Tchaikovsky

Composer Cagematch! Round 4: Gershwin vs. Tchaikovsky

Oh now just what in the hell was that.

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Brahms over STRAVINSKY? Whatever happened to Team Igor? I feel like I went in for the trust fall and you didn’t catch me, readership. Harrumph.

Well, fine. I have some devilish plans for Johannes in the future. For now, I must collect myself and announce that in this corner, he turned Verdi Blue! It’s

GEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORGE GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERSHWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN

And in this corner, he serenaded Copland right out of the ring! It’s

PIOTR! ILYICH! TCHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIKOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVSKYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Tchaikovsky discovers America, indeed.

Is that a conductor’s baton in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Some people simply do not do things by halves.

Concert Roundup, Partially Rewound

Because I’m only 33% kind.

• Hey, remember that time I wasn’t paying attention and posted a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert a week early? Of course you do; it was last week. Tchaikovsky and stuff. April 13 & 15 at the Meyerhoff; April 14 at Strathmore. [ See it! ]
  
• The National Symphony Orchestra hauls out some big guns this week — not only does their concert guest star Sweet Honey in the Rock, but they’re also premiering a co-commission by Bill Banfield. There are a couple other works on the program, by Bernstein, Ellington, Tchaikovsky, and more, although I don’t know how liberally they’re seasoned with Honey (rim shot). April 13 & 14.  [ See it! ]
• This week at Strathmore, you can catch a Brazilian dance, song, and martial arts group in a pseudo Carnaval, try to see Joshua Bell and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields but probably not because I think there are like two tickets left, mix it up with electric violinist Chelsey Green and the Green Project, investigate what CityDance is up to, take in a lecture on jazz percussion, soak in all the bluegrass your ears can handle with a tribute to Bill Monroe, and get your Spanish guitar on with Paco de Lucia. [ See the calendar! ]

Concert Roundup: Some Will Be Pardoned and Some Punish-ed

Go forth and have more talk of these musical things.

• Oh, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. You raise me to the highest highs only to plunge me into the lowest lows. I see a concert entitled “Romeo and Juliet” and immediately I think, PROKOFIEV! SQUEE! And what do I get? Berlioz? NOT EVEN. I get TCHAIKOVSKY. I love almost all Tchaikovsky — EXCEPT HIS R&J. Ugh. What are you trying to do, kill me and then bring me back to life with Mussourgsky‘s Night on Bald Mountain, my boy Khachaturian‘s violin concerto, and no less an adrenalin shot to the heart than Stravinsky‘s Firebird Suite? It’s an emotional roller coaster, I tell you! April 13 & 15 at the Meyerhoff; April 14 at Strathmore. [ See it! ]
  Edited to add: Whoops, jumped the gun. That’s NEXT week’s concert. Unfortunately I built the theme of this post around it, so I can’t take it out. You’re just super-prepared for next week. Hush.
• The National Symphony Orchestra has no time for roller coasters. They prefer a steady, even keel with ONE composer only, thank you very much. That composer is Mendelssohn, and the piece is Elijah. April 5 – 7. [ See it! ]
• This week at Strathmore, we have Kevin Costner. No, seriously, Kevin Costner is coming! Do you have ANY IDEA how I feel about Field of Dreams?! But he’s not playing baseball; he’s singing with his band, Modern West. So there’s that, and there’s Video Games Live which I talked about on Monday (you should come and say hi and check out the costume contest and play some Guitar Hero), and a wind ensemble called Flutopia of all things. [ See the calendar! ]

Composer Cagematch! Round 3: Copland vs. Tchaikovsky

Triumph of the American spirit!

I’m not going to beat around the bush, so to speak — it was a tough fight, with both parties taking the lead at times, but ultimately Gershwin eeked it out over Verdi. People, THIS is what the Composer Cagematch! series is all about. I have seen Verdi listed on a number of top 10 great composer lists, and Gershwin none. If pressed, I bet even a lot of the Gershwin voters would admit that, technically, Verdi is the better composer. But Gershwin! Gershwin, it seems, is the composer you love. And that’s why he proceeds to the next round.

Well done, George, you scrappy little American, you. You’ve done your country proud. Can you brother in citizenship do the same? It’s time to find out, because in this corner, he pushed Britten over a cliff! It’s

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAROOOOOOOOOOOOON COOOOOOOOOOPLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND!

And in this corner, he stabbed Rimsky-Korsakov with a spindle and sent him to bed! It’s

PIOTR! ILYICH! TCHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIKOOOOOOOOOOOOOVSKYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

I don’t think anyone’s going to argue over who’s the better composer (although who knows?). But! Who. Do. You. Love?

Fanfare for the Concert Roundup

Buh buh baaaaah… buh bah baaaaaah… baaaah baaaah buuuuuuuh… BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH. (I speak fluent onomatopoeia.)

• Get ready to [insert alcohol joke here], because this week’s Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert is “Tchaikovsky’s Fifth.” Colin Currie will leave my apartment long enough to solo on your two favorite fanfares: Copland‘s Fanfare for the Common Man and Tower‘s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, plus the premier of a Higdon percussion concerto. And then you purists can have your eponymous Tchaik. March 22 at Strathmore; March 23 & 24 at the Meyerhoff. [ See it! ]
• Not concerts in the strictest sense, but of note: the BSO‘s subscription packages for next season are now available. They’re also accepting applications to audition in the 2012 O Say Can You Sing? national anthem competition, and if you don’t sing, maybe you play? The BSO Academy is still taking applications.
• The National Symphony Orchestra believes you should hear Dvorak‘s Stabat Mater and ONLY Dvorak’s Stabat Mater. You may do so on March 22 – 24. [ See it! ]
• No, wait! The NSO is just kidding. The NSO believes that sometimes your Dvorak should be fortified with some vitamin Janacek. Get your weekly allowance with Dvorak serenades in D minor and E major; then add a Janacek concertina and capriccio. March 23. [ See it! ]
• This Week at Strathmore! Piano prodigy Ethan Bortnick (if you come to that one, stop by the concierge desk and say hi!), a heavy metal cello ensemble that isn’t Apocalyptica, an all-Mozart program (blehhh), a soul electric guitarist, a Russian military and folk song and dance troupe. [ See the calendar! ]

The Best

Two weeks ago I made a list of composers I considered to be the greatest, in terms of talent, innovation, and output. I tried to make this as objective as possible while still noting that my own preferences and the limits of my knowledge base must unavoidably come into play.

This week? IT’S SUBJECTIVE TIME. Which, indeed, is kind of like Miller Time — alcohol free, yes, but with just as much opportunity to shout your opinions while gesticulating wildly and possibly falling out of your chair.

All of this is just to say that here I would like to present my list not of the greatest composers of all time but the ones I like BEST. Basically the idea here is a collection of the composers that, when the radio deejay says, “next is a piece by ________”, make me say “YAY!!!” Here goes:

1. BEETHOVEN (duh)
2. Bach
3. Khachaturian (and I stand by my decision)
4. Stravinsky
5. Schubert
6. Holst
7. Prokofiev
8. Shostakovich
9. Ravel
10. Tchaikovsky

There is of course a fair amount of overlap, but I bet some of them surprise you. Before you pull out your extra-sharp pitchfork, rest assured — I’m not suggesting Khachaturian ranks above Stravinsky in… well, in ANY category, really. Stravinsky is definitely the better composer. But Khachaturian makes me super happy! So high up the list he stays. Ya get me?

The nice thing about this list is, it’s even more changeable than a best-of list, undulating and evolving with your changing moods and interests; I expect Handel could sneak on to mine any moment now.

Now about you — who are you feeling right now?

Concert Roundup Up and Away

Good morning, campers! Are you ready to find out what you’re doing this weekend?

• Option number one: the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is cheating. No, wait, that’s not true; it’s Sarasate who cheated with his fantasy on Bizet’s Carmen. Next time you write your own fantasy, young man; none of this downloading scores off the internet. Also on the menu: MacMillan‘s The Confession of Isobel Gowdie and Prokofiev’s fifth symphony. February 23 & 26 at the Meyerhoff. [ See it! ]
• Or if you want to hang with the BSO but feel that only Prokofiev is worth your time (that’s a little snobby, sir, but I see where you’re coming from), Marin Alsop will help deconstruct and contextualize the piece in another one of those snappy Off the Cuff concerts. It’s like a music history lecture with a live orchestra, and Alsop’s pretty funny! February 24 at Strathmore and February 25 at the Meyerhoff. [ See it! ]
• Maybe just music isn’t enough for you anymore. Maybe you need acrobatics to catch your interest. If so, the National Symphony Orchestra has you covered with one of those crazy Cirque de la Symphonie performances. The NSO Pops will play as circus performers of all stripes performing feats of daring. Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, and Khachaturian are all promised. February 23 – 25. [ See it! ]
• A smattering of upcoming Strathmore performances: a cello and piano duet, a Bach concert, a jazz vocalist. [ Check out the full schedule! ]

Remember, if you’d like me to include your upcoming concert in next week’s roundup, leave a comment or drop me a line.

Next thing you’ll tell me it’s a pah de doo

Okay. I’ve already told you about my Rimsky-Korsakow thing. If you haven’t seen it, Mr. Clayton provided an excellent comment shedding a little light on the issue. It’s all about transliteration, he says; it’s how many languages and alphabets the composer has been filtered through before he gets to us that determines the spelling.

Well fine. Then who came up with this one? General Tsao?

Tschaikovsky? Tschaikovsky? PETER? ILYITCH? Did he decide to incorporate a tribute to eczema while filing for British citizenship? It’s PIOTR, dammit! PIOTR! ILYICH! TCHAIKOVSKY! I’m going back to bed.

The pits

As I mentioned yesterday, I spent my Saturday in New York City with some fellow ballerinas. We did the requisite NYC wandering, but our main objective was to see the New York City Ballet perform a series of short works, including The Steadfast Tin Soldier (which I didn’t like because NO ONE MELTED), Le Tombeau de Couperin (which I loved, at least in part because RAVEL!), a Tchaikovsky pas de deux (more on that Friday, kinda), and The Concert (hilarious at the beginning, WTF at the end).

But this is not a post about ballet. This is a post about the pit.

The New York City Ballet performs with a pit orchestra, an increasingly rare luxury in these hard economic times. I’ve never played in a pit, myself, but I can only imagine it’s a very different experience from playing in a regular concert — and not just because no one can see you. Even if your work has been recorded to CD, when someone plays that CD it’s all about you and your music. In the pit, you become secondary, do you not? Important, yes, but not the focus. The conductor doesn’t even get to fully control the nuances of the piece, constantly adjusting to suit the dancers/actors/what have you.

I thought of this particularly because of the Tchaikovsky, the lost pas de deux from Swan Lake. It featured a violin solo, and I wondered — what’s it like soloing in the pit? Of course you still don’t want to make a mistake, but the eyes aren’t on you; hell, most of the audience can’t even see you. Are you still nervous? Do you play it your way, or are you more inclined to play traditionally, to keep things consistent for the dancer? Does it even matter if you snag a solo or not?

And conductors, how do you feel answering to dancers? Does it add an extra layer of difficulty, dividing your attention between the musicians and the performers on stage? Have you ever had a dancer ask for a truly ridiculous adjustment? Have the music and the dancing ever separated, and if so, how did you get it back? Did you get it back?

In short, does playing in the pit take the pressure off, or is it the pit of despair?*

* Don’t even think about trying to escape.