This Sunday night, Kronos Quartet perform Getme, Getme (Don’t Leave, Don’t Leave) with the Asim Qasimov Ensemble, from Azerbaijan, featuring vocals by Qasimov and his daughter Fargana. This event, entitled Music Without Borders, is part of Kronos’s season-long Perspectives series.
A live performance of Getme, Getme, from London's Barbican Hall Used courtesy of Nonesuch Records
When I first met Ge Gan-ru in 1985 and heard his Yi Feng, I immediately asked him to write for me. The results were Gu Yue (Ancient Music), inspired by traditional Chinese instruments, and an unusual piano concerto, Wu (Rising to the Heights). Two decades later, Ge has come up with yet another one-of-a-kind gem: Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!, a Peking opera–inspired melodrama for my voice, self-accompanied by a toy orchestra.
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! is a poem of sorrow and anguish by the illustrious Song Dynasty poet Lu You. He wrote it after divorcing his wife and cousin, Tang Wan, on the decree of his tyrannical mother. (The “malevolent East Wind” in the first stanza is but a caustic metaphor for the hateful matriarch.) The girl wasted away from a broken heart while Lu You composed poems of loss and abiding love into his autumnal years.
Composer. Pianist. Conductor. This month, Thomas Adès performs each of these roles at Carnegie Hall, with three distinct concerts. In this exclusive audio interview, Adès explains the balancing act that’s required to keep up with his musical life on and off the stage.
There's a reason Kronos doesn't refer to itself as a "string" quartet. When the group concludes its Carnegie Hall Perspectives series with four concerts in Zankel Hall this weekend, they won’t just be featuring music for violins, viola, and cello. How about the hurdy gurdy? Or string instruments with protruding metal horns? Or the lata, an instrument created by Angolan children out of remnant military materials found across their war-torn country? These are just a few of the distinctive instruments that Kronos and their collaborators from around the world will be playing. When the accordion and Afghan rubâb are not the most obscure instruments featured, this is definitely not your typical string quartet series.
On March 9 and 10, Valery Gergiev leads a complete concert performance of Berlioz's grand opera Les Troyens. This epic work, which traces Aeneas’s quest from Troy through Carthage and on to Italy, is so massive in scope that in his lifetime, Berlioz was unable to secure a full performance of the opera, and was forced to divide it into two parts: The Siege of Troy and The Trojans at Carthage. In this Soundbyte, Jeremy Geffen, Carnegie Hall’s Director of Artistic Planning, brings to attention some sung highlights from the opera, as well as some great musical moments that don't call for any voices, at all.
One of the great beauties of Carnegie Hall’s Perspectives series is that it allows
artists the opportunity to articulate their artistic visions in a curatorial way.
For the Kronos Quartet’s Perspectives, the group has created programming
that truly reflects the myriad and far-reaching explorations that Kronos has
undertaken in more than 30 years of work.
During this series, we see the members of Kronos as the quintessential
collaborators. They are not simply commissioning work, nor seeking out
different voices just for the sake of being novel, but instead graciously inviting
composers and artists of all stripes to create new artistic visions. They have
asked a number of artists with whom they have shared the stage previously or
with whom they hope to work in the future to join them for these concerts.
The common denominator is that all are grounded in the notion of “we.”
When Kronos generates commissions or begins to work with new artists, the
ideal is to create a greater whole, a sum that far exceeds the voices of four
individual musicians.
When an eight-year-old Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) performed a polonaise he had composed the previous year, he made a powerful impression. “A true musical genius,” the Warsaw Diary noted. “The boldest and most magnificent poet of our time,” declared Robert Schumann. Celebrated throughout his life, Chopin continues to be praised today. ”Chopin was the greatest master of counterpoint since Mozart,” writes American pianist and critic Charles Rosen.
Though Chopin’s musical gifts were clear from an early age, it wasn’t until he left his native Poland at age 20 that the rest of Europe heard him play. After a brief stay in Vienna, Chopin settled in Paris, where he quickly established a reputation as a brilliant pianist and a sought-after teacher. While virtuoso composer-pianists largely made their livings by playing public concerts, Chopin preferred the intimate settings of exclusive salons. “You cannot imagine what a torture the three days before a public appearance are to me,” he wrote. At small gatherings of artists and aristocrats, he was free from the anxieties of public performance, and able to play and improvise without inhibition.
“What I really am I myself do not know clearly,” wrote a 16-year-old Robert Schumann. His two great passions were music and literature, but he wasn’t sure which art to pursue. “Excellent in music and poetry—but not a musical genius—my talents as musician and poet are at the same level,” he wrote in his diary a few years later.
The son of a publisher, Schumann spent many childhood hours devouring classic literature. He tried his hand at writing lyric poetry, drama, fiction, and even translated Greek poetry while still a teenager. He was also a gifted pianist and enjoyed improvising and composing, particularly musical portraits of people he knew.
Since his parents thought that neither music nor literature would lead to a practical career, Schumann was sent to Leipzig to study law. But he had little patience for the “ice-cold definitions” of the law; according to a roommate, he never went to a single law lecture.
Carnegie Hall hosted a vintage attire contest for ticket holders of the Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester concert on Thursday, March 4. Ticket holders had their photos taken in the main lobby during intermission, flaunting their vintage Weimar-era cabaret style. Now through March 12, Carnegie Hall Facebook fans can vote for their favorite dressed concertgoer, and award the Grand Prize, a 2010–2011 subscription series to the New York Pops. Vote now »
In Part II of his great epic, Berlioz follows his Trojan heroes to Carthage, where their leader, Aeneas, finds the most profound of all loves. But destiny decrees that he is to travel onward and found Rome. Here the story turns intensely human, and Berlioz brings it to life with music of sweeping passion, grandeur, and heartbreak.
Act III begins in Carthage, where Queen Didon is
presiding over a civic festival. Didon’s music
marks her as very different from Cassandre, the tragic
heroine in Part I. Whereas Cassandre is passionate and
unpredictable, Didon here is calm and assured—which
makes her undoing by Enée all the more devastating.
Excerpt from Berlioz’s Les Troyens (Act III, No. 19a - “Nous avons vu finir sept ans a peine”)
Act IV opens with a lengthy orchestral tone poem,
including an offstage chorus, which depicts a sylvan
glen and follows the progress of a storm. Yet the music
really portrays the nascent love affair between
Didon and Enée as well as their lovemaking.
Excerpt from Berlioz’s Les Troyens (Act IV, No. 29 - “Chasse royale et orage”)
In the recitative and second chorus at the start of Act
V, the Trojans resolve to push on from Carthage.
Excerpt from Berlioz’s Les Troyens (Act V, No. 39 - “DPreparez tout, il faut partir enfin”) London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus / Sir Colin Davis / Michelle DeYoung, Mezzo-Soprano LSO Live
The Musical Connections program of the Weill Music Institute provides access to live music for people dealing with challenging social and emotional circumstances. WABC-TV recently aired a news feature about the program’s performance by Chris Washburne and the SYOTOS Band at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Ossining, NY.
Berlioz composed his grand opera Les Troyens between April 1856 and 1858,
but never saw the first part (Acts I and II) during his lifetime. The tradition of
performing the opera as two separate halves dates back to the premiere of
Part II in 1863. Yet the work is a unified whole that traces Enée’s epic quest
from Troy through Carthage and on to Italy.
Act I begins in Troy. The Trojans and the Greeks
have been at war for nearly a decade, but peace may
be at hand. The people of Troy rejoice by singing a
celebratory chorus (there is no orchestral overture).
Excerpt from Berlioz’s Les Troyens (Act I, No. 1 - “Ha, Ha! Apres dix ans”)
After a seemingly decisive and triumphant
cadence, the orchestration quickly shifts along with
the mood. Slow, pulsing strings and a turn toward
the minor mode mark the appearance of the
prophet Cassandre, who is doomed always to say
the truth yet also to be ignored.
Excerpt from Berlioz’s Les Troyens (Act I, No. 2 - “Malheureux roi!”)
The arrival of the Trojan Horse is heralded by three
brass ensembles plus a fourth of oboes and harps.
Cassandre’s plangent cries of warning (“Malheur!”)
go unheeded. A grand march in the major mode
(the Trojan March, which will return throughout
the opera) passes, leaving her alone on stage to end
Act I in a minor key.
Excerpt from Berlioz’s Les Troyens (Act I, No. 11 - “De mes sens eperdus (Marche Troyenne)”) London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus / Sir Colin Davis / Petra Lang, Mezzo-Soprano LSO Live
To remind myself of the Weimar Republic’s musical attractions, I glanced at the weekly Spielplan ("concert schedule") in Berlin for the second week of November 1929, as it appeared in the Vossische Zeitung—a newspaper banned after 1934. What a staggering array of offerings! The Benatzky operetta-revue Die Drei Musketiere at the Großes Schauspielhaus, Max Reinhardt’s celebrated production of Die Fledermaus at the Nollendorfplatz, Lehár’s Das Land des Lächlens at the Metropol with Richard Tauber, Spoliansky’s Zwei Krawatten, and many more revues, concerts, and operas—not to mention the stage version of Grand Hotel and Fritz Lang’s film Frau im Mond at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo.
Rechanneling hit music from these successes, as well as the newest German and American pop songs, was the business of the hotel and nightclub orchestras, from the glamorous Adlon down to the more lowly caféhaus or cabaret, as well as the Rundfunk radio and the Shellac record.
Excerpt from "Cheek to Cheek" (Irving Berlin) Max Raabe / Palast Orchester SPV Records
The big band sound was entrenched in Berlin with such ensembles as the Weintraub Syncopators, Barnabas von Géczy and his Orchestra, the Dajos Béla Tanzorchester, and many more. Though big band continued after 1933, the Jewish composers, lyricists, and performers were replaced by “Aryans.” The Weimar style of Heymann, Hollaender, Stolz, Jurmann, and others was carried on by just a few composers, such as Mackeben and Jary. But the public’s thirst for the type of entertainment that reached a crescendo in the UFA film musicals of the early 1930s persisted, and Swing had a hold on German audiences that the Nazis failed to suppress.
Max Raabe and Palast Orchester are the legitimate heirs to this musical tradition. As they make their third visit to New York’s Carnegie Hall, devotees of German Schlager (“hit songs”), big-band, and faultlessly recreated Nostalgie for the sounds of the Weimar Republic are sure to be enraptured.
A journey through Beethoven’s life and art begins with the youthful exuberance of the Op. 18 string quartet. In this video, members of the Artemis Quartet give their insights into Beethoven’s genius, including performances of excerpts from this early period masterwork, as well as a middle period “Razumovsky.”
Friday, March 19, 2010 at 7:30 PM
Pre-concert talk starts at 6:30 PM in Zankel Hall: Thomas Adès in conversation with Jeremy Geffen, Director of Artistic Planning, Carnegie Hall.
Credit for inventing the string quartet tends to be laid at the feet of Joseph Haydn, that industrious, fecund genius whose life’s work counts among the crowning achievements of the 18th-century Austrian Empire. Haydn was not the first composer to write pieces for two violins, viola and cello. But his efforts established the intimacy, flexibility and expressiveness that made the string quartet a medium capable of encompassing his own congeniality and craft, Beethoven’s stormy spirit, Shostakovich’s hidden turmoil and Elliott Carter’s fearsome concatenations. Read more »
Combining education with technology, the Carnegie Hall Cultural Exchange program connects hundreds of New York City students to their peers around the world not only through creative, music-making projects but also with an exchange of ideas between participants through an online community and concerts using videoconferencing technology.
On January 26, the Celso Duarte Ensemble performed at Teatro Julio Castillo for students at nine Mexico City schools, while NYC high school students enjoyed a performance by Miguel Zenón—a New York City-based jazz saxophonist and composer—with his quartet in Zankel Hall. In May, the ensembles travel to each other’s countries with the Celso Duarte Ensemble performing for the New York City audience and the Miguel Zenón Quartet performing for the Mexico City audience at Teatro Julio Castillo.
Carnegie Hall will host a vintage attire contest for ticket holders of the Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester concert on Thursday, March 4 at 8 PM. Elegance is back, so join us to recapture the style and wit of German Weimar-era cabaret culture from the 1920s and ‘30s and flaunt your own vintage style at the concert. The contest will take place during intermission. For the most up-to-date information on the contest, please visit the Carnegie Hall Facebook page at facebook.com/carnegiehall
Max Raabe and Palast Orchester always put on a hugely entertaining show, recapturing the style and wit of German cabaret culture from the 1920s and ‘30s. Here, Raabe explains what makes his group such a "global musical act."
