On his birthday, Glenn Gould offers wise words on the tension between curators and inventors

This being the day Glenn Gould would have turned 79, I sat down to sample another one of the 10 DVDs that Sony Classical has released in the new boxed set, Glenn Gould on Television: The Complete CBC Broadcasts.

I chose "Music for a Sunday Afternoon," for obvious reasons, plus wanting to hear him play Mozart (Sonata No. 13 in B-flat) and Beethoven (Sonata No. 17 in D minor -- the Tempest).

I can't warm up to his interpretations, but I loved his 4-minute introduction, where he explains how he can't possibly say anything original about Beethoven in such a short space of time. He does, however, say something that comes from the core of the interpreter's art.

He speaks of how Beethoven straddled Classicism and Romanticism, paying homage to the past while nodding to the great effusion of personal expression that would mark the 19th century. He call this "the inventor at odds with the museum curator."

This is exactly what anyone interpreting music from the past faces -- as well as anyone trying to judge or appreciate a concert. There is a tradition to honour, and an act of creation to carry through. Both walk arm in arm.

Some performances are the acts of museum curators. We can walk away appreciating their form or the inherent beauty of the music. But the real spark comes when the performer stirs in an act of invention, bringing an immediacy and energy to the score.

Love or hate the interpretations, Gould brought that tension to every note he played, and that's what made him so special.

It was precisely this energy that animated the Toronto's Symphony's season-opening concert a few days ago. It was an energy that reminded me how much I already miss my old job as music critic, but also lifted my mood instantly -- as, I think, it felt like it did for most people sitting in Roy Thomson Hall.

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The CBC has launched a new Gould site full of interesting stuff to check out. You'll find it here.

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To do any job well, one needs to be totally present for it. In my new life as a business reporter, it has meant very limited time to listen, read or play music over the past four weeks.

I can't imagine being able to make a meaningful contribution to the appreciation of music under these circumstances but, I'm realising today, that if I feel sufficiently inspired, I might put a word or two down here once in a while, as long as the Star keeps this blog up on the website.

It's not simple practice but the depth of research and overall preparation that makes perfect

Last fall, the legendary Alfred Brendel, just shy of his 80th birthday, gave a memorable performance in Koerner Hall. He has officially retired from concert life, but continues to make public appearances as a music lecturer who happens to have 10 miraculous fingers available for instant illustration.

His engrossing Koerner Hall lecture was "Does Music Have to be Entirely Serious?" He illustrated the creative use of humour principally with music from the Baroque and Classical eras. (He also took time to explain how and why humour was shown the door by the Romantics.)

There are two other of these lectures in his public portfolio: "Musical Characters," which looks at how a composer establishes mood in a piece of music (focusing on Beethoven's sonatas); and "Light and Shade of Interpretation," which is a clever double-entendre on the art and craft of creating a musical performance (also heavily based on late-18th and early-19th Austro-German composers).

All three -- presented at the Schüttkasten in Salzburg, Austria over three days last September -- are collected in a new, 3-DVD set just issued by Unitel Classica.

These are 225 must-view minutes for any serious music lover. Yes, there's only a piano in the room, but what Brendel says applies to any instrument, and even voice.

I was enjoying my first Thursday night off in months, so decided to do a Brendel marathon, for inspiration and challenge, and, to see how the old master could help me in his interpretation lecture with the question I posed here yesterday morning.

Just before making dinner, I sat down with Book I of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier. My childhood edition, from Peters, does not contain any musical instructions or footnotes; it merely lays out a pile of notes, leaving the interpreter to figure out tempo, ornamentation, phrasing and dynamics. 

The possibilities are endless, and it took me less than an hour to feel completely overwhelmed as I considered the alternatives as I skipped and stumbled through the music. There are no easy formulas here.

Even with the help of more scholarly editions, it takes years to work out how to turn these piles of notes into a musical narrative worth sharing with more than the stuffed bear and sleeping dog in the corner.

After dinner, Brendel gave me a 75-minute summary of that years-long process of shaping any interpretation, further humbling me and my facile pronouncements on other people's blood, sweat and tears.

And there was the key to the whole thing: If a performer has taken the time and agony and effort to research, digest and sculpt, he or she will have created something worth hearing, something with an inner logic and an outer compulsion. That is what makes a fine recording or fine live performance, not whether or not their interpretation follows a specific set of rules or prescriptions of "this is the way it must be done."

A poker-faced pianist-teacher friend describes this, tersely, as "preparation." Oh, how simple that makes it all sound.

I think back on the concerts and operas I've reviewed over the past 10 years. I hope that giving appreciation of preparation has been the basis from which I have arrived at my commentaries. If not, I have deserved every angry email from readers.

Two other pianists, both at the start of great careers, are behind today's musings: New York City-based Italian Alessio Bax and Russian Vassily Primakov, who have just released overlapping albums of solo-piano music by Rachmaninov.

Both are compelling pianists offering richly layered interpretations. And they are completely different from each other. After multiple listens, I can't decide which one I like more -- prompting even more thought about what makes for compelling listening.

I'll let you know when I figure the two Rachmaninov discs out.

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Here is a pirate video segment of Brendel's "Waldstein Sonata" from the "Musical Characters" lecture, from Oct., 2009.

I've followed this with of Ferrucio Busoni's transcription of Bach's "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland." The first is Brendel in a 1995 recital performance (in Tokyo's Suntory Hall), the second of Vladimir Horowitz in his living room, 10 years earlier:

DVD Review: The magic of late conductor Carlos Kleiber eludes two different made-for-TV documentaries

This blog is back -- temporarily and not in a new format. Hopefully, that's better than a blank window.

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One of the recurring points of lively debate is what makes a conductor great. As Lorin Maazel said to me a couple of months ago, it's hard to put one's finger on specific characteristics, "but you know one when you see one."

Last month, German conductor Carlos Kleiber (1930-2004) was voted the top conductor of all time in a public poll published in BBC Magazine. He conducted a much less than most of the great conductors and his repertoire was especially narrow, rarely venturing out of the 19th century core of European repertoire.

Whatever you and I might think of polls, this must mean he was pretty special.

Coincidentally, two TV documentaries made about Kleiber since his death have recently been issued on DVD: Carlos Kleiber: Traces to Nowhere by Eric Schultz (ArtHaus Musik), which is the strongest of the two; and Carlos Kleiber: I Am Lost to the World, by Georg Wübbolt (C Major).

After watching both, I could only think of one thing: History only matters -- in the real sense of being deeply, viscerally important -- to those who have lived it. It's why each new generation needs its own heroes and villains and why we can't jsut write or say that so-and-so was great, we have to keep proving it over and over.

That's a roundabout way of saying that neither bio-doc really got to the heart of what made Kleiber so special -- more special that Leonard Bernstein or Riccardo Muti or Herbert von Karajan, or the hundred other greats listed in the BBC's poll.

Kleiber is said to have refused to give in-depth interviews, so both documentaries rely on friends and collaborators and colleagues. The most personal is Schultz's film, which includes Kleiber's older sister, Veronica.

Both documentaries use the same film clips of Kleiber in rehearsal and in performance, showing off a highly expressive, engaged conducting style of the type we see with someone like Canadian Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Both make the point that this is at the heart of what made orchestras respond to his instructions.

As has been the case so many times throughout history, the person behind the artist is a lot less impressive: Kleiber would frequently walk out of rehearsals and cancel performances. He wanted to be well-paid for what he did. Despite clear devotion to his wife, he was a compulsive womanizer. It appears he might have been borderline manic-depressive.

We don't need to know more about Kleiber's drinking habits. But we do need to see and hear more of his work. What both films lack, for me, is a complete performance of any one work, because that is, ultimately, what bound both listeners and musicians to him.

I love Kleiber's recording of Brahms' Symphony No. 4 with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1981 -- and there is a fine, if slightly less endearing one, available on video from a 1996 concert given by the Bavarian State Orchestra. This would have made an excellent companion to either documentary.

There is an excellent website that has nicely gathered up everything we need to know and hear about Kleiber here.

Here's a rare opportunity to see a bit of Kleiber at work in opera, while also being able to see what is happening on stage, in a Vienna State Opera production Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. it really is special.

Singing are Felicity Lott, Barbara Bonney and Anne Sofie von Otter in the Act III Trio:

 

If you'd like to watch the final duet (without a Kleiber inset), click here.

Simone Dinnerstein: Listening to Bach's Goldberg Variations is like looking up at all the stars in the night sky

American documentary filmmaker Michael Lawrence sent me a note this morning, after reading my interview with Simone Dinnerstein, who is in Toronto tomorrow to play Bach's Goldberg Variations at Koerner Hall. He wanted to fill me in on the next steps in a monumental, ongoing labour of love and obsession he calls the Bach Project.

Lawrence's note reminded me of a beautiful segment in the project that features Dinnerstein. She plays the Aria (followed by a short clip of a variation), while talking about Bach and the Goldbergs and her feelings about the music.

Her description of listening to Bach being like looking at all the stars in a clear night sky is particularly apt. Even if you have no idea what it all means, you can't help but admire the view. What Dinnerstein doen't add, but implies, I'm sure, is if you do eventually begin to figure out what it means, and discern the patterns and interrelationships between the notes/stars, the view only becomes more beautiful.

I've followed Lawrence's Goldberg clip with the promotional video from Dinnerstein's new Bach album for Sony Classical, which gets released in a few weeks, where she says more about what Bach means to her, and the importance of capturing multi-dimensionality in music. (The piano she is playing in the video is the Hamburg Steinway she fell in love with while recording in Berlin. It was delivered to her home in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago.)

Stephen Sondheim: It's the music, not the lyrics that elevate a song to the level of poetry

My moment of illumination this morning came from Paul Simon's review of Finishing the Hat, the first volume of Stephen Sondheim's lyrics and miscellaneous musings up to 1981, in today's New York Times Book Review. (It came with this morning's Star, in case you didn't know about the papers' new Sunday partnership.)

Sondheim admits that he hates the lyrics he wrote for Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. Simon then writes: "Sondheim's rule, taught to him by his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, is that the book and composer are better served by lyrics that are 'plainer and flatter.' It is the music that is meant to lift words to the level of poetry."

I started thinking about opera and how the "plainer and flatter" rule applies equally well in that artform.

Unfortunately, Simon and Sondheim avoid mentioning the final ingredient in the magic: a great singer and actor.

Here's a clip from Act I of the amazing 2006 production of Company, directed by John Doyle, where all the characters except for Bobby also play an instrument (for details on that performance, click here).

It is followed by two clips from the making of the original cast album, starting with "The Little Things You Do Together," followed by Elaine Stritch trying desperately to get  "Ladies Who Lunch" right. In the middle of that muddle, Sondheim does give due credit to his actors:

DVD Review: André Previn as music world’s man of many faces and places

André Previn: A Bridge Between Two Worlds
(Unitel Classica)
*** (out of 4)

Jazz people know and love him, as do fans of Hollywood film scores, opera and classical music. Over his 81 years, André Previn has led a remarkably productive, eclectic and acclaimed career as a composer, pianist, conductor and eager collaborator.

He has even spent time as tabloid fodder, when he took on Mia Farrow as the third of his five marriages.

Although pretty slim, this DVD offers up a tidy, nicely balanced, 51-minute version of this-is-your-life, André Previn, made by Lillian Birnbaum and Peter Stephan Jungk in 2008. The sole bonus is an excellent live performance from the Mozarteum in Salzburg, from 2000. It features Previn at the piano, in Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor, K.476.

In the doc, we see Previn in a live musical piano duo with Oscar Peterson, on British TV doing comedy with an orchestra in black-and-white and, best of all, we get to appreciate him through the lens of the important women in his life: Farrow, ex-fifth wife, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and soprano Renée Fleming, who premiered his opera adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire.

Much of the talking is done in taxis, minivans and trains, giving the impression that Previn is always on the move. On one train, he says that his constant search for new challenges has a simple motive: If you say you’re happy with what you’re doing and want to keep doing it, “that’s when you get old and stale.”

It’s an inspiration (or kick in the ass) for people in any field, at any age.

 

Organist Cameron Carpenter shows us how to colour words with sound in Schubert's Erlkönig

One of the most dramatic German art songs has to be Schubert's Erlkönig (Erl-King, the story of a father clutching his sick little boy as they ride on horseback to find help, while being pursued by death).

It is one of the pieces Cameron Carpenter has recorded on a Wurlitzer theatre organ for this new CD-DVD combination album, which I reviewed in today's Star. He adds so much colour to each sound -- while being rue to Schubert's music -- that I can alost forget there is no actual voice present.

You can see how Carpenter shaped his interpretation in a making-of video. But, first, here is the great Jessye Norman to sing it for us, first.

DVD Review: Leonard Bernstein's Omnibus broadcasts are accessible, small-scale peeks into the art and craft of music

Leonard Bernstein: Omnibus -- The Historic TV Broadcasts

*** (Koch Vision/E1)

We're so lucky that Leonard Bernstein was able to practise so much of his craft in front of TV cameras. The latest goodies made available on DVD come from a show called Omnibus, where the composer-conductor was allowed to explain some aspect of music or his craft on the small screen. These segments are like adult, bite-sized versions of his New York Philharmonic children's concerts.

This set contains 7 1/2 hours of Bernstein on everything from opera to conducting to composers to jazz and blues. (I didn't have time to watch more than a fair sampling.) The audio quality is not bad, although some of the finer musical points the maestro tries to make don't always sound clear. The picture quality is terrible on a big screen -- but that's not really the point.

Allan Kozinn has an excellent article, "Bernstein On The Mystery Behind the Music," on this DVD release, in today's New York Times.

There are a couple of videos posted with the New York Times article. Here are a couple more excerpts from what you can catch on this DVD set. The first is a 1955 segment on recitative in opera, using the rising price of poultry in Mozartean, Verdi-esque and Wagnerian ways. The second, from 1956, is more serious, on some of the details a conductor needs to polish when working with an orchestra:

DVD Review: Deep artistry trumps vocal shimmer in Edita Gruberova's stunning Lucrezia Borgia

There was no room in today's Star for an opera DVD review, so here it is:

Lucrezia Borgia

**** (out of 4) (Medici Arts)

Four stars for a production of a bel canto opera featuring a 60-year-old singer? Am I crazy?

If there was ever an example of age and experience trumping youth and beauty, here it is, in the person of the great Slovak soprano Edita Gruberova. Her voice has lost its shimmer, but she quickly makes us completely forget that fact.

This a thoroughly gripping production of Gaetano Donizetti’s 1833 melodrama featuring legendary aristocratic poisoner Lucrezia Borgia confronting her deepest maternal instincts when her long-lost son Gennaro shows up at the door.

In true operatic fashion, the encounter quickly becomes tangled in deceit and misunderstanding. Lucrezia’s husband thinks she is having an affair with the young man. The mother is not sure how to acknowledge the son. In the end, he is poisoned by the hand that gave him birth.

The title role is dramatically meaty and vocally daunting. Gruberova marshalls every tool in her massive artistic arsenal to sing and portray Lucrezia in her full glory and pathos in Christof Loy’s elegantly straightforward, modern-dress production by the Bavarian State Opera, recorded last summer in Munich.

The rest of the cast, including Pavo Breslik as Gennaro, does an excellent job. Conductor Bertrand de Billy teases every emotional nuance out of the rich score. The Bavarian State Orchestra is excellent.

There is a companion DVD featuring a 55-minute documentary called The Art of Bel Canto, which is really a profile of Gruberova.  It is very nicely done, contrasting her public and private lives with a lot of finesse.

“I’m beginning to wonder if I should still be singing an 18-year-old Lucia?” asks the now-63-year-old Gruberova, at one point. The answer is that opera companies are still asking her to sing. This production of Lucrezia Borgia shows us why.

For full album details, click on the DVD image, above.

Here is "Com'è bello! Quale incanto" from the Prologue. (If you're interested in the companion documentary, much of it can be pieced together with YouTube clips):

Birthday girl Marilyn Horne still an expert on getting a handle on Handel's operas

The great mezzo Marilyn Horne turns 76 today and is, despite a brush with pancreatic cancer, still a much sought-after mentor, through her foundation.

I thought I'd do a bit of "tnen and now" with her mastery of the music of George Frideric Handel in her prime, a clip from one of her workshops, and a clip from one of her star pupils, Toronto's own Isabel Bayrakdarian (from a absolutely fantastic 2000 production of Xerxes at the Dresden Opera, which came out on DVD in 2005):