WMV Music Web Log

Well it is the eve of the new year, and it feels like big changes are possible for WMV in its sixth year of existence. First of all, we are moving a piano into the Ratner museum - a 6'3" Baldwin loaned by my aunt, Thelma Stein, who bought it new in 1962. Thelma, who is now in her 90's, is living near my parents on Cape Cod, but can no longer play the piano. She was a wonderful pianist, and my first piano teacher. She was in a trio with Daniel Majeske and Paul Olefsky, and did a lot of performing in Washington, many times at the Phillips Gallery. She was also the pianist for several of the most significant Washington dancers, including Ethel Butler and Pola Nirenska, and composed a lot of music for them. I have some of her scores, and eventually I plan to present some of her music on our programs. Washington has had a number of women composers of whom we should be more proud: Ruth Crawford, Esther Ballou, Dorothy Rudd Moore among them. Thelma's story is a lesson in oppression of women artists - she was a superb pianist, but was cast mostly as an accompanist, and replaced by men (who were in no way superior) when it came to making the commercial recordings. And all her life she retained some bitterness about being underpaid and even stiffed on her fee, by male musicians who should have known better. She abandoned performing in the mid-1950s, and taught piano to literally hundreds of children and adults for decades out of her home in NW DC. She gave me her collection of scores when her eyes began to fail. To my astonishment, she had clearly performed such works as the Bloch Quintet, Martinu Trio and Quartet, Shostakovich Quintet, Copland Quartet when they were brand new compositions, as well as the complete standard classical chamber music literature. I have used many of these scores in my performances, and am often struck by her clever and inventive fingering.

The piano will allow us to perform at the Ratner without paying the $600 rental fee for a single use that we paid when it was still possible to get a rental piano at all. The last program was played on our studio upright, because no one would rent us a grand piano for under $1000. Our goal: to play a concert without losing money. We're a long way off, but until that is achieved, WMV is a losing proposition, and the less we do, the better off we are financially. With the Ratner piano, I plan to institute a WEEKLY Sunday afternoon series of free concerts, initially solo, but eventually convincing some of my colleagues that an open rehearsal or reading session at the Ratner would be fun and good pr. This is one version of a longtime dream: a chamber music coffee house, modeled on folk or jazz coffee houses of my youth. I imagine a store front affair, with small stage and piano, art on the walls, and books. A full time operation, gallery and rehearsal/recoding space by day, performance at night - how to make a business plan for that? Is it impossible? It can't be, it's just too good an idea.

In the meantime, the Ratner series will be a good start in that direction.

That is a very useful observation about the songs. Yes, the translations were abominable, and we gave no real explanation, so of course we have a disoriented audience (except for the Czech speakers, maybe). I think the texts are simply proverbs in dialect, or folk sayings (spruche, in german). They were quite moving when Karyn supplied the word for word translations.

Well, on to the next thing - EVOLUTIONS! I am really getting into this - thinking about how jazz is one of the pillars of American music in all its forms, including chamber music. Of course, American composers, like composers in other countries, draw on what they hear; that is everything around, top 40 radio, folk music, jazz, etc. But what is most interesting about American culture is the effective mixing and multilogue of immigrant (and native) cultures, and that is also the strength of our music.

I am studying syncopation - what is it, how do you it? is it magic? When I asked Rhonda whether it was second nature for a jazz musician, she said yes, but only after practising many many hours with a metronome. So that's what I'm doing, consulting "Dr. Beat", the super-metronome. My parents objected to my early experiments with jazz, insisting that you had to have some innate talent for it, (implying that our family was not properly programmed genetically, I suppose). But I don't agree; we are all rhythmically programmed as humans, and as Americans, jazz is all of our heritage. And europeans have no trouble borrowing it either.

Actually, the piece Rhonda and I are currently working on is San Antonio by Harbison, inspired by Mexican-american music in Texas. It makes me remember a single lesson I had once with a guitarist on Latin dance rhythms - completely overwhelmed by the complexity, and my inability to reproduce them on the piano. I think maybe I should take lessons again! San Antonio is kind of a lesson, in that Harbison has notated with exquisite clarity what he wants, and when you actually do it, it works! Very exciting.

We are also working on several of Libby Larson's works; now there is an interesting composer! She draws on Jerry Lee Lewis, the blues, cocktail piano, torch songs, and tango for her song cycle - a very sexy group called Love After 1950. I can't wait to hear Karyn's mezzo on these. And of course, ther is "Four on the Floor", speaking of which, I had better schedule some rehearsals. More later.

I loved Karyn's performance of the songs, but the texts themselves felt too short and overly simplistic. Most of the songs felt almost like fragments of longer songs. I guess I expect folk songs to have some more narrative, but perhaps these short songs were just repeated in canon in a group or something.

There was a point somewhere in the evening - can't remember if it was in the songs or in the other works - where the textures were like those of Phillip Glass: the piano was doing slow arpeggios I remember. It was either towards the end of the songs, or towards the end of the other works.

OK, testing. Gerhard said that the last movement of the quartet was so beautiful it brought tears to his eyes and he did not want it to end. That is precisely my feeling about the piece and what I most wanted to convey in this concert, which apparently we did. I knew it was working while we were playing - on the second to last page I'm thinking "this is really really cooking, and if we stay cool and blow our tops this will sink all the way in" or something like that. And it worked. Now, the first movement was flawed, unfortunately, and it would be hard to get an idea of what it was about. I got lost, they got lost - it was just a little harder than we had anticipated. Of course, we had never performed it before; a disaster or two was probably inevitable. That is why first performances are wonderful and terrible.

The second movement was OK until the strings got lost (not my fault!) and couldn't find their way for 10-12 bars - it lent an air of confusion and panic which was not appropriate for the piece, apart from some really hilarious harmonies. The other parts were not bad.

Amy did a great job on the sonata; made it sound easy, and it's not. I held my own, and felt good about it. Why wasn't the audience more enthusiastic about the songs? I was melting at the piano listening to them. I gave Karyn two more scores to possibly perform in the spring: Mahler's Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen, and some Smetana songs.

The all-Martinu concert was a big success - not perfect, and that's the point. I was watching tv last night; there was some orchestra with piano soloist playing Mozart d minor k. 466 concerto. I mean, she played it perfectly. I was astonished; the notes were all there, every one, and the rhythm was right on. She even smiled once in awhile, although it was pretty hard to tell what she was smiling about. Everyone else looked bored, audience, orchestra, conductor, everyone. I began to feel embarrassed - embarrassed for music, that music, the musicians, K.466, orchestras - something is very wrong with this picture. I don't mean that a performer should suddenly stand on their head or take off their clothes - just that perfection comes with a terrible cost. I love that concerto, really, but it was hard to remember why listening to this broadcast.

Testing test testing. What hath God wrought. What are we getting into. Will we regret it in morning. Is this just for teenagers. And so forth.

Let's see, why did we want to do this in the first place. Oh yes, because there is much to discuss and it will be easier to post this way. Let me get my bearings - it is informal, as if emailing someone you know, and public at the same time. I guess we'll learn the ropes as we proceed. Mistakes will be made no doubt. (Can people respond on the blog? By email? How many bloggers on a single site? Etc.)

I did say I wanted a larger forum for ideas about music, poetry, art, etc; ideas, opinions, information - kind of like a musica viva continuously online, so that the performances and events resonate a little further, and there could be some anticipatory chatter before an event.

OK, let's see.