“Music has Charms to Soothe a Savage Breast”

                                                                           William Congreve

Music has been called the universal language. It’s the aspect of our culture that arguably moves us more than anything else--other than sex. Mankind cherishes and values music so much that snippets of several of western civilization’s musical highlights, including the song “Johnny B. Goode” and the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th symphony, were sent into space along with the two Voyager probes in 1977 in the hopes of ultimately reaching extraterrestrial life and demonstrating that we as a race are intelligent. Ahem.   

What happens when music goes wrong? Sure there’s plenty of what can generally be considered bad music and much of it from the 1970’s, which by the way was my formative decade. Catch a mere smidge of any of these truly bad songs and you may be stuck with it for the rest of your day and auditorily maimed, so to speak. Yes, even a mere five second exposure to the likes of “MacArthur Park,” “Take a Letter Maria,” “Honey,” or “Muskrat Love” is enough to stun the naked mind. I apologize for even bringing up these cursed tunes and hope you will read on.  

Beyond simply bad music like the songs listed above, there are other times when musical mismatching of monumental proportions takes place; where the performers, the performance, the music, and/or the context is so epically wrong as to defy all logic, much less lofty imagination. These are special musical moments indeed and here are three of my favorites. Read on, listen, and prepare to be sore amazed.

Exhibit A: The Leningrad Cowboys Play, “Sweet Home Alabama,” with the Russian Army Chorus

It’s doubtful that you’ve heard of the subject of our first sonic implosion. If by some chance you have, then you know that the Leningrad Cowboys were and still are a Finnish band known for their exaggerated hairstyles and costumes. The Cowboys are further known for performing a wide range of popular '70's and '80’s covers, not to mention some very slick polka tunes. Beyond that, the band also has a cult following for their filmed concerts, in particular the “Total Balalaika Show” first released in 1994. The film is of a 1993 performance of the group in Helsinki accompanied by the 160 member Russian Alexandrov ensemble and chorus. The highlight of said concert, even above an inspiring rendition of “Stairway to Heaven,” has to be Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1974 ode to southern rock, “Sweet Home Alabama.” Know that the Cowboys are a pretty decent cover band that manage to do justice to anything they play. But the combination of their remarkably outlandish hair and outfits with the minions of straight-laced Russian lads in staid brown uniforms belting out “Sweet Home Alabama” is impossible to describe. It must be experienced:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKD7g56DNN0

Exhibit B: Lawrence Welk and “One Toke over the Line”

Even in my naïve youth I could sense an incredible rift in TV reality played out weekly on early Saturday evenings on our local Albuquerque ABC affiliate. Precisely at the 7:00 hour, just before the listening audience was about to go face down in their TV dinners due to a combination of starch, fat, and various medications, conductor and accordion player extraordinaire Lawrence Welk and his band of renown offered up 60 minutes of what can only be called well-scrubbed sonic dry wall. Each week Larry and the band would play perky tunes so removed from musical reality that their source had to be a portal into some bizarre alien universe or the result of a cruel government anti-youth plot.  

Likewise, I’m sure that Welk struggled with all the music/noise born in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, when musicians began to plug their instruments into wall sockets and play louder than proverbial hell. And let’s not even mention the long hair, the outlandish clothes, and the steaming morass that defined the morality of the times. Every now and again Welk and his band would bravely foray into the murky waters of rock and roll and always with mixed results at best. The finest example surely must be their 1971 rendition of Brewer and Shipley's ode to marijuana and excess entitled, “One Toke over the Line.” It’s a song I remember from high school, a song that’s definitely forgettable--unless you tried to embody the spirit of its lyrics, in which case remembering anything other than your name became a major sport not to mention the power-eating of junk food. 

Did Lawrence and company realize what the song was about, especially with Welk himself calling it a “modern spiritual”? And did bashful Dick Dale and perky Gail Farrell really get what being, “one toke over the line sweet Jesus,” meant? Probably not, but then we are the benefactors, yea the grateful recipients, of this momentous occasion in the history of musical short circuitry. Watch, listen and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8tdmaEhMHE

Exhibit C: the Portsmouth Sinfonia Performs “Also Sprach Zarathustra”

By now the initial bars of Richard Strauss’ tone poem, “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” aka the opening theme to Stanley Kubrick’s, 2001: a Space Odyssey, is one of the most ubiquitous pieces of classical music known to mankind. It’s right up there with the Blue Danube waltz and the Taco Bell Canon. You might assume that a piece such as Also Sprach, which is scored in C Major with a lot of open chords, a simple melody, and tympani (kettle drums) going boom, boom, boom, might be a piece of cake to play. After all, how hard could it be?  You would be wrong. The very fact that so many different instruments in the orchestra are all playing the same pitches and the same chords at the same time, lives and breathes disaster for ensembles at practically any and every level of expertise. Just ask the principal trumpet player who has to end the opening segment by blowing his or her brains out on a high “C.” Lovely.

Enter the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an orchestra founded in 1970 by a group of students at the Portsmouth School of Art in the U.K. The only requirement to be in the orchestra was that players either had to be non-musicians; or if they were musicians, they had to play an instrument that was completely new to them. The ensemble started off as a lark but soon gained notoriety with concert appearances and a film. They eventually attracted the attention of musician Brian Eno, who produced two albums with the group. Even though the orchestra disbanded in 1979, their recording of Also Sprach is legendary. Without further ado, I give you a performance for the ages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpFQLw5_N2o

Last month the classical music world celebrated an important milestone: one hundred years ago on May 29th, Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, or The Rite of Spring, was first performed. For most people, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring means Disney’s Fantasia and dinosaurs. But decades before the movie was ever conceived, the inaugural performance of The Rite in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris caused a cultural uproar including a near riot in the audience that almost stopped the performance midstream. 

The Rite was the third of Stravinsky’s large scale ballet scores for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The first two ballets, the Firebird in 1910 and Petrouschka in 1911, were triumphs and quickly catapulted Stravinsky into the top echelon of classical composers of the day. The Rite was commissioned for the 1913 Paris season with original choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, with stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich. The concept for the piece was developed from composer’s idea of “Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts.” The plot centers on several primitive rituals celebrating the advent of spring ending with a young girl being chosen as a sacrificial victim ultimately dancing herself to death in the composition’s closing bars.

Stravinsky’s Rite was not the only revolutionary work of its time.  The year before Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg premiered his work Pierrot Lunaire ("Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight"). Schoenberg’s work is a setting of twenty-one poems for soprano and chamber group. What made Pierrot so revolutionary was Schoenberg’s abandonment of traditional tonic-dominant harmony for atonality, literally music without a central key or scale.   

But the Rite is arguably the more revolutionary work. Good friend Frank Ticheli, composer in residence at U.S.C., believes that the Rite is the more important of the two because of the composition’s size and scale. "It's as if Stravinsky took traditional orchestration and forms, and tossed them out the window. His use of new and very sophisticated harmonic, rhythmic, and metric structures combined with traditional Russian and Lithuanian folk melodies was nothing short of revolutionary."

To point, the score features dissonant harmonies that would only reappear decades later in various jazz works. Juxtaposed against these new, startling harmonies were deceptively simple Lithuanian and Russian folk tunes. Above all, however, the Rite introduced the powerful and innovative concept that rhythm could completely dominate a musical work over melody and harmony, the tradition of which had existed for over a thousand years in western music. Even the opening melody scored for solo bassoon in the high register was revolutionary for its time in that the instrument literally lacked the keys to be able to accurately play the part. Not surprisingly, makers of the instrument quickly adapted its hardware to be able to perform the piece. With those opening bars, Stravinsky set the stage for the revolutionary music that would follow--and music as the world knew it would never be the same.  

As for that ill-fated initial performance, Pierre Monteux, famed conductor of the premier, went on record after the fact saying that the trouble in the audience began soon after the opening bars. Two opposing groups in the audience—one made up of traditionalists who were appalled by the performance and the other, a more radical group who embraced any new work--began attacking each other. Soon their mutual anger was directed towards the orchestra. Monteux wrote, "Everything available was tossed in our direction, but we continued to play on." Some forty of the worst offenders were ejected from the hall but amazingly enough the performance continued without interruption. During the second part of the work, the audience calmed down considerably with the final "Sacrificial Dance" viewed in near silence. In the end Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Monteux, and the orchestra and dancers received several curtain calls.  
  
Since that time the Rite has influenced every genre of music including the likes of jazz, heavy metal, rap, and hip-hop. To me it’s the most important—and influential--piece of music in the last century. 

As of 2012, there were over 100 different recordings of the Rite available making it one of the most recorded of all 20th century compositions. Here are some of my favorites.

1. Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky, Columbia Symphony Orchestra: Stravinsky’s own interpretation of his masterpiece. 

2. Leonard Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic: arguably the most dramatic performance ever recorded. 

3. Seiji Ozawa conducts the Chicago Symphony: a high powered performance by a young Seiji Ozawa and the brilliant Chicago Symphony. 

4. Lorin Maazel conducts the Cleveland Orchestra: a great performance of the Rite and arguably the most life-like recording available.

The classical music industry is in the tank. It’s been there for a while. As of this writing, the orchestras in Minneapolis and Indianapolis are both on strike. Last year the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of the country’s finest and most venerated musical arts organizations, filed for chapter 11. Two years ago my hometown Albuquerque Symphony, a group founded in 1932 and a group I performed with as an undergraduate, folded. Done. Finito. Finale.

Add to this list of misery is the fact that none of the top five class “A” orchestras has a recording contract with a major label at this time. That in itself is a litmus test of just how far the industry has sunk; 20 years ago they all had at least one contract with a major label. In fact, the only recent American recording project of any magnitude I can think of is the outstanding Mahler Symphony cycle by the San Francisco Symphony completed several years ago. Mind you, the only reason it was ever accomplished was because the recordings were released on the symphony’s own label and the entire project was underwritten by the Getty foundation. Otherwise, it would never have happened. 

Why is the state of the state so dire for American orchestras and classical music in the U.S. in general? Lots of reasons, but the first has to be cost; the average annual salary for a top orchestra is upwards of $100K. Multiply that by 75-100 people, add benefits on top of that, and you can easily see that running a major orchestra is a multi-million dollar excursion and one that simple ticket sales can’t completely support. Historically, American orchestras have been subsidized by the feds. But that funding has dramatically decreased in the last decade, most notably in the last several years coinciding with the world economic meltdown. 

Listening audiences, specifically those that actually attend a “live” concert by a major orchestra much less buy a recording, aren’t getting any younger. Other than having a young rock star conductor like Gustavo Dudamel in Los Angeles, there doesn’t seem to be any major impetus or vehicle to get younger audiences listening to classical music or going to concerts. Likewise, in the past composers and compositions were cyclically being “rediscovered” by movie audiences as elements of soundtracks, but that doesn’t seem to be happening as much now. 

I’d also like to put forth that the way younger generations listen to music now probably has something to do with all this. To point, listening to music is not the singular experience I grew up with as in sitting down in front of some speakers for a duration of time—and listening. Now the music experience is generally defined as downloading single songs, creating playlists of different songs/artists, and listening to music through ear buds to an iPod, iPhone, or other smart phone-like device. Further, listening to music is often done on the go with any number of other things going on in the moment. One might be tempted to ask if listening to single songs and multi-task-listening makes for a shorter attention span or at least a different kind of attention span.

What can you do? Can you help? Yes, you can. The answer is simple: Mozart. That’s right, Mozart. Far-fetched? Not at all. If you’re not listening to classical music at least once in a while, it’s time you did. Classical/symphonic music is one of the greatest artistic-cultural expressions and gifts we have—and you definitely don’t have to pay big ticket prices for live concerts. Classical music is boring you say? It might be if you pick the wrong thing as in starting off with Wagner’s Ring Cycle—and you don’t have an attention span. Ahem. But Mozart makes this easy. It’s gorgeous music that you can listen to in the background just as mindlessly as you do anything else, or you can actually dedicate some listening time to it and appreciate it as some of the most profoundly beautiful music ever written. Imagine that, listening to music and not doing something else at the same time. What a concept. In the end, you support the classical music industry, orchestras, and artists by downloading some tunes or purchasing a CD, which in turn might even lead to your actually going to see a live concert. Who knows? You may be the beginning of a trend that brings classical music back. Once it starts, the sky’s the limit. 

Here’s what I want you to do: go out and download or even purchase a CD of Mozart. It’s easy. Not sure what to buy? Not a surprise given our beloved Wolfgang wrote almost 700 published pieces in his altogether too short of a life span—as in less than 36 years. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I’ve put together a short list of favorite recordings to make it easy for you. I also just checked on iTunes and many of them are available there. Otherwise, mosey on over to Amazon for the recordings. You’ll be glad you did. Mozart does indeed make you smarter.

Recommended pieces and recordings: there are multiple recordings of all the pieces I’m suggesting but know that all recordings are definitely not equal. In fact, some can be pretty lousy either in the performance aspect or the recording aspect—or both. But the right combination of soloist, conductor, and orchestra can be truly magical. Most of the recordings listed below are just that. 

Note: when searching for the recordings, input the name of the conductor or soloist first and the orchestra next.  

1. Mozart: Overtures, Sir Neville Marriner conducting, Academy of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields

Opera overtures are the classical music version of speed dating as in several minutes, everyone gets excited, no one gets hurt, and then it’s over. For that reason alone Mozart’s overtures are easily the best introduction to his music. The Magic Flute and Marriage of Figaro are personal favorites. The latter can best be described as Champagne expressed in music.

2. String Quartets 20 in D Major and 21 in D Major, Alban Berg Quartet

Think chamber music and string quartets are light, boring, and fluffy? Think again. These two gems are beautifully played by the Alban Berg quartet from Vienna. The Champagne Mozart comparison definitely applies here as well.

3. Piano Concertos 20 in d minor and 21 in C Major, Mitsuko Uchida piano, Jeffrey Tate conducting, English Chamber Orchestra

Mozart’s 27 piano concerti are my desert island tunes. I first studied them as an undergraduate and they get more play on my iTunes than practically anything else. Strange, but true. All are made up of three movements and last from 15-25 minutes, so they’re easily doable on the “are we there yet?” scale. Number 20 in d-minor is my favorite Mozart concerto of all. It’s driven, manic, melancholy, and triumphant in turn. Understand that Mozart wrote precious few things in a minor key, and when he did it was serious-ass business. Number 21 by contrast is like a beautiful summer night. Mitsuko Uchida is one of the great Mozart pianists of our age; her playing is perfection.

4. Piano Concertos 23 in A Major and 19 in F Major, Maurizio Pollini piano, Karl Böhm, Vienna Philharmonic

Amazingly precise and artistic playing by Italian Maurizio Pollini accompanied by one of world’s greatest orchestras and one of the top Mozart conductors of the 20th century. This is a wow.

5. Clarinet Concerto and Clarinet Quintet, David Shifrin clarinet, Gerard Schwarz conducting, Chamber Music Northwest

This is one of my favorite classical recordings of all time. Period. Buy it. 

6. Symphonies 38 in D-Major “Prague”, 39 in E-flat Major, 40 in g-minor (that minor thing again) and 41 in C Major; Sir Charles Mackerras conducting, Prague Chamber Orchestra 

There are 41 or 60 symphonies depending on whose catalogue you use. The early symphonies are short, charming, and not long on content or complexity. The late symphonies, nos. 35-41, are the sweet spot and responsible for Mozart being considered among the greatest symphonists of all time (think Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms and Hadyn). The coda of the last movement of Symphony no. 41 is stunning just for its brilliant counterpoint writing. Mackerras’ conducting and the Prague Chamber Orchestra is a great match.

7. Violin Concertos 1-6, Anne-Sophie Mutter violin, Yuri Bashmet conducting, London Philharmonic

Dazzling performances by German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. I also like the older recordings of Beglian violinist Arthur Grummiaux as well.

8. The Magic Flute, Herbert von Karajan conducting, Berlin Philharmonic

9.The Marriage of Figaro, Sir Charles Mackerras conducting, Scottish Chamber Orchestra

The last two recommendations are you having purchased/downloaded many of the above recordings and deciding to go the whole hog--as in opera. I’ll be the first to say that opera is not for everyone. Depending on how you think about it, opera is either the most artificial or the most dramatic and realistic form of music. I think it’s a little of both. Regardless, these two Mozart operas are arguably the best introduction to opera genre simply because of the purity and beauty of the music. In other words, there are a lot of great tunes in both works. 

Cheers!

The Torture Never Stops

I’m a long-time fan of Frank Zappa. “Freak Out,” “Absolutely Free,” and “Cruising With Ruben and the Jets,” are landmark formative musical influences in my adolescent cultural weltschmertz. But of all the many Zappa albums I’ve owned and listened to over the years, my favorite, hands down, is the double live CD from the early ‘90’s called, “The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life.” The album was so named because the personalities in the band completely melted down during the middle of what would be Zappa's last tour. Further, the tracks were taken from European and East Coast concerts of what was to be an extended international tour.

Aside from personnel dysfunction, this is arguably the best possible introduction to Zappa’s music there is. Included on the double disc set are brilliant live versions of Zappa classics such as “Zombie Wolf,” “The Torture Never Stops,” and “Let’s Move to Cleveland.” But this particular tour also found Frank in the midst of a serious Reggae phase, so Best Band You Never Heard includes Reggae versions a wide variety of tunes including Ravel’s “Bolero” (utterly brilliant!), Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” and “Stairway to Heaven.” Finally, no Zappa album would be complete without some biting, caustic, commentary on social and political events of the day. With that, there’s more than an ample segment devoted to examining the sexual indiscretions of TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. Listening to the latter makes me pine for Zappa’s much-needed social commentary, and also realize how much we lost with his untimely death in 1993 from colon cancer at the age of 52. With the exception of South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone, no one has come close to taking his place. 

The Greatest Brass Album Ever Recorded

What does music like in heaven? This is it. Once upon a time decades ago, the top five Class A American orchestras (as in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago) all sounded completely different; sadly not so true today. The brass sections of these great American orchestras at the time were led by some of the most legendary classical trumpet players that will ever live. Young brass students like me knew the principal players of all the sections in the orchestras by name. We followed their every new recording and often argued over favorite performances of works by Stravinsky, Ravel, and Mahler as if arguing baseball stats.  
 
In 1968 Columbia Records producer Andrew Kazdin gave us the ultimate Christmas gift: a recording of the antiphonal music of Italian Baroque composer Giovanni Gabrieli as performed by the brass sections of the Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Chicago symphonies. The playing throughout the recording is breathtaking--as good as classical brass playing gets. What is all the more remarkable, is that the entire album was recorded in three three-hour sessions. Abe Torchinsky, the tubist from the Philadelphia Orchestra, has also written that when everyone went out for a beer at the end of the sessions, the group realized that they had forgotten to tune.  Needless to say, I wore out multiple copies of the LP over the years and have purchased every new re-mastered version as recording technology has improved (current version on SACD). Will there be a Blu Ray version in the future? I hope so. Highest possible recommendation.