Jarrett House North

The concert week continues; I sing the chorus part in Don Giovanni in a few hours. The chorus part consisting of approximately 30 measures of music, this will be mostly an excuse for me to watch the action from up close. And the cast being amazing, the action should be excellent indeed.

I was actually reading this New Yorker article about the complete Mozart oeuvre during one of the long stretches between our entrances during one rehearsal this week, but had to stop—there was just too much to watch. For instance, the celebrated scene in which Leporello explains to the stunned Elvira that she is just one of his master’s conquests, then proceeds to read the list from a log that he has kept. In the first runthrough, Leporello used his own paperbound copy of the score as the “catalogue.” In the second, there was a burst of laughter and applause as at the requisite moment in the aria, Levine’s own hard-bound score appeared, passed to Leporello via one of the wind players. Leporello took the score, gaily referred to it during the aria, then passed it back, Levine conducting from memory all the while. The humor of using the score as the catalog, as Leporello’s record of Don Giovanni’s conquests, is delicious, and plays nicely on the metaphysical level.

Today’s Random 10 is brought to you by the letters C and B, where C stands for Carver Middle School and B stands for bus. Carver was the middle school next to ours—immediately adjacent, oddly enough—where a lot of the kids from my neighborhood went, some of the nice ones and some of the troublemakers. I rode the bus with them through three-quarters of the town and a 30 minute morning commute to attend the next door middle school, which had a gifted program. Watching them go their way as I turned and trudged mine probably goes a long way toward explaining my reluctance to accept the privileges in my life at face value, as I know how close the alternatives are.

And that bus goes a long way toward explaining my bizarre memory for 80s pop and hip-hop. The alpha kids at the back of the bus always had a radio, a boom box really, which the driver tolerated since it kept them from beating up the other kids (usually). And that radio would always be tuned to some reasonably urban station or other, which (in the days before really rigid formats) could also be counted on to drop some choice dance tracks alongside the hip hop. I first heard Doug E. Fresh do “The Show” on that bus, and “Roxanne Roxanne” … and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Which explains its presence with the former two songs on my first brace of 80s compilations.

And the rest of today’s list? To me today, the other nine songs look like the fruit of my long running attempts to run away from the music on that bus and find something different. It was a quest led me down a lot of blind alleys as well as to a lot of new and interesting places. But it never succeeded in excising those other songs, which tormented me for years—the knowledge that the troublemakers may have gotten the worse school, but they still had my attention because I couldn’t get their music out of my head.

1. David Byrne, “Good and Evil” (Rei Momo)
2. Frankie Goes to Hollywood, “Relax”
3. James Brown, “Bewildered” (Star Time)
4. Richard Buckner, “Faithful Shooter” (Since)
5. Miles Davis, “Assassinat (take 2)/Julien Dans l’Ascenseur” (Ascenseur Pour L’échauffaud)
6. Mogwai, “Friend of the Night” (Mr. Beast)
7. Funkadelic, “Funky Dollar Bill” (Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow)
8. The Wedding Present, “Shatner” (George Best Plus)
9. Mogwai, “Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/Antichrist” (Come On Die Young)
10. Camera Obscura, “Dory Previn” (Let’s Get Out of This Country)

I came from an intoxicating rehearsal of the Mozart Requiem this morning (if you’ve ever sung the “Rex tremendae” with a huge, well-tuned chorus after listening to four nearly perfect soloists hit the “Tuba mirum” out of the park, you know what I mean). This afternoon I was startled to come across a suggestion that the piece is not just intoxicating but subversive. A reviewer on Amazon writes that the piece incorporates “Freemason music” (look for the review called “The All Time Best Mozart Requiem”). In a word, huh?

Turns out it’s not that far fetched. Mozart was a Freemason, a member of the lodge “Zur Wohltätigkeit” (Benefaction) and a Master Mason for the last six years of his life, and many of his works contain what some have described as overt Masonic symbolism, such as the three chords in the opening of the Magic Flute. But the only case I can see for giving credence to the Masonic symbolism suggestion for the Requiem is its echoes of the orchestration of the Magic Flute. Not much to hang a conspiracy theory on.

But I was amused to learn of one non-Masonic connection in Mozart’s work: the scatological, as evidenced by his six (or three) part canon, “Leck mich im Arsch” (K. 231 or 233, also known as the “Kiss My Ass” canon). You won’t hear that on WCRB…

As I was looking through the Feedster and Technorati listings for reviews of the Gurrelieder concert, I was pleased to run across a couple of other people who have been blogging about (and from!) the TFC:

• Rishi, who performed in February’s and July’s Gurrelieder
• Carol Minor at Minor Music, who attended the performance last weekend and with her keen eye noted some details of Levine’s conducting
• Five O’Clock Shadow, who attended the February performance and appears to be a Boston student
• Maury D’Annato of My Favorite Intermissions, who joins the chorus of bloggers and reviewers griping about balance problems with the soloists
• Kelly Corcoran of, um, her MySpace, who sang with us in July (and whom I didn’t realize was a conductor)
• fanw, who writes intelligently about the trade-offs involved in singing in a major work like the Gurrelieder as an amateur chorister
• Andrea, who sang in the February Gurrelieder and wrote about some of the logistical challenges of singing the last five minutes of a 130-minute-long work
• Marie, whose dad is in the TFC and who wishes she could sing like Karita Mattila (don’t we all?)
• Willowfinn, who had an impromptu Gurrelieder dance party with his/her friends in the back row at Symphony Hall back in February, and who also points out the real reason for the piece’s magnificence: “Schoenberg + zombies + a dude named Waldemar + a veritable forest of violins = WIN!”

I don’t always go back and gather links to the reviews of concerts that I’m in, but it’s a habit that I’m trying to get into. Not because I’m egocentric (though as e.e.cummings once wrote, I have yet to run into a peripherally situated ego), but because for years I sang in groups that didn’t get reviewed and I’m trying to make up for lost time.

This time the first review I saw was Sunday’s Albany Times-Union story, which was Page 1. The New York Times and Boston Globe reviews followed yesterday. Mercifully, all three avoided the temptation to use the common review of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, “as usual, the chorus sang superbly and from memory.”

• Albany Times-Union: Cantata by BSO, singers classy: “The huge male chorus (and the women when called upon) sang superbly, especially in the “Wild Hunt” section. By the time, the final chorus to the sun rang out, the music of “Gurrelieder” was anything but ugly or boring.”
• New York Times: At Tanglewood, James Levine Transforms Students Into Pros (about both the Gurrelieder and the following night’s Strauss Elektra performance): “Even in the orchestral prelude, which evokes the natural world with plangent harmonies, glowing strings and twittering woodwinds, Mr. Levine paid heed to the harmonically restless bass lines, glints of dissonance and ominous stirrings amid the musical bliss. The orchestral and choral textures are often daringly thick in this music. Schoenberg had to manufacture special manuscript paper with 48 staffs to notate the work. (That oversize manuscript is on display this summer at the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan.) Yet though the textures are dense, they are never gloppy. In a good performance all the inner voices and details should come through, and this performance was superb. The Boston Symphony continues to sound like one of the glorious ensembles of the world under Mr. Levine. He was joined by the impressive Tanglewood Festival Chorus and some noted vocal colleagues from the opera world.”
• Boston Globe: BSO’s ‘Gurrelieder’ is luminous, heartfelt: “The men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus really pumped out the sound in their demanding music. The work is a favorite of Levine’s; he knows how it works and how to make it work. The orchestra responded to the conductor and to the challenges of the music with playing that told the story and bathed it in an ardent glow.”
• The Patriot Ledger: CONCERT REVIEW: Levine carries off grueling task with a flourish: James Levine is definitely back. Just a week after his return to the podium after months-long recovery from a fall and rotator cuff surgery, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s music director led thrilling back-to-back performances of two blockbuster scores during the weekend at Tanglewood, a daunting feat for any conductor… orchestra and chorus sounded glorious in this opulently orchestrated score richly depicting nature and a vast range of human emotions. The love theme bloomed with memorable depth and sheen, while the Wild Hunt with the ricocheting men’s chorus sounded frighteningly unleashed. The mixed chorus made the concluding sunrise a stunning soundburst.
• Berkshire Eagle: Unforgettable Schoenberg: “John Oliver’s festival chorus — and especially the men, who sang in three antiphonal groups and carried most of the choral burden — wakened heaven and earth with its outcries and murmurs. But perhaps the real star of the performance was the BSO, which, under Levine’s knowing ministrations, took a narrator’s role of its own and delivered it in sonic splendor. The delicate opening invocation to nature, the shouts of passion, the eerie rumblings and seethings: All told a tale of undying love.”

I knew that my residency in the Berkshires was no vacation, but between rehearsals, calls for work, the concert tonight, and driving home afterwards (ETA: 1:30 am), I’m gonna be dead tired. So here’s to the Friday Random 10, which is hopefully going to do its job and take my mind off the next twelve hours:

1. Smashing Pumpkins, “Stumbleine” (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness)
2. Nada Surf, “Concrete Bed” (The Weight is a Gift)
3. Dead Can Dance, “Song of the Nile” (Spirit Chaser)
4. Hank Williams, Sr., “Hey, Good Looking’”
5. Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, “Leap Frog (alt tk)” (Bird and Diz)
6. Wynton Marsalis Septet, “Marthaniel” (Citi Movement)
7. Wynton Marsalis Septet, “Spring Yaound&eacute” (Citi Movement)
8. Elvis Costello and the Attractions, “13 Steps Lead Down” (Brutal Youth)
9. London Chamber Orchestra (James MacMillan, composer), “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” (MacMillan: Seven Last Words)
10. Radiohead, “Faithless the Wonder Boy” (Anyone Can Play Guitar [single])

Just posted a new set of photos from the Tanglewood grounds from the last few days of rehearsal for Gurrelieder. Hopefully it will stop raining soon and tomorrow’s will be a bit brighter.

Many of these photos were taken in the formal gardens on the Tanglewood grounds, which are well hidden near the theatre building and seem a bit forgotten (though the hedges are cleanly clipped, they’ve grown to the point of beginning to obscure some pathways).

Incidentally, the photo to the right may help provide some context for why Maestro Levine had difficulty being heard over the rain. Imagine him sitting just inside the building near the open side, with a 120-voice men’s chorus facing him; then imagine a torrential downpour on the outside.

It’s not a promising start when you’re standing in the second row of singers and you can barely hear James Levine’s comments over the pounding rain.

To back up: I’m at Tanglewood this week, and we’re up to our eyeballs in water as we prepare for the Gurrelieder performance on Friday. So far it’s playing out weatherwise like a replay of last year, though I feel much more part of the group this time around. (It helps that I already know the music too.)

Hopefully it will dry off soon. Then I can relax and enjoy myself a little.

Boston.com: Obituary: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson; her luminous voice lifted Boston Symphony Orchestra, transported listener. I had the rare privilege of singing in the chorus behind Ms. Hunt Lieberson during the Gurrelieder this spring. She stole the show, quietly stepping on stage during the tenor’s penultimate aria in the first half to announce the downfall of his love and set the stage for the rest of the action.

I got word this weekend that our performance of the Gurrelieder on Friday at Tanglewood will be prefaced by the fourth movement from the Brahms Requiem, “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen” (known in many churches by its English title, “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place”). We rehearsed it last night on stage and chills went up my spine. I can’t think of a more appropriate tribute for an artist who moved so many lives with her voice.