Coincidence?

The number of lines in the final version of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land: 433. The title, and duration, of John Cage's most notorious composition: 4:33. Coincidence? Most likely. But if not, the joke is on Eliot, though through no fault of his own.

Beethoven

I’ve been remiss in keeping up with Andras Schiff’s cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas I’ve been collecting. Volume VI arrived over a month ago, and I have the last two, released simultaneously for some reason, on order. Volume VI has two very famous works – the “Appasionata” (op. 57), arguably the most frequently played of all the sonatas, right up there with the “Moonlight”, and “Les Adieux,” also quite well-know. For me, however, the revelation was in the two compositions that sit between those, op. 78 in F-sharp minor, subtitled “à Thérèse” and op. 79 in G. Both of these are written on a much smaller scale than the famous sonatas, but that is precisely why I find them so appealing – they pare Beethoven down to his essentials and completely avoid melodrama.

The thing I love about Beethoven in general, and his solo piano music in particular, is contrast, usually between major and minor keys in the same work, and frequently in the same movement, and both of these sonatas provide an excellent illustration of what I’m talking about. Op. 78, written in only two movements and, at under 11 minutes total, very short, has a minor-key snippet in the secondary theme of the opening, and while it doesn’t amount to much in and of itself, it gives balance to the whole work and keeps the listener interested.

Op. 79 is a more traditional three-movement, fast-low-fast, work. Again in the opening, there is the major-minor contrast, but for me, the sonata seals the deal with its slow movement in the parallel g-minor. It is a slow-ish (the tempo marking is Andante) barcarolle that opens with a gorgeous minor-key melody that could stand easily on its own. Beethoven is not out to write a tear-jerker, however. The development, and there definitely is one, is unequivocally in a major key. It is quiet, gentle and, to me, prefigures Chopin in some of its phrases, but it avoids sentimentality and one-dimensional melancholy in favor of an almost perfect balance. The closing fast rondo puts us back in a cheerful, positive territory, making for an upbeat and optimistic yet emotionally well-rounded work.

I do not have any other recordings of either of the sonatas, so I cannot offer any meaningful commentary on Schiff’s interpretations, but he sounds good to me. Both works, especially op. 78, sound quite challenging technically, more so than their “light” character would suggest, but Schiff sounds confident, his articulation is excellent, and both performances have that nonchalance about them that only a true virtuoso supremely sure of his skills can convey.

Anyway, highly recommended. I cannot wait for the last two volumes to show up. I have a feeling I’ll be eating takeout and ignoring housework for a few days listening to them.

Divestment

My good friend S.G. has been engaged in what he calls a divestment project over the last couple of months. The origins of the project are obscure – I gather that a friend of his gave him the idea – but the gist is that every day you get rid of one thing that you don’t need but are either too much of a pack rat to throw out or too lazy to figure out a way to donate. So you get rid of it in a “creative” way – leaving it on top of a gas pump while filling up your car, dropping it into the bed of a parked pickup truck, etc. You divest of one thing every day. After a while, you’re considerably less encumbered with stuff you don’t use. At least that’s the idea.

As much as I believe most of us own way too much useless junk, I’m not sure I really understand the appeal. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to just go through your closets, put together a couple of boxfuls of stuff, drive it to the local Goodwill and be done with it. But what I think is beside the point. Yesterday morning, I noticed a Vitamin Shoppe plastic bag sitting on top of a newspaper vending machine on a street corner outside my building. There was clearly something in the bag, for it was staying put despite the rather strong breeze. Wondering whether I should be wearing a pair of rubber gloves, I gingerly parted the folds of plastic and looked inside. I found a pair of worn-looking brown boat shoes. Did someone in my neighborhood divest of them the same way my friend was doing? Is this a cultural phenomenon now? Is there some underground message board on the internet dedicated to creative divestment of this sort? Probably. It’s just littering if you ask me, but then, there are many current cultural phenomena that I don’t get and probably never will.

National Symphony

Went to hear the National Symphony two weeks ago; the first concert of the season. On the program were Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto with Hélène Grimaud soloing, and Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony - just about the perfect program for my money.

A guest conductor led the orchestra - a young South American fellow named Miguel Harth-Bedoya whom I had never heard of. Whether it was him or if this is a new post-September 11th thing (seven years behind schedule), I don't know, but unexpectedly, the orchestra started with the Star-Spangled Banner. I had never heard them, or any other orchestra for that matter, do this. It was very bizarre. Surprised, the audience hurriedly got up from their seats, but after that people weren't quite sure how to react. I had a good view from my usual perch in the chorister. Some people put their right hand on their chest, most did not. I saw one or two mouthing the words, but most just stood there.

I've always found the frequent playing of the national anthem, especially at sports games, strange, and felt it contributed no meaning either to the event or to the anthem, and in fact risked cheapening the anthem's value. Now that the NSO did it, I gave them, and other orchestras, retrospective props for not adopting the meaningless ritual. We'll find out in December (Itzhak Perlman conducting Mozart, Bach and Tchaikovsky; I can't wait) if this was a one-off, or if the anthem is here to stay.

Anyway, back to the show. The orchestra started with Beethoven's Overture to The Consecration of the House, as forgettable as you would expect it to be. The less said about it the better.

Then Hélène Grimaud played Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. In a perfect world, I would have wished that it was the Third (a strong contender for the simultaneous titles of Beethoven's best work and the best XIX-century piano concerto, if you ask me), or the Emperor (Fifth) that Grimaud had recorded a mean version of a couple of years ago. But the Fourth is no slouch, and with Grimaud, I'll take what I can get. I admit I have a bit of an irrational fascination with her. J. and I heard her in New York almost exactly a year ago, and loved it, and it was great to have another opportunity. Funny enough, that concert, too, paired her playing a concerto (Ravel) with a Shostakovich symphony (Fourth).

The solo parts of the Fourth's outer movements sounded hellishly difficult. Grimaud tossed them off with the expected nonchalance. I am tempted to say that I was very slightly disappointed; that her playing sounded just a tad perfunctory, but that wouldn't be fair. Beethoven's orchestral writing in those movements, especially the opening, is so gorgeous that I must admit I was paying more attention to it than to the soloist. Harth-Bedoya took a measured, deliberate approach to the score, and his tempo was quite relaxed. He could have been conducting Bach. Definitely an Apollonian take on Beethoven, but I didn't mind - so much the easier to hear that beautiful second theme in the strings in the first movement.

The slow movement, however, was all about Grimaud, and it was breathtaking. Much like the Ravel we heard her play last year. Beethoven's melody is gorgeous, and Grimaud articulated every note perfectly. I was hanging on to every sound, and actually had that feeling of being in the presence of overwhelmingly beautiful music well up in my chest.

It's worth mentioning that one of the reasons I admire Grimaud is her lack of flamboyance, and she lived up to that impression. No fancy evening gowns for her (admittedly, it would be challenging to play the piano in one of those, but I've seen it done) - she came out in black slacks and a simple gray blouse, bowed reticently, and just played.

The Shostakovich in the second half was just as much of a treat. I've heard the Fifth performed before, but not in many years, and as I don't own a recording (a shame, really), my memory of it was very vague. Harth-Bedoya is clearly really into this symphony - he conducted without a score. I'm not going to deconstruct the whole thing here. Suffice it to say I loved it. Though not nearly as sprawling as his Fourth that we heard last year, it was still vintage Shosti - plenty of buildups that move from consonance to dissonance, crippled-sounding march rhythms, mildly insane string writing, and some phenomenal solos, in particular the oboe, clarinet and harp (yes, harp) in the third movement. Reading some commentary after the fact, I learned that he scored it for three violin sections instead of the usual two. I admit, sheepishly, that I did not hear that.

The ending of the symphony has generated quite a bit of opinion over the years. After the Fourth, composed in 1936, nearly cost Shostakovich his freedom, if not his life, and was pulled during rehearsal, not to be heard until 1961, the Fifth was officially considered to be his work of redemption, one that conveyed the optimism and grandeur the Soviet censors wanted him to communicate. The ending, in particular, is supposed to be unequivocally triumphant. The triumph turned out to be very equivocal. A few critics caught on immediately, but the point was substantiated by Shostakovich himself in his memoirs (though their authenticity is disputed by some), who said that essentially, he wrote it under duress and that listening below the surface of the music would reveal that.

My own impressions of listening to the finale fit. Everything is going along fine; loud, consonant, powerful chords played with gusto by the entire orchestra until, just two (if memory serves) measures before the end, instead of resolving the way you would expect him to, Shostakovich repeats the previous phrase, in strings only, then resolves. A minor point, you might think, but the effect is devastating. That repeat, though only one bar long, throws off the listener completely, and leaves him unsettled and questioning instead of beating his chest at the triumph of man. Cantus interruptus for sure.

After the show, J. and I strolled to Circle Bistro for a post-concert cocktail. The place was dead - aside from an odd-looking woman seated at the bar drinking white wine, we were the only customers. I was surprised by that. We've had dinner at the adjacent restaurant several times (excellent food, by the way), and the dining room had always been full, so I expected the same to be true of the lounge area. I suppose at bottom it's still a hotel bar, located as it is in the basement of the Circle Hotel, too expensive to be a watering hole for GW students, and just enough off the beaten path for tourists to ignore it as they walk by. Worked for us, though - it was quiet and intimate, with downtempo electronica spilling unobtrusively from the PA, dim lighting, and candles on the low round tables placed before cushy banquettes along the wall. The middle-aged lady with an English accent tending the bar had something of a failed actress about her. As we relaxed, reclining, we saw the strange woman leave. Dressed in an ill-fitting gray pant suit and sporting a black beret and enormous glasses, she had awful, scraggly gray hair and horrendous teeth, and was visibly drunk. I don't see people like that very often, but when I do, I wonder. She probably comes in there every single night and spends her money, whether meager or overwhelming (both are equally likely) on several glasses of white wine, until she manages to drown whatever she is trying to drown, before stumbling to a place that has been her home since long before the neighborhood knew what a swanky bar was. What's her story?

Financial crisis

Until I find time and inclination to write something else about books, music, or the dinner at Vidalia J. and I had recently, here is something that I found more readable than most of the stuff on the financial crisis and the government bailout.