Notes on Notes

Baroque Concert Cures Spider Bites

 

 

You heard about L'Arpeggiata here last year (search previous entries), before they became famous, so there's a lot that won't need repeating (sez I, blowing my own cornetto).

    This early music ensemble was back in Zankel Hall Friday, with Baroque and contemporary evocations of the Tarantella.  The dancer, singer and period band with theorbo, psaltery, castanets and the like performed with zest, sly humor and utter charm. 

Their enthusiastic audience had the chops to sit through no-frills programs of Aston Magna or Frederick Renz, so they were acting like they got off easy, listening to the soulful or yipping vocalism of Lucilla Galeazzi and watching the spins and stomps of wild-haired tough-faced "teatrodanza" Anna Dego.

(Trying to insert photo, no luck, google L'Arpeggiata, they'll come up.)

The program demonstated the influence on Italian dance form of not only tarantulas but also the soulfulness of mittel-Europe Klezmer and the flamenco idiom of Spain.

More!  Whee!  First encore, Dego grabs a young guy from the front row, rolls him onto the stage and dances around in some sort of rock and square mix, what fun.  Second encore, Galeazzi does a join-the-chorus thing with a rhythmic pattern so catchy that I'm sitting here with an ear worm, and if I had note characters to set it down, you'd catch it too.

Why I Write About Music When I Have Better Things

Someone was asking why I don't give up reviewing to tell my life's big stories:  my daughter's death, PS. 2, "Decline and Fall of the Choir, by a Jewish church-watcher." But I stay on music invitation lists, and find out about things I wouldn't otherwise hear about, because arts publicists exchange lists. 

Like the Armory Art Show on the piers, an exciting event with a mini-concert.  I heard the concert, which was a piece with symphonic instruments plus recorder and ukelele, composed by an Icelandic man about the 2009 banking crisis there.  The piece is "Kreppa," which means crisis.

Then I browsed through endless cubicle-galleries on two piers:  one of modern works and one of contemporary.  The scope was traditional to vanguard, and the effect was exhilarating.  I came away vowing to return tomorrow (using my press pass) for another look at some old-style flowers I love, by Sharon Core for the Yancey Richardson galleries on W. 22nd St.By the way, before leaving I heard Kreppa again in another version.  I'll go again, see more art, see films, hear music, get a free sample of Pez.

I'm richer for having been treated to that.  I wouldn't have heard about any of it if I didn't write for a pittance about music few people want to read about.

Sibelius and Vienna Phil: Perfect Together

I was tired Friday, expecting to doze at Carnegie Hall's all-Sibelius concert--symphonies 7,5 and 1--by the Vienna Philharmonic.  No such thing:  how could I have forgotten this orchestra's beauteous body, juicy, rich tone and unity of phrase and dynamics?  No intermission coffee needed here, what a natural caffeine trip.  What, over so soon?

The program served as a reminder that since Sibelius's serene, dignified single-movement 7th in 1924 (he burned his 8th, he was a depressive and a drinker), there has been no greater symphonist.  And despite the program's unsettling Benjamin-Button reverse order, the Vienna made the case amply.

Male musicians (I counted 5 women including the harpist--the orchestra is slowly but finally working on that) wore white tie, tails and patent leather shoes, the ne plus ultra of formal respect for the occasion.  The American conductor, Lorin Maazel, did the tie but not the rest, which was emblematic of his just-ok performance.  This noble ensemble, 170 years old,must be accustomed to tolerating crazy Americans and other types that they can't take seriously.  They all rocked together in the swinging-hammock theme of the 5th, but when it was all up to Maazel, like in Sibelius's all-important grand pauses--they couldn't quite get there for him.  As Leonard Bernstein would say to student conductors, "That's you."

So, does this mean men play better than women?  Europeans better than non-Euros?  Is the dark grandeur of the Finnish national composer more accessible to a European orchestra?  Is this a fluke group?  They make some of this country's most prominent orchestras look a little scruffy, I'll tell you that.