There is no conceivable way that a music lover in New York City can get out to hear everything of potential appeal. But weekends, at least, sometimes provide the illusion that it's possible. In terms of conspicuous consumption -- the stated motto of this blog -- today was as close to perfection as I can imagine. I caught three separate performances, all different and each deeply satisfying in its own right. Taken together... well, this is why anyone would go to the trouble to live here.
First up was a 3pm matinee performance by the Allsar Quartet at the Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA). I'd passed by the venue countless times: it's the stylish glass-faced enclosure at the front of the American Bible Society on Broadway, midway between Columbus Circle and Lincoln Center. This was my first time inside.
What drew me there was an ingenious pairing of seldom-aired works: Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's String Quartet No. 1, "Calvary," and Ben Johnston's String Quartet No. 4, "Amazing Grace." The first piece is practically unknown; the second gained exposure as an early staple of the Kronos Quartet repertoire (it's on their CD White Man Sleeps), but isn't played especially often. William Lowe, a music scholar and jazz trombonist, presented an opening lecture that emphasized the way in which these two composers, from very different walks of life, both made use of black gospel music to forge connections between disparate communities.
Perkinson -- "Perk" to his friends, according to Lowe -- engaged himself in a wide variety of musical activities, includng arranging for Marvin Gaye and Harry Belafonte, as well as playing piano in drummer Max Roach's band. He composed his first quartet in 1956, and revised it in 2004, the year he died. In the opening movement, violinist Erik Carlson played jazzy lines over harmonies reminiscent of more famous quartets by Debussy and Ravel. Carlson opened the second movement with tick-tock pizzicati, while a lyrical melody played initially by violist Miranda Sielaff spread to second violinist Amie Weiss and cellist Christopher Gross. The last movement offered piquant harmonies and playful rhythms. Carlson was a strong leader with a bright, lively sound, and the group played with a compelling unanimity of gesture. The piece, which I'd previously heard in a good account on a disc from the Cedille label, seemed even stronger here.
After a break for retuning, the quartet returned for the Johnston piece, a series of brilliantly kaleidoscopic variations on "Amazing Grace." From Bob Gilmore's excellent liner notes to a recent recording by the Kepler Quartet on the New World label:
The quartet traverses three different tunings in its eleven-minute span, all of them forms of just intonation: Pythagorean tuning (based entirely on chains of pure fifths), triadic just intonation (based on pure fifths and pure major thirds), and an experimental form of extended just intonation using, in addition to pure fifths and thirds, intervals derived from the seventh partial of the overtone series (a narrow minor 7th quite different from its equal-tempered equivalent).
The Allsar players stated the theme without vibrato, producing a rustic sound more commonly associated with early-music performances. The group offered a spirited, handsomely balanced account, with especially lovely playing from Weiss in one of the darker, more turbulent late passages. I'm personally of the belief that Johnston's quartets -- ten of them to date -- are an accomplishment on the magnitude of the Bartók and Carter works in the genre, if very different from either in style; I reviewed the Kepler Quartet's disc for Time Out New York, and it was among my top ten classical recordings last year. This afternoon's performance provided still more compelling evidence that this music should be much better known.
A word of unsolicited advice to the Allsar players, should they find their way here: Take these two works and pair them with Haydn's Seven Last Words or Beethoven's Op. 132 -- or commission a new American quartet based on a hymn tune -- and get them out to Bargemusic, Issue Project Room, the Brooklyn Lyceum or wherever, stat. This pairing was far too ingenious and compelling for a one-time-only affair.
The music aside, visiting the museum was time well spent thanks to its small but fascinating current exhibit, Angels of Light: Ethiopian Art from the Walters Art Museum. Housed in a single large room are a variety of fragile sacred books, protective scrolls, ornate metal crosses and other religious art objects of Ethiopian Orthodoxy, many of which borrowed iconography from earlier and contemporary Italian religious art but translated it into a native tongue. The items are here on loan from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The entire exhibit takes about an hour to digest, and it's well worth the requested $7 donation.
I whiled away a few more hours digging into a newly acquired copy of Martin Popoff's Black Sabbath: Doom Let Loose, a fannishly juicy history of the band from its inception through its induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. Then it was off to Carnegie Hall, where David Robertson led the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the second concert of its current visit.
Tonight's program opened with the Adagio from Mahler's Symphony No. 10, built on one of the composer's loveliest, most melancholy melodies, which featured the orchestra's tawny violas and burnished brass. The winds excelled in the more macabre passages that came later in the movement. Robertson elicited ghostly silence in the measures preceding the crushing, anguished chords with which Mahler provided the movement's climax.
The orchestra sounded finer still in Ravel's Shéhérazade, sung by mezzo-soprano Susan Graham. There's no accounting for why this New Mexico-born, Texas-bred singer has such a strong affinity for French music, but the fact remains that Graham is unbeatable in this repertoire. Her tone was lush and ripe throughout; the rich swell with which she sang the line "Et qui déploie enfin ses voiles violettes" and her steely bite in "Je voudrais voir des assassins souriant" were but two details that stood out. Robertson elicited sounds luxuriant and transparent from his finely tuned ensemble.
(And while it's not especially classy to dwell upon the physical attributes of a female soloist, I would be remiss were I not to mention that Graham was the definition of voluptuous in floor-length yet daringly low-cut kiwi, guava and papaya, topped by a smart, shortish blond coiff.)
Concluding the program was a thunderous account of John Adams's Harmonielehre, prefaced by personable remarks from the conductor, who suggested the music was equally inspired by Beethoven and "Roll Over, Beethoven." The stormy initial chords rocked the house, bass notes literally shaking the floor. And if the strings didn't always project ideally in the development between the first movement's bristing opening and its more luscious second subject, superb playing from the horns made up the deficit. A gripping, nearly agonized account of the second movement was close in spirit to the Mahler heard previously; the energetic finale was bathed in an opalescent shimmer.
On the whole, this performance left no doubt that the New York Philharmonic needs Robertson -- or someone pretty much exactly like him (I've not yet heard the extremely well-regarded Alan Gilbert) -- as soon as possible. Based on what I've seen and heard, Robertson's keen musicianship and personable advocacy are exactly what is needed to make our phenomenal resident ensemble an essential part of this city's musical life, circa now.
The final notes of Harmonielehre (and a lengthy ovation) still ringing in my ears, I headed over to Iridium for the late set by Anthony Braxton. With last year's powerful residency with a large ensemble at this presumably inhospitable venue recently preserved for posterity in a new nine-CD-plus-DVD box, I was eager to witness Braxton's return engagement. (The photo by Scott Friedlander that appears to the left, which depicts Professor Braxton and his class of 2006, accompanied a fine preview feature by Hank Shteamer in Time Out New York.)
Braxton is leading a septet this weekend, with cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, violinist Jessica Pavone, guitarist Mary Halvorson, tuba player Jay Rozen, bassist Carl Testa and percussionist Aaron Siegel. Different guests are being added each night; this set included reedist Matt Bauder and bassoonist Katie Young.
For a while, I scribbled in my notebook the same sort of exacting play-by-play found in my three blog posts about last year's Braxton run, all of which found their way into the booklet of the new box set. But this time, I don't see much need to offer a similarly literal recap. The goal here was much the same as what I described before: rather than telling his band members precisely what to play and when, Braxton constructed a system whereby every member of his ensemble seemed to have exactly as much say in the proceedings as he did.
The hourlong performance was launched by a stammering Ghost Trance Music pulse, which was buried almost immediately by duo and trio defections. The fact that this year's band was smaller than last year's basically meant that all of the various subsets were more audible, cast in sharper relief. The music felt more diffuse and episodic in the absence of hefty massed statements; even so, every member of the core septet has become exceptionally well versed in Braxton's current musical logic, which meant that there were virtually no dead spots in this constantly varied tapestry of forces in motion.
That's not to suggest that there were no details worth noting. Bynum has become one of Braxton's finest collaborators, his deep understanding of the leader's idiom making him an ideal coordinator of Braxton's sprawling ensembles. Versatile and accomplished on a great many brass instruments, some of them only quasi-legitimate, Bynum may well have made his most striking contributions tonight as an actor: in an extended sequence near the mid-point of the performance, he and Testa offered a surreal narrative dialogue that depicted the perils of Braxton's musical terrain in terms normally associated with terrestrial trailblazing.
Halvorson, Testa and Siegel were all strikingly more evident in this year's music, as well -- not just because it was easier to hear them, but because their ever-increasing security in Braxton's idiom allows them to inject their own personalities more assertively. The same can be said more strongly for Pavone, who made powerful contributions on violin, viola, electric bass and ukulele. And Braxton played with vigor and finesse on sopranino, alto, baritone and -- yes! -- contrabass saxophones. His solo playing was rigorous and exciting, but here, just like last year, it was his democratic ensemble model that provided the most substantial musical thrills.
Playlist:
Philip Glass Ensemble - Music in 12 Parts, Parts 1-3 and Live in Monterey, Mexico (Orange Mountain Music iTunes exclusive downloads)
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality and Black Sabbath, Vol. 4 (Warner Bros./Rhino)
Andrew Hill - Dance with Death (Blue Note)
Wynton Marsalis - Unforgiveable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (Blue Note)
brakesbrakesbrakes - The Beatific Visions (Rough Trade/World's Fair, due May 8)
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