| Wednesday, May 28, 2008 |
13:24 - Memorable Day Weekend
http://www.midamerica-music.com/carnegie/carnegie_may2008.htm
|
(top) |
This past weekend I spent two evenings down in the city at Carnegie Hall. The first night, Saturday, I was there to see my college buddy Kjerstin Williams—
—soloing in front of the Caltech-Occidental Concert Band, singing a couple of Gershwin songs from early-20th-century musicals. And doing a really fantastic job of it, too.
Carnegie Hall seems smaller than I imagined it, somehow. I don't know quite what I was expecting, but 2700-something seats seems less impressive than my imagination would have conjured. But then perhaps I'm just comparing it unfairly to other kinds of venues, ones designed for completely different media, like the Chinese Mann theater in Hollywood—which is so huge the movie screen in it is curved. But apparently Carnegie Hall is regarded as being "enormously tall", and the four levels of balconies are pretty impressive. The interior is all in white with gold filigree trim everywhere, not like the dim dark paneling of the Mann or other places—since, after all, this is a performing arts venue and not a movie theater, they don't try to make the interior dark to contrast with the stage or anything. They leave the house lights on so you can read your program.
Monday night I was there again, reading a different program: the one for the performance of two Requiem masses conducted by John Rutter—the latter being Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem, and the former being his own creation, first performed in 1985. Now, I'm generally no fan of modern "classical" music; in my experience, anyone who currently produces music ostensibly in a "classical" vein really means they're writing unlistenable, cacophonic caterwauling for unheard-of instruments in the key of R and a 17/11 time signature and using a Dorian scale, or maybe a Corinthian one. (Either that or they're writing film scores, in which case they don't presume to call themelves "classical" composers, which in effect relegates real modern classical music to an ill-regarded corner of the commercial market that one is lucky to find being allowed to mount a prestigious stage once in a while as a lark during the off-season.) But to my pleasant surprise, this was nothing of the sort. It's sweet, wistful, and very melodic, with a movement structure that's highly symmetrical in theme (each movement mirrors the format of one that came earlier, such as the second and sixth, third and fifth, and so on) and yet highly creative and imaginative in its variety of styles and its mingling of Latin and English text. The program compared it to Andrew Lloyd Webber, and for my part I could certainly hear a "movie-ish" sensibility to the instrumentation, one that takes full advantage of the things we've grown as a culture to appreciate in music over the centuries since Brahms. In fact, I enjoyed Rutter's Requiem more than I did Brahms', which had far less in the way of melody and far more in the way of showoffishly echoing a line from one side of the chorus to the other, and not enough distinctiveness in presentation or sound or structure from one movement to the next. Definitely worth hearing, but I tend to think Rutter could have placed his own composition second in the program, and nobody would have shouted for his head, at least after having heard it.
Afterwards we all adjourned to the Carnegie Deli for blintzes, and after a couple of hours of hobnobbing and reminiscing, I realized I was in danger of being stranded in the city in a suit on a work night, so I sprinted in formal shoes to Penn Station to catch the midnight train going anywhere (well, within reason). I left the out-of-towners with recommendations of Murray's Cheese tasting courses and Lombardi's Pizza, and am now rather dimly aware of a certain ability to fake being a local, at least for these highly specialized purposes.
Next I get to see what a New York summer is like.
UPDATE: Permalink for Kjerstin's post about the performance, with photos and video.
|
|
Brian Tiemann
