Mary Kunz Goldman - Music Critic

Oh, brother!

2012-01-30T20:51:00.000-08:00

Tony Kunz is my big brother.

Too funny, to find a tribute to him on YouTube.

Go Tony!!

Elmore James and his strange legacy

2012-01-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

Besides being Mozart's birthday, January 27 is, or was, the birthday of one of my favorite blues musicians, Elmore James.

Back in my blues days Elmore James was my favorite. I still love his raw sound.

Years ago I heard a rumor that Elmore James' son was an opera singer, having inherited the family pipes. I heard that from Shakin' Smith, the harmonica genius I used to be friends with, I mean back when he lived in Buffalo. Shake told me that Elmore James Jr. was an opera singer but he never wanted to talk about his father because his father had not been in his life. Something like that. This is years ago that I heard that story. I do not remember it exactly

Just now I took it upon myself to Google the situation. After all these years!

And lo and behold I did find an Elmore James who is an opera singer.

Elmore James the blues singer apparently had another son who is a blues singer and goes by the name Elmore James Jr. That is inevitable.

The Elmore James who is an opera singer does not go by Jr. And what references I can find of him, he does not mention that his father is the blues singer, if indeed it is. But come on, it has to be.

The New York Times praised an Elmore James as Leporello in "Don Giovanni" back in 1987.

And this same Elmore James seems to have appeared as Masetto in a Peter Sellars film version of "Don Giovanni" set in a ghetto. Alas, I cannot find a clip of him in that.

It has to be the blues singer's son. He inherited the voice.

Three cheers and a turntable

2012-01-27T05:46:00.000-08:00

Great story in today's Wall Street Journal about the resurgence of vinyl, a favorite topic on this Web log.

I have to say that being in the newspaper business I take statistics with a grain of salt. Being told something like, "CD sales fell by 5 percent, whereas vinyl grew by 36 percent ..." I think, well, that could mean that there were 10 vinyl records sold last year, and now there were, I don't know, 14? (I am not too good at doing math before I am through with my coffee.)

It is very easy to get statistics to say what you want them to say.

But still. The story made good points, points that we have made on this Web log before, and will make again. For instance the album art. Isn't that a classic up above? I own that record. This is funny but doing a Google Images search on Mozart album covers it seemed I own most of them.

Also the way when you play a record you are "relatively engaged in the experience," as the writer put it. You cannot just push a button and go on with your life with the music in the background which is the way too often people listen to music in this day and age.

What I liked most about this story was it never had, as Pee-Wee Herman used to put it, the big But. As I read it I was bracing for a disclaimer like: "But the sales of vinyl or still overall very low..." or something like that, something that would ruin the moment. That never came.

Yay!

On that up note we celebrate Mozart's birthday the old-fashioned digital way. I love this, the finale of the "Linz" Symphony. I love the theme that rolls out at 0:55.

Morning music

2012-01-26T20:49:00.000-08:00

This morning I am driving in to work with a lot on my mind and I turn on the radio. And what do I hear but one of the suites from "Der Rosenkavalier."

And I am listening. And immediately I start kvetching to myself.

The performance is too herky-jerky. The tempos are too erratic. Phrases are exaggerated. The wrong things are brought out. It is not the way I like it. It is overengineered. Why are conductors always overengineering things?

That was when I suddenly came to my senses.

Who was overengineering things? Me.

Here I was facing this stressful day, and I was driving in to work, and "Rosenkavalier" ...

... was on the radio. It did not have to be. All of a sudden my day was touched by magic. So what if it wasn't perfect?

Why look that gift horse in the mouth?

That was not the performance I heard, by the way. I chose that clip because I liked the idea of its slideshow. The performance I heard ended when I pulled into my parking space. For the record it was conducted by Christoph Eschenbach.

By that time all was forgiven.

You should never become so critical of music that you cannot enjoy it!

Lieder of the pack

2012-01-16T21:36:00.000-08:00

So a colleague of mine posts on Facebook this video of Dietrich Fischer Dieskau singing "Gute Nacht" from Schubert's "Die Winterreise," accompanied by pianist Al Brendel.

And naturally I have to pause in my work day and watch it.

Hahahahaa! I got more than I bargained on!

I get such a kick out of it when YouTube throws an ad up at you. "Your video will start in 10 seconds," you read.

You would not believe the ad they channeled at me, the Schubert fan seeking to watch "Gute Nacht."

It was a screaming ad for a movie concert by Van Halen!

Watching the video again the ad was different. This time it was for a trashy movie starring Rob Lowe.

What kind of robo-ad person would come up with that? What, do they think "Wintterreise" is some kind of kraft metal band?

You know what they say about Schubert, the wonder never ceases.

This day in history

2012-01-13T06:39:00.000-08:00

A friend from church emailed me with a one-line message, that today is the day Stephen Foster died. I am lucky to have friends to tell me things like that! We love Stephen Foster here on this Web log.

Stephen Foster died Jan. 13, 1864.

Here he is on one of my favorite sites, Find a Grave. You can see a picture of his grave. It looks just like millions of other graves. Stephen Foster is buried in Pittsburgh.

I read that book about him called "Doo-Dah" that came out a few years ago. That is a terrible title! One of these days we should hash over what that book should have been called. But otherwise it is a good book. A lot of it was upsetting to me because although I had always been a Stephen Foster listener I had not known much about him.

It was surprising to me, because you associate so many of his songs with the south, that so much of his life was spent not far from where I live. There was some association with North East, Pa., which is right over the border from us. Foster spent some time there loafing, dodging school, something like that. If I remember right. I may be wrong. But I do remember mention of North East in addition to other towns I knew.

Another local connection for me was that Foster wrote a lot of his songs for Christy's Minstrels. Christy's Minstrels were from Buffalo.

Reading the book I actually cried when he died. I had known he died young but I did not know how bad things were, that he was this drunk, that he lived in the Bowery, that people laughed at him. You are used to fiction and I kept expecting things to get better.

It is said that the last song Stephen Foster wrote was "Beautiful Dreamer." Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the great Nelson Eddy.

Hahaha... my favorite comment, up at the top:

His diction is perfect. There are no singers like him . Thomas Hampson couldent carry his dirty underware. What a voice.

I love that comment! The spelling of "underware" is what makes it.

I also love how Nelson Eddy mentions the great pianist Leonard Pennario. Here I was just looking for a good performance of "Beautiful Dreamer" and I found this and play it, and I find Pennario is mentioned. I love that!

Here is a magnificent Hollywood treatment of Stephen Foster's death, starring the great Al Jolson. This is a day for greats! This is from the movie "Swanee River." Jolson is E.P. Christy of, yes, Buffalo's own Christy's Minstrels. Yes, I know this is highly politically incorrect. It is a miracle it is even on YouTube. But it is of its era, try to remember that. Plus, if you are making a historical movie, you try to be accurate. My guess is that they do a pretty good job of re-creating what a Civil War-era minstrel show was like. And this was 1939 so there were still people around who remembered.

I have to say I am starting to love Al Jolson's voice. He is from this different era and I love what he does with a song, with the syllables of a song.

At the end it is sweet. He tells the crowd: "Everybody sing!

"Everybody!"

So we do not leave on a down note here is the magnificent "Camptown Races" from the same film.

Enjoy!

The goodbye guy

2012-01-12T19:23:00.000-08:00

For some reason in the last couple of days I have become obsessed all over again with Schubert songs. I cannot stop listening to them. I think it started at work the other day when I had to listen to Werner Gura's new CD, "Willkommen und Abschied," for work-related reasons. And after that I could not stop!

It was like eating chocolate cake. You know, you keep shaving off another little bit.

That day it got to be a real problem. I got like this junkie, sneaking Schubert songs into my day, staring out the window and calling it work. I fell behind and had to stay late.

I should notify the Schubert Club!

Anyway. Up above is the song "Abschied," from "Schwanengesang." Werner Gura is singing it. I am getting to like Werner Gura because I like his quirky approach, also his pianist's quirky approach. The tempo of this song is a little fast for me but I do like how the pianist throws phrases at you in unexpected ways. I get the idea the two of them have a good feel for the music.

The idea behind "Abschied" is that a guy is leaving town and saying goodbye to everything, one thing at a time. He says goodbye to the cheery town, to the gardens, the trees, his girlfriend, the sun, as it sets, even the stars. The rhythm you are hearing is the trotting of his horse. Schubert loved to write the sound and feel of horses. That was his world. It is like the way blues musicians would work into their songs the sound of trains.

When the guy in "Abschied" says goodbye to his girlfriend he says, "But I will never turn my little horse around." That always gets at me.

The singer of Schubert's little song, is he cheery as he says goodbye, or is he brave? Also, the business about saying goodbye to the sun and the stars, and the weird and beautiful and unsettling key changes the song goes through -- that makes you wonder if the music is about something more than just leaving this little town. Schubert songs are like the paintings of the great masters. You can stand there and discuss them and look at them different ways.

Here is the Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau version I am married to.

But this is what I am working up to. There is this hilarious video I found of this song.

Hahahahaaaa!

My sister is a German teacher and I keep telling her about this video and saying she has to use it in her classes. She keeps coming up with excuses. Chicken! It is great.

The girl makes the video. I love how she just sits there. And the guy's voice. You know what, you cannot tell me Schubert's songs were not performed like that many times in his lifetime, by guys in bars. Surely they were. Probably on occasion by Schubert himself. They were like Leonard Cohen songs are now, is my guess.

OK, that's it for today. Look for me tomorrow. One word...

Ade!

The pianist 'of fire and ice'

2012-01-11T17:34:00.000-08:00

It was poignant to read about the death of Alexis Weissenberg, the Bulgarian-French pianist. That is Weissenberg up above. I like his look, kind of like Rachmaninoff.

I wonder if the New York Times, which I just linked to, went too far in the very first sentence in calling him charismatic. People throw that word around too freely and the rest of the article does not back it up. But Weissenberg was a very interesting pianist -- I like the bit about the fire and ice.

There is this moving account on pianist Stephen Hough's Web log where Stephen Hough writes about meeting him and being impressed by how dapper Weissenberg was. He writes about looking at Weissenberg's cuffs, lapels, buttons, sleeves ... it's beautiful, try to find a few minutes to read it.

Anyway a few years ago he runs into Weissenberg again and by this time Weissenberg is "a crumpled body in a blanket in a wheelchair."

When I read that all I could think of was that Weissenberg had Parkinson's disease. Leonard Pennario, when I met him, was in a wheelchair and he had Parkinson's. Pennario somehow managed not to be pathetic in that situation but that was Pennario, he was a kind of weird superman. Anyway, Googling around, I found I was right, Weissenberg had been suffering from Parkinson's.

That is very sad. As people are always pointing out to me, Parkinson's is terrible for a pianist. And it is, in that you have to step down early, and people forget about you. And you cannot play, even for yourself.

Weissenberg had a wrenching childhood because during World War II he wound up in a concentration camp. Years ago I read about this and it stuck with me: It happened he had an accordion with him, and he would play Schubert on the accordion, and the guards apparently loved to listen to it. And one day one of the guards, a German guard, came to get Alexis and his family and thrust their possessions at them and spirited them away to a train to safety. The guard shoved them onto the train with their stuff and told them good luck.

A few years ago when I saw the movie "The Pianist" I thought about that. Weissenberg lived "The Pianist."

It is strange for us who are too young to remember World War II to imagine being caught up in a drama of that magnitude. So many people affected in so many different ways. We are spoiled, never having known something like that. That is why we have stuff like Occupy Wall Street going on. People do not know how good they have it.

I reviewed a CD by Alexis Weissenberg a few years ago and I looked up what I wrote.

Alexis Weissenberg can raise arguments among piano fans. Some love his power and drama, and others find him occasionally icy and off-putting. In the first movement of the Piano Sonata No. 2, he clearly revels -- if you can use so upbeat a word -- in the music's stormy, frightening nature. The Scherzo picks up exactly where the first left off. It's downright furious.
    You get the sense that lyricism doesn't come easily to Weissenberg. But, in a way, that makes the tender interludes more touching. They sometimes seem so awkward. The heartbreaking section in the middle of the Funeral March sounds self-conscious, like a child playing. The Funeral March itself is, of course, almost unbearably terrifying and chilling. The two piano concertos clearly clip Weissenberg's wings. He has to conform to the orchestra, so his rage, if that's what we're hearing, isn't as evident. The slow movements are beautiful enough. One problem lies in the recording. From time to time, the orchestra sounds downright harsh.
    It's refreshing, though, to hear a pianist who's original. "Fantasy on Polish National Airs" and "Krakowiak," two unexpected treats, help make this a good, complete glimpse of an engrossing artist.

I really do not remember that CD set at all! I think I wrote that in a terrible hurry. The date it was printed was Nov. 7, 2007. I had just met Leonard and I was out the door and before I left I wrote a lot of things in a real hurry and this must have been one. By the time it was printed I was already in California.

I had no idea Weissenberg was in the same situation as Pennario -- in a wheelchair, suffering from Parkinson's.

Life is kind of strange sometimes.

The Octave of Christmas Part 2

2012-01-01T19:28:00.000-08:00

My little niece Barbara was playing her one-note piano and she was playing "Joy To the World." And it reminded me of something that has amazed me in the past. I should have thought of it a few days ago when I was reflecting on the Octave of Christmas.

"Joy To the World" is just one descending octave! Listen to it on this great square old Robert Shaw recording, up above. You know me, I love square old recordings, and Robert Shaw.

It is amazing what a little rhythm can do to just one octave.

Another classic example of octaves in music:

The great pas de deux from "The Nutcracker."

That was Tchaikovsky's last ballet, who knew that? I was thinking this Christmas season how enchanting it still is. The opening theme of the great pas de deux, it is just one plain old octave, descending. Tchaikovsky knew what to do with it. That is genius.

Tomorrow or the next day I will deal with octaves going up. I have two examples all ready to go.

It is a nice game to play with yourself when you are standing in a bank line or dropping off to sleep.

My fight with Kenny Rogers

2011-12-21T06:09:00.000-08:00

Listening to Jussi Bjorling singing "O Holy Night" yesterday got me thinking again about my conversation last week with Kenny Rogers.

Ha, ha! Now there is a name that needs no introduction. I have to say "the great pianist Leonard Pennario" or "the great violinist Jascha Heifetz," but Kenny Rogers, everyone knows who he is.

Kenny Rogers is playing Buffalo tonight. I did an interview with him last week for work, i.e., for The Buffalo News. Let me say this right now, Kenny Rogers is a doll and were it not for my religious convictions and the fact that I am already married to Howard, I would cheerily be his sixth wife. That is how much I liked him!

The thing I will remember most about my interview with, ahem, Kenny, was our argument about "O Holy Night."

Before talking to him I watched this clip from a show he did in Toronto.

Hahahahaa... I love that video. I love the looks on the kids' faces. The apprehensive little girl in the middle is my favorite.

But back to "O Holy Night." Kenny Rogers was talking about it and told this story that was just completely wrong. Right away when he said the song "was commissioned as a Catholic Mass," you know you are in trouble. Sure enough, it goes downhill from there.

So I addressed this matter on the phone with Kenny. The whole story is here -- but in case the link expires, here is the pertinent portion, the "O Holy Night" portion.

“Kenny, I saw a clip of your Toronto show, and you said ‘O Holy Night’ was banned by the Catholic Church. I have to tell you – it wasn’t.”

“It was.”

“No, the Catholic Church never banned it, it was just some bone-headed French bishop –

“Mary. You telling me to change my show?”

“Well, I’m Catholic, and –”

“Oh, no! Catholic! Oh, no!” Rogers pretends to recoil. “The church has enough problems without –”

“The church is taking the heat for this one!”

Both of us are laughing now.

“It’s OK. They let it back in in 1921,” says Rogers.

“But they never –”

“Mary! Please don’t screw me up this late in my career."

Hahahahaaaa! (This is me talking again -- I do not know how to change the font back.)

A darling man, even if he is all screwed up on "O Holy Night." That: "You telling me to change my show?" I am still laughing about that.

I had never known much about Kenny Rogers aside from his songs. I had not realized he was so funny.

About "O Holy Night" -- a love it or hate it Christmas song, by the way -- when I wrote up my story I did not get into part of the business Kenny Rogers was talking about, which centered on the possibility that Adolph Adam, who wrote the music to the song, was Jewish. First there is no evidence that he was. For what it was worth, he had a Catholic funeral. Second, if he was, who cares. "O Holy Night" was never "banned." A French bishop said something nasty, is all I could find. And now that I read the account I found again, the bishop was not even named. So that is probably a myth too.

Wow.

Good thing I studied up on all that!

I might forget the rest of the interview, but that argument, I will remember.

Sing it loud

2011-12-20T09:05:00.000-08:00

On my Leonard Pennario Web log I found myself reflecting on how much I love Jussi Bjorling singing "O Holy Night." This is one of the greatest versions of this hymn -- which was, I have to say, one of Pennario's favorites. Bjorling has that big, big voice. It is as if the song just pours out of him!

You can imagine a cartoon, this big bubble. Sing it, Jussi! How exhilarating it must feel to sing like that. To have the music just pouring out of you.

Also there is "The Boar's Head Carol" as posted by my Buffalo News colleague Doug Turner on Facebook.

Is that magnificent or what? I love that song. You picture them in a medieval feast hall, carrying in this boar's head.

Here is the version I grew up with. The recording of the song, not the boar's head.

And the inimitable Steeleye Span.

Christmas is a time to sit on our kiesters, as we say here in Buffalo, and waste time listening to music we know inside out, preferably with a cocktail in hand.

Bring on the holiday!

The Krips boys

2011-11-29T21:28:00.000-08:00

Today my mom had a record sitting on her record player and it was Henry Krips.

I had never heard of Henry Krips!

He is the brother of Josef Krips who was the music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1950s. Henry Krips wrote waltzes and that was what was on my mother's record.

"They're nice waltzes," my mom said. As if, they're just OK.

Henry Krips made his fortune in Australia, I have since read.

The picture on the Seraphim album above is kind of flattering but good looks do not appear to have run in that family. In the picture on the back cover Henry Krips does not look nearly as good.

Henry Krips' son Henry leads some band called Wagons. That is he in the middle.

He looks like a genial chap!

I have to say though: I do not know what Henry Krips would have thought of this...

... but being from Buffalo, where Josef Krips is a name still known around town, I know what Josef Krips would have thought of it.

Not very much.

Sweet singing in the choir

2011-11-28T18:10:00.000-08:00

As I was writing on my Leonard Pennario Web log, a friend and I were sitting around the other night drinking wine and listening to the Roger Wagner Chorale.

There is Richard Wagner and then there is Roger Wagner.

And about Roger Wagner, do not knock the Roger Wagner Chorale until you try it.

I am affectionate toward Capitol Records artists because of Leonard Pennario, who made history as the chief classical pianist for Capitol in the 1950s. When Christmas comes I love the lush Hollywood scorings by Carmen Dragon. On the Pennario Web log today I posted "Deck the Halls." As one comment writer on the video said, "The most bombastic version of this song you will ever hear."

Miraculously, just recently, some other Carmen Dragon fan out there besides me has been posting new --well, new to YouTube -- Carmen Dragon Christmas recordings. His "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" is a classic.

Bombastic, but at the same time tasteful. It will not irritate you. Carmen Dragon had that certain something.

So did Roger Wagner. His Roger Wagner Chorale's Christmas carols are so of their era, but they somehow stop short of becoming annoying. They are inventive and shining.

As luck would have it there are Roger Wagner Chorale Christmas songs also recently posted on YouTube.

This "O Tannenbaum" is sure to go viral!

I looked up Roger Wagner because I knew nothing about him other than that I have a picture of Pennario with him. Roger Wagner was from France. I did not know that! He seems to have been super-Catholic. The pope made him a Knight Commander in the Order of St. Gregory. Also the Roger Wagner Chorale made an important 1951 recording of a piece I love, Palestrina's "Pope Marcellus Mass."

He was also music director at a couple of Catholic churches. Imagine that, Roger Wagner as your music director! That sure does not happen much now. After Vatican II, Catholic church music fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. Haha! That is a phrase of my ex-housemate Severin and I had to borrow it.

Roger Wagner's daughter Jeannine leads the current Roger Wagner Chorale.

Encore!

That is so great.

Even with scratches and pops!

Live from the 9th century

2011-11-27T18:26:00.000-08:00

It is Advent and so I am hitting the Gregorian chant. The "Rorate Caeli" is a chant I love.

It is haunting, that the Nativity was foretold in the strange and poetic words of Isaiah.

This is strange but I never thought about any of this before I started going to the Tridentine Mass ...

(cool video) ...

...just about, yikes, four years ago. How time flies! Now I have this new feeling about going through the seasons. I never knew the "Rorate Caeli" before but now when I hear it, it gives me the feeling of this time of year. Just like other chants and melodies now mean other times of year to me. Music I never knew before.

We also got to sing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." I was thinking how old that song is! And most people know it. It is actually hard to find a version not sung by a rock or pop singer.

Most sources say that the hymn dates to the 12th century. However. However! The jacket to my record of the Roger Wagner Chorale says that hymn dates to the 9th century!

To the 800s! Imagine! You could go back in time to the year 850 and go into a cathedral and be able to sing "O Come O Come Emmanuel." "Veni Veni Emmanuel," that is. It is advised to learn the hymn in Latin because you never know when you might inadvertently wind up in the year 850.

So here, as a public service:

Veni, veni Emmanuel;
Captivum solve Israel,
Qui gemit in exilio,
Privatus Dei Filio.

Refrain
Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel,
Nascetur pro te, Israel!

Veni, veni, O Oriens;
Solare nos adveniens,
Noctis depelle nebulas,
Dirasque noctis tenebras.
Refrain

Veni, Clavis Davidica!
Regna reclude caelica;
Fac iter tutum superum,
Et claude vias inferum.
Refrain

Veni, veni Adonai!
Qui populo in Sinai,
Legem dedisti vertice,
In maiestate gloriae.
Refrain

If Mannheim Steamroller can do it so can we.

An incredible hymn. Timeless!

The Advent season has officially begun.

Turkey Day

2011-11-17T06:07:00.000-08:00

It is great when you run into a piano performance that makes you laugh out loud. This is one.

Someone, I unfortunately forget who, posted this on Twitter a few weeks ago and I watched it and loved it and made Howard listen to it and Howard got a big kick out of it too.

"He's a monster," he said.

Fazil Say is a Turkish pianist and it is great how he views Mozart's "Turkish March" with such apparent affection. My friend the soprano Sebnem Mekinulov who has sung with the Turkish National Opera tells me that in Turkey there is also great affection for Mozart's "The Abduction From the Seraglio."

You would not think so, you know? Mozart's "Turkish" music reflected a craze in Germany at the time and politically correct people would say that this music reflected a Eurocentric view. But the Turks clearly know better.

Here is a fine glimpse of "The Abduction From the Seraglio" -- complete with translation -- from Turkey.

Ha, ha! I love at about 2:05 when the drama flies off the tracks. That is so Mozart! That sort of thing is always happening in "The Magic Flute."

Back to the Turkish March. I especially like what Fazil Say does with the bridge, how he turns it into something like the "Maple Leaf Rag." Listen to me, using jazz language. Bridge.

Lots of fun.

'The saddest music ever written'

2011-11-16T06:03:00.000-08:00

Author Thomas Larson calls the Barber Adagio the saddest music ever written. That is a big claim to make but heck, it never hurts to make big claims.

A Facebook friend posted it and I had to listen. Larson makes a good point that that the mood "is rarely found and held in a piece of music." "Held" being the relevant word here. It is true that Barber does not lift that mood. Or change it, for that matter. As Larson says, "It dies of its own exhaustion." Then he says something about how we feel glad that it does.

That is the truth!

It is interesting to me to hear about this piece. I have heard it a million times and actually I would be happy if I never heard it again, you know? I mean, I feel I know it now.

One thing, they say it is the quintessential music to play at funeral services. I have never heard it at a funeral.

On the site where I found this, the comments have turned into a discussion of the saddest rock songs ever written. In classical music I think the competition is much more keen. I nominate a lot of Schubert. Or the slow movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.

With that music it is harder to say what gets you. To put your finger on it. This is funny, my mom and I were just talking about this piece last night and I was thinking how the clarinet was new when Mozart wrote this piece, and he sensed the instrument's bittersweet nature and built on that. He does the same thing in his Clarinet Quintet. Beyond that, I think the music creates a kind of conflict in you. It's sad but in a way it is not. So it pushes you and pulls you.

I mean, this song by Schubert ...

... it's a beautiful melody, a kind of sprightly piano part, a prettiness ... what is it?

Or a Chopin waltz, simply and beautifully played.

Pennario gets me thinking of this Schumann.

That piece kills me!

The slow movement of Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony also kills me. Lots of Mahler ... and Richard Strauss ... and Beethoven ... and Brahms of course ... and Wagner, and even Bach. I could go on and on. We all could.

It is fun to think about the saddest music ever written!

Strange as it sounds.

'They tend to freak out'

2011-11-15T05:40:00.000-08:00

Rene Pape, pictured above in an undignified shot that I love, is this bass I like. And yesterday I was listening to his new Wagner CD. It has him singing "Wotan's Farewell" from "Die Walkure."

I can not listen to that music without thinking of two things I know I have written about. One was the time when my sister and I saw the opera in Toronto and both of us wept all through the last scene. We had a sodden Kleenex we were passing back and forth. It was pathetic!

The other was when I tuned in to a radio broadcast. I had to pull over for the ending. This is not something you can drive through! I pulled over and I stayed there as the singers took their bows. And as he described the scene, the announcer began to weep. I will never forget that!

Anyway, yesterday I happened on this interview with Mr. Pape. Pape talks about his influences who include George London, Hans Hotter and Theo Adam. Hans Hotter is a singer I love.

Pape is asked if audiences for Wagner differ from other audiences.

"Wagner audiences are special, I think," he says. "It's their music -- but in a positive way. It's a passion. Everyone feels extended -- musically and physically -- after five hours or whatever of a Wagner performance. So people tend to -- how should I put it -- well, freak out at the end."

Hahahahaaa!

I guess I am Exhibit A!

The other main thing I got from that interview is that Pape has a dachshund named Wotan.

Cute.

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening

2011-11-14T17:51:00.000-08:00

On my Leonard Pennario Web log today I allowed myself to gloat over that Leonard was just included in the new Penguin Guide to the 1000 Finest Classical Recordings.

He was listed along with the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky for an album that, originally released on vinyl, looked like this:

My gloating led me to this site where someone is kind enough to share Piatigorsky's autobiography, "Cellist," chapter by chapter.

Unfortunately it does not seem to go up as far as the years when Piatigorsky and Pennario were collaborating, though I have not had time to take a good look. I also could not get the photo gallery to work.

But as I hopefully clicked on Chapter 30 I found this classic, pardon the expression, story:

Once, in a small town in Ontario, there was a party after the concert. I brought my cello and was still wearing full dress.

After being given a cooky and tea I apologetically told the hostess that I must leave soon because my train departed at an early hour the next day. She said that she would help me disappear unnoticed and that a car would be waiting for me in front of the house.

It was a dark and cold night, and the snow was deep. As I walked out of the house, I saw a car with motor running and, grateful for such promptness and consideration, I put my cello in the back seat and settled myself in the front next to the driver, who was a woman, she had a hat covering half of her face.

"It's so nice of you," I greeted her, but before I could tell her the name of my hotel the car sharply shot away and with unexpected gusto, rattling, and skidding sped along the deserted street. The car coughed and jerked and it moved away from the road and brushed into a snowbank, bounced off, and headed into another one. Stunned, I did not utter a word.

Soon there was no road at all, and I saw the car sliding downward toward a forest. My silent and unperturbed lady drove the car straight into the woods, where it finally stopped, sunk in the snow. Only then did I see the face of my driver. Really it was not a face, but a huge grin that covered everything that originally might have been a human face. Mute as before, she got out of the car and crawled under it.

Bewildered, but elegant in white tie and patent-leather shoes, I stood there not knowing what to do. After several vain attempts to communicate with her, I left the lady and my cello and rushed up the hill toward the road to look for help.

Soon I saw a truck coming. I stopped it and explained my predicament to the driver. He was willing to help and said that with his chains and other equipment he hoped that he could pull the car up onto the road. We gently dragged the woman out from under the car, and with her peacefully at my side the truck driver towed us to the hotel.

As I entered the lobby, I saw the anxious hostess and a number of her guests. I was told that the lady was a mental patient. Related to the hostess, she had attended the concert and came to the party with her nurse and doctor, from whom she managed to escape.

Since that ride I am much more careful, and only if a lady driver is pretty will I entrust myself into her care for a journey in the dark.

Ha, ha! I love musicians telling strange stories and that one is a gem. The way he tells it! The car shooting away with unexpected gusto. Then, how she calmly drives into the woods.

Dear Gregor Piatigorsky. No wonder Leonard loved him.

I am looking forward to combing through the rest of this book!

Finding Mozart wanting

2011-11-07T21:13:00.000-08:00

It is fun once in a while to see something from a totally different perspective from yours.

I just had that experience with the church music of Mozart.

I love Mozart's church music. Just today I heard the famous Alleluia from "Exultate, Jubilate." I love that piece, the joyous faith that shines through it.

Once I wrote about how much I love the "Coronation" Mass.

And then of course, the Requiem.

Then I see this write-up in this Catholic encyclopedia site.

They generally praise Mozart, calling him one of the greatest geniuses of history. They sum up his childhood, his works, his operas. Then ...

Mozart's individuality was of an exquisitely delicate, tender, and noble character. His operas, "Don Juan", "The Magic Flute", "The Marriage of Figaro", "Cosi fan tutte", "La Clemenza di Tito", on account of their melodic beauty and truth of expression, have as strong a hold upon the affections of the musical public today as they did at the end of the eighteenth century. His instrumental works continue to delightmusicians the world over. As a composer for the Church, however, he does not, even artistically, reach the high level he maintained in other fields. In his day the music of the Church, Gregorian chant, was practically ignored in Germany, and sadly neglected in other countries. Mozart had but little knowledge of the masters of the sixteenth century, and consequently his style of writing for the Church could not have been influenced by them. The proper of the Mass, which brings singers and congregation in intimate touch with the liturgyof the particular day, was rarely sung. The fifteen masses, litanies, offertories, his great "Requiem", as well as many smaller settings, most of them written for soli, chorus, and orchestra, in the identical style of his secular works, do not reflect the spirit of the universal Church, but rather the subjective conception and mood of the composer and the Josephinist spirit of the age. What Mozart, with his Raphaelesque imagination and temperament, would have been for church music had he lived at a different time and in different surroundings, or risenabove his own, can easily be imagined.

Hmmm.

(This is me again, though the type is still changed.)

It is funny, some talking head out there regretting that Mozart did not live up to his potential as a Catholic composer.

You have to respect someone coming from completely another viewpoint like that! Even though I do not quite agree with it. I have wondered about Gregorian chant, about how much Mozart and Beethoven knew of Gregorian chant. I have had my hunches but I have not had time to research it. Perhaps this answers that question!

But you know what, in light of the music I grew up with, it seems unfair to find Mozart's Church music wanting. To say it does not reflect the "Universal Church."

I suppose "Table of Plenty" reflects the Universal Church. Because we still hear that all the time, you know?

I grew up with "Blowin' in the Wind" played at Mass.

It is funny, no one criticizes this stuff, but oh, they throw the book at Mozart.

Cold comfort

2011-10-28T06:21:00.000-07:00

Buffalo got its first frost today. I saw it when I went out to get the papers.

Then when I went inside and opened the papers what did I read about was the Beethoven frost bed! That is it pictured above.

That is my life, a series of strange coincidences.

The frost bed is on display at Miami's Art Museum. What this one guy did was, he -- let me quote the Wall Street Journal.

"Inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven's death during a snowstorm in 1827, Florida-based artist Enrique Martinez Celays has created 'Schneebett' ('Snow-bed') -- a series of rooms, one of which, refrigerated, contains a bronze bed blanketed with a thick layer of frost.

"Outside 'Schneebett,' a video performance of one of Beethoven's late quartets is playing. Inside the initial corridor, a compression system and cooling tower buzz loudly. the sonic clash is intentional: 'Not only was Beethoven deaf toward the end of his life, but his head was ringing,' yet he composed until the end, says Mr. Martinez Celaya, who sculpts, paints, photographs and writes. The piece was first shown in 2004 in Berlin."

I like any sign that Beethoven is remembered or thought of -- any way, anytime, anywhere.

A Miami paper, or Web log, or something -- the reason I wonder is, it misspells "Nietzsche" -- interviews the artist here. I like the artist. He seems to like Beethoven.

I wonder if this installation made it into "Beethoven in America," this book I was just reading about. It tracks Beethoven's image in America. Of course, this work of art was in Berlin first.

I am looking at this book, which is by Michael Broyles.

"Most importantly, this book is addressed to anyone who wonders how this man reached the pinnacle of American cultural recognition and what it is exactly he represents," he writes.

It looks kind of interesting but it is not exactly addressed to me. I do not wonder about stuff like that, I have to say. I have never wondered how Beethoven reached the pinnacle of American cultural recognition and what it is exactly he represents.

I just listen to him.

Ivan the Terrible

2011-10-26T21:07:00.000-07:00

On my other Web log today I got gabbing about this story by Turgenev, "The Song of Triumphant Love." I got thinking about it the other day because Halloween is coming up.

That story is the scariest story I think I have ever read.

You can read it in its entirety by clicking on the link. I recommend it! Well, maybe I should not recommend it.

As I wrote on my other Web log I was so scared that the night after I read it I could not sleep and was too scared even to get out of bed.

What got me reading that story was a CD that matched the story up with music that appeared to go with it, some of it by the singer and composer Pauline Viardot, who for a while was mixed up with Turgenev, although I have not gotten around to researching the details. Oh, look, the English critic Jessica Duchen has written a book apparently about the two of them, "Songs of Triumphant Love."

Maybe this is a romance I should read about!

I wonder if it was as frightening as that story!

This being the wonderful age of the Internet you can peek at excerpts of the book here. Now I am not sure if it is a novel set in the present day, affected somehow by, God forbid, that story "The Song of Triumphant Love." Whatever it is, it looks like an interesting project.

There is also a ballet, "The Song of Triumphant Love."

Not sure I would want to see it!

Benedict, Bruckner and beer

2011-10-24T17:26:00.000-07:00

Remember a while ago when we talked about Pope Benedict XVI and his knowledge of music?

His Holiness is at it again!

Just the other day he listened to a performance of Beethoven's Ninth and Bruckner's "Te Deum." That is Bruckner up above in an old photograph I like. After listening to the piece Benedict got up and talked. Here is the transcript from the Vatican that was sent to me. I am lucky! Whenever anything happens in the Vatican someone buzzes me, I will have you know.

VATICAN CITY, 22 OCT 2011 (VIS) - This evening in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, the Bavarian State Opera gave a concert in honour of Benedict XVI. The programme included the Ninth Symphony and the "Te Deum" by Anton Bruckner, played by the Bavarian State Orchestra and the "Audi Jugendchorakademie", conducted respectively by Kent Nagano and Martin Steidler.

At the end of the performance the Pope rose to thank the musicians. Listening to Bruckner's music, he said, "is like finding oneself in a great cathedral, surrounded by its imposing structures which arouse emotion and lift us to the heights. There is however an element that lies at the foundations of Bruckner's music, both the symphonic and the sacred: the simple, solid, genuine faith he conserved throughout his life".

"The great conductor Bruno Walter used to say that 'Mahler always sought after God, while Bruckner had found Him'. The symphony we have just heard has a very specific title: 'Dem lieben Gott' (To the Beloved God), almost as if he wished to dedicate and entrust the last and most mature fruit of his art to the One in Whom he had always believed, the One Who had become his only true interlocutor in the last stage of his life", the Holy Father said.

"Bruckner asked this beloved God to let him enter His mystery, ... to let him praise the Lord in heaven as he had on earth with his music. 'Te Deum laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur'; this great work we have just heard - written at one sitting then reworked over fifteen years as if reconsidering how better to thank and praise God - sums up the faith of this great musician", Pope Benedict concluded. "It is also a reminder for us to open our horizons and think of eternal life, not so as to escape the present, though burdened with problems and difficulties, but to experience it more intensely, bringing a little light, hope and love into the reality in which we live."

A pope who knows about Mahler and Bruckner and Bruno Walter, how cool is that?

I would love to sit down with him and music-minded friends like Norman Lebrecht and Prof. G who comments on this Web log, and others who care about this kind of thing. All of us with a couple of pitchers of beer and what a round table that would be.

Wow, I had better watch what I say. A long time ago, just fooling around on the Web log, I wrote that it would be fun to have a beer with Norman Lebrecht and lo and behold, it happened.

All of us having a beer with the Pope could happen!

Here is Bruckner's "Te Deum" with Jessye Norman and Samuel Ramey, the Chicago Symphony conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Quite a piece. Bravo, performers!

Bravo, Pope Benedict!

The prince of passion

2011-10-23T17:56:00.000-07:00

This morning on my way to church I tuned into the classical station, and this outrageous piece poured out at me. It was intriguing at first, and I liked it. Then this chorus came in, and it was just too much.

"Oh, no," I said. And I turned the radio off.

Then after a few minutes I turned it back on.

The piece was still iffy but then it seemed I was making out something I knew. It was the old "Crusader's Hymn," this German medieval hymn I know from church.

Anyone who will include the "Crusader's Hymn" in a piece gets my vote!

So I stayed tuned in. I got to church and I had to get out of the car but I waited through the piece's ending, which was outrageous. The whole piece was just, I don't know, overblown? But I liked it too. I was drawn to it.

What was it? I found out. It was "St. Elizabeth" by Franz Liszt.

Liszt!! Of course! Today is his 200th birthday.

There was supposed to be a Google Doodle. Here is a picture I found of it, complete with cool photograph of Liszt.

I guess they got it in Europe and I was kind of excited about seeing it today. But I guess it is not on our continent. That Google Doodle of Franz Liszt, they regulate it like crack cocaine over here. Boo to Google. That is what I wrote on Twitter. Booooo.

They have no problems making Doodles to honor the guy who made up the Muppets and this woman who drew pictures for Disney -- that one was the other day -- but today, Google is Liszt-less.

Fie!

The "St. Elizabeth" -- or "St. Elisabeth," I guess it would be in German -- I found at least a piano version of it on YouTube. That sweet thrilling old hymn I love starts at 2:10.

I like Franz Liszt. I love how you can see him in photographs. The camera, reaching into the past, showing us what Liszt looked like!

And his music. It sounds as if he had a spirit too big for his body.

You can see why Wagner admired him. Here was a guy whose philosophy, it seems to me, could be summed up as "Why stop here?"

Wandering the 'Net I see that Alex Ross from The New Yorker has written a neat Web log post about Liszt's "Christus" and Wagner's "Parsifal." This is funny, you always think of Liszt as a lot older than Wagner because Wagner married Liszt's daughter, Cosima. But Liszt was born in 1811 and Wagner was born in 1813.

No celebration of the artistry of Franz Liszt is complete without Leonard Pennario.

Franz Liszt's birthday is a wonderful birthday to celebrate.

Doodle or no doodle.

The trouble with CDs

2011-09-29T05:19:00.000-07:00

Listening to my Wilhelm Backhaus CD I am becoming distressed by how the sound is cutting out now and then. Every once in a while the CD hits the skids and jumps or fogs out.

It happens right in the middle of the beautiful slow movement of the "Waldstein" Sonata. Among other places.

Fie!

Compact discs are junk, you know? I remember when they were new and everyone was saying how long-lasting they were, as opposed to old-fashioned records, which could get scratched.

Records are far more durable. Plus you had control over what happened to them. If you took care of a record it would take care of you. If it got scratched, it was because of carelessness. And here is another thing: Even if a record got badly scratched, a lot of the record would still be good. When a CD gets inexplicably ruined, you just have to toss it.

Even cassettes, my brother George and I were talking about them with affection. Cassettes had longer life than CDs. Sure, tapes could break, but cassettes were designed in a way that gave them protection. They have a built-in case the way a turtle has a shell. If you were listening to one in the car, you could take it out and toss it on the seat next to you and most of the time it would be OK.

CDs are so vulnerable. You cannot just toss them on the seat and expect them to be OK.

You have to struggle to find the jewel case which, do not get me started on those. If you cannot find the right case, or maybe you are in traffic and do not have time to look, you have to put it into whatever case is handy. That is why a lot of my CDs are divorced from their cases or missing in action.

Also, liner notes.

No matter how lavishly they package CDs it always comes down to a flimsy paper booklet. Small, so the pictures are tiny. Not like those great old LP sets where you would be sitting there listening with the book on your lap, gazing at a giant-sized picture of Roberta Peters or Leonard Pennario or Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. I always did enjoy gazing at giant-sized pictures of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Pictures that were much bigger than this one:

CDs, cases, booklets, they are always getting separated and damaged and thrown to the four winds.

It's funny for me, looking back on recording technology. I have never known permanence. Records were already on the way out by the time I started buying them. Cassettes, I liked them, but they always seemed as if they were not here to stay.

Now, CDs, I can see them fading out too. I have a house full of them and I am starting to see they are fools' gold.

I mean, this Backhaus CD. I have listened to it only something like 100 times. It should not be wearing out on me.

Meanwhile my records go on forever.

Confessions from the keyboard

2011-09-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

I am reading a book I got at the University Women's Second Hand sale. It is the memoir of the great accompanist Gerald Moore, called "Am I Too Loud?" It is accompanying me through my life!

Today we would call Mr. Moore a collaborative pianist. But he called himself an accompanist, although he talks in the book about how he was an equal partner with the great singers he partnered on stage.

I have always wanted to read this book. And I was lucky to get it! I paid maybe $2 for it. The Internet makes it clear it is out of print. On eBay there is one for about $10 and otherwise they are all $50, $75, the sky is the limit.

Perhaps when I am through with this I will sell mine!

No, I do not think so. It is just too charming.

Gerald Moore's personality just jumps out at you.

About Feodor Chaliapin, the great Russian bass:

Fred Gaisberg suggested to me in Glasgow that we visit the singer's bedroom at noon to see how our hero was faring. There he was sitting up in bed with the only solid food he allowed himself prior to a concert: a boiled egg and coffee. The egg standing in its cup looked exceedingly minute by contrast with the enormous torso behind it. Each mouthful, one felt, had a long way to travel: up, up, precariously balanced on its spoon between the waistline and the lips, and then down, down a very long way before it reached its destination. ...

And then I saw a tragic performance; Boris Godunov's death scene was enacted: a distant mumble like the growling of a double bass came from the depths of his being, as with beetling brows and mouth drawn down in despair I heard these anguished words, "M-m-m-m, they bring no salt with my egg."

They don't write like that any more.

Another quote on Chaliapin I cannot resist: "Chaliapin came in clad in a pair of shorts and a kimono round his shoulders. His torso was bare and was so white, so vast, it reminded me of a wall on the Acropolis."

I can see I am going to wind up copying out this whole book onto my Web log!

There are big chapters of course relating to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, pictured here suavely with Moore...

... and John McCormack. That I have not gotten around to them yet is high praise for the book! There is too much other great stuff to keep me occupied.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf comes off as nice.

At a recent performance in Salzburg of 'Don Giovanni' all she could find to say to me was how marvelous Leontyne Price had been and that she had never sung opposite such a Donna Anna before. I told the American girl of this praise from the finest Donna Elvira of our time, but Leontyne said, "Elisabeth made it so easy for me by her encouragement and friendliness."

"The American girl." I love that.

I think you can find Gerald Moore talking on YouTube.

This is just one instance. He is playing Brahms' "Vergebliches Staendchen" and explaining it. Wow, this is fun. I love hearing his thoughts on this song. There is no video on this by the way. Which does not surprise me. Though there are plenty of videos of Mr. Moore on stage he writes that he considers television an abomination.

Dear Mr. Moore.

By the way here is the book's opening quote:

"Normally the most considerate of accompanists, on this occasion Gerald Moore too often overwhelmed the singer."
-- London Daily Telegraph, May 8, 1961.

Hahahahahaa.

Fabulous Fabio

2011-09-27T06:44:00.000-07:00

With my nose in my book, I am so out of things! And today in the Wall Street Journal I was reading Heidi Waleson's story about Fabio Luisi, above, the new conductor of the Metropolitan Opera.

I had no idea the Met had a new conductor, although I did know about James Levine's health problems. And I have never heard of Maestro Luisi.

Waleson writes that Luisi (I keep wanting to write "Bidini," I am mixing him up with Fabio Bidini, the pianist coming to the Buffalo Philharmonic) ...

(and one day soon we must play the game of famous Fabios)

... has conducted a half dozen "Ring" Cycles. Good, good.

He was trained as a pianist. Good, good.

Wikipedia tells me they have three sons.

His wife is Bavarian. Like me! My ancestry is Bavarian. Well, part of it anyway. I am also from Alsace-Lorraine and, ahem, Baden-Wurttemberg.

Let us watch Fabio Luisi in action.

Sounds good to me!

Does anyone have a problem with that? I don't.

Luisi, buttering up New York, says in closing how much he admires the energy of the city.

"You can really smell and breathe it all the time, even when I take our dogs to the park at midnight. There's a feeling of wanting to be alive and productive for oneself, family, neighbors and society. In Europe, the growing tendency is, 'I don't care, someone will provide.'"

Haha! Buffalo has quite a bit of that "I don't care" attitude and rest assured, Maestro Luisi, there is a lot of that in New York too. We do not have a monopoly on it.

Do not start believing there are not slugs in New York and America at large!

But we should not scare off Luisi. He seems like a sweet guy.

He says, "Here, I feel the taking of responsibility. It's quite amazing for me -- as an Italian, especially."

Cute story.

We remember the vacant chair

2011-09-25T18:53:00.000-07:00

Today is pianist Glenn Gould's birthday. He would be 79. That is too bad he is not around, you know? Glenn Gould would have made a great old man.

If he was as weird as he was years ago imagine how weird he would be now.

Plus it would be just interesting to see what would have happened to him. I bet he would be on Facebook. Just a guess.

I wonder how or what he would be playing on the piano, or whether he would be playing the piano at all.

I am ambivalent toward Glenn Gould because of all the press he gets over stupid things. Whenever you see a movie about him, or a trailer for a movie about him, they can't wait to start talking about his special chair or his heavy overcoat or any of that other dumb stuff that really has nothing to do with anything. It has nothing to do with anything but it is what he is remembered for.

Then the movie makers usually put Bach's "Goldberg" Variations on the soundtrack. Which, he played them superbly, but he didn't write them, you know? I see this sort of thing all the time in movies about conductors. They show some guy conducting, and then this Brahms symphony billows out, and you think: What a genius! But who is the genius -- the conductor, or Brahms? Who is it you are really falling in love with?

That having been said, as pundits like to put it ....

I like to watch Glenn Gould defending Richard Strauss. There was a time when you had to defend him.

This video has a song I love, "Cacilie." One of those great declarative Strauss love songs with an over-the-top piano part. Which, I have to say, Gould plays rather well.

Gould is kind of obnoxious and too sure of himself, and he felt free to broadcast boneheaded opinions. That comes from having a government behind you.

But I do get the feeling his heart was in the right place.

Plus I have to admit this, since I was a teenager I have had a weakness for his thuggy performance of the Mozart A Minor Sonata. So many pianists treat Mozart like glass. Gould does not, that is for sure.

Hahahaha... watch the bubbles in the video.

I think Glenn Gould would have liked them!

The music master

2011-09-24T06:13:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been impressed by Pope Benedict XVI and his knowledge about music. I had heard he was an accomplished pianist but I had not realized until recently how he lives and breathes music.

You can tell when someone lives and breathes music, not that you find this type too often, when the person brings music into the conversation for no reason at all.

The pope does this.

Above his a picture of him listening to music alertly.

About a year ago he competently discussed Beethoven's "Choral Fantasy" in comparison with Arvo Part's "Cecilie, virgine romana." Amazing that anyone even knows what the "Choral Fantasy" is, not to mention "Cecilie."

I found the pope's erudite comments on this great Web log, Ignatius Insight, where you read all kinds of stuff that never makes it into the mainstream media. The mainstream media have no interest in anyone's views on Beethoven's "Choral Fantasy," let alone Arvo Part.

Ha, ha! Looking at I.I. just now, I see this quote at the top: "But there is no excuse for being unaware of Aquinas." I guess I have some reading to do! I mean, I know St. Thomas Aquinas was a saint, and that he was a great thinker, but that is about it.

On the other hand I know about other stuff and you cannot know about everything, you know?

Unless you are Benedict XVI.

The I.I. Web log also discussed how on another occasion the pope got up on his pope-box (sorry, could not help that) and gave a wonderful speech about Mozart. He was in Italy for a performance of the Requiem and in his talk he knowledgeably discussed how the Italian composers of the time influenced Mozart. He also quoted Mozart's letters. I have read that the pope writes these speeches himself. He does not have anyone else writing them for him.

Amazing, this guy! And I applaud him also for taking on the sticky and problematic matter of reforming the music in the Catholic church which, face it, in the last few decades has pretty much descended into dreck. It is time someone showed leadership in this department.

Music is just so important.

A tale of two critics

2011-09-16T04:39:00.000-07:00

Today in the Wall Street Journal there is an interesting column by Terry Teachout about a couple of critics who were, in retrospect at least, corrupt. Criticism is always an iffy job as we talked about the other day but these two took it to the extreme.

There was an art critic named Clement Greenberg who, a lot of painters he gave good reviews to gave him paintings in gratitude for the good reviews. In time he built up a collection worth a fortune.

Then there is the music critic Virgil Thomson, pictured up above, who became a music critic for the New York Herald Tribune in hopes that his name would become better known and more people would program his music. That in itself might not be a bad idea, but the word got out that Thomson could be "bought" if you played his music.

I have to say I do not have a lot of sympathy for either of these guys. Especially the art critic. Terry Teachout seems kind of sympathetic to Greenberg. He writes: "Nobody who knew the famously outspoken Mr. Greenberg at all well believed that his critical judgment could be swayed by giving him a painting. Moreover, the now-famous artists whom he championed were unknown when he first wrote about them, meaning that their work had little or no monetary value. But in the hard-nosed world of journalism, appearance and reality are inseparably entwined..."

What he did not touch on is that Greenberg could not help but influence the value of the paintings he was given. A word from a critic like that, if he was that important, could mean all the difference as far as whether a painting like this ...

.... was an, ahem, masterpiece, or whether it was trash. I mean, like a lot of modern art it could go one way or the other. Much depended on Greenberg's thumbs up or thumbs down. He was a big influence on the market. If Greenberg gave one of these artists a glowing review, the chances went up that if the artist gave him a painting it would wind up being worth something. Hence no big surprise, that his collection wound up being worth a lot of money.

Oh, the world of visual art. Do not get me started! That painting by the way is Kenneth Noland's "No One." It was the example used in the story.

Virgil Thomson, to me he illustrates the growing gap between composer and audience. I wonder how many people outside of a handful of us eggheads have even heard of him. I bet most eggheads have not even heard of him. That opera Terry Teachout mentions, "Four Saints in Three Acts," Teachout writes that it is one of the most important American operas of the 20th century. Fine, who has ever heard it?

I wonder if it is on YouTube.

Nope.

Well, there are a couple of Virgil Thomson clips and here is part of a Mass he wrote.

That's not too bad, you know? That is just about the best you can hope for, that something is not too bad.

I am trying to think if my reputation as a critic has ever been compromised, if anyone will be picking me apart in the future the way we are picking apart Greenberg and Thomson.

Once I got a bouquet of a dozen roses from a band called Smokin' Butt whom I mentioned in a story. Ha, ha! The good news: Miss Kunz, you got a bouquet of roses! The bad news: They're from Smokin' Butt.

As I go on frittering away my Friday....

Should you want to do likewise, here is the story in the Journal.

Great stuff to chew on.

The closed stacks

2011-09-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

It amazes me how in the Internet age you can find so much on the computer. For instance I love being able to paw through the archives of Gramophone magazine. And the New York Philharmonic is putting a lot of its old paperwork up in a searchable archive, too, which I find fascinating. And useful, too, for my book on Leonard Pennario.

What also amazes me though is the amount of stuff that is still kept under lock and key.

Earlier this morning, I am working away at the discography for my book, which is a huge task because Pennario made a million wonderful records, he was not just some schlep. One thing I love to do is track how the records were received -- when they were released, who said what about them. That is where Gramophone comes in handy, and the New York Times, etc.

But would you believe the moldy oldy Saturday Evening Post, oh, they charge you?

A search on Pennario's RCA box set of Debussy Preludes allowed me to view this stingy snippet from the old Saturday Evening Post.

“Whoever’s taste was reflected in the choice of Pennario for this assignment, it is poorly justified by the results," some critic is harumphing. "This record reflects Pennario's previous enterprises in that..."

Then it tells me: "Want to know how to read the rest of this book?" And they want you to pay for it.

Forget it!

As if I am going to pay to slog through this boring, snobby, ignorant, unoriginal, Eastern Eurocentric review.

Take it to your grave, you know?

Same with gray stingy old Harper's magazine.

On the bright side it is exciting to check back on the Internet from one week to the next and see what is appearing. Just because it was not there last week does not mean it will not be there this week.

It is something to look forward to when you wake up in the morning!

Earth to Mary

2011-09-09T05:35:00.000-07:00

"Carmina Burana" is coming up at the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and I am prepping for it. I must be the only person in the world who has to prep for "Carmina Burana."

This is funny too. At work yesterday I ran into my friend Michelle in the newsroom and we were talking about what we were working on and I mentioned Carl Orff. And Michelle said, "Wasn't he known for teaching kids music?"

"Yes, he was," I said. I had just read about how Orff taught kids about rhythm, and this course he came up with is still used, etc. Then I stopped. "Michelle, how did you know this?" I asked. "I did not know this!"

I have just simply never gotten around much to Carl Orff, is all. I do not think I have to be ashamed writing that. When you are into music you have to get around to things. You need time. In my life I have squandered an inordinate amount of time on, say, obscure Schubert songs. There are only so many hours in a day, in a week, in your life. Plus I work a full-time job. So there are some things I have not heard.

The funny thing about "Carmina Burana" is everyone else knows it but me.

I mean, of course I know this.

But I did not know, for instance, this.

I am listening to it thinking: "Isn't that beautiful?" Because I am sorry, whatever your opinions on "Carmina Burana," it is. Orff got it right with this little aria.

Then YouTube starts tossing other recordings up at me. Sarah Brightman sang it. Charlotte Church. Barbra Streisand, for heaven's sake. All these popular popsters. How could I miss it? But I did.

I am the only one in the world who never heard it!

The only one!

An old song re-sung

2011-09-08T05:35:00.000-07:00

Last night the most unbelievable thing happened.

My encyclopaedic knowledge of Stephen Foster songs came in handy!!

I met Howard downtown at the Hyatt after work so we could hear Jackie Jocko. Howard and I live like college students. We hook up. Anyway, we were listening to Jocko sing and play the piano. And sometime during the course of the evening this gentleman comes up with his wife. And he asks Jocko for "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair."

This guy and his wife, they were adorable. Looked to be in their 40s or 50s, and both of them half in the bag. The woman's name was Ginny, or Jenny, something like that, and she had light brown hair, and that was apparently "their song." The husband was Asian, Chinese I am guessing. Handsome and distinguished-looking. They were hugging each other and asking Jocko for "Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair."

Jocko did what he always does and faked it. "I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair..." he started.

Then he dropped off and just played the music. I was sitting next to the piano and I chimed in.

"Borne like a vapor on the summer air!" I sang.

What a strange line that is, when you think about it. Ghostly! But beautiful.

The husband, the Chinese husband, lit up.

"That's right!" he beamed.

All my life I have waited for someone to appreciate me knowing this song!

Stephen Foster songs ... still relevant. I just wished we could have gotten to my favorite line, which is "sighing light the night wind and sobbing like the rain..." In a way it is a pity that "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" got trivialized because of the sitcom "I Dream of Jeanie." This is a weird song.

I am charmed by this arrangement by Ned Rorem.

It has a great unresolved ending.

I think Ned Rorem "got" this song.

It is weird.

But beautiful!

Oh, Mr. Paganini

2011-09-06T05:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I labored, it being Labor Day, on my labor of love, which is the massive tome I am finishing up. Taking a YouTube break I found the video up above.

I would love to see more videos like this one! Well, it is not exactly a video, it is a set of performances by a bunch of piano aces of "Paganini," the knuckle-busting piece from Schumann's "Carnaval." I play this piece! So for once anyway I know what I am talking about.

It is fun just to sit back and listen to one after another and compare and contrast.

Guess which one I like!

Ha, ha! I am sorry, No. 7 is just superior, no way around it. But there are others I like. Barenboim's has a good excitement about it. There is something I hear often in Barenboim's playing that can get on my nerves which is, he fools around a lot with tempos and dynamics. I have this CD of him accompanying Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in a lieder recital -- picked it up for a quarter at a recent library sale -- and it drove me crazy, I just could not listen to it. Well, apparently Fischer-Dieskau was fine with it, so who am I. But still.

What I am getting at is, this thing about Barenboim's playing, this "listen to me" kind of thing, it works to his favor in "Paganini." I think it is because the piece is supposed to be about a self-centered virtuoso.

Anyway, lots of fun, this video. And great work avoidance on an onerous Tuesday.

When you are through contrasting Mssrs. Barenboim, Rosen and Pennario, you can avoid more work by watching this great classic clip of Ella Fitzgerald.

The first thing you hear in the morning

2011-08-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

On Facebook a lot of people like to post music in the morning. I think they should be careful about that.

What you listen to in the morning cannot be just anything. You have to be careful!

For one thing it can set your tone for the day. When I am on my way to work I try to be particular what I listen to. If I am in the car it cannot be anything too deep. This is not the time for Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony or some soul-searching music by Schubert. If the classical station plays something too deep in the morning I get aggrieved. I try to keep CDs around for my drives in. My commute is short, usually only about 10 minutes. That is life in Buffalo!

This morning the station was playing Dvorak's Eighth Symphony. I tuned in during the last movement. So that was what I heard starting out. I was listening to it driving down Nottingham Parkway, and I was thinking about how there is one part in it that I always think Dvorak did not quite get right. He has this nice Brahms-like theme going and it's wonderful but for a minute there I always think it flies off the tracks. You can hear it here at 8:37, 8:38.

Ha, ha! That should be a whole separate post, criticizing the masters.

Somewhere during my drive it turned over to Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony, Semyon Bychkov conducting. WNED-FM is going over former music directors of the Buffalo Philharmonic.

I was thinking, the "Italian" Symphony is tremendous morning music. It is bright and full of energy and gorgeous but at the same time you will not crash the car. The slow movement is calming but not wrenching. That was what was playing when I got to work.

I am trying to think of what else I listened to during the course of my day. At one point at work I was riled and had a few minutes to take a break so I admit it, I listened to Pennario playing his arrangement of the Emperor Waltz.

I often self-medicate with music, who doesn't? Listening to Leonard makes me feel good and I am happy that when he decided to make an arrangement of a Strauss waltz he chose the one that has always been my favorite. I like that nostalgic main theme, then those sweeping middle melodies.

What other music did I hear today? It is interesting to ask yourself that and try to remember.

I did not do much other listening during my work day because I was doing other work.

After work I went to Zumba class and danced to a number of songs including the fabled "Pause" by Pitbull that we have been discussing.

Between Zumba and my mom's house I listened to Schubert, that new CD I may have mentioned by Gyorgy Tchaidze. Schubert is probably too deep for the car but I stayed away from the "Wanderer" Fantasy and listened to the sonata and the short pieces and they made me feel good.

My mom and I went to the movies and saw "Larry Crowne" (bad title, hard to remember). The soundtrack was rock and none of it stuck in my head.

On the way home from that I did not feel I would do the Schubert justice so I listened to some piano music on the radio, I do not know what it was, but it was calming and sounded like bells.

End result, as say here in Buffalo ...

Guess what was on my brain when I walked into the house just now?

The Dvorak Eighth Symphony! The first thing I heard in the morning. That theme, I was singing it.

After everything else I heard! And you know what, that happens a lot.

Watch out what you listen to first thing in the morning.

Choose it wisely!

The 'Pause' that refreshes

2011-08-25T07:17:00.000-07:00

You know how every once in a while life throws you these coincidences?

Last night I was driving home from seeing Jackie Jocko down at the Hyatt and I had Schubert's "Die Schone Mullerin" in my CD player. No big deal, this CD -- Dietrich Henschel is the singer -- has been living in the CD player for the last couple of weeks because I cannot get my act together to put in anything else. But as I neared my house the song "Pause" came on.

As I pull into my driveway I am thinking, I love this song.

This is one of the superior songs out of "Die Schone Mullerin." Well, one of the superior songs ever.

I can sing no more, my heart is too full.

And that enchanting line about what if a bee flies by and rustles the strings of the lute with its wings.

I walked into the house thinking about that song, turning it over in my mind, thinking how great it was. I got on YouTube and checked out a few versions. Some are too fast for me. I like this song slow and daydream-like.

Wow, who knew, there was even a version for flute and orchestra?

I sat there, listening. Then I realized, isn't this funny?

I had started the day writing on the Web log about Pitbull's "Pause."

Now it was the end of the long day and here I was listening to Schubert's "Pause."

It is even the same in both languages!

Let us take time to consider that.

Pause.

A nickel in the National Jukebox

2011-08-24T05:57:00.000-07:00

The greatest work distraction ever has been invented. It is the Library of Congress National Jukebox!

What the Library of Congress has done is, it has loaded up a million of recordings from the early 1900s and put it up there for you to access. There is opera and blues, to name two categories I love. There is a lot of other stuff too. Wait, what is this? There is an interactive facsimile of the 1919 Victrola Book of the Opera. How about that? All this is free aside from that you have to consider that, like everything else, we pay for it with our taxes. It is very easy to use. I tried it just now when, you guessed it, I was supposed to be working.

"Warning: Historical Recordings may contain Offensive Language." It reads.

Hahahaa. As if today's recordings do not! That is a good one.

They should have heard the song I danced to in Zumba class yesterday! It was by a band called Pitbull. I asked. The Zumba version is a little cleaner than the real version. Well, I digress.

Naturally, you know me, I put a virtual nickel into that National Jukebox and went looking for the most politically incorrect thing I could find.

Al Jolson is a good place to start. I give you "The Spaniard Who Blighted My Life."

Ha, ha! I do not want to give it all away but it is great when he rhymes "Spanish onion" with "bunion."

What else? I love the title "Movin' Man, Don't Take My Baby Grand!" But that does not sound offensive enough for my purposes.

Oh, I see. For the really un-P.C. stuff you want "Ethnic Characterizations."

"I's Gwine Back to Dixie," performed by -- got to love this -- the Haydn Quartet. This is kind of sedate number, mournfully harmonized. Wow, is this one a window into the past or what? It is strange to hear these voices of long-dead men suddenly coming out of your laptop.

Equal strokes for equal folks, here is "The German's Arrival." It is a 1906 by a singer named Frank Wilson. It spoofs a German immigrant. Ah, this must be the reason for the disclaimer. They are afraid German-Americans are going to riot in the streets and turn over police cars.

Ha, ha! I wish I could catch more of this song. All I can catch so far because of the surface noise is yodeling and mention of breweries. But it sounds like a classic!

I read once that in the vaudeville era, ethnic groups would go to vaudeville shows hoping to hear themselves roasted, because when they did, it signaled to them that they were included, that they were in the club. Times have sure changed since then!

One thing that reminds me of, a few years ago there was that movie "The Wedding Crasher." Owen Wilson would crash weddings and hustle the bridesmaids, if I remember correctly. Anyway, I read a little essay in a women's magazine that, my heart went out to the writer. She was a woman of color and she regretted that the movie had not included an African-American wedding. And I saw in that essay a flicker of the old vaudeville era: a wish to be in on the joke, to be "in the club." Unfortunately people are so afraid to offend now and my guess is that was why an African-American wedding was not in that movie.

Back to the Library. One more before the work day closes in, why not? Let me see what I can find.

Here is an early corny recording, like something out of an old movie, of "My Old Kentucky Home." Odd, but inevitable, to see this in the "Ethnic Characterizations" category. Is it, considering this is a solo violin, no voice? The Library of Congress is playing it safe.

OK, here we go: "An Evening at Mrs. Clancey's Boarding House." By the Victor Vaudeville Company. In 1908.

This is not so much a song as it is a skit. All those brogues! And the conversation they are having! I would not want to reprint it here but it is fascinating.

It is amazing to hear these old recordings.

Talk about a window to the past!

Sister act

2011-08-22T05:08:00.000-07:00

There is this elegant new movie out that I am looking forward to. It is called "Mozart's Sister" and it is a fantasy about when Mozart was a kid and toured Europe with his father, Leopold, and sister, Nannerl.

I love how the 18th century looks in movies. You do not see the, ahem, outhouses and other inconveniences. You know what, just thinking out loud here, but those scatological references in the Mozart family's letters that raise everyone's eyebrows now, those references were very much of their time. Talking about s--- was probably much more accepted then because heck, it was all around you.

Anyway, the movie looks beautiful and anything about Mozart generally gets my vote.

The only trouble is, the movie starts out saying "The True Story of Mozart's Sister." It is very far from the true story and I do not know what the filmmakers were thinking, making that claim. I mean, come on, from what I gather from the trailer ...

... it has her having a romance with the Dauphin in France. I am sorry about that picture of the trailer! It is early in the morning where I am plus it is Monday and I absolutely could not help it.

Also the movie exaggerates Nannerl's talents. She was talented but not compared with Wolfgang. Nothing personal, it is just that lightning does not strike twice like that.

Wolfgang was off the charts as far as humanity goes. It is ridiculous to imagine that his sister was just as talented, just as it would be ridiculous to imagine that if he had a brother, the brother would be as talented.

It worries me that this movie's story will become accepted as fact, the way aspects of "Amadeus" became accepted as fact when they were not.

Also the trailer ...

... shows footage of a nun behind a grate, and I suspect an agenda involving feminism and the Catholic Church. The nun is heard saying to Nannerl, "Imagine how our lives would have been different if we had been boys." I can imagine where that discussion is going and I suspect it will be both offensive and boring.

Plus people who do not know anything about religion or history are going to be shocked at the sight of the grate which will make it look as if the nun is in prison. You know the movie is going to capitalize on that.

Oh well. I guess that illustrates the never-ending fascination with the Catholic Church as well as with Mozart. That is good news to me.

The movie does look beautiful, in a perfumed and candle-lit way.

And the music should be good!

Wang Dang Doodle, part 2

2011-08-18T04:13:00.000-07:00

We return to the subject of Yuja Wang and her slinky mini. We are honored to have a comment by the pianist Pierre-Arnaud Dablemont. He is an Internet buddy of mine. Here he is playing Janacek's beautiful "In the Mists."

That goes great with coffee at 6:15 a.m., I will say that! That pretty much sums up my reality.

Speaking of which, I caught myself writing "In a Mist" and then I corrected myself to "In the Mists." Then I sat there staring at it, thinking, wait, I thought it was "In a Mist," not plural.

Then I realize "In a Mist" is by Bix Beiderbecke.

That is a pretty piece! Pierre-Arnaud Dablemont should play it. Bix does a nice job with it there. I did not know Bix Beiderbecke played piano as well as cornet, you know? That is a great Heinie name by the way. Bix was short for Bismarck.

And there was his sidekick, the great saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer. They did this great laid-back record which I love. Lester Young used to love it too. He carried it around in his car trunk everywhere he went. I read that once.

Where am I? Now I am really in a mist. In the mists. How did I get here?

I was talking about Pierre-Arnaud Dablemont!

This will teach me to write on my Web log before I have finished my first cup of coffee.

Pierre-Arnaud is a great Blog-o-Land buddy because he is a pianist out there now, operating, and he knows a thing or two about how the world works. I am more expert about the piano world before I was born than I am about the one we actually live in now.

Monsieur Dablemont reminds me that we discussed sort of business once before, on his Web log, which we did. And he makes the point in a comment on the post that perhaps it is not up to Miss Wang what she wears.

I had not thought about that and perhaps it is true.

Perhaps her management made her wear that mini.

"But I do not want to wear it!"

"Wear it!"

Perhaps her management also made her wear that Russian fur hat for her Rachmaninoff album, pictured above. I am sorry but I find that picture so obnoxious! I would rather she just wore a mini.

You know what, I do not even know how I even got onto all this. It is hardly news any more when someone walks out on stage practically naked. There are so many young women musicians out there being marketed in pretty much the same way. It is getting almost impossible to stand out from the pack and if Yuja Wang's promoters did indeed make her wear that mini that must have been their objective.

Speaking of which, if it was, they have really succeeded, you know?

Look at all this ink!

The things that we can't see

2011-08-17T05:42:00.000-07:00

The other day I got a new CD by a pianist named ... what was he named? It does not really matter because the post is not actually about him. His name is Georgy Tchaidze. He is Russian, from St. Petersburg.

Georgy Tchaidze's CD is all Schubert and he "gets" Schubert. He plays the music simply and well. And anyway, I put on my headphones at my desk at work and then I just ...

... sat there.

Broadsided by Schubert.

It happens sometimes. I think: how did he come up with this music?

How did God speak through this ungainly, pudgy young man who lived 200 years ago?

I get tears in my eyes listening to this stuff. I did not even know this one sonata very well. Parts of it I knew, but not the whole thing. And still I sat there, just broadsided. Caught unawares. I could not believe it.

We have a line at Mass when we say that God made all things visible and invisible. Visibilium omnium et invisibilium.

Schubert saw the invisibilium. Maybe not the omnium invisibilium but he saw things normal people cannot see.

I am sure of it.

There are these "Three Piano Pieces." I mean, listen. This guy Tchaidze is not on YouTube playing this piece so I give you Enrico Pace. Because he has hair like Schubert in the picture up above.

Yuja Wang dang doodle

2011-08-15T06:04:00.000-07:00

As a music critic who is a woman I feel I must weigh in on this tempest in a teacup going on about pianist Yuja Wang.

Wang apparently played the Rachmaninoff Third at the Hollywood bowl wearing a minidress.

Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times wrote about the situation. Anne Midgett of the Washington Post takes issue with him.,

I like both critics but I go with Swed on this one.

My belief is, if you want to play the Rachmaninoff Third wearing a micro-mini, go right ahead. It's not as if it is surprising or anything, especially in the case of Yuja Wang whose out-of-the-gate-running CDs have already proven her to be something of a show-off. We will be seeing more of this kind of look with the proliferation of young beautiful skinny classical musicians. Anyway, there will be nothing we can do to stop it.

If you want to play Rachmaninoff in your underwear, I guess it is still a free country despite the efforts of certain people, and I am not so naive as to think anything I am going to say is going to make any difference.

Just do not be surprised if someone comments on it.

I read once where Liberace ...

... said, "Go ahead! Stare! I didn't dress like this to go unnoticed."

Yuja Wang could say the same thing.

I think she should.

The pianists in the crystal ball

2011-08-11T19:30:00.000-07:00

It is funny, every summer I think I will be depressed when the details start arriving about the fall concerts.

Then the details arrive and I feel as if I can't wait!

It happens every year. And this year it happened today. I got the schedule for Slee Hall, at UB, and I made a face, because who wants to think about fall in the middle of August? Well, I do, that's who. Because I opened the booklet and could not believe it.

"Wow," I kept saying. "Wow!"

They have a medieval/Renaissance concert at Christmas time with the New York Virtuoso Singers. I am ready to start listening to medieval and Renaissance carols now, this minute. I am just so psyched. Isn't this funny, I was just writing about the Middle Ages today, and my wacky participation in them, on my other Web log.

I will have to wait for the spring for this but Richard Goode is coming. He is a pianist I am crazy about. That is a great moody picture of Richard Goode I found on the Internet somewhere.

Hmmm, I have interviewed him twice already. I wonder if I can get away with interviewing him again. Perhaps not. "What's her name again?" he will ask. "That sounds familiar. Mary Kunz ... Mary Kunz Goldman ... Oh, I remember. Her again! Forget it, I've already talked to her twice."

I will get around this difficulty by phoning under a different name.

Back to the schedule. They are bringing back Robert Levin, another pianist I think is great. Last time he was here I trailed after him all the way to the airport! My friend Phil was taking him to the airport and let me climb into the back seat.

That concert Robert Levin gave with his wife was one of the greatest piano concerts I ever heard. They played Rachmaninoff, I forgot what else, I was just sitting there loving it.

Alas, I have interviewed him already too. But only once. Maybe I can get away with a second time.

My piano teacher Stephen Manes is also coming back. I do not have to wait that long for him. That is in September. He is doing a Viennese program. Berg is listed and I wonder if it is the Berg Sonata. I played the Berg Sonata with a lot of help from him. That is a piece I love.

I am going to to go every piano concert I can this year and report on it all.

So much to look forward to!

So much music, so little time!

Misty watercolor memories

2011-08-08T06:22:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to the Pine Grill Reunion, the free jazz concert on Buffalo's East Side, and I caught Houston Person, the great saxophonist.

Houston Person, playing the same ol' beat-up looking sax he always plays, played an unusual jazz number. He played "The Way We Were."

It goes great on saxophone as you can hear here. Hear, hear!

It is perfect for Person's way of playing which is natural and conversational. Unfortunately that YouTube clip, which comes from another time and another place, cuts off the beginning of the melody. But it gives you an idea of what Houston can do.

As long as I have known Houston Person he has been an old man. That is strange because I remember first seeing him, I think, 10 years ago. He used to come to Buffalo's Calumet Arts Cafe with Etta Jones, his wife, or girlfriend, or whatever she was. Those evenings were glorious. Then we heard them both at the Pine Grill Reunion several years ago, just a few weeks before she died. He is just a wonderful natural player. That is a quality I love in Pennario's playing and it is not as common as you think. There are so many artists, both in classical and in jazz, who over-engineer things.

"The Way We Were" is a pretty song. Marvin Hamlisch is a good songwriter. Nice guy, too. See, I cannot say he is a nice person because writing about Houston Person that could get confusing!

We had a blast with Hamlisch here in Buffalo when he was our pops conductor for a few years. Well, I did, anyway. I do not know if everyone did!

Once I had the idea for a story to trail around after him for a day. It was hysterical. This BPO staffer drove us around in a little compact car. You had big Hamlisch getting in and out of this tiny front seat. I was his briefcase carrier, was another thing. It was never discussed but every time Hamlisch and I got into this little car -- I was in the back seat -- Hamlisch would hand me his briefcase.

He got cookies from somewhere and was handing me cookies in the back seat. I remember that too.

Fond memories of Marvin Hamlisch! And Houston Person.

And the way we were.

The two faces of Robert Schumann

2011-08-02T06:21:00.000-07:00

Today is the feast day of St. Eusebius. That is a name that I used to think Schumann made up. Because Schumann had those two dual personalities, Florestan and Eusebius.

Then I found out Eusebius was a real name. The way I found out was, I came into possession of some hoary old volume of music, and the editor's name was Eusebius something or other. Ha, ha! If you did not know a real Eusebius existed that is a great way to find out.

But Eusebius was a saint who was persecuted and died in exile. That is the man himself up above! There was also a Pope Eusebius who was a saint from the fourth century. His feast day is in September.

So many Eusebii, so little time! I took Latin so I know it is one Eusebius, two Eusebii.

Was Schumann a Gemini, with these two personalities? Let me check. Yes indeedy he is. He is June 8. I am June 1. We are exactly a week apart.

How come scholars have not made more out of Schumann being a Gemini? I mean, I know astrology is only entertainment and hokum but this is a classic.

You can hear Schumann's two personalities throughout "Carnaval." And this is nifty -- you can listen in on a piano lesson about "Carnaval" with Andre-Michel Schub. Free piano lesson from Andre-Michel Schub! I am in. I interviewed Mr. Schub once and I loved him. When I mentioned I played the piano he asked what I was playing! Only two pianists, I think, have done that in the course of my career. One was Andre-Michel Schub and the other was Harry Connick Jr.

Schub sings and all the people who write comments are giggling about that. He is a bit of a dual personality himself when you think about it, you know? "Andre-Michel" is so French and "Schub" is so German. No word on whether he is a Gemini like Robert Schumann and me. Anybody know?

Meanwhile, what a cute lesson. It makes me want to find time to practice "Carnaval," work it back up.

But first I have to figure out what to name my two personalities.

The critic speaks

2011-07-25T06:15:00.000-07:00

All of a sudden, the music critic Andrew Porter keeps jumping out at me.

Alex Ross at the New Yorker talks about how once Porter was jumped by a mob in Milan. Well, the mob thought they were attacking him but got the wrong man. It's funny. Read the link. I guess Porter was interviewed in the new issue of Opera News and this story comes from that.

Ross says that many people, himself included, would consider Porter the greatest music critic alive.

Also the other day I was working on a story about the upcoming "Magic Flute" in Chautauqua and they were proud of that they were using the translation by Andrew Porter.

So, all of a sudden Porter is everywhere! And this means something to me because I am doing the book on Leonard Pennario. And when Pennario was 28, Porter -- who was a couple of years younger -- heard him and could not believe what he was hearing.

I have no idea what Andrew Porter looks like and I cannot find a picture of him. So at the top of this post I have substituted a painting of myself listening to Pennario.

I will tell you this, though: When Porter heard Pennario live at the Wigmore Hall in London, that was when he said, "No one today plays the piano better than Pennario."

In Gramophone he wrote how dazzled he was by Pennario's treatment of the Schulz-Evler transcription of Johann Strauss' "Blue Danube" Waltz.

"But what playing!" I love that line.

I have seen mean-minded critics take lines out of context, to make it sound, for instance, as if Porter, when he said Pennario's trills went off like electric bells, meant that he sounded mechanical. In context you can see Porter meant that in admiration. The question to me is, why would other critics go out of their way to turn it around and make it seem otherwise. Pooh on them! Naturally I will be more professional in the book but let me tell you this, I am going into it, the ups and downs of critics.

Thanks to the miracles of the Internet you can hear the record Andrew Porter was raving about . It is fun to listen to it and match it up against what the critic was saying.

You can also hear Pennario's own arrangement of the Kaiser-Waltz -- that is the Emperor Waltz, but Pennario always called it the Kaiser-Waltz -- that Andrew Porter praised. (Here is a video with less scratching.) This was always my favorite Strauss waltz and I am happy I was able to tell the old man that I loved that he arranged it. Those wistful, beautiful themes.

Anyway that is what I like about Andrew Porter.

It is great to see him back in the limelight!

The mark of the maestro

2011-07-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

The other day I was going on about -- I know, as usual! -- the Allegretto from Beethoven's Seventh. I am sorry, I liked it was a teenager. I am afraid I am still a teenager.

Anyway, I found myself watching Herbert von Karajan conducting it on YouTube.

That is von Karajan up above.

There are moments when you see why a great conductor is a great conductor. I remember watching, also on YouTube, Leonard Bernstein conducting Mozart's "Ave, Verum Corpus." Here Bernstein was, not Catholic -- not even Christian -- and yet, for while he is conducting that music, he is. Because Mozart was, and that is what it takes to understand that music.

It is amazing. I want to say it is like watching a great actor but I think it is deeper than that. Bernstein brings out this music's reverence and mystical beauty as I have never seen anyone else do. He takes that moment at the beginning and gets into the zone. You see him mouthing the Latin along with the chorus. He was drawing the music out of everyone. You can see it.

That was, honest, the first time I "got" Bernstein. I looked at that and thought, that is a great conductor! That is what I am seeing.

The other night, watching Herbert von Karajan, I saw the same thing.

Watch what the maestro does at the end. He is guiding the music to a close, cuing the woodwinds, the hushed pizzicato on the violins. Then ... at the last chord. Look at that gesture.

It is a great bit of showmanship but it is genuine, too.

Amazing.

Kaiser Wilhelm

2011-07-15T07:46:00.000-07:00

This morning I am listening to Wilhelm Backhaus playing Beethoven sonatas. Actually there is nothing special about this morning.

Pretty much every morning I listen to Wilhelm Backhaus playing Beethoven sonatas!

There is this CD that crossed my desk at work and somehow it became lodged in the CD player in my back room. Somehow for me it takes great organization and initiative to change a CD and so Wilhelm Backhaus has stayed. He has become family. On this disc he is playing four Beethoven sonatas including two that I love, the "Hunt" and the "Waldstein."

I get up early to work on my book on Leonard Pennario, which I am slowly but surely bringing into shape. And so here I am, in my pajamas, drinking my coffee and typing away, surrounded by huge binders full of newspaper clippings and letters, and my card files detailing where Pennario was from day to day, year to year. My neighborhood is noisy. When it gets to be, oh, 7:30 a.m., everyone starts waking up and shouting and screaming and blasting their car stereos. So that is when the Backhaus goes on.

Wilhelm Backhaus is my friend!

I love Beethoven and normally his music would be too distracting to work to. Pennario is also too distracting to work to, I find. I think back on the old man and I get weepy. But this Backhaus, I am used to this disc. I know all its twists and turns, and so I can work to it. The music is strong and robust and encouraging.

Backhaus is like Pennario, and this is high praise, in that he is unpretentious. These performances are live and sometimes old Wilhelm comes down -- hard -- on the wrong notes. Whole chords, he gets wrong! But it does not bother him one bit. He soldiers happiily on. I get such a kick out of him. I just grin hearing him play the "Hunt" Sonata. That galloping finale! Nothing stops him.

We should all be like that in life!

This morning for the first time I looked up Backhaus on Wikipedia. There is a somewhat hagiographic and annoying entry but there are a few facts in it. Wilhelm Backhaus was the first pianist to record a concerto. He recorded the Grieg. On July 15, 1909. Yikes, that is today! Isn't it July 15? Well, in my life I am used to coincidence.

Speaking of coincidence, I just found that picture to post up above. And I know the man Backhaus made the autograph out to! He was Dr. J. Warren Perry. He was a Buffalonian. I met him. He just died recently. Isn't this strange? I just found that picture at random on the Internet.

Here is a young picture of Backhaus with Evgeny Kissin hair.

Here is a cool interview with Backhaus discussing technique.

Here he is playing the finale of the "Tempest" Sonata.

Play it, Wilhelm!

Play it!

Birthday boy

2011-07-09T14:57:00.000-07:00

Today is Leonard Pennario's birthday and to my surprise, it was on Twitter without my putting it there!

Three pianists were on Twitter posting that it was Pennario's birthday. Well, two of them were pianists. I am not sure about the third one but she was a fan, anyway.

Pennario would have been 87 today. That is an early publicity shot of him up above. I used to laugh with him about how great looking he was.

I guess the odds of his surviving until now were pretty slim because of his Parkinson's, but when he was 83 he had a lot of life in him. Pennario had the kind of spirit that lasted. You could not accomplish what he accomplished without a bright and strong spirit. There was so much about life he still loved.

He would have loved it, pianists noting his birthday on Twitter. When he was alive, if he was mentioned on the Internet, I used to love to tell him. Once people got into a fight about a Leonard Pennario recording on YouTube. The person who loved the recording was flinging epithets at the person who hated it. I told Pennario about that and he got a big kick out of it.

Oh well. It will all be in the book!

This morning I listened to him playing this. I like how romantic he makes it. So many pianists make it sound angry. Pennario knew better. I love the turn he takes at ... hmmm.... 1:09. And the seductive sound he brings to the middle section.

My thanks go out to everyone who joins me in admiring Pennario's artistry on his birthday.

His spirit lives.

The music of the heart

2011-07-08T18:21:00.000-07:00

Today I heard about a death that made me emotional. The violinist Josef Suk died. He was 81. There he is up above! I never knew what he looked like.

Suk -- you say it "souk" -- had significance to me. I wrote about it once before. He was descended from Dvorak and the composer Josef Suk but I did not care beans about that. What I cared about was that he played the version of Mozart's Adagio in E for Violin that I fell in love with when I was 14.

The reason I remember I was 14 -- I had just turned 14 -- was that it was 1976 and the classical station was playing music for the Bicentennial, music written in 1776. This glorious Adagio in E came on and I was taping it with my primitive cassette recorder. I know, nerd! I was a hoot when I was 14. I was leading this double life. None of my schoolfriends knew anything about my Mozart obsession. Well, they knew I was obsessed but they knew nothing about it.

Josef Suk played the daylights out of this piece and I will always remember hearing it for the first time. There is this one part of it so passionate and grown-up and I remember listening to it and thinking I would faint.

After that I learned the lesson in music everyone learns, that not all recordings are equal. I got somebody's recording from the record store, I forget whose, but it did not measure up.

So periodically even as I got into my 20s I would dig out that old cassette and listen to my old Suk recording.

To my delight I found it on YouTube. Well, I found one recording by Josef Suk. It is not quite the one I had, because I remember the cadenza of the one I had, and it is not this one. But it is as good.

I knew what I liked when I was 14, you know? The things I loved then, I love now. And it is funny because when you are a kid you see the world in primary colors. You LOVE this. You HATE that. Often there is no middle ground.

Back then I never knew what Suk looked like and it is strange to see him now, this square looking Czech guy with big glasses. But man, can he play.

Listening to Suk play this piece now, I can put into words what I loved about it, and still do. I like the passion he puts into it. I like how he sails and soars through it. The part I love, and I wrote about this before but I must write about it again, it starts at about 2:51. It repeats later. I am not a violinist but it seems to me what you have to do at this point is just sing your heart out. Don't hold back. I have heard other violinists who pull back and that is not the right thing to do. Suk does not. He sings out the music, and he does that consistently through the whole piece. This is a quality by the way that I love in Leonard Pennario's playing. He doesn't play stupid games with you.

It is great on a hot night like this to listen to this beautiful and passionate Adagio accompanied by a big glass of chilled white wine, as God and Mozart surely intended.

Rest in peace, Josef Suk, you wonderful musician who showed me the beauty of this wonderful piece.

Someone's in the kitchen with George Szell

2011-07-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

Shows where my mind is, here I am reading the new George Szell biography by Michael Charry, and what thrills me the most?

The part about how someone noticed that Szell's music library held a copy of "The Joy of Cooking."

And it turned out Szell was friends with Irma von Starkloff Rombauer, the original author! That his her full name. I had always thought it was just Irma Rombauer. But it is not!

Charry explains that Szell liked Rombauer's German heritage, which I would concur is a most excellent thing in a woman. A friend of Szell tells him that Szell contributed some of the recipes.

Wow! Which ones?

Perhaps the Chicken Paprikash? (Or Chicken Paprika as it is called in the 1940s edition I scored at a garage sale.)

Or perhaps some of the German Christmas Cakes? Cookies are called cakes in that old edition.

Perhaps I have been cooking Szell's recipes and never knew it.

Szell is quoted as saying about Irma Rombauer: "She was living in St. Louis when I went there to conduct and we became very friendly. That was one of the reasons I went back the second year. You know how it is when people live far apart. Nothing came of it but I'm still very fond of her. Some of the recipes she got from me."

"Nothing came of it.." This book is kind of dense and gray but that is a paragraph I have pored over, I will tell you that right now. It is on page 28.

At the time they met, Charry writes, Rombauer was 54 and Szell was a young whippersnapper of 33. But the book says, "Her vivacious personality, her love for music, and her interest in cooking would have made her attractive to Szell.

Here is a picture of Irma Rombauer.

"Nothing came of it." Hmmmm.

I guess sometimes it gets hot in the kitchen!

Lost in la la land

2011-07-05T06:36:00.000-07:00

Just a couple more thoughts on "Meistersinger" and then we will move on, I promise. I think what has happened is, I never saw this opera before in its entirety, and so it has been on my mind.

It is funny how sometimes you hear something that colors your life. You wake up in the morning feeling a little different because of it. One of these days I should list some of the music that has done this to me in the past.

I did finish watching the Glyndebourne production. As I shared yesterday, it took all kinds of doing including getting up that morning at 4 a.m. -- and being late for a party later that day. Yikes, I was almost an hour late because I had to finish watching the thing before Glyndebourne pulled the plug on it.

Howard ended up watching the last scene over my shoulder. We had it on full screen. Howard always kills me. As Beckmesser was making his sorry attempt at singing the Prize Song, Howard said, "I don't know, he sounds all right to me." By the way what I wrote the other day about the name Sixtus Beckmesser, I was wrong. Beckmesser was a real actual Mastersinger, I have learned.

When the opera was over I had to scramble to explain away the last scene, the one that always gets quoted, about keeping German art sacred and pure. Awkward!

I said, "Howard, I don't want you to think I am watching Nazi opera, or anything." I explained "Meistersinger" premiered in 1868 (was it? I am in a hurry right now) and furthermore there was that speech Hans Sachs makes earlier condemning man's inhumanity to man.

Also I tried to tell him how it is supposed to be set in the Middle Ages and these Mastersingers, you know, they are these provincial tradesmen striving for something greater. They are gently comic figures. This opera is bittersweet in a kind of Mozartean way -- there was one instance where I am sure Wagner is quoting Mozart -- but it is not meant to be serious as a heart attack.

Also, I did not say this to Howard but face it, no German opera is complete without crowds of people shouting "Heil" to something. It just has to be done. I mean, look at "The Magic Flute."

OK, time to put this all to bed. But it is not easy!

This morning I realized it was time to snap out of it so while I was drinking my coffee, I looked into this new memoir that came my way, by Katherine Weber, the granddaughter of Kay Swift, who had the long affair with George Gershwin.

And there "Meistersinger" was again!

I could not get away from it!

Apparently Gershwin went with Kay Swift to see "Die Meistersinger." The book said, "He was enamored of the score."

That is fascinating! It is fun to look at "Meistersinger" through Gershwin's eyes and wonder what he took away from it.

But it is time for me to stop thinking about this.

Nuernberg all-nighter

2011-07-03T09:54:00.000-07:00

No one can say I do not practice what I preach! Yesterday I encouraged people to check out "Die Meistersinger" from Glyndebourne. I said I was going to even though we had less than 48 hours left to do it. And trust me, I had a lot scheduled for those hours.

I was up at 4 a.m., watching the first act!

I could not sleep because I had a lot on my mind so I thought, as long as I am good for nothing anyway, I may as well watch "Meistersinger." Anyway that is time well spent. It is one of the dumb things about the world that reading a book is looked on as being productive while listening to music in general is not.

So, somewhere around 5:30, 6 a.m., there my life is, mirroring art. Hans Sachs has been up all night and so have I!

The Hans Sachs in this production is Gerald Finley, a Canadian singer. I am not an expert on this opera, though I am fast becoming one. I had never really seen it before, not even on video. I knew parts of it and had a sketchy concept of the story. My father loved this opera and I remember when I was about 16 he sat me down and we listened to it together. I guess I liked it but I do not remember a lot more than that.

My father had a book of Wagner librettos that I inherited after he died and he had made pencil notes about the dates he listened to "Die Meistersinger." It must be written in there when exactly he and I listened to it. I will have to go look. My dad did that for one other thing that I know of. In "The Forsyte Saga," he noted down whenever he read "Indian Summer of a Forsyte." That is extremely affecting, too. So beautifully written.

I was up all night when I read "Indian Summer of a Forsyte," too! I remember when I finished it the sun was coming up.

What is this all adding up to? Darned if I know.

Back to "Die Meistersinger." I still have half of Act 3 to go but I took a break to, ahem, share my observations, should you wish to call in sick to whatever plans you had today and catch it at the last minute.

Glyndebourne set the opera in the early 19th century. It is obvious right away -- you have the top hats and the Empire waist gowns. It does not quite go with the opera's reflection of the medieval age of faith -- the night watchman calling the benediction as he calls the hours, the entire town at Mass, the hymns to and celebration of the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Also there is that last act when -- I remember the opera expert Father Owen Lee pointed this out -- Wagner brings the Middle Ages to life as no play or movie has been able to do. You are kind of wasting that if you set the opera in a different era. "Die Meistersinger" is medieval and I can't understand why people can't leave it that way.

Still, the costumes are charming and you kind of forget they are not medieval. The opera puts you back in the Middle Ages no matter what the costumers are doing, I guess I am saying.

Finley, pictured up above, is tremendously moving as Sachs. He is a young Sachs. His hair is not even gray. He has a kind of pugnacious look, like a bulldog, and his ears stick out, and he's cute. Never having seen the opera before there were some things I had not realized. Sachs is kind of mean, for one thing. His apprentice is afraid of him. Sachs beats him. Sachs is wrestling with all kinds of stuff that the other people in the opera do not see.

Granted, my sleep is all over the map, and this ravishing music gets to me anyway, but I teared up watching the Prelude to Act 3. It just exposes all the secret messiness of this man's life. How he represses the memory of his dead wife -- and children, too, it seems. How he drinks too much. This might have been a Glyndebourne touch, the bottles lying around, but it rings true. Just looking at him slumped over his desk, his wine glass in his hand -- then opening the shutters and confronting the sunlight -- your heart just goes out to him. Finley shares the credit with Wagner on this one.

You hear so much, too much, about how Hitler loved "Meistersinger." Hitler must have been sleeping through the part where Sachs despairs over man's inhumanity to man. How come you never hear that quoted? I am just saying. You hear all this blah blah blah about the ending, when he talks about the sacred German art, but you never hear the other things that Sachs says.

Two other things and then I must get back to Glyndebourne because time is short.

One, Beckmesser -- this is Johannes Martin Kranzler -- pretty much steals the show whenever he is on. You cannot look away from him. He has a marvelous comic face, and something is touching about him, too. I would imagine that is important in a good Beckmesser. You do not want some cartoon, or some blatant idiot. Most of us have some kind of inner Beckmesser and Wagner was smart enough to know that.

Two, the part where Eva comes to see Sachs and she kind of flirts around with him, gently, about whether he is going to try to win her hand.... God knows how this works, but music fools around with your subconscious. And opera in general -- and Wagner in particular -- is very good about getting across people's foggy relationships with each other. Things that can't be spoken or acknowledged or put into words, that is what you get from the music.

I think I should get back to it now!

Free Wagner

2011-07-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

You have one more day to catch "Die Meistersinger," the complete opera, streamed from Glyndebourne.

Not to fall back on Valley Girl talk, but it is So Cool. Gerald Finley is Sachs

It really puts you there. The camera pans over the crowd. You hear the clipped British announcement to turn off your cell phone and that the taking of photographs is prohibited. So exciting!!

I have not seen the whole thing but from the half hour or so that I managed to wedge in so far, it looks great. The British have a great sense of humor and a lack of vanity that I admire. I mean a lack of vanity in the service of comedy. You see this in Britcoms. They don't care how blowsy they look, how ridiculous. In "Die Meistersinger" this quality translates into great Sixtus Beckmessers. Although the Beckmesser in this production seems to be a German, Johannes Martin Kranzle.

Sixtus Beckmesser. Wagner and his friends must have been sitting around with their beers laughing and laughing when they came up with that name. Originally I heard Wagner wanted to name the guy Hans Lick, after Eduard Hanslick, the critic who hated him.

Back to the opera. I started watching it at work the other day and got so drawn into it that when someone came up to say hello to me I just about jumped out of my skin. It is that good.

Sometime between today and tomorrow I vow to get back to it.

I must!

My dream job

2011-06-30T06:04:00.000-07:00

Today the Wall Street Journal has a huge story about the Naples Philharmonic in Florida getting a new executive director, Kathleen van Bergen. To be honest I am really tired of thinking about orchestras and their problems. I just am. But there is one fascinating thing in this story.

That is the job that this Kathleen van Bergen is leaving.

She is, or was, the artistic director of the Schubert Club in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The Schubert Club!

Imagine that!

Monday mornings would be less onerous if instead of going into an office like everyone else, to meet my deadlines and squabble with my supervisors, I was beginning a new work week at the helm of the Schubert Club. I would spend my days listening to Schubert. Perhaps I could call musicians and talk about Schubert. I would spearhead and implement educational programs involving Schubert.

I could spend days adjudicating whose version of "Normans Gesang" is superior, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's or Thomas Hampson's.

My head spins to think about it.

Just to say it. You are at a party and someone asks, "So what do you do?" And you get to take a sip of wine or beer, as the case may be, and reply: "I am the director of the Schubert Club."

How did this woman get a job like that, and why would you ever leave it?

Looking up the Schubert Club the story just gets better. They have the coveted domain name www.schubert.org. They have programs coming up featuring Susan Graham and Malcolm Martineau and -- slaver! -- Matthias Goerne and Leif-Ove Andsnes. We never get lieder in Buffalo.

What Schubert are these people performing? Let me check.

Well, now I am a little less jealous. Susan Graham is singing a "predominantly German" program with a little Schubert but also Purcell, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Duparc, Sondheim, Noel Coward, etc. Sondheim, what the heck? Why do they have to throw in Sondheim? Let these Sondheim fans have their own club.

Goerne is singing Mahler and Shostakovich. Nothing against them but ... who is supposed to be the reason for the season? Schubert!

The instrumentalists are not much better. Violinist Sarah Chang and pianist Andrew von Oeyen include no Schubert on their program. Neither do violinist Julia Fischer and pianist Milana Chernyavska. Andre Watts is playing Liszt -- probably the same program he played recently here which, while dazzling, is not Schubert.

Hmmmmm.

No wonder Kathleen van Bergen is leaving.

Perhaps I should declare my candidacy for her job.

Someone had to bring Schubert back to the Schubert Club!

Grouchy old man

2011-06-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

There is a problem I have in that the things I like to listen to, I listen to over and over, and the things I like to read, I read over and over. It is not a bad thing but it is hard to find the time to do it. I wish I were a teenager again, when all I had to do was sprawl on my bed and listen to Bach.

Now I sneak in pleasures here and there.

The other day at a second-hand book sale I spent a buck on a book I get a kick out of, David Dubal's "Evenings with Horowitz."

It has been a long time since I looked at this book and there are some things I am foggy on. The book tells how Dubal's friendship with old pianist Vladimir Horowitz collapses because the Horowitzes will not let him bring a date to any of the parties. I am not sure why that is. Also I am not sure why Horowitz gets addicted to having students playing for him. Did he just want to feel like the Maestro or was it more nefarious? Probably what I should do is sit down with this book and read it cover to cover. But when? I do not even have time to dry my hair.

So what I do is, I open the book here and there, and read this and that, often when I am drying my hair, which was the mental connection there. "Evenings With Horowitz" is always fun.

I like the book for its insights into Horowitz's personality, which I think must be pretty accurate. Also, not to sound too nerdy, but I like Dubal's use of adverbs.

"Wanda ardently agreed."

"Horowitz said glumly."

"Horowitz and Wanda nodded vigorously."

That is Horowitz and his wife, Wanda, the daughter of Toscanini, up above. By the time Dubal knew them, though, they were much older.

One paragraph last night got Howard and me laughing.

Dubal wants to bring his girlfriend to a party the Horowitzes are having and he is arguing with Horowitz about it.

"You know Wanda is in charge of these things," Horowitz says. "She likes only married people. She's Catholic."

I said, "Come now, Maestro. Are Woody Allen and Mia Farrow married? And I can name other exceptions who are allowed to your parties. ..."

There was no doubt Horowitz was rather upset at this confrontation. Just then, we were called to dinner.

"We go down now. I go peepee first. After a good dinner, you will feel better."

When he returned, he sat, as always, at the head of the table, with me at his left side. During his absence, he had regained his composure and started talking about the people who had been ostracized from his life.

Hahahahahaa!

That is what cheers Horowitz up!

Well, Dubal makes the point that Horowitz was thinking of ostracizing him, making a subtle threat. But I think even besides that, Horowitz probably liked to think about the people he had ostracized. Like notches in his belt.

Gotta love him, you know?

Fingers flying

2011-06-27T05:10:00.000-07:00

Here is a treat for pianists. Stephen Hough, the British concert pianist, has written on his Web log what amounts to a free piano lesson on how to do trills.

Is this a marvelous age we live in or what? You hop onto the Internet and you never know what you will find.

I am trying to think of the trilling-est piece I ever played. I think it would have to be Beethoven's Sonata in E, Opus 109, which ends in showers of trills in the right and left hands with all kinds of other things going on too. Once I, ahem, played this sonata in recital and Howard said that when the trills all finally wound down, his heart could stop pounding because it meant the plane had landed safely. Ha, ha! Playing a sonata like this is like being at the controls of a jet. If you listen to the music you can actually feel the wheels touch ground.

Unfortunately my recital was not recorded for posterity so here is Daniel Barenboim playing it. What a sonata. It is intoxicating. The first theme, heartbreaking! The middle voices get to me. Then the beginning of the first variation always gets me. Barenboim gets to this at about 2:18. It is almost like a very slow waltz. I know I should not think about it like that but still.

Barenboim is the slowest pianist I have ever heard doing this! Also I had not realized his fingers were that stubby.

When you get to 4:10, 4:11 the music kind of hurts. I remember my teacher, Stephen Manes, talked about that. Sometimes music has to hurt a little bit and this is one of those times.

The third variation sounds like sleigh bells and there are things that given my overactive imagination I read into that. The variation that starts at 6:45 is one I love. It is so tender and so direct.

The fun starts about 10:40 when he states the theme simply, then doubles up the notes, then triples them. Beethoven likes this trick. Then it picks up .... you can think of a train, but I like to think of being on a plane, when the engines really start going and you are flattened against the back of your seat and you take off.

The trills get under way slowly at 11:00. At 11:16 they speed up and by about 11:30 they are going full blast. Wow, Barenboim! Look at those stubby fingers fly! As you gain altitude, the trills keep going in the left hand while the right has all this other exciting stuff going on. It builds and builds and then starts coming down. There can be some discussion about when exactly the wheels touch down but I would ... say ... right .... about ....

... 11:37.

That is one thrilling 30 seconds!

Did I say thrilling?

I meant trilling!

Great Scot

2011-06-25T21:27:00.000-07:00

Looking at pictures of Edvard Grieg I found the oddly pathetic picture up above.

I am thinking, what is this, some joke?

It was an unfortunate period for men's fashions. He just looks like a sad sack, you know?

This site reports that Greig's ancestors were from Scotland and the family name was originally "Greig." Too bad it is not still! Because every time I type it it comes out Greig.

Such Norwegian nationalism swirls around Grieg that I wonder if they mind that his family was from Scotland. I hear that his picture is on Norwegian Air planes, along with Jenny Lind's and Ole Bull (a name I love).

A young Grieg.

An artistic photo of a young-ish Grieg.

Grieg did not have much of a chin!

Here is my Grieg story. I was a teen-ager and in the middle of this Mozart craze which, I have to say, has lasted my whole life. I was buying records one fevered afternoon and one that I picked up was Mozart's ballet "Les Petits Riens," which translates to "The Little Nothings."

On the other side of the record was Grieg's "Holberg Suite."

I went home and when I got around to that record I played the Mozart. I realized pretty quick that Mozart was on autopilot when he wrote that thing.

But the other side!

The Grieg!

That was a different story!

I held onto that record over the years all on account of that Grieg. That "Holberg Suite." I have played it hundreds of times. That was how I first got to know the "Holberg Suite," by accident.

So lovely.

A novelist's dream

2011-06-22T20:31:00.000-07:00

I am happy to hear there is a new novel out about Mozart. The British music writer Jessica Duchen writes about it on her Web log. It is called "Mozart's Last Aria."

Jessica Duchen calls it "a cracking read." That is a British expression I will have to pick up.

The book is by Matt Rees and it is a fictional exploration of how Mozart could have died. Admit it, his death has always been mysterious. I like how Rees apparently hinges his story on Mozart having said in a letter that he thought he had been poisoned. I always thought that was pretty important, you know? You cannot exactly dismiss that.

Jessica posts the book trailer. That is one long and leisurely book trailer. When I do my book trailer for my book on Pennario it is going to be shorter. Because I will tell you one thing, if I were not pathologically fascinated by all things Mozart I would never have sat through this thing.

The one thing I hope is that Rees' book does not blame Mozart's death on the Catholic Church. Fiction that blames things on the Catholic Church has a way of sticking and before long everyone will be quoting it as fact.

Blame it on the Masons. Blame it on anyone else, you know?

Well, I should not get all nutzed up. I have not even seen this book.

Let me see what teasers are out there.

Here is a video of Mr. Rees reading from it. I like the glass of red wine! Man after my own heart.

Here is another. I appreciate how the author refers to Mozart's son, who called himself Wolfgang II, visiting Mozart's sister, Nannerl, in her older age. That is a historic turn of events I have always found touching. Another real-life aspect of the Mozart story I love is when the biographers Mary and Vincent Novello, long after Mozart's death, went looking for the people close to him and found Nannerl, Aloysia Weber (Mozart's old flame), and Konstanze (his widow), all living in the same town. These three old ladies, all there, with all their old rivalries.

What a strange story, on all levels, surrounds Mozart's death. It is not anything anyone could ever make up.

It is a novelist's dream.

Mid-summer magic

2011-06-21T06:17:00.000-07:00

Music with me goes sort of with the calendar. There are certain things I like to listen to on different days.

For instance on New Year's Day and on my birthday I like to play Bach on the piano. It puts me in a sunny frame of mind.

On the first day of summer, which is today, I like to listen to "Die Meistersinger," the chorale that starts it. It is the chorale to St. John because in June 21 is the feast of St. John the Baptist, or Johannestag.

I would go crazy trying to find that on YouTube so forget it. Instead here is this clip of the unique Glenn Gould working his way with enjoyment through Wagner's Prelude to "Die Meistersinger." I love how he sings along. In this case it adds to it.

There is the Mendelssohn "Midsummer Night's Dream" music, obvious but I have to mention it because I like to listen to it. You know me, I love warhorses. I could do a whole separate Music Critic Web log on warhorses.

It is hard for me to name my favorite part of the Mendelssohn score because I love the whole thing. Mendelssohn at 17, already at the top of his game.

It is wonderful to play the Nocturne at night. Listening to it, you know, I wonder what this kid's parents were thinking. "Holy cow." I mean, there are kids today who are talented as teenagers, but ... not like this.

To have come up with this. Again, obvious, but has to be mentioned. I knew Howard was starting to think about marrying me when he started working this theme into his jazz playing. Then we walked down the aisle to it at St. Gerard's. I know, boring, been done, but some things you just have to do, you know?

One other midsummer matter.

I love how Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" takes place all in one day.

So does "Die Meistersinger."

Both of them filled with all this crazy hazy romantic action and packed into this one long up-and-down day. The longest day of the year.

So there is something else I associate with them and that is "The Marriage of Figaro." Another dreamy creation that takes place all in one day. It is not necessarily Midsummer Day, as far as I know, but it could be.

That last scene in the garden. Warning: Do not listen to this clip in the morning. Your whole day will be shot!

Well, who gets work done today anyway?

It is Mid-Summer Day!

Tell 'em, Maestro

2011-06-01T06:26:00.000-07:00

Riccardo Muti is like me!

I was dazzled to read that Muti has spoken up on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI and his drive to clean up Catholic church music.

"When I go to church and hear four strums of a guitar, or choruses of senseless, insipid words, I think it's an insult," says Muti, who is the music director of the Chicago Symphony.

And:

"I can't work out how come once upon a time there were Mozart and Bach and now we have little sing-songs. This is a lack of respect for people's intelligence."

I love this guy!!

It is time someone spoke up about this music mess. It is great that we have a recognizable musical figure chiming in.

You know what, I am not denying that John Paul II was a holy man. But his powers apparently did not extend to fixing the Catholic Church's music. The whole time he was pope this whole situation just got worse and worse and worse. And I am sorry, music matters. Perhaps it should not but it does. The human spirit responds to music on levels we do not understand.

As well as on levels we do understand. A lot depends on your particular Mass -- more than should depend on it. If you are stuck with a Mass that grates on you, it makes it awfully hard to go back the next Sunday, I will tell you that right now, because I have been there.

I am so personally grateful to Pope Benedict XVI for pushing to fix the music and the liturgy situation and take out the trash even if it makes him the heavy and even if it makes him unpopular. Someone has to show leadership here. I pray every day that the pope stays healthy and lives long, because God knows we need him. I need him, that is for sure.

Wow, this Riccardo Muti, I should pray for him, too. Google Riccardo Muti and it is not pretty. The Google system prompts you with other people's searches and so you get:

riccardo muti health
riccardo muti fall
riccardo muti pacemaker
riccardo muti accident
riccardo muti injury
riccardo muti illness

The poor maestro! Well, it seems that after blacking out earlier this year he has gotten a pacemaker and is recovering. So, though I am but the casual observer here, things appear to be looking up. I wish him renewed health.

And, at long last, decent music at Mass!

Time out for Schubert

2011-05-20T05:48:00.000-07:00

Today, all kinds of work to do. A to-do list a mile a long!

With which, YouTube.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing "Auf Der Bruck."

The version with Gerald Moore is superior to the one with Sviatoslav Richter. Gerald Moore has a spring in his step. Well, he is sitting at the piano but you know what I mean.

Richter is just a tad, a tad slower. It is only a microsecond's worth but it makes a difference. However, I have a treasured vinyl record with Fischer-Dieskau teaming up with Richter where they take it over the top. Fischer-Dieskau is older on that record and his voice is rawer but I do reckon that might be the best recording of all.

I wonder if that recording is on YouTube. I will have to go looking for it.

La la la la la la la.

As if I have no work to do!

The fun of the Fischer-Dieskau/Richter video is that it is an actual video. There are all kinds of pieces of this recital kicking around YouTube. I have watched a bunch of them. They are hilarious because Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is just so, so charming. He is having the most wonderful time. He is looking this way and that and enjoying the songs that he sings and he is handsome and cuddly like a big puppy ...

... and you just want to hug him and kiss him. Here he is in a song I have loved since I was a teenager, "Fischerweise." The way he sings that last line: "Den Fisch betruegst du nicht." Then the way he listens up to the piano. Ha, ha! Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, you sweet thing! Get over here, you.

Meanwhile you get Richter and he is just this icy ugly old guy at the piano squinting at the music and forging grimly ahead.

Too funny.

More fun than I have time to be having right now.

Alas.

The diva does Pilates

2011-05-03T05:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to a Pilates class and later I was writing about it on my other Web log. I got on the 'Net and began looking at pictures of Joseph Pilates.

And I found that great old picture up above of Pilates coaching the great coloratura soprano Roberta Peters!

Isn't that classic? It was taken in February 1951. I love when you find a picture of someone beautiful and glamorous ...

... and there she is in her exercise clothes, doing Pilates, just like me.

Well, not exactly just like me.

She gets Joseph Pilates herself to teach her!

"This is my trainer, Joe Pilates." That would be the greatest. Well, it would have been. It is too late now because Pilates is no longer among us. He was around for a long time, healthy as a horse, but all good things must come to an end and now you may no longer take Pilates from Pilates.

Here is a great vintage "Traviata" starring Peters.

Those Pilates lessons paid off!

Wake-up call

2011-04-28T05:05:00.000-07:00

Just now I went out to get the paper and I looked at the morning and I got this Gustav Mahler song in my head. Actually the song had nothing to do with the actual day. I get this song in my head every morning. It is funny how you can fall into musical habits like that. It is morning, I get up, I think of this song at one time or another.

I was surprised there were not more takes on this song on YouTube of this song. I would have thought someone would have done something artistic with it because it is so atmospheric, describing a spring morning. Well, the one I found is a dandy: Bo Skovhus with the Bamberg Symphony and a good-looking conductor named Jonathan Nott. Funny, I am hearing a lot about Bamberg lately! We just had thing going in Buffalo where they brought over a film about how they brew beer in Bamberg. The film made the rounds of the taverns and they showed it and had beer tastings. The German filmmaker came along with the film and you could ask him questions.

The Bambergers play Mahler as well as they brew beer. There is no translation but you can get the spirit of the song. And heck, I can more or less translate it from memory. There is breeze in the linden tree (in German songs you are always dealing with linden trees). It's a spring morning. The sun is up. Get up!

And my favorite line, at 1:50.. "And I have already seen your sweetheart."

Your sweetheart is out and about!

If that does not get you out of bed what will?

You get your own inner videos to go with these songs and I always picture the breeze blowing through a village, the birds singing, the people in the streets. You are asleep in an upstairs front bedroom and the branches of the tree outside are tapping on your window and the breeze is coming into the room and stirring the sheets over your feet.

Oh, look. This is darling. (That is what I even wrote, as a comment.) This is a sweet video someone made of the song. The performance, by a singer named Rob Wanders, is kind of amateurish which adds to the charm. Plus it is with piano. All other things being equal I almost always prefer the original piano version to the orchestration. And the piano accompaniment to this song makes the bird trills so pretty.

The concluding image in this second video is especially cute. "Lang schlafer, steh auf!" Long sleeper, get up! There is a comment apparently from the person they show asleep. "That's me in the video! Thanks for using my picture, Rob!"

We would say sleepyhead.

I am one!

Close encounters with Van Cliburn

2011-04-15T05:49:00.000-07:00

This morning I have a million things to do so I sit down with my coffee and get set to get started when ...

Work Avoidance 101: How is the concert pianist Stephen Hough doing these days?

Stephen H. keeps this Web log on the Telegraph -- you can find it at right, among my links -- that I love checking into now and then. So I check into his Web log. I am flipping around it, here and there, when I find this ancient thing he wrote on this little film clip of Van Cliburn returning from Moscow where he just won the Tchaikovsky Competition.

Wow, there is so much on YouTube, you know? And new things are appearing every day. You can peek at home movies of Rachmaninoff and Richard Tauber. You can watch cellist Lynn Harrell playing in his rec room. You can watch clips of Chico Marx playing the piano in movies. And these are just a few of the things I have chanced to discover as I wander through life wasting time and avoiding work.

Stephen Hough was charmed by the Van Cliburn clip and so am I.

If you get down in the comments on his Web log, which naturally I did -- I mean, what else do I have to do, you know? -- he mentions having had dinner with Cliburn at Tanglewood and what a charming and humble man he is. Having had my own encounters with Cliburn, I second that.

I would go as far as to say Cliburn is almost otherworldly. It is as if when it comes to privacy he has totally given up. He has come to recognize that he is public property. He is like Niagara Falls, is what I remember thinking. That little video shows the start of that. Practically his whole life, he has been noticed.

When I was down in Texas competing in his amateur pianist competition, he did not hide out, he got right in there among us. I was at his house twice. At his house you were free to wander around, look at whatever you wanted, he did not care. He was there smiling at you, ready to talk. He is kind of saintly and you find yourself feeling protective of him. Well, I did.

A couple of years ago there was this big deal about we were going to send the New York Philharmonic to North Korea, I think it was. The papers were saying that these musical ambassadors would do what Van Cliburn did years ago in Russia, that it would break down walls.

My husband, Howard, said what I am sure a lot of people were thinking.

He said, "Why don't we just send Van Cliburn?"

We should have!

Who can resist him?

Song sung blue

2011-04-14T06:04:00.000-07:00

Besides the wild book on Earl Wild I am also going to be reviewing this book on Edith Piaf in The Buffalo News. It is more work than the Wild book, I will say that. But it is interesting anyway.

I like Piaf's no-good, on-again-off-again friend Momone. Wow, this is a coincidence! I am struggling and struggling here to include a picture of Momone on my Web log. But when I tried to download one it attacked my computer and my security system banned it!

Even in the afterlife Momone is causing trouble!

Therefore alas, no picture of Momone.

However I was able to nail a picture of the boxer Marcel Cerdan with whom Piaf was involved.

Piaf is a textbook case of "Smart Woman, Foolish Choices." Anyone else, if you saw this guy...

... you would run in the other direction, right?

Plus he was married!

The author, Carolyn Burke, writes something about how at last Piaf had found this perfect match. I am sitting there thinking, perfect match? On what planet? Even if he had not been wiped out in that plane crash, there would have been no happy ending to that.

Burke includes a couple of details I love.

One is when Cerdan was about to fight "the redoubtable Jake La Motta." Piaf wrote to him, "I'd like to bite La Motta's a--, that bastard."

Hahahahahaaa!

Another thing, Piaf felt blue because she did not feel that Cerdan felt as bad leaving her as she felt leaving him.

"I thought he suffered when we were apart," Piaf is quoted as saying. "But the day he was to leave, he was singing at the top of his voice in the shower!"

As I wrote the other day:

*** crying ***

That happened to me once in my bad old single days. There was this guy I was seeing and he was out of town and I called him from this pay phone in this jazz club where I was with my friends. Remember pay phones? I am ancient! Anyway, I told this gentleman how much I missed him and how unhappy I was without him.

Then, disaster! The phone did not hang up right and he could hear me laughing and carrying on with my friends, having this wonderful time.

He sat there listening and listening and he got so mad!

Me and Marcel Cerdan, I am telling you. We are trouble!

I am not yet to the end of the Piaf book.

But I can tell you one thing, I can just tell it ends badly.

Wild kingdom

2011-04-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

Oh my gosh, my golly, this new book by Earl Wild.

My friend Michelle, there is something she writes when she is just overwhelmed laughing over something. She writes: "*** crying ***."

So let me do that too.

*** Crying ***

This thing, titled "A Walk on the Wild Side," is 886 pages long. It weighs a million pounds. I find myself needing to tote it everywhere. I took it to work yesterday and everyone was asking, "What do you have in that bag?" I might take it to the gym and use it instead of the weights in Zumba Toning class! I just cannot bear to be separated from it.

Wild just takes shots at everything and everyone. You would not believe it. It is like having him in the room with you. Actually it is like having him as your roommate for the rest of your life. I mean, with 900 pages there is always going to be something new.

He attacks out-of-bounds people like Alfred Brendel. I mean, who in the world mocks out Brendel?

Wild writes stuff like "Do as I say, not as I do, right, Al?" He also has issues with, I don't know, Krystian Zimerman.And the New York Times music critic. And another New York Times music critic. People nobody in his right mind insults, Wild insults. He is just going for broke.

A while ago I remember reading this book was going to be published by Carnegie Mellon but it appears now to have been published independently through Ivory Classics. Fine, that is the way of the future. We are going to be seeing a lot more of this. Meanwhile I wonder if maybe Carnegie Mellon wanted nothing to do with some of the stuff in here. I mean, you have to wonder.

Adding to the fun, there is a lot that has nothing to do with music. Last night I was reading out loud to Howard this episode about a prim, owlish girl at one of the universities where Wild taught who went and created, out of the blue, this pornographic art exhibit. Howard and I were both *** crying ***. At one point I could not even read. I had to put my head down on the table and catch my breath.

I am going to be writing a more, ahem, exhaustive account of this book shortly in The Buffalo News. So I cannot give everything away. Let me just saw this for now, probably this book should have been aggressively edited and cut but I personally am glad it was not.

It is glorious in its voluminousness!

The book costs $45 but it is worth every penny and then some.

It will entertain you for the rest of your life!

The piano crasher

2011-04-11T05:44:00.000-07:00

There is this hilarious site my husband Howard stumbled upon called www.pianocrasher.com. This guy from Kazakhstan, I think it is, he performs what he calls "acoustic graffiti." Which means, music where it is not permitted.

It is nicer than the visual graffiti in that no one's property is damaged.

And it is just such a kick.

What this guy -- his name is Oleg Lapidus -- does is, he finds an unguarded piano somewhere -- in a highbrow restaurant, say, or a hotel lobby. And he launches competently into an impromptu performance of a loud, showy, demanding piece by Chopin or Rachmaninoff. Impromptu, get it? And here I thought I would be foggy because of giving up coffee for Lent.

Inevitably a security guard or bureaucrat approaches and makes Oleg stop. He puts up no fight. That is part of the fun. He shrugs and obeys. Then he turns to his friend with the video camera and shrugs again as if, what can you do?

This is a piano crash in the lobby of London's Royal Festival Hall.

The site has a bundle of other performances.

Googling around I see that Oleg Lapidus also has a serious site where he offers music lessons. "Oleg Lapidus is a well-established London music teacher."

But his alter ego as the Piano Crasher is what I really love.

On YouTube you get these comments here and there: "Well, the guard had a point. He could have damaged the piano and they cannot afford to take that risk, blah blah blah..."

Hahahahahaha!

Too funny.

Home, James

2011-04-07T04:48:00.000-07:00

The Scottish composer James MacMillan went to a Tridentine Mass in Amsterdam and he wrote about it for The Telegraph. I like his thoughts. I will never forget my first Tridentine Mass which I went to in October 2007. It changed my life, honest, in the first two seconds.

Everything clicked into place and I just stood there staring! It is a day I would like to live over again, just to feel everything I felt.

Anyway it is fascinating to me to read how the TLM, as it is abbreviated, hits MacMillan, who is passionate and (read the link) kind of a firebrand. His comments on Amsterdam are, shall we say, colorful.

We have performed MacMillan's music here in Buffalo. The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and JoAnn Falletta played his "Veni, Veni Emmanuel," which I realize I talked about once before. That performance was before my Tridentine Mass so I was still in my fog, otherwise I would have gotten him on the phone. Well, maybe I did get him on the phone. I am always flying by the seat of my pants and I often cannot remember who I have interviewed and who I have not.

Whether or not I talked to him, whether I understand his music or not, that is a picture of James MacMillan up above. He looks very Scottish, I have to say.

Congratulations, Mr. MacMillan, on your continued exploration of the Tridentine Mass!

A tree falls

2011-03-29T12:23:00.000-07:00

I was sorry to read Pinetop Perkins, a giant among bluesmen, has passed on. He died a week ago but I did not find out until reading this.

Pinetop was 97. You cannot say that he did not live.

I love the paragraph about how Perkins had smoked every day since 1922, ate all his meals at McDonald's and drank whiskey until he was 85 and had to undergo treatment for having an open container. These great old guys, they are passing away. My brother George and I were talking the other day about how the blues scene is gone, just gone. The old guys are all leaving us and the college kids are listening to crud.

I was one of the many, the millions, who partied with Pinetop when he was on the road. When he came to Buffalo he would play the Lafayette Tap Room. Pinetop actually liked my friend Lizzie better than he liked me but, whatever, he liked all of us. One night at the Tap Room he was mocking everyone out at about 3 a.m. when his gig ended because he wanted to stay and have drinks and a lot of people were going home to bed.

We stayed and had drinks with Pinetop! Lucky we did because now all these other people are regretting that they did not. Pinetop would have been about 85 then.

We also used to go see him and our buddy Robert Lockwood Jr. down in Helena, Ark., for the King Biscuit Blues Festival. Sigh, for days gone by, ain't that the blues?

I have lots of pictures of myself with Lockwood because we knew him better but I am not sure about Pinetop. I am going to have to search my house. Above is a picture I took from an Austin paper that ran with a story about Pinetop being 95. I would say the photographer deserves a credit. He is Will Van Overbeek.

Look at those long pianist's fingers. With Pinetop being so old that hand looks like some kind of sea creature.

Here is one thing that is a crying shame, as long as I am speaking blues. Looking around YouTube it is hard to find any video of Pinetop playing an actual piano. This is a blues I love but you can tell it from a mile away, that bland electric piano sound.

Oh, wait! There is this! Plus you get to watch the master's feet tapping under the piano.

Dear Pinetop.

He will be missed, along with the rest of them.

The big sleep

2011-03-15T04:53:00.000-07:00

The good news: A new photo of Frederic Chopin has been discovered.

The bad news is that it is of when he was dead.

That is the photo up above. Supposedly Chopin is lying in his coffin in the Madeleine Church in Paris. I do not think I ever knew the church Chopin was buried out of. Subsequently I did not go to it when I was in Paris. I would imagine the church was named for St. Mary Magdalene.

I did not expect the Madeleine Church to look like this. But it does!

Here is the interior where Chopin was lying when he was photographed. It looks kind of like my old church, St. Gerard's, which is now being shipped to Georgia.

Here is Gerard's, for comparison's sake.

I always thought it was kind of ghoulish that Chopin's heart was separated from his corpse at one point and brought to Warsaw. But it was, and there it still is, in Warsaw's beautiful Holy Cross Church.

I do not get the idea that Chopin was much of a churchgoer during his life. After his death, though, he seems to have made up for lost time.

Here is a brain teaser for today, something you can think about as you go about your Tuesday.

Were you to choose an elegy for Chopin what would you choose?

Imagine you are making a movie about Chopin and you need something to play as the closing credits roll. What would it be?

A Nocturne?

That beautiful E major Etude?

So many choices.

So little time.

Mystery in the Steinway attic

2011-03-09T05:20:00.000-08:00

They have found something creepy in the old Steinway mansion!

This is the mansion near the Steinway factory, in Astoria, in Queens, where the Steinway family lived once upon a time. For the past 80 years or something it has been occupied by a family named Halberian. Michael Halberian, who was in his 80s, died in December and now the auctioneers are cleaning out the house.

That is a video of Michael Halberian up above talking about the house. He seems like a nice man and there is this touching story about him and the mansion by James Barron. Barron is the New York Times writer who wrote the obituary on Leonard Pennario and I always remember this crazy day I spent in California on and off the phone with him. He also wrote a book about Steinways called "Piano."

But back to the spooky story.

They found this trunk. When they pried it open it had four voodoo masks and -- this is really grisly -- a creepy little doll in a kind of coffin surrounded by rusty nails. The New York Post wrote about it under the terrific headline of "Piano Mansion Voodoo Shock."

The paper has a picture of it. Brrrrr!

Now there is speculation surrounding whose trunk was it, anyway. Could it have been the Steinways'? I doubt it. They were Unitarian Universalists if I remember correctly from reading a whole bunch of books about them. They were these stolid Germans and I cannot imagine them being into this kind of thing.

The question was raised as to whether this voodoo equipment could have belonged to a servant. Perhaps.

However.

I went to the Steinway factory eight years ago. It is a memory I treasure. Howard was with me and while we were on the tour we stopped to chat with some workers and admire these centuries-old tools that were lying around. Then suddenly a whistle went off and we were swept out of the room with this giant tide of workers going to lunch. Ha, ha! We never did find the tour again!

We did, however, find our way to the Steinway mansion and we got a look at the outside. And I remember I wrote about it in the Buzz column which is the column I write for The Buffalo News. I looked it up today to see what I wrote because I recalled that something was not right.

And I had written about how Buffalo was not the only town that neglects our landmarks, that the poor old Steinway mansion, its lawn was covered with chickens, garbage can lids and -- this is the kicker -- Sunbeam parts cars.

People who own and display items like that, I think it would be perfectly possible they had a voodoo trunk in the attic. Perhaps they picked it up somewhere and never even opened it. Living in Buffalo I know junk collectors and that is the way we operate. Did I say "we"? I meant "they."

Also the more word gets around that you are a junk collector, the more junk comes your way. People say things like: "You like old stuff. I have this old trunk. I'm dropping it off at your house."

Whatever, there is one thing I know.

If I bought that mansion, I would call in a priest.

Renaissance woman

2011-03-08T06:28:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about the music of Palestrina ever since Sunday, when I heard a live performance as an actual Tridentine Latin Mass. I have already gone on about it in the paper and on my Leonard Pennario Web log but I have to write about it just one more time. There is this video now which I just posted.

Darn, I am almost visible but not quite! When they are panning down the aisle at the end of the Mass, you will see this guy in a big red jacket. I am a few pews behind him. He blotted me out.

The Palestrina was the "Pope Marcellus Mass" which I find fascinating. The Kyrie sounds as if it rains down from above. It has these descending lines which make me think of rain and of what Shakespeare wrote about the quality of mercy is not strained, it falleth like a gentle rain from heaven.

Palestrina's music has a quality which makes me see it, I mean visually. I picture the melody lines, like colored bands. They intertwine and come apart and sometimes they all come together in a blaze of light. He will play one line, one note, against the others and you can feel the contrast, feel the slight dissonance, and then you feel it when it is resolved. It is like a push-me, pull-you thing. It happens again and again.

Oh, my! Oh, my goodness! I just went looking for a recording on YouTube to show what I mean and what do you know, someone has put up a synthesized version of the Kyrie from the Pope Marcellus Mass that does just that, shows the melodies with colored lines. Apparently I am not the only one thinking this! It must be built into the music.

Visually the Mass was fascinating too.The video shows the torchbearers. They file out before the Consecration and then they stay in place around the altar. I read somewhere that torchbearers are kind of an honor guard.

My sister was rejoicing that you did not have to hold hands during the Our Father. I am thinking it is time for that fad to be scrapped, you know? Everyone is sick of it.

My two nieces who, I guess you would call them "tweens," all they know is Communion in the hand. There was some anxiety on the way up to the altar rail.

It is dramatic to go back to the Renaissance!

Record highs

2011-03-03T11:20:00.000-08:00

Something is happening to the vinyl business but I am not sure what. I am also not sure if it works in my favor.

It is my habit, when I need to relax, to go through the records at Goodwill or the Salvation Army. You never know what you will find, and it helps me unwind.

So I look through these records. And over the past few years I have found a lot of treasures. Lots of classical piano -- my favorite -- great gems from Rubinstein, Lipatti, Kapell -- sometimes you could see that some collector had maybe died and someone had just dumped his collection. I was amazed at the treasures I was finding, for nothing. I remember saying to my mom, this is so different from when I was a kid. When I was a kid, records were still the main thing. As a result, you would look at the records at Goodwill and all you would find was junk, stuff nobody wanted.

Well, guess what?

Those days are back!

I have not found a decent record at a thrift store in I do not know how many months.

It is getting depressing! The other day I went to Goodwill after my Zumba class and I even asked a clerk there about it. I asked where the good records had gone.

She said, "We're just not getting them."

Meanwhile, the record situation on eBay is changing too. I always keep an eye on the Pennario department. People sell records, vintage ads, etc. Mostly records. And recently, in the last month or so, I have noticed the prices becoming extremely irregular. Some are still inexpensive. But others are skyrocketing.

And the sellers are pricing them weirdly. For instance there is this Heifetz/Piatigorsky/Pennario box set priced at $99.99. On the one hand I am drawing myself up proudly, thinking yes, this is a magnificent set, this trio was perfect together, that's my Leonard! But on the other hand .... $99.99?

Here is a listing so you get the picture. Pennario playing the Khachaturian is $25. Pennario's first Chopin Waltzes record is priced coolly at $39.95. His Bartok/Prokofiev/Rozsa sonata album ...

is $34.95. A Gershwin album he made with Felix Slatkin is priced capriciously at $11.20. $11.20??? What kind of a price is that?

As Oprah would say, what is going on?

I do know that people seem to be paying more attention to vinyl. Gramophone magazine is planning a feature on the worst album art -- funny, the concept of album art has been on my mind too. A lot of people still appreciate the warm sound that records have.

If vinyl is getting more popular, though, the downside is that I do not think too many people are making new vinyl albums. I did see some new vinyl turn up at The Buffalo News, from some rock band. I am like St. Thomas -- if I had not seen I would not have believed. I did see it, with my own eyes! But surely those new records are an exception.

That means that with vinyl picking up, there will not be more vinyl, there will be less of it. It will be harder for me to get my hands on what I want.

Oh well. On the bright side...

What happens is not up to me!

Jones-ing for Jonas

2011-03-01T05:21:00.000-08:00

My friend Marta through whom I live vicariously resides in Los Angeles and in a couple of weeks she and her husband -- my piano teacher, Stephen Manes -- are going to hear the tenor Jonas Kaufmann in recital. I am envious and restless.

I chose the above picture of Kaufmann because I thought the red would look snazzy on the Web log. But you cannot have too many pictures of Jonas Kaufmann so here is another.

Ha, ha! This particular photo shoot appears to have gone a little bit awry.

Well, ahem. Back to Kaufmann and that wonderful voice. It is a funny thing about Jonas K ... I know he is a tenor but I keep wanting to say he is a baritone. He somehow manages to have the kind of tenor voice that makes you think he is a baritone. But soft! I repeat myself. I realize I had this in my head back when Mr. Kaufmann first came to my attention.

Here is the program for Kaufmann's recital which, I wish a giant hand could pick me up and put me down there right now. They put the program on the Internet to torture you, how about that?

He is singing Schumann's Kerner Lieder. I love that set of songs. You do not hear them as often as some of Schumann's other songs.

Not that we do not love those other songs. "In wunderschoenen Monat Mai..." It feels as if you are standing up in the morning in your pajamas and stretching. Jonas Kaufmann is singing "Dichterliebe" too at his Los Angeles recital. Sigh.

On the bright side, that is a beautiful video. It has the first three songs, one melting into another, with luminous images. Schumann nailed it, you know? I look back on the months of May that I remember when I was a teenager and in my 20s and they are equal parts beauty and misery.

"Und wenn du mich lieb hast, Kindchen..." That is a line I love!

La la la la la la la.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

Oh well.

Time to pull my head out of the clouds and get on with my onerous Tuesday.

When the music is just too good

2011-02-28T04:51:00.000-08:00

The Oscars last night were good to me because with the victories of "The King's Speech," my, ahem, Music Critic Web log suddenly spiked. Briefly, gloriously.

That is because of when I went to "The King's Speech" I spent a little while chewing on the music in the movie. We actually had a kind of good conversation going which, I had dropped the ball on it, but last night it picked up again.

One anonymous commenter said: "Problem is, I still don't know what the final speech was about ... the allegretto spoke much more loudly!" I hear you, Anonymous Commenter!

Sometimes you use music a certain way and it works but it is just too good, you know?

Sometimes a piece of music blots out everything else.

As I wrote to that commenter I remember a time I went to a dance recital and the music eclipsed the dance. It was Configuration Dance, too, this superb world-class troupe, and it was in no way the dancers' fault that the music was just too good. There was one dance set to "Tristan and Isolde," the Prelude and Liebestod. The recital was in Buffalo's Studio Arena Theatre and the music poured wonderfully through the sound system and eventually I could not help it, I shut my eyes.

It happened another time too, at another dance recital here in Buffalo by a different company, I think Pick of the Crop. They did a dance to the famous Adagio from Bach's Concerto for Two Violins. Was anything else so beautiful ever written? Again, all you could do was lean back and close your eyes.

On both those occasions I thought, there is money in the idea of just putting this music on these powerful theater sound systems. I would pay just to sit here and listen!

Now of course that is coming to pass. We are seeing "Live in HD" broadcasts of concerts from the Philadelphia Orchestra, other orchestras. It's a good idea but again, as far as I am concerned, they almost do not have to bother with the film.

Just play the music! A blank screen is more than fine with me.

Husbands from hell

2011-01-31T05:51:00.000-08:00

When I get done with my book on Pennario I am going to write a book called, "Who Was a Bigger Pain To Be Married To, Horowitz or Rubinstein?"

There is a question that can keep scholars busy for years!

Horowitz must have been a pain to be married to because ... well, for a million reasons. Otherwise Horowitz' wife would never have had that affair with Byron Janis.

And Rubinstein, you would have thought he would have been better, aside from his cheating of course.

However.

There is this Rubinstein book I keep poking into, by Harvey Sachs. Not to be blasphemous but reading it is a little like reading the Gospel in that every time I open it I find something new in it.

Nela Rubinstein, Arthur's wife, was much younger than he was and she was very beautiful. This did not stop him from flirting with everyone else on the planet, including but not limited to Olivia de Havilland and her sister, Leonard Pennario's friend Joan Fontaine.

Once, in what amounted to a nightmare for Nela, they all had dinner together. "Arthur did nothing through the meal but talk to and flirt with these two beautiful young stars, and Nela sat there, grim-faced." A friend named Mildred recalled that.

Mildred continues the story, talking about Nela:

"She was one person when Arthur was there, and another when he wasn't. When he wasn't, she was loving and relaxed and finding dozens of things to do that entertained and amused us; when he was, she was uptight and worried all the time that she might be disturbing or distressing him or doing the wrong thing. Arthur was very much wrapped up in himself and wanted others to recognize whatever he did or said. In some ways you could relax with him. But you couldn't relax in a silly, easygoing way with him."

Fun? Wow!

The story continues: "During the war, when food was rationed, Mildred and Nela kept chickens, in order to have a supply of fresh eggs, but the chicken feed attracted rats and the whole process soon became so complicated that they killed the chickens. Nela decided to make chicken soup, and she invited Mildred over to help her pluck the chickens.

"They were working, laughing and gossiping together, 'when suddenly the door opened and in walked Arthur, looking very smart in a fedora hat, a brown suit with a vest, a red carnation and his cane,' Mildred said. "He was absolutely furious and started screaming at Nela: 'You have servants -- it's insulting to use your friends for this kind of thing! The whole situation was so embarrassing that I got up and walked home. He never forgave her for that."

What a pain!

Who needs that?

Before marrying Rubinstein Nela was married to the pianist Mieczyslaw Munz, shown here in a home movie from 1929. Maybe she should have stayed married to him! I wonder if that thought ever crossed her mind.

Here is Nela cooking. She has a few more years on her now than in the picture above.

Here she is with her husband and Robert Redford, left.

What a glorious period picture of Robert Redford! The gentleman next to Redford is the director Sydney Pollack. It is the Cannes Film Festival. It is May 8, 1972.

Whoa, look! Another picture apparently taken a few minutes later. That look Redford has! What a great and glorious era that was. People could have fun when they got dressed in the morning.

Here is a sweet and glamorous picture of Young Nela.

Nela wrote a cookbook.

There are a couple of used copies on Amazon.

Perhaps I will buy one and cook my way through it like that girl who cooked her way through the Julia Child cookbook.

But that would require a whole separate Web log.

Unchained melody

2011-01-27T21:28:00.000-08:00

There are many monumental Mozart pieces you could listen to on his birthday, which was today.

But me, I like this goofy little Gigue.

The first time I heard it, years ago, I was driving somewhere and it came on the radio and I remember enjoying it so much. And I felt so good about myself. I thought: Who says I do not like modern music? Here is a modern piece I like.

Who is this composer? I wondered.

Then of course they announced it was Mozart and I almost fell over.

But I did not feel so stupid when I read somewhere that this piece, this Gigue, is unusual. Mozart was obviously experimenting and having fun. The "melody," I read -- I put that in quotes because you can hardly call it a melody -- is something like one note short of a twelve-tone scale. Mozart almost nailed the twelve-tone scale. You can tell when you listen to it it sounds funny. I like singing it to myself because it is so strange.

When you play it on the piano the line is thick with accidentals, all kinds of sharps and flats.

It is like a lot of colored tiles that are scrambled up and then he arranges them into a picture that makes sense.

That is Mozart for you.

Two hundred and fifty-five years young.

A fish called Wanda

2011-01-14T08:30:00.000-08:00

I am glued this morning to David Dubal hashing over the respective memoirs of Byron Janis and Leon Fleisher in the Wall Street Journal.

Who knew that Janis had a romance with Wanda Horowitz -- daughter of Toscanini, wife of Vladimir?

I did not, I will tell you that right now! I was trailing after my husband this morning trying to talk to him about this. Howard was making his oatmeal, trying to get around me to the honey and raisins, trying to get me to go away.

Dubal, taking the high road, writes:

"In a chapter titled 'Wanda,' we learn that, in his early 20s, Mr. Janis had an affair with Wanda Toscanini Horowitz, his teacher's wife. After 60 years, do we need this footnote to the tortured Horowitz marriage?"

We do indeed!

If Byron Janis is writing a memoir, how could he leave that out?

I cannot wait to read that chapter "Wanda." When I get my hands on this book I am going to skip right to it.

That is Wanda and Vladimir up above, c. 1946, says the site from which I stole it. Dubal makes the point that she would have been horrified to have had that information in Janis' book made public. But you know what, you marry someone like Vladimir Horowitz, you better get used to the spotlight, even when you are dead. Especially when you are dead. Plus, I am tired of Horowitz being looked on as being this sacred being.

And furthermore, Dubal wrote that book "Evenings with Horowitz" that contained a lot of personal details that I do not think Horowitz would have been crazy about getting out. There are people who see that book as unprofessional. I am not one of them, needless to say. I enjoyed the heck out of that book and think it is wonderful that Dubal got around to writing down all his experiences.

Anyway, I am looking forward to reading Janis' book too even though it sounds kind of loopy, full of stuff about Uri Geller. Uri Geller, how 1970s. I have not heard that name in forever.

These pianists, I am telling you.

By the way, the "Fish Called Wanda" headline is not meant to imply that Wanda was a cold fish. I know not. I have not yet read Byron Janis' book. The headline was irresistible to me because my husband has a friend who was something of a ladies' man and finally got married and settled down. The friend is happy with his choice. "I got my fish," he says.

As we have discussed before, you can hear Byron Janis reading from his book here.

He has his own inimitable style!

The music of the morning

2011-01-10T05:01:00.000-08:00

You know how you get music in your dreams? Last night I had this Bach fugue on my mind. It was the fugue I wrote about the other day. The music wove in and out of my dreams all night. Sometimes I was just hearing its cool layers. Sometimes I was playing it on the piano and in my dream I thought, I had not realized I had this thing memorized.

This morning, Monday morning, I am wondering if it is a good thing or not to have a piece like this on your brain all night. I mean, I love this music, and things could be worse, because I had just been to this hip-hop dance master class and I could have had hip-hop on my brain. But still, that fugue was starting to drive me crazy.

This morning I must politely show it the door.

So as not to offend Bach I will usher in instead his Coffee Cantata, a piece that has special relevance to me on Mondays.

I would die without my cup of coffee in the morning! Above is a portrait of me drinking it. It is by Canadian painter Oliver Ray. I cribbed it off is Web site.

My husband, Howard, he is giving up coffee temporarily, for whatever reason. "Fine, if you think it makes you a better person." That is what my boss at the Niagara Gazette said to me years ago when I tried the same experiment.

What I love about the Coffee Cantata, besides the robust music of course, is how it proves to us that coffee was debated about even in Bach's time. Even in the 1600s people were hemming and hawing about whether you should drink it or not. It is irrefutable proof!

This great chorus, the YouTube version only has it in German, so I will translate.

It means "Stick it, our ancestors drank coffee and we are going to drink it, too."

On the ninth day of Christmas...

2011-01-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

With the Christmas season on the wane, I am looking back and thinking of the music I have listened to. Normally I am a creature of habit when it comes to Christmas music. I like the music I know. And I do not like people overengineering it. That is a common Christmas sin. Everyone wants to mess these songs up.

Let's put revolutionary harmonies to "O Holy Night"!

You know "I Wonder as I Wander"? Let's speed it up!

Yes, I am a bitter creature of habit when it comes to Christmas songs. But still. This year I was surprised to find a few things I liked that I did not know that well.

There is this song "Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning." It was never part of my Christmases but I find I like it a lot. The music comes from an earlier song called "Star in the East. There is a fascinating account of Reginald Heber (1783-1826) who wrote the words. Heber also wrote the famous and thrilling chestnut "Holy Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty."

When Heber was born Mozart was 27. Heber died one year before Beethoven died. There, now that we have placed him in context, that is a picture of Reginald Heber up above.

When Reginald Heber died he had just come back from, where else, a church service.

”He retired into his own room, and according to his invariable custom, wrote on the back of the address on Confirmation 'Trichinopoly, April 3, 1826.' This was his last act, for immediately on taking off his clothes, he went into a large cold bath, where he had bathed the two preceding mornings, but which was now the destined agent of his removal to Paradise. Half an hour after, his servant, alarmed at his long absence, entered the room and found him a lifeless corpse."Life, &c, 1830, vol. ii. p. 437.

How about that?

"The destined agent of his removal to Paradise." That is a phrase I love!

"Brightest and Best" is an Epiphany song which makes it perfect for now. Another song I got to like this year: "The Little Road to Bethlehem."

Judy Collins sang it too. I must have been the only person in the world who did not know this song. It dates to the 19th century.

There is really such a trove of Christmas music.

I do not care if it is January. I am going to keep listening.

The music of "The King's Speech"

2010-12-29T05:47:00.001-08:00

Last night seeing "The King's Speech" -- I expound on the experience on the, ahem, Leonard Pennario Web log -- I was struck by their choice of music. The original music seemed to me as your usual piano-based movie score, so bland you hardly noticed it. Perhaps it was that way on purpose.

But boy, when the King gave his speech, they gave you that glorious Allegretto from Beethoven's Seventh.

Is there any better music in the world? That Allegretto, it builds to the point where it gives me a kind of vertigo. It is as if the sky and the ground are switching places.

And when the King of England, played by Colin Firth, was speaking as an exercise while listening to music, the music was the heated, breathless overture to Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro."

Again you are thinking: Is there any better music in the world?

Then at the end of the movie they bring in the slow movement from the "Emperor" Concerto. I started to cry. It had nothing to do with the movie. It is just that I always cry when I hear this music. It is as if it pulls the tears out of me. It is nothing I can control.

You also hear Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. And part of Brahms' "German Requiem."

A strange aspect of all this is that "The King's Speech" deals with the rise of Nazism, this evil force. That is the king's big challenge, having to confront the prospect of war with Germany. So it says something that there is all this German music. Maybe it is supposed to bring out both sides of the German people. Maybe it reflects that the British royal family was German, and the confusion and sadness of that.

Then again, maybe it is just that this music belongs to the whole world.

I think that is the explanation I like best.

Newman's own

2010-12-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

Last night I had the best time at my office party. And one highlight was, I was talking to my friend Jerry's girlfriend Melinda, and she told me that when she was a kid she met Alfred Newman.

Of course Howard is there with me and he is bouncing all over the walls and he could not shut up about Alfred E. Neuman. But this was Alfred Newman whom Melinda was talking about. The movie score composer.

He wrote the music to "Wuthering Heights" which is the reason the 1939 version is the only one I love. All others are intolerable to me because that music is not there.

That ending.. Gaaaaaaa....

When movies were movies. When music was music. When screen deaths were screen deaths.

Where was I?

Alfred Newman. I could not believe Jerry's girlfriend Melinda had met him.She was a kid. I Googled Mr. Newman and he died in 1970. He married an actress and Goldwyn Girl -- now there is a title -- named Martha Louise Montgomery. She was from Clarksdale, Miss. They had five children. His nephew is Randy Newman. One of Alfred Newman's sons is some kind of musical figure too but it is too late tonight to get that all straight. I do not want to do research on a night like this. I want to wallow in "Wuthering Heights."

It says something about the way movies were back then that the music to "Wuthering Heights" that I love so much was nominated for an Oscar, it did not win. Back then you had serious competition. It was up against "The Wizard of Oz" and also "Gone With the Wind." "The Wizard of Oz" won.

What a year for movies, 1939. Here are the Oscars. Brooding, black-and-white "Wuthering Heights" won for Best Cinematography.

Here is something that you could not make up. Alfred E. Neuman ...

... was in fact named for Alfred Newman, in a roundabout way. There was a character in a drama named after the composer, and the cartoon was named after the character. They changed the spelling. You can sort it all out here.

So there is a connection. Who knew?

I wonder how Alfred Newman felt about that.

Looking for a chateau...

2010-12-11T21:44:00.000-08:00

... 21 rooms but one will do!

Pursuant to my last post I went and listened to Byron Janis reading his story of Chopin and the supernatural.

It was not everything I thought it would be but I stuck with it, I will say that for Byron Janis and his storytelling skills. The episode took place in Paris in the 1960s -- 1967, I think -- when Byron Janis and his wife went forth from Paris to visit a Viscount in his country chateau. And mysterious things develop. I mean, don't get your hopes up, there are no ghosts or anything, but a couple of Chopin waltzes mysteriously turn up.

One of them is the beautiful Waltz in G flat.

But whatever, you know? A lot of the story was eclipsed in my mind by one thing:

I envied Byron Janis' wife, pictured with him above. Not because she was married to Byron Janis or anything, just because she apparently had nothing to do but hang around with him and go out to this chateau of an afternoon.

She is not like me. She does not have to get up for work. All she does is follow Byron Janis around.

No boss yelling at her. No deadlines.

Paris.

La la la la la la la.

So that was one thing. The other thing that struck me was that Byron Janis seems to be, ahem, a bit of a crackpot.

Well, who among us is not?

The student of Horowitz, 2

2010-12-09T05:56:00.000-08:00

One thing I love -- love! -- about the Internet, about Blog-O-Land, is that you toss something out there on the way to bed, you do not really think about it, and the next morning surprises are waiting for you.

Last night I just ruminated a bit about Byron Janis when I was sitting around in my pajamas and this morning, I get this note from my friend Steve Baker who is now, ahem, Senior Director of Marketing at the San Diego Symphony. Steve is a great Facebook friend because he is intense and loves music. And he told me that on the Vanity Fair Web log site you can hear Byron Janis reading an excerpt from his book which is "Chopin and Beyond: My Extraordinary Life in Music and the Paranormal."

These are great days for books on pianists, you know? We recently got "My Nine Lives," by Anne Midgette and Leon Fleisher, and now there is this memoir by Byron Janis. Also I wonder about the memoirs of Earl Wild. I know he had been working on them. I think they might be out. Anyway, it is great that the public cares so much about these people, these pianists.

Back to Byron Janis. I had not known about this book and I have to say the title intrigues me. What, is he talking with Chopin? Does Horowitz visit him in his dreams and impose more lessons on him? These are questions that will have to be answered.

I have to mention this, Vanity Fair proves what I said yesterday, that you never hear Byron Janis' name without Horowitz's name being right there next to it. There it is, first sentence: "Renowned concert pianist Byron Janis -- the first student of Vladimir Horowitz at age 16 -- has made quite a remarkable career..."

Working on my book on Leonard Pennario at least I do not have to worry about his being eclipsed by some teacher. Well, no one eclipsed Pennario. But that must be a particular kind of bummer, you get identified with some teacher at 16, for Pete's sake, and in a way it is downhill from there. It has its advantages, sure. But I do wonder how Byron Janis, a bright and interesting man in his own right, feels about that tie with Horowitz being his biggest credential.

Perhaps he will talk about that in his book.

The student of Horowitz

2010-12-08T21:05:00.001-08:00

The pianist Byron Janis has a byline! He was in today's Wall Street Journal talking about his teachers and how they promoted his creativity. That is a picture up above of Byron Janis with babes.

That is a cool name, you know, Byron Janis? Byron as in George Gordon, Lord Byron. Janis as in Joplin.

However.

It is funny that no matter how old certain pianists get they are always identified forever and ever by who their teachers were. No one ever thinks about Byron Janis without thinking that he was taught by Vladimir Horowitz. So this whole Wall Street Journal story, you are waiting to see when he gets around to talking about Horowitz.

Which he does. He says Horowitz told him, "You want to be a first Janis, not a second Horowitz."

I wonder if that could ever come to pass. Whenever I think of Byron Janis all I think of is that he studied with Horowitz. That is the danger of having this big-name teacher.

I wonder what Byron Janis would have turned into without Horowitz. I mean, he still would have been good, right? You would think.

But he may have been different.

And when you heard his name, Horowitz would not be the first thing you would think of.

Bad archbishop

2010-12-06T21:39:00.000-08:00

How cool is the church I go to? Cool enough so that the priest's message in the bulletin this week was all about Mozart's nemesis, Hieronymus Colloredo, pictured above in his robes.

It is interesting that back in the 1700s there were already people wanting Mass in the vernacular and there was already debate about church music. I do not know about Joseph II and his desire for simplicity. I do not think I would agree with him.

About Mozart's Church Sonatas, I am not so sure. I know those sonatas pretty well. And the thing is, they can rock the house! I normally side with Mozart on most things but I do not know how these sonatas would sound after the Epistle, I have to say that.

Darn, I cannot find exactly the Church Sonata I am looking for on YouTube but this one is a pretty good example of what I mean. There is just all this energy.

About Colloredo, I never did get a good feeling about him and I have to say, I do not like him better after reading this.

OK, enough opining. Here is what our priest, Father Secondo Casarotto, wrote in the bulletin. It is called "The Good Old Days." You almost never get to hear music history from a Catholic priest's perspective so now is your fleeting chance. Grab it, I say!

When Hieronymus Graf von Colloredo was elected prince-archbishop of Salzburg, he
wanted to reform the liturgy. Even before the Council of Trent, musicians had started to
introduce elaborate music in the liturgy. In 1567, shortly after the close of the Council of
Trent, a diocesan synod held in Dilingen, Germany, issued the following statement: "We
permit ancient and vernacular hymns, especially those which our praiseworthy German
forefathers employed in major feast days and we approve that they be retained in church
and in processions."
Masses, especially in cathedrals, became full of extraneous music that added great
length in their duration and church services were becoming more and more reminiscent of
concerts. In a pastoral letter, the new Archbishop demanded, among others, that Mass last
no longer than one hour. This did not go well with Amadeus Mozart, then organist of the
Cathedral of Salzburg, who had composed a series of 17 sonatas to be played after the
Epistle and were no longer permitted in the Catholic mass.
At the same time, Joseph II, emperor of Austria, was centralizing his authority and in
1781 ordered that all Austrian bishops not follow any order from outside his empire (i.e.
Rome). The following year he ordered the bishops to swear "fidelity and submission" to
him and not to the Pope. Over time, Joseph continued to formulate his own church laws,
including sacramental fees, issuing liturgical decrees, even regulating the music to
accompany the mass. In his desire for simplicity, he limited church decorations,
processions, mass times, pilgrimages, veneration of relics, etc.
In 1781 Joseph introduced a recommendation that the German language be used in lieu
of Latin during the celebration of the Mass. Even though the archbishop of Vienna
rejected Joseph's idea of a vernacular Catholic liturgy, a new Catholic hymnal was
published in 1783 that included several hymns in German.
Archbishop Colloredo sided with a group of bishops who wanted to form a German
National Church. At the same time he continued to restrict the mass to one hour, banning
instrumental pieces (which he eventually permitted in 1787). Although not under Joseph's
rule, Mozart felt the effects of the emperor's desire for reform. He continued to compose
some instrumental music for masses, a movement expanded by Johann M. Haydn who
wrote more than one hundred Graduals. Mozart eventually fell in disgrace with the
Archbishop and one day, while in Vienna, he was kicked out on the street by one of the
Colloredo's secretaries.

The secretary that kicked Mozart was Count Arco. I do not have to look that up.

It is funny, the immortality these clerics have achieved.

The Gypsy pianist

2010-11-29T05:45:00.000-08:00

Gyorgy Cziffra, there is a life.

From what I see on the Internet you are now supposed to say, ahem, Georges Cziffra. But I am sorry, Cziffra will always be Gyorgy to me.

When he was a little boy he played the piano in a traveling Gypsy circus. Cziffra was Gypsy. From what I see on the Internet you are supposed to say, ahem, Roma. But again I am sorry, Cziffra will always by Gypsy to me.

Imagine playing the piano in a traveling Gypsy circus. Talk about The. World's. Coolest. Job.

Here is a video of Cziffra at 13. This kills me, you know? There are millions of obscure videos of all kinds of pianists turning up on YouTube except for Pennario, there is next to nothing. Pennario, this household name, nothing turns up. He is a shadow. A sphinx. Well, I digress.

When Cziffra grew up tragedy struck. The Communists in Hungary imprisoned him for three years. They tortured him and after that Cziffra always played with a leather band on his wrist because of injuries he received, also just to remember. That is the way Gypsies think!

Cziffra married an Egyptian woman. They had a son who apparently killed himself. That has to have been terribly tough on the old man. When Cziffra died at 72 it was from lung cancer and -- I read this -- "complications from smoking and alcohol."

I got onto all this yesterday because I was deep into my Pennario book and I was reading how Harold Schonberg, the New York Times critic, was praising Pennario's Tchaikovsky First and saying it beat out Cziffra's, which came out at the same time. Schonberg wrote that Cziffra's in comparison was flashy and vulgar. I felt bad for Cziffra. When Schonberg got his claws into you it was not fun.

Anyway, what hardships in Cziffra's life but also what beauty and drama and flair.

Cziffra wrote a memoir called "Guns and Flowers" which was clearly the inspiration for the rock band Guns 'N Roses.

Quite a life and legacy.

Oh! Mr. Fleisher!

2010-11-24T04:54:00.000-08:00

So I am reading the new Leon Fleisher book, which pianist Fleisher, pictured above, wrote with Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette. I am engrossed in the part of the book where Fleisher talks about meeting the woman who would become his second wife.

I enjoy that kind of reminiscence. I burned through Arthur Rubinstein's "My Young Years," I will tell you that right now. Although in Rubinstein's memoirs it did get to be a bit much.

One particular thing in the Fleisher book, I got a kick out of.

Fleisher writes how he is bowled over by this woman, Rikki, because she is beautiful and loves Bartok.

That is all well and good!

But then comes the, ahem, seduction scene. Which of course I am glued to. Fleisher shows up after a concert tour at Rikki's apartment. He brings a magnum of champagne and "Der Rosenkavalier."

Gotta love that!

I am thinking, sure, you think you love a woman because she loves Bartok. But oh boy, when it's time for amour, who's your friend? Not Bartok.

Richard Strauss, that is who.

How a guy who looked like him turned out stuff like this, this or this, we will never know.

But sometimes we are glad he did!

Who's that guy on the cello?

2010-11-23T06:47:00.000-08:00

As my vinyl kick continues... I love how the old record box sets often include lavish books with pictures. You cannot get these in CDs because CDs are just too small. The format does not work for luxury. The most beautiful box set still winds up with just a cheap little booklet with small disappointing pictures. You just cannot get around that!

As opposed to the big pictures and quality paper of the booklet accompanying this 2-record RCA Red Seal set I picked up somewhere, of Fritz Kreisler playing with Rachmaninoff.

It included the above picture of Arnold Schoenberg.

Schoenberg is the one on the cello! I am sorry, I stared and stared. I did not know that at any point in his life he looked like one of the old guys who hang out at the Rose Garden in Buffalo. The Rose Garden is an old German restaurant.

Look at him there with that little Tyrolean band! That is Kreisler, of course, on fiddle second from the left.

Would you fancy looking at another picture of Fritz Kreisler? Thank you, I do not mind if I do.

That picture was also in my booklet.

My friend Gary got me on to the idea of buying records for their booklets. He recommends buying those "World's Greatest Classics" series because of that. He got a Debussy set along those lines that included a booklet with a photo of Debussy after dinner, passed out at the table with an empty wine bottle in front of him, sitting next to a woman with a turban. Gary made copies of that picture for his friends and we all have them framed. We have never seen that picture anywhere else! And I cannot find it on the Internet.

Just one more reason to buy vinyl.

Here is Fritz Kreisler's "Liebesleid," arranged by Rachmaninoff, performed with unabashed smoldering passion by America's greatest pianist, Pennario. This is funny, my friend Larry, who made the video, pulled a typo and reversed two letters so instead of reading "Love's pain," it reads "Love's song." Either one is correct, say I.

Here is an annoying-but-sort-of-cool square Canadian-sounding video about Schoenberg cabaret songs -- songs I love and once binged on for about a week. This is the side of Schoenberg you do not often hear and naturally the side I like better than the one you usually hear about.

It is the Schoenberg from the above photograph!

A buried treasure

2010-11-21T14:08:00.000-08:00

Today I was so jazzed from having sorted out my records that I went and listened, for the first time, to that Christmas record I was admiring yesterday. The one with the classic cover, pictured above.

What a kick! It is far and away my favorite Christmas record.

I looked on YouTube and someone has posted "Deck the Halls." If that does not bring back the era of the silver screen in all its glory! I love how the tune suddenly veers into a whole different mood, the way it does at 1:20, around there. It is like "Gone With the Wind."

The arrangements are by the conductor, Carmen Dragon.

What is funny is, working on this book on Leonard Pennario as I am, a record like this makes me understand more where Pennario was coming from, being the pianist on the Capitol label. It would definitely make some stuffy people see you differently than if you were on one of the more "establishment" labels. Oiks and eggheads would just see a record of Pennario playing, say, Schumann's F Minor Piano Sonata and they would go, uh, I don't think so.

They lose! We know better now.

Carmen Dragon, pops conductor and arranger, was a big presence at Capitol. He was also a big presence in Hollywood. For one thing he wrote the score to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

I looked up a picture of Carmen Dragon and found this snapshot.

Here is his very Catholic-looking gravestone.

Carmen Dragon rests in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery so, bingo, I guess he was Catholic. Did I really write "Bingo"? An appropriate choice of word there.

If you are into cemeteries the way I am, there is this great site that tells you about the other faithful departed that rest along with Carmen Dragon in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery. Among them are Ritchie Valens; Ed Begley Sr.; the actor who played Fred Mertz on "I Love Lucy," and Bob Hope. I had not known Bob Hope was Catholic. I also had not known who played Fred Mertz. His name is William Frawley.

Live and learn!

Or should I say, live and listen.

Viva la diva

2010-10-29T04:48:00.000-07:00

The recent passing of the diva Joan Sutherland has gotten me wondering: Which divas are left from that generation?

We are talking people born in the 1920s.

I thought of Leontyne Price, above. She was born Feb. 10, 1927. Back in the 1970s, when I was a kid, Leontyne Price was opera. It was not a real opera event until they brought out Leontyne Price, and her voice, and her Afro.

Roberta Peters ....

... who sang a heck of a Queen of the Night is still among us. She was born May 4,1930.

Gwyneth Jones...

... being born in 1936 is a little young for our purposes.

Who else??

There must be others.

This is a question to occupy you when you are stuck for a few minutes in an elevator or a bank line.

Schubert karaoke

2010-10-05T06:54:00.000-07:00

"I've been stuffing myself with 'An Die Musik.'" This one commenter wrote that on YouTube and it cracked me up. That is a great way to describe binge listening! Which, you know I am no stranger to that.

The commenter also pointed out that "An Die Musik" is classical music's "My Way." That is a funny way to put it but it is true. It is the song every singer wants to sing, and every singer wants in a way to make it his own.

It is emotional looking at YouTube because there are all these amateur singers stepping shyly but proudly into the spotlight: "This is me singing 'An Die Musik.'" Young people, old people, some accompanying themselves on the piano, some grabbing a friend to do it.

Just now on my 1950s stereo I was listening to Hans Hotter singing it, is what got me going on this today. It is a marvelous version, luxuriously slow, with Hotter's silken deep voice.

This Web log is no stranger to my namesake Erich Kunz but I cannot remember ever hearing his version of "An Die Musik," and I found it unusual. I listened to it three times and I am still not used to it. Taken at a fast tempo with a sort of light orchestral accompaniment, it is jubilant and extroverted -- forceful, almost -- but in a way very moving. As if he is saying that music makes everything worth it.
Here is "An Die Musik" in a dramatic scene from a movie, sung by the dapper Jose van Dam.

And an old black-and-white filmed performance by George London. Or, as one commenter puts it, the Great One, George London.

Here I am, I should be working and instead I am listening to great bass baritones singing "An Die Musik."
And a tenor, Fritz Wunderlich. With sweet pictures and a translation. So beautifully done, as my Zumba teacher Eileen would say. "So beautifully done." That is what she always says, watching us dance.

Wow, look at this! A pianist has been nice enough to post the accompaniment so anyone can: tackle singing the song.

Schubert karaoke! I just tried it. I could not help it! Unfortunately I am more of a mezzo than a soprano and I found the high notes tough going. But it was fun. You find yourself standing up, taking a deep breath.

Here are the words in case you want to try. You can be like Eula Beal, the contralto pictured above! In the picture she is singing "Erlkoenig." But you, you will be singing "An Die Musik."

Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden,
Wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt,
Hast du mein Herz zu warmer Lieb entzunden,
Hast mich in eine beßre Welt entrückt!

Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf' entflossen,
Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen,
Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!

To Music

Oh sacred Art, how often, when depression
and life's wild circle had ensnared my space,
have you aroused my heart to love's compassion,
have you removed me to a better place!

How often has the sigh your harp created,
a sacred chord of your enchanted mood,
to heaven's better times my soul elated:
Oh sacred Art, I thank you for that!