Month: May 2010

Mark Morris Dance Group makes its annual Seattle visit Friday night at the Paramount

By R.M. Campbell

Time passes. Is it possible that the Mark Morris Dance Group has been visiting Seattle for 25 years? It is. Morris is now middle-aged, as is everyone else still around from those days, at the very least. On the Boards was the first to bring the company here in its funky space off Yesler. Then, Morris outgrew that for Meany Hall, which presented the company for years until it got too expensive. For the past there years, the Seattle Symphony and Paramount Theatre have co-produced the annual visit. Thank goodness. Who does not want to see the Morris company on a regular basis?

Sometimes he brings new work. Not this year. On Friday night there was “Gloria,” his first major work from the 1980’s. The other two works were only slightly younger: “A Lake,” premiered at Wolf Trap near Washington, D.C., by the White Oak Dance Project, which Morris co-founded with Mikhail Baryshnikov, in 1993, and “Jesu, meine Freude,” commissioned by Dance Umbrella in Boston and premiered in that city two years later.
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Questioning the conductors: Christian Knapp

Christian Knapp is the only guest conductor this season, with or without an orchestral post who has admitted to being interested in having his own orchestra. You can draw all sorts of conclusions from his openness. Is he angling to be the SSO’s next music director? Given his history with the orchestra as its associate conductor a few years back, the thought of returning to Seattle in the orchestra’s top artistic spot is probably very enticing. Or, perhaps he has eyes on other posts? Indianapolis is looking for a new conductor (Knapp has guest conducted there as well) and so is the Richmond Symphony.

Knapp is back in Seattle this week to lead the SSO in a performance at the Paramount Theater with the Mark Morris Dance Group. Mark Morris is back for a third year, and this year his troupe will dance to Haydn, Bach, and Vivaldi.

Established conductors, with larger (and fragile) egos, might bristle at being a secondary focus for the audience. Not Knapp, he takes it in stride. Just because Knapp’s temperament is self effacing doesn’t mean he lacks ideas about how the music he will take charge of starting tonight should sound. Quite the contrary. Knapp is full of ideas about Haydn, Bach and Vivaldi, but also new music, repertory staples, and the qualities that he would find ideal for an orchestral post in the United States or abroad.

from on .

Quarter notes

My write up of last week’s Music of Remembrance concert and the premiere of Vedem is up at the .  I’ve generally liked the Music of Remembrance concerts I’ve attended.  This one didn’t do it for me.

A couple of events this weekend to check out: and the .  The SYSO dives into Mahler’s Second Symphony while the American String Project gives three concerts of string quartets and other chamber works, arranged for string orchestra.

From last week, an article which asks an important question: ?  Should it matter if he is?  Later today I will be posting a video interview with Christian Knapp (the former associate conductor and guest conductor this week of the SSO) where this subject came up.

Youth Symphony tackles death and resurrection in Mahler’s Second Symphony this Sunday

Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, the Seattle Youth Symphony’s music director, sat perched on a stool looking out over his orchestra. He flipped through the pages of his score to Mahler’s Second Symphony, searching for a good place in the music to start rehearsal. This was only the symphony’s second rehearsal of the symphony. Press were invited to attend to watch and hear how the orchestra was approaching the piece in advance of their May performance.

When the Second Symphony is performed this weekend (Sunday, May 23rd), it will be only the second time the orchestra has played the work in front of a paying audience and only the second time Radcliffe has conducted the piece – the previous time was with a professional orchestra in Sioux City, Iowa.
Continue reading Youth Symphony tackles death and resurrection in Mahler’s Second Symphony this Sunday

Onyx chamber players build a bridge to the Romantic era

By Gigi Yellen

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s Piano Trio in D Minor Op. 11 added interest and drama to the Onyx Chamber Players’ season-long commemoration of her brother Felix’s birth-bicentennial, and the death-bicentennial of their musical grandpapa, Franz Josef Haydn. Rolling in like ominous thunder, the piano part in this mature (1846) work of Ms. Mendelssohn Hensel underlines a lyrical theme, a big open melody for the cello, in the manner of the piano figure in Schubert’s famous song “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel.”

“A bridge to the Romantic era,” is how pianist David White described Fanny Mendelssohn’s music, in his spirited remarks before the concert on Sunday afternoon May 16. He also described Fanny’s considerable contributions to her younger brother’s works.

Happily, there’s more about that contribution in a new biography, Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn by R. Larry Todd (© 2010, Oxford University Press) with extensive documentation of this powerful relationship between equally talented, but unequally privileged musical siblings. The book is filled with detailed musical analyses of Fanny’s work, including the intriguing trio Onyx played. During intermission, I showed it to pianist Judith Cohen, who was in the audience, and her eyes lit up.
Continue reading Onyx chamber players build a bridge to the Romantic era

Hercules vs. Vampires comes to Oregon

By Lorin Wilkerson

“Cigars, cigarettes? Sweets, flair?” If you heard these sing-song syllables from a beautiful cigarette girl ringing out over a noisy theater the last time you went out, you either last went to the movies in the 1950s, or attended the premier of the Opera Theater Oregon/Filmusik production of Mario Bava’s Hercules vs. Vampires this weekend. (Of course the cigars are bubblegum and the cigarettes chocolate or mint, but with all proceeds going to OTO, the ambience is what counts.)

This isn’t the first joining of forces between OTO, Portland’s homegrown alternative opera troupe, and Filmusik, a project that re-imagines the sonic world of classic cinema through brand new sound- and vocal tracks. It’s not the first collaboration, but to date it may be the most brilliant. Thanks to the combination of Los Angeles composer Patrick Morganelli’s inspired short opera composed specifically for this film, the sterling quality of the OTO singers and Erica Melton’s expert direction of the Filmusik orchestra, Hercules vs. Vampires (It. Ercole al Centro della Terra) was a high-caliber musical experience coupled with the guilty pleasure of watching a campy old movie. In short, it was exactly the type of experience that Filmusik seeks to impart and contintually does, in fresh new iterations time and again.
Continue reading Hercules vs. Vampires comes to Oregon

Quarter notes

How could those masks not be dangerous? Photo LA Times.

The LA Ring sounds like a .

Meanwhile, The Met’s new Ring gets the . Robert LePage’s ideas look promising. Will Levine be healthy enough to conduct? Can this production cement Gelb’s reputation as an innovator with the right vision for the Met?

The NY Phil has unveiled a new (and even funny) video campaign for this month’s Le Grande Macabre. Gilbert and Death share a moment over . They even face off over a game of .  Death gets brain freeze; loses a fin.

Jun Markl conducts SSO in all German program

Since January, when the legendary Kurt Masur came to Seattle to conduct the SSO in a spellbinding performance of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, SSO performances have steadily improved, interpretations from the podium have varied, and among musicians there is genuine excitement for the orchestra’s future. The musicians have even magnanimously stepped up their playing for Gerard Schwarz, the orchestra’s current music director. It is, without a doubt, an exciting time to hear the SSO in action.

One musician confided a few days back that it is a good thing he isn’t on the search committee to find a new music director because he is having so much fun playing for the likes of Spano, Dausgaard, Masur, Markl, Gaffigan, and Manze that he would prefer the search for a new music director go on as long as possible.
Continue reading Jun Markl conducts SSO in all German program

Questioning the conductors: Jun Markl


Update : I am not entirely sure what happened with the video for two minutes in the middle. I apologize and will upload a mirror copy tonight.

I had a chance to sit down with Jun (pronounced June) Markl earlier this week. Markl, no stranger to the Seattle Symphony, is guest conducting a program of German music that covers Schumann, Beethoven, and Wagner. Though his program is uber-traditional, Markl takes a relativist view of Beethoven and the masterpieces of the classical music repertory. Markl doesn’t embrace just one view of how Beethoven should sound. As he says in our interview, Beethoven played in France can sound different from Beethoven played in the United States. Differences resulting from geography should be embraced for what they bring to the music.

Markl’s embracing attitude is important for someone in his position. His own family bridges two cultures (his mother is Japanese and his father is German). He also currently leads two orchestras: one in Lyon, France and the other in Leipzig, Germany and is a regular guest conductor in the United States too. Because of his firm command of the Franco-German repertory, I assume some have placed high high on their list of conductors they would like to see replace Gerard Schwarz after next season.  His previous visits to Seattle have given audiences shapely,poised interpretations of mostly familiar repertory.

These interviews often take on a life of their own when the camera is turned off. This time was no different.  When the camera was shut off I had a spirited conversation about the economic differences between American and European orchestras with Alex Prior. Prior, who is assistant to this season’s guest conductors, sat in on the interview. Afterward, I asked him what he thought about Markl’s response to my questions on the subject (which you can watch) and his own thoughts. Prior approached the subject with the free market enthusiasm of someone just beginning to get a handle on American consumerist culture and with the experience of seeing European orchestras hew to the political whims of appropriators.

Our exchange came in the context of contemporary music. In Europe it isn’t uncommon, as Markl explains, for orchestras to offer contemporary music festivals even when they know ticket sales will flatten or dip. In the United States, prolonged encounters with the music of today is a recipe for orchestra fiscal ruin. European orchestras have the luxury of being able to program difficult pieces because of the state subsidies they receive. By contrast American orchestras depend on a steady flow of private subsidies. Prior’s argument is that the American system of orchestra funding is better, because it is market oriented, which allows the audience to have more of a say. I cautioned that if orchestras are purely market oriented there is a risk that new music would be squeezed out by a parade of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Mozart.

I hope to be able to speak with Prior for more than a few moments here and there. In the meantime, take a moment to watch what Markl had to say about orchestra economics, the German tradition, and contemporary music.

from on .

Quarter notes: Amelia trailer

Seattle Opera is up with their Amelia trailer on YouTube. If RM Campbell’s review doesn’t make you want to see Speight Jenkins’ first commissioned opera, surely this trailer will.