Thomasina’s last waltz

Unruly publicity

An august music institution is promoting a most interesting program to conclude its open day. I reproduce it here (and I’m not making this up, you know):

Sensational Sundays, Unruly Passions 3.00pm
Satu Vänskä, Ole Böhn & Alice Evans violin, Christopher Moore & Nikki Divall viola, Melissa Barnard & Timo-Veikko Valve cello, Maxime Bibeau double bass and Daryl Pratt congas

Brahms    String Quintet in G Major Op. 111 (1882)
Charles    Wuorinen Spinoff (1983) for violin, double bass and congas
Beethoven    Violin Sonata No. 9 in A, ‘Kreutzer’ Op. 47

I’m intrigued by this Wuorinen Spinoff by Charles. I’ve never heard of Charles but he/she does a great line in catchy titles.

Even more intriguing is the listing of a violin sonata with no pianist among the artists. It makes me wonder, given the the lineup of players, whether it might not be a transcription of Janácek’s “Kreutzer Sonata” Quartet that’s being performed.

And my mind turns to Professor Digory Kirke’s favourite phrase, “What do they teach them in schools?”

Rob has kindly provided an answer to the question that the proofreader should have been asking…but there’s more to it than meets the eye…and we have the makings of a bidding war for best typographical or other error in music publicity…see comments.

Free programs – it's a trend

The ACO today posted the first of their free program books for 2009 online. And therein lies the beauty of free programs: you can post them online in advance of the concert without any fear of damaging subsequent sales. Because there are no subsequent sales.

Making programs available online has been one of the most satisfying aspects of the move to free programs over where I work. For years we had patrons saying they’d like to read the programs in advance, that the programs were so full of richly interesting reading that they simply couldn’t take it all in at the concert, especially if they were attending with friends. But there was no way of making programs available early in a really practical way while we were still selling them at the venue. (How many people were going to make a special trip to our office to buy a program in advance? I can tell you: zero.)

My colleague at the ACO has done a really nice job – and I’m not just saying that because I know he’ll read this. The result is handsome, interesting and generously conceived, with some very nice touches to it.

Even better – be still my beating heart – they’ve abandoned the long-standing A4-sized format for an elegant smaller size (15x24cm). At last, programs that will fit in a girl’s handbag!

In-house orchestra

Amanda at Life’s a Pitch has touched on the age-old matter of first-hand participation leading to genuine appreciation. Her Olympian analogy is a good one, although I wouldn’t be volunteering my 1-minute-something attempt at 50 metres freestyle for comparison.

It’s a good observation that even those of us in the industry and the audience who have practical musical experience don’t necessarily refresh that practical connection immediately before going to hear a performance. Amanda suggests we’d be more appreciative of what it is the performers achieve if we did that. That’s probably true.

But from the occasions when I’ve done it – playing through bits of an orchestral work on a piano, or playing a flute or piano part – I would say that what I’ve mostly gained is a deeper appreciation of the music itself, and a clearer memory of its ideas and gestures. (The appreciation of what the performer has to do is already firmly ingrained.)

Then Amanda asks:

“when was the last time your orchestra’s administration played instruments? Perhaps the orchestra members could give them lessons as well. Make it a team-building day, and see if your local paper would cover it.”

Well I’ll leave talk of PR stunts to the PR experts. But…

I would so love to see my colleagues in orchestra administration make music together. (The closest we get is every time we sing “Happy Birthday” with some nice cadential harmonisation happening.)

The standard would be wildly varying: the proficiency level ranges from active professional musicians who take gigs on the side to the I-had-lessons-when-I-was-a-kid types. Some play several instruments (and sing); others have no experience at all. The “orchestration” would be mighty strange, too.

My guess is we’d be under on strings and have way too many flutes. But it was ever thus.

Before and after: the dance makeover

Imagine saying to Fred Astaire “No one could teach you to dance in a million years”?!

But it was true – it took rather less time than that:

Thank you to the new President of the United States for reminding me about Swing Time!

When a composer writes

The composer-written program note can be the bane of a program editor’s existence. I say “can” because there are definitely composers who (a) understand what is helpful and interesting to the listener in the audience, and (b) can really write. (And there are some composers who get (a) and just need some editorial help to massage the words.) I don’t take such composers for granted and it is always a pleasure to come across a program note that’s engagingly written and appropriate to the character of the work and the context of the performance and its audience.

I came across such a note this week past and will link to it just as soon as I’ve published it, which is likely to be at the end of January or very early February. This note made me smile all day – let me count the ways:

1. It was – as a piece of writing, of “rhetoric” – well-crafted.
2. It was the right length.
3. It had a refreshing candour and rang with honesty.
4. It was good-humoured and intelligent.
5. The tone was well-judged (the musical work is short and wouldn’t have borne laboured analysis). 
6. I could see that it would lead the reader to be well-disposed towards hearing the piece, as well as, in a couple of clever and discreet ways, directing attention to tangible aspects of the music worth listening for.

And while this should have no bearing on the matter at all, I couldn’t help but be further impressed by the knowledge that the composer-writer is 16 years old. A talent to watch on all fronts.

Play me, I'm yours!

The 2009 Sydney Festival began only today, I’ve yet to venture into the city, and already I have discovered its highlight. I will look no further for something that has inspired and amused me and warmed the cockles of my heart, while drawing me in as a participant.

This morning took me on an errand to Parramatta [to collect my first ever pair of sunglasses – another story]. As I left the station on the less busy and relatively undeveloped north side I spotted a piano on the footpath, a chair conveniently chained to the leg.

“Play Me, I’m Yours.” Well, I was always very good at following instructions – no need to ask twice. Unfortunately three years without an instrument to hand meant that the only thing I could retrieve from my muscle memory was the rondeau and first couplet from Couperin’s Baricades mistérieuses. So this received an airing, with only one uninterested passerby to make me feel self-conscious.

A URL on the front of the case leads to more information about this festival project. It’s been done before (Birmingham) and Luke Jerram is the artist behind the idea.

And it’s a good one. Or at least, it’s an idea that I like a lot. I felt the tiniest twinge at the element of “vandalism” involved (and apparently we’re invited to decorate the pianos as well) and, later, some concern over the condition of these street instruments as the weeks progress. But for the most part my reaction was complete and utter delight. Here was a piano for the playing! It wasn’t locked; it didn’t have a politely printed Do Not Touch notice on it; it wasn’t occupied by a hired cocktail pianist.

Only the other night, while listening to neighbours two doors down sing what might have been Turkish folk songs to the accompaniment of some mandolin-like instrument, I was musing on how sad it was that so few people nowadays sing and make their own music in informal and social situations. This sort of artistic project, which encourages precisely that kind of musical behaviour, makes me think that perhaps all is not lost.

Moving on… near Parramatta Town Hall I spotted another piano – this one with two kiddies playing and smiling. Evidently, if I’d had the time, I could have found eight more. On Monday I intend to seek out the one at Circular Quay, the one in front of the MCA, and maybe the one at Sydney Hospital. About 20 pianos have been installed in and around the CBD; placing one somewhere at the Sydney Opera House seems both redundant and beautifully subversive.

Note to self: must get a piano.

Not all brass players do crosswords during the rests

The other day when I was writing about the SSO tour scrapbook I kept something back.

This particular clipping with its conductor caricature wasn’t simply interesting in itself, but held the serendipitous solution to a little mystery that’s been bugging me for years. A decade actually.

When I was working at Symphony Australia, the librarian unearthed an oddity in a set of parts. It was unsigned and unlabelled, and since none of my older-and-wiser colleagues were able to identify it, I kept a scan in case of, well… the wholly unanticipated possibility that one day I’d be able to work it out.

The front is ordinary enough – a loose horn part for an aria from Rigoletto.

Side two got interesting…

The scrapbook clipping suggests it’s very likely if not completely certain that this “Questa o quella” caricature was by the multi-talented Napier Dunn (1938–2005) – he ended up trading orchestras for newspaper cartooning in his native South Africa. He also made music cartoons in a slightly Hoffnung-esque mode.

But who’s the conductor? And the tenor?

This is still uncertain, although the identity of the artist helps narrow things down. Dunn played in the SSO for 14 months during a period that included late 1967 – let’s make a window of 1966 to 1968. According to the historical records, the SSO doesn’t appear to have performed this aria during that time. But before that Dunn played with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and here, at least, there is a possible performance from 1965.  That would make the conductor Rudolf Pekárek and the tenor “Sidney Paterson” (or “Sidney Patterson” perhaps). 

Of course, it’s possible that this particular aria wasn’t on the program at all, and that the music was simply on the stand as part of a set. That makes the historical performance records less helpful and would require going through an imaginatively assembled list of possibilities, beginning with other arias from Rigoletto – not something I have time to do. 

Meanwhile, feel free to chip in with other possible artists active in Australia during the late 1960s.

If you had to choose

A meme courtesy of composer Daniel Wolf, via the world-changing blog. In the ancient tradition of memes, I make my own variations and spell Handel’s name auf Englisch, the way he would have liked it.

1. Bach or Handel?

2. Haydn or Mozart?

3. Beethoven or Rossini?

4. Strauss or Richard?

5. Puccini or Verdi?

6. Debussy or Ravel? 

7. Mahler or Strauss?

8. Schoenberg or Stravinsky? 

9. Prokofiev or Shostakovich?

10. Porter or Sondheim?

Bonus round:

1. Astaire or Kelly?

2. Eliot or Yeats?

3. Joyce or Mann?

4. Hitchcock or Welles?

5. Duchamp or Picasso?

6. Futura or Gill Sans?

7. Ballet or Opera?