March 2008 Archives

If you keep up on the opera scene you've probably been reading about a pretty wild Tristan und Isolde at the Met recently. Ben Heppner (Tristan), took ill on opening night, with understudy Gary Lehman thrust center stage. Then in the middle of the second act, Deborah Voigt (Isolde) nearly doubled over, then rushed from the stage from a very sudden attack of flu. After a 15 minute pause, Janice Baird took over the role. All they needed were the Marx Brothers bringing down the scenery.

To take a stroll around Powell Hall and not hear music is a rarity. Late Thursday afternoon in the Green Room I could hear a duet of horn and violin behind the door. In the morning was Steve Reich minimalism on the stage, in the afternoon Beethoven romanticism. And there are often the sounds of musicians making use of the seventh-floor breakroom to practice, or you hear a trumpet being played somewhere in the vicinity. Powell is one big house of music.

My return to work has been enriched by listening to a rehearsal of Steve Reich music through the office speakers. Two Reich works, Music for Pieces of Wood and Sextet, are on the program for Saturday's Percussion Festival at the Touhill. Tom Stubbs was making the most pleasing liquid sounds on the marimba - again and again and again. I was reminded of the sculptor Donald Judd's definition of minimalism: "one thing after another." I mentioned this to Peter Henderson, who is playing keyboard on Sextet, and got a very hearty laugh.

I am taking a few days off next week. My next post will be Thursday, March 27, Fidelio eve.

This morning I returned to the hall and was welcomed by the smell of fresh varnish on the stage floor. An X of caution tape covered both stage doors so no one would ruin the new shine. I asked Stage Manager Mike Lynch how long he thought the gleam would last. With orchestra, chorus and seven featured vocalists and a narrator to come for Fidelio, Mike figured it would be back to scuffed state by the end of March.

The orchestra is on its annual spring break this week, a much-deserved hiatus after many strenuous weeks of music-making: from the Brandenburgs to Mitsuko Uchida to Turangalila to Doctor Atomic premieres at Powell and Carnegie halls to Symphonia Domestica to Shostakovich 10 to The Creation. And all the other music in between and all the many community concerts and recitals and Family Concerts and Classical Detours, plus the day-to-day business of lives with partners and children and aches and pains and flu. No business like show business.

There is value in longevity. SLSO Principal Bassoon George Berry joined the orchestra when he was 18 years old. He is one of the current musicians who played the Gala Opening of Powell Symphony Hall 40 years ago. George also played the only previous SLSO performance of Fidelio, with Eleazar De Caravalho conducting, in 1966. "It's been over forty years since I've played Beethoven's opera Fidelio," George told me last summer, "and I've been longing to do it again ever since!" What goes around does come around. Sometimes it takes a while. The SLSO revisits Beethoven's Ode to Freedom next week.

Friends of mine, a married couple, went to The Creation this weekend. They enjoyed it tremendously. As they were congregating with friends in the foyer after the concert, the husband turned to his wife and spoke from Adam's song to Eve, which in translation reads "Fair wife, at thy side the hours glide past gently. Every moment is rapture, no care troubles it."

 And she said, "That isn't going to get you anywhere."

A good way to celebrate the imminence of spring this weekend is with the creation of the heavens and the earth and all creatures great a small, in German, with intermission. Haydn's The Creation. Go!

You know the Music Director is in the building when you hear the bright bark of Milo down the hall: Milo, the brave and swift dachshund, the Powell Hall pooch.

When I wasn't watching a classic Japanese samurai movie on the Henchmen's laptop during Creation rehearsal, or listening to the Haydn Creation rehearsal sans vocalists, although David Robertson added his voice to some of the parts (the soloists go at the making of the heavens and the earth in an evening rehearsal, with orchestra, tonight), I was at my job and found this notable: the only previous SLSO performance of Elliott Carter's Holiday Overture (which will be performed as part of the one-night Happy 100 birthday concert honoring the don of American composers) was in April 1970. The conductor was Aaron Copland.

I ran into a friend in the lobby Friday night. I said, "I knew I'd see you at the Shostakovich concert."

I'm working with the new stuff that has been applied to our web technology in recent days so who knows how this will turn out. I sure don't.