Ballplayers in Prospect Park

At least, that was my drift of my thoughts for several days last week as I ambled across Central Park, and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on one day that proved to be all too short. Following two weeks of brain-flaying financial analysis and enough time spent on enough spreadsheets to gain entrance to, I would hope, any degree-granting finance program in the country, a vacation was desperately needed, and since far too much time had passed since I had last been in New York, it was to New York that I went.

Baseball field in Central Park

And even by New York standards, I think the week beginning May 16 must have been a good one for live music. The Berlin Staatskapelle was finishing its cycle of the Mahler symphonies at Carnegie Hall with Daniel Barenboim (Pierre Boulez having conducted the Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth), the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra was booked for two programs at Avery Fisher Hall, indie-pop darling St. Vincent was down to play Webster Hall downtown, and the International Contemporary Ensemble and Corey Dargel were finally collaborating, a union that took these Oberlin grads far longer to bring about than one would have expected. This was just the stuff I thought I could get to, leaving out entirely all the other calendar items that either A) unaffordable or B) impossible to attend since you can’t be two places at once. [Full disclosure: These concerts feature musicians I already admire, so I'll let you factor in bias however you wish. These aren't formal reviews, more like "I noticed this..." for what it's worth.]

Having been Barenboim-less for some time now, this Chicagoan was looking forward to seeing him back on the podium for Das Lied von der Erde, the Adagio of the Tenth Symphony, and, on Sunday, the Ninth Symphony. The Ninth was quick, pushing along in the middle two movements without pausing for breath, and the final closing movement was one of those slices of audible heaven you get every so often.

Before that movement, though, and in what I think has gone completely unremarked in every review so far, was COMPLETELY WAKKO BIZARRE.  A side door near the stage opened, and an elderly couple walked in. Barenboim and orchestra watched them. The man was in a walker and took a seat, but the woman (his wife? his caretaker? We didn’t know) stared straight at Barenboim and, in a voice loud enough for the entire audience to hear, said,

“My name is Marilyn Mahler.”

Well, ok, then. Come on in to the final symphony whenever you please. My best guess as to their identity is that the man she was with was Gottfried Mahler, the former Keeper of the Fire Island Lighthouse.

Aimard and the Bamberg Symphony also lit up their stage on Thursday night, May 22. The orchestra is under Jonathan Nott’s direction these days, and he brought a sort of “Icons of the 20th Century” theme to their concerts of Debussy, Bartok, and Stravinsky. Aimard was on hand to hold the programs together with all three of Bartok’s piano concertos, with Debussy and Stravinsky talking to each other across that divide.

Photo: Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, R. Naughton

The La Mer Nott led Thursday was of the “Just the notes, ma’am,” school, with both Nott and his flexible players skimming through it, taking time to view the aquatic scenery, but never slowing down to make the moment last longer. The Rite of Spring that followed intermission tore through the hall like the Russian Army, all percussive outbursts and screeching winds. My concert-going companion covered her ears to hide from the maelstrom at different points. It was a memorable Rite, explosive in all the right ways, and as ominous and unstoppable as could be desired.

And then there’s Aimard, who in all his Aimard-ness made Bartok’s Second Piano Concerto sound as if it’s phrases were as easily parsed as “Chopsticks.” The fearsome runs and massive chords make it one of those pieces that’s impossible to find a soloist for, but Aimard managed to put his own unique stamp on it.

Photo: Samantha West

I’ve been listening to Corey Dargel’s music for years now – five, at my best guess – and we’ve become friends in that time, so adjust for the following however you see fit. I’d never seen him perform live, only picking up CDs and mp3s on his website, finding packages of albums in the mail sent by him, so I was greatly anticipating the premiere of Thirteen Near Death Experiences with ICE at PS 122 on the Lower East Side.

The most immediately obvious part of his aesthetic is his amplified, regular-pop-singer voice, bearing no trace of classical training. (Makes sense, since there isn’t any.) He’s admitted a debt to Stephen Merritt, and the influence shows on the sound and the lyrics. For most of his songs, he’s used electronic backing tracks, so the ICE commission was a change of pace with acoustic instruments (though they’re amplified). So it’s to his credit that the Dargel sonic thumbprint is still audible in Thirteen, and that the music and lyrics sound fresh and original and are clearly his invention, and no one else’s.

The songs are all online now, I think, and you can listen for yourselves and see what you think. Should you be massivelypressedfortime, I’d check out “What Will It Be for Me?” and “Someone Will Take Care for Me.” More Dargelmusik is here. His take on a Christmas song is pretty much pitch-perfect.

St. Vincent‘s show will stick in the memory hole for being the night I stood outside a club for 1 1/2 hours waiting for my friend to show up, including a small break for pizza around the corner. Start time was supposed to be 8:00, and there was an opening act (the duo Pattern Is Movement), and we all know how these things go, so I got there around 8:30, figuring I’d hear part of the Pattern Is Movement set, friend would show up, St. Vincent and her four-musician band would start playing and everything would be groovy. In a word, no. Friend’s subway was stuck underground, and what should have been an 8:30 arrival turned into something closer to the 9:45 area of the clock. Which was entirely fine, because the Pattern Is Movement songs I did hear when I finally gave up an headed inside were unmemorable, and St. Vincent herself didn’t begin playing until 10:15. Brooklynvegan has the setlist and a massive cache of pictures from the show.

The advance word had been that unlike St. Vincent’s (or Annie Clark’s, depending on how wedded one is to using a musician’s given name) exquisitely wrought, Swiss-timepiece-engineered recordings, her live appearances tend to be looser affairs. Yea, verily, I say unto you, that is true.

The biggest difference is her devil-may-care guitar-playing, which is about a million times flashier than you’d expect from the recordings. Intricate breaks, full-on whammy-bar whamminess…something unwholesome was taking hold of this girl. And the band she’d assembled was seriously tight. The unison instrumental fills on “Actor out of Work” hung together more fiercely than a lot of music I’ve heard where the musicians didn’t have to contend with power cables, screaming fans, stage lighting. Guitar, saxophone, violin and keyboards, all together…nice. Not content to rest with that, they can also sing a four-voice a cappella chorale when the need arises.

So that was the music. I also ran something like 30 miles in Central Park that week, probably walked another 30 going from museum to museum to lunch place to subway stop, etc., from uptown to downtown to Brooklyn, and caught up with enough friends such that two hands are needed to count them all. And I managed to forget all about those diabolical Excel documents and work email. Praise be.

As it happens, I spent some time talking with a young classical musician this week, talented as all get out, who doesn’t listen to classical music. Hip-hop is on the radio in the morning, and listening to classical music takes place when a new piece needs to be learned. We agreed that it’s unique to classical music that most musicians just don’t listen to a lot of it, unlike jazz musicians, most of whom could write their own jazz histories, or hip-hop artists with closets and hard drives full of mixtapes. “Face it, classical music just isn’t relevant.” Point taken.

But here’s the thing. When people want the Big Feeling after a national tragedy, or in a time of celebration, it’s classical music that people turn to, and there are examples of classical music turning up in popular culture that show there is some relevance there. But that relevance isn’t being picked up on by the experts (us), probably because a lot of us are buried in this music, have our own thoughts about it, and don’t have our antennae tuned in to a lot of other stuff. Which is just as it should be.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kQZQAAEBFU

That’s right. It shouldn’t be any other way. People who care deeply about any form of entertainment are going to take it way more seriously than they take others. Someone who’s playing the music three or more hours a day is invested in it, and it shouldn’t seem strange that they aren’t thinking about it for the rest of the day. They’re going to do other things to blow off steam, and look for other experiences. I listen to infinitely more indie rock than I did when I was a classical critic, largely because I can and I don’t need to know every last classical ensemble in Chicago. I can check out Little Joy and not miss a string quartet somewhere. For many people who aren’t thinking about classical music for their livelihoods, they’ll come to classical music in order to find something different, and to blow off steam.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJCNKxt3VLA

This is because classical music gives you different reactions than hip-hop, rock, punk, whatever. Classical musicians and presenters don’t need to obsess about ways to be more like the larger culture. That’s what the larger culture is for. (This notion of a monolithic larger culture is also going the way of the dodo, but that’s another topic.) Classical music stands for many things, and those traits and qualities have been built up over centuries. They ought to be celebrated and embraced, not turned away from.

And yet, turning away from them is seen by some as just the ticket. Not enough visual stimulation in the concert hall? Projections. Formal dress not doing it for you? Casual wear. Aging audience? Kill ‘em. (jk)

Aside: The notion of old audience being problematic is the one that really kills me. It’s propagated largely by the Baby Boomers, and some days I wish we could keep the Boomers’ parents and do away with the Boomers. Once upon a time, in the 1940s or so, there was such a thing as grown-up entertainment, and youth entertainment, but then the Boomers came along and decided that they were going to stay young forever, even after buying homes in the suburbs and buying a Hummer, still fight the power, and then cry foul when it didn’t work out and expect the government to bail them out, like Mom and Dad. Maybe if y’all had been a little more mature and not still trying to convince us that the Rolling Stones and Neil Young are still cool, you would’ve kept your eyes on the till a little better.

On the contrary. Classical music has this insane history behind it, running from churches in the 11th century to clubs in the 21st, and that’s what we need to be capitalizing on. The rest of it is just window dressing. The music is there, and people will tap into the excitement and fervor of it when it’s presented honestly, not fed to them like their vegetables. We’re putting on Mahler’s Second Symphony this week. It’s a popular piece, and audiences have been flipping out since Thursday over Bernard Haitink’s conducting of it. It’s not because he’s whipping them into a frenzy; it’s because people can’t help but hear the seriousness of purpose there. Not all music requires that, of course, and a lot of music would be ruined by it. But when it’s what’s called for, that should be the calling card, and not some shambolic notion of connecting to the larger culture.

By Tuesday night, there will have been roughly 8,000 people who will have heard these concerts. You can tell me classical music isn’t relevant, and that people don’t connect with it, but I can also tell you that you’re willfully blind.

Dutch mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn joins the orchestra this week. Here she sings “Urlicht.” The pianist is Julius Drake.

Urlicht-Stotijn, Drake-mp3

iTunes, Amazon. Onyx Classics ONYX4014

Track via the promotional use of the IODA Promonet.