By Leslie Kandell
MusicalAmerica.com
November 18, 2009
NEW YORK -- The struggling classical music world is taking note: millions of people would rather watch than listen. It's the reason television supplanted radio -- and why instrumental performances are not the top ticket. One classical music concert looks much like any other. So, as attracting new audiences has become imperative, adding a visual component has become a trend.
"Pictures Reframed" is a collaboration between the splendid Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and the South African-born visual artist Robin Rhode. The project’s central work is Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," played on the piano and supplemented by video art. Commissioned by Lincoln Center, “Pictures” had its premiere on Friday at Alice Tully Hall, the first 19 of concerts scheduled in the U.S. and Europe, with an EMI "Making of..." recording available and a website, picturesreframed.com.
The concept, which teeters between avant-garde and mainstream, needs work, but follows recent precedents, such as "The Ride of the Valkyries" projected on the ceiling of Carnegie Hall during the YouTube Orchestra concert; pianist Christopher Taylor's Miller Theater series mixing classical and mass-appeal music with found art; and the Schoenberg-Kandinsky Blue Rider chamber music and dance event, also at Miller Theater.
Andsnes was spotlighted on a darkened stage with five panels that surrounded the piano and one upstage center, carving out a smaller space -- perhaps an art gallery. Video images were projected on the center screen, and their reflected light dappled the piano as Andsnes played. Static, three-dimensional patterns appeared on the side screens, suggesting gallery pictures.
Among the offerings: Two cute, feisty "Memories from Childhood" from Mussorgsky's teenage years. Rhode's "Kid Candle, a grainy video of a charcoal-drawn candle, lighted by a boy who thus brings it to life.
Andsnes approached Schumann's "Kinderscenen," the definitive depiction of childhood memories in music, with respect, loving skill and no visuals. How a listener prefers to hear Schumann's details played is a matter of taste, but if some passages seemed subdued or wanting in contrast, Andsnes resisted temptations to rush, and showed superb control of soft phrases and crisp staccato.
Rhode's new "Spray Painting," is another brief film whose abruptly vanishing images were inspired by his interest in graffiti. Additional videos augmented "What Becomes" by the Austrian Thomas Larcher, composed for this project and dedicated to Andsnes and Rhode. The piece combines Schumann's fingery style with the thunks and twangs of a prepared piano. Successive stills that accompanied it created an effect of motion: in a movement called "Parabolic Bikes," a child in a yellow shirt bikes, frame by frame, across the center screen , up the side of it and then down, backward. The following section, "Promenade," had some of the spirit and beauty of its Mussorgsky counterpart, with black-and-white designs projected on the screen.
"Pictures," the core of the concert, is best known in Ravel's orchestration written 50 years later, but the piano version remains alive. It is more evocative than the morsels of Schumann, whose stylized approach avoids the pungent truths depicted by Mussorgsky. The exhibition that inspired Mussorgsky, a memorial for his artist friend Victor Hartmann, was a natural for this composer, whose songs, operas and piano pieces are titled to complement what they evoke musically.
On the screen during "Promenade," a black-suited goofball dude representing the innocent viewer cavorts through the gallery, walking on the floor as well as the wall and ceiling, doing handstands, courtesy of the camera. As the narrative proceeds and images affect him, he becomes stuck to objects that appear on the gallery walls.
Rhode's images for "Gnomus" were threadlike shapes; trees changed to bubbles and then formed designs. "Bydlo" was not a cart but a railroad with dreary rural views, suggesting trains of the World War II era that carried Jews to the camps. "Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle" had black and white iconic designs, and the red and blue colors of "The Hut on Fowl's Legs" intercut a tablecloth of rooster designs and, anticlimactically, a rooster running around a chicken yard.
Andsnes' mighty playing of "The Great Gate of Kiev" accompanied a video of a fine-looking piano drowning in a deliberately flooded Bergen dry dock, the camera pulling back as the lid went under. It was probably not meant to be sad. Videos are proving a way to draw audiences, but this pianist was more persuasive than the enhancements.
MusicalAmerica.com
November 18, 2009
NEW YORK -- The struggling classical music world is taking note: millions of people would rather watch than listen. It's the reason television supplanted radio -- and why instrumental performances are not the top ticket. One classical music concert looks much like any other. So, as attracting new audiences has become imperative, adding a visual component has become a trend.
"Pictures Reframed" is a collaboration between the splendid Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and the South African-born visual artist Robin Rhode. The project’s central work is Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," played on the piano and supplemented by video art. Commissioned by Lincoln Center, “Pictures” had its premiere on Friday at Alice Tully Hall, the first 19 of concerts scheduled in the U.S. and Europe, with an EMI "Making of..." recording available and a website, picturesreframed.com.
The concept, which teeters between avant-garde and mainstream, needs work, but follows recent precedents, such as "The Ride of the Valkyries" projected on the ceiling of Carnegie Hall during the YouTube Orchestra concert; pianist Christopher Taylor's Miller Theater series mixing classical and mass-appeal music with found art; and the Schoenberg-Kandinsky Blue Rider chamber music and dance event, also at Miller Theater.
Andsnes was spotlighted on a darkened stage with five panels that surrounded the piano and one upstage center, carving out a smaller space -- perhaps an art gallery. Video images were projected on the center screen, and their reflected light dappled the piano as Andsnes played. Static, three-dimensional patterns appeared on the side screens, suggesting gallery pictures.
Among the offerings: Two cute, feisty "Memories from Childhood" from Mussorgsky's teenage years. Rhode's "Kid Candle, a grainy video of a charcoal-drawn candle, lighted by a boy who thus brings it to life.
Andsnes approached Schumann's "Kinderscenen," the definitive depiction of childhood memories in music, with respect, loving skill and no visuals. How a listener prefers to hear Schumann's details played is a matter of taste, but if some passages seemed subdued or wanting in contrast, Andsnes resisted temptations to rush, and showed superb control of soft phrases and crisp staccato.
Rhode's new "Spray Painting," is another brief film whose abruptly vanishing images were inspired by his interest in graffiti. Additional videos augmented "What Becomes" by the Austrian Thomas Larcher, composed for this project and dedicated to Andsnes and Rhode. The piece combines Schumann's fingery style with the thunks and twangs of a prepared piano. Successive stills that accompanied it created an effect of motion: in a movement called "Parabolic Bikes," a child in a yellow shirt bikes, frame by frame, across the center screen , up the side of it and then down, backward. The following section, "Promenade," had some of the spirit and beauty of its Mussorgsky counterpart, with black-and-white designs projected on the screen.
"Pictures," the core of the concert, is best known in Ravel's orchestration written 50 years later, but the piano version remains alive. It is more evocative than the morsels of Schumann, whose stylized approach avoids the pungent truths depicted by Mussorgsky. The exhibition that inspired Mussorgsky, a memorial for his artist friend Victor Hartmann, was a natural for this composer, whose songs, operas and piano pieces are titled to complement what they evoke musically.
On the screen during "Promenade," a black-suited goofball dude representing the innocent viewer cavorts through the gallery, walking on the floor as well as the wall and ceiling, doing handstands, courtesy of the camera. As the narrative proceeds and images affect him, he becomes stuck to objects that appear on the gallery walls.
Rhode's images for "Gnomus" were threadlike shapes; trees changed to bubbles and then formed designs. "Bydlo" was not a cart but a railroad with dreary rural views, suggesting trains of the World War II era that carried Jews to the camps. "Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle" had black and white iconic designs, and the red and blue colors of "The Hut on Fowl's Legs" intercut a tablecloth of rooster designs and, anticlimactically, a rooster running around a chicken yard.
Andsnes' mighty playing of "The Great Gate of Kiev" accompanied a video of a fine-looking piano drowning in a deliberately flooded Bergen dry dock, the camera pulling back as the lid went under. It was probably not meant to be sad. Videos are proving a way to draw audiences, but this pianist was more persuasive than the enhancements.