work, this sample of it at least, inadequate in another way. Her languages are also carefully crafted (she did French, German, Spanish and English) and well produced, but yet again I see another native English speaker who only comes to life in English. Hahn, Ravel and Wolf have souls as well. Her phrasing is excellent and very beautiful, but where is her heart? When Regine Crespin sings Schéhérazade, it is overflowing with her very French emotions. Measha, where is your heart? I want passion and not merely beauty. Create the music in your heart, too.

The last group was a set of cabaret songs by William Bolcom. I overheard someone comparing her to Audra McDonald. They were OK, I guess. I especially liked the line "tears fell into the cognac."

She and her accompanist, J.J. Penna, were well coordinated. He was with her all the way.