Monotonous Forest

Too big for Lincoln Center, and almost anywhere else

Die Soldaten, Bernd Alois Zimmermann's 1965 opera, is going to receive an epic production in a few days, thanks to the Lincoln Center Festival.  While it's anyone's guess whether listeners will respond to Zimmermann's uncompromising score (and I hope they will), I suspect many will rave about the staging, adapted for New York City's vast Park Avenue Armory from the Ruhr Triennale in Germany.

On Sunday, prior to a rebroadcast of the Met's fizzy La fille du régiment, PBS had a brief segment showing the construction of the massive Soldaten set.  The stage is a narrow platform stretching the length of the Armory, with a huge seating unit like stadium bleachers, straddling the playing area and positioned on railroad tracks, and able to glide closer or farther away from the action as needed.  Kate Taylor in The New York Sun has an enticing preview, with some photos.

Update: PBS has posted the ten-minute video mentioned above here.

[Photo of Bernd Alois Zimmermann from Schott Music.  Sound samples here.]

Thorny composer breaches pop culture firewall

Amid all the commentary on Charles Wuorinen's upcoming opera, Brokeback Mountain, I missed the brief mention on The Soup (E! Entertainment Television's weekly digest).  But thanks to this post (and this one, with the actual clip) on Counter Critic, you can see it for yourself.  In the words of CC's Ryan Tracy: 

"In other words, [Gerard] Mortier has managed to get an atonal composer and The NYC Opera mentioned on a show the regular topics of which are Britney, Paris, Lindsay, Oprah and Tyra."

Online concerts from Aspen, Aix and Verbier

Last summer, much of the Verbier Festival was made available online by medici.tv, in extraordinarily high quality video and audio.  (You'll want to use the "full-screen" feature.)  This year the offerings have increased, starting today with ten days of concerts from the Aspen Festival followed by Aix-en-Provence beginning June 27.  On July 18 the Verbier events will be featured for two weeks.

Just one snapshot: last summer the Verbier Festival Orchestra, an energetic group of talented young players, performed Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto with Martha Argerich.  I've seen her rip through this piece both live and on video maybe nine or ten times, but never with cameras right at her elbow, or perched overhead for a birds-eye view of her hands skittering across the keyboard.  After the broadcast the concert was archived, and I must have watched it three or four times.

Not just for polkas

Thanks to Anthony Cornicello for citing Accordion Awareness Month (i.e., June), which I hope will cause those skeptical of the instrument to reconsider.  The accordion has long struck me as one of the world's most difficult instruments to play, requiring not one, not two, but three separate techniques operating in seamless harmony.  Perhaps the enduring image of Lawrence Welk has prevented some listeners from taking the repertoire seriously, and to those I would suggest checking out Bill Schimmel, whose rapturous reading of Sofia Gubaidulina's De Profundis a few years ago is still burned in my memory, or the work of Mikko Luoma, one of the leaders of a new generation of Finnish accordion virtuosos. 

And for those who like molten-lava jazz, Dwayne Dopsie (leader of the Zydeco Hellraisers) is about as ferociously talented as they come.  It's no accident that he has been called "Hottest Accordion in America" by the American Accordionists Association.

Two recent concerts

With a culinary focus, the American Modern Ensemble showed that contemporary music isn't always as dour as some people think.  And a bang-up evening by Boston's Xanthos Ensemble introduced me to yet another group of young musicians who are completely comfortable with formidable scores.

Speaking in tongues

Relatively unknown in the United States, Greek-born composer Georges Aperghis is known for combining striking vocal techniques with a penchant for theatrics.  Next week New Yorkers will have the rare opportunity to experience an unusually large sample of the composer's work on three concerts (June 10, 11 and 17) as part of the Institute & Festival for Contemporary Performance, directed by pianist Marc Ponthus.

UbuWeb has a fine introduction to Aperghis, the eleventh of his Récitations for solo voice, performed by Jaap Blonk.

[Above, the score to No. 9 from Récitations, via www.aperghis.com]

Thought for the day

"We might wish for a better artist to manifest our time, but that would probably amount to wanting a better time."

-- Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker, writing about artist Jeff Koons 

All-nighter, plus an afternoon

You might think twelve hours of music would be difficult to sit through, but Bang on a Can's constantly morphing landscape (and a few cups of coffee) made it seem easy.  At least two other intrepid listeners--Steve Smith and Darcy James Argue--also stayed for the long haul, to witness a sublime sunrise performance of Stockhausen's Stimmung by Toby Twining's extraordinary six-singer group.  More detail later, but other highlights: Donnacha Dennehy's Grá agus Bás by the Crash Ensemble from Ireland, Bang on a Can All-Stars in the much-anticipated Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen premiere, Bora Yoon's ( ((Phonation)) ) for cellphone and vocals with absorbing graphics by R. Luke DuBois, and a moving reading of Steve Reich's Daniel Variations by SIGNAL, conducted by Brad Lubman.  (And get-well wishes to Alex Ross, who posted even more links and you-are-there photos.)

So after a brief nap I bit the bullet (yes, a little crazy) and went to hear Spatial Explorations, an exceptional program by Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra.  Along with rarities by Takemitsu and Panufnik came the United States premiere of Rued Langgaard's Sfaerernes musik (Music of the Spheres), an astonishing score from 1918 with effects that anticipate Ligeti by almost 50 years. 

Why show up, slightly bleary after hanging out all night at the World Financial Center?  Except for Ligeti's Atmosphères, which ended the afternoon, I don't expect to ever hear any of these pieces live again.