on recordings... again

I'm sitting here waiting for my car to be repaired, managed to steal a WiFi signal, and so I thought -- what better time to update the blog?

Uh-huh. 

I mentioned last time that the AWCB was doing a recording session. The first round of it was this past Monday, we will take a week off for the Memorial Day holiday, and then we'll come back and do another recording in the first week of June. I expressed that I was worried that we were under-rehearsed, and my fears were definitely confirmed. We did several takes of each piece, especially Suite of Old American Dances. I was personally disappointed in my own performance in our recording of this piece, and I think most of the band wishes we could have a collective mulligan.

There were, however, really good parts of each take we took of that piece. I am hopeful that by the miraculous tactics of recording engineers, they will be able to crib together a version that somehow incorporates the good parts of each take and eliminates the bad parts. Now, I can't wait to hear the final version of the recording, and I will make absolutely sure to post my reaction when we get the final product.

I do enjoy that piece very much, especially since someone had the bright idea that the first trombones should have a chance to play really loudly in the meaty range. I think Jon and I nailed that particular lick very nicely on one of the takes, and I hope with a musician's sometimes-futile hope that they keep THAT version for the final copy. 

on recordings

So the AWCB is doing recording sessions in our next rehearsals. The idea is, generally, to put together a CD of light summer fare that we can sell at our summer concerts. We have hired a recording engineer to come in and record us as we play in an auditorium, and (I think) mix it up so it sounds nice; this is different from the recordings done of concerts (we have several of those) which are victims of local acoustics.

Personally, I have been part of a number of scheduled recordings like this. The Symphonic Band at the RLMU was part of a number of recordings of new band music for sampler CDs for band directors. Most notably, however, I was in the band that recorded Jim Bonney's Courage and Compassion, which appears on BCM's Men of Industry CD. It's a great piece of music, truly, and the recording experience was intense (and Jim Bonney is an amazingly inspirational person).

The difference between that session and this session with the AWCB is one simple thing: rehearsal time. With the RLMU band, we rehearsed C&C for about two weeks solid, nothing but that. When we did the band sampler stuff, it was two or three grades underneath what we played regularly and so it wasn't a problem for most of us to sight read it.

Although many of the people in the AWCB have played most of the music previously, it feels like we are not gelling in that way that you need to in order to get a decent recording. We've read through the pieces a few times and had a somewhat rushed rehearsal this past week, and I get the feeling that we're going to be spending a lot of recording time doing things that should have been done in rehearsal. But maybe we will find our sea legs and get it together at the last moment (as the AWCB is very good at doing) and create a fine recording. I'm hopeful for the latter, although the lack of rehearsal time sure makes me nervous. Either way, I'll make sure to blog about it next week!

Veni, creator spiritus!

I'm late again, dear reader. (Singular?) I got run over pretty hard by the despair train this week, what with school starting and the stark realization that I've got four people worth of homework to parse every night, including my own, which I just turned in. (A good hour early, I might add!) But in order to get myself off of my own self-pitying behind, what better task than a quick blog post?

And as if by providence, a box appeared in the mail yesterday. I love getting boxes in the mail; it's one of my major addictions, up there with classical music cds, anime dvds, and playing trombone really loud. In the box was a cd I've been waiting for for two whole years: the San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas recording of Mahler's Eighth Symphony.

This is the last symphony in the cycle to be released. There is still a recording of the Songs of a Wayfarer and the Ruckertlieder due, which I will commence waiting for now, but this covers the nine symphonies, and includes the adagio from the abortive Tenth. I love the cycle, from the ground up: the understated cover designs, the simple yet gorgeous cds themselves, the extensive booklets that actually (get this) include the names of the musicians that performed. (It is a personal pet peeve that cd booklets rarely include the orchestra, and I have to do extensive internet searches to dig up the name of the oboe player in the Seattle Symphony in 1986 to find out who did such a nice job on that solo.) There is also a wonderful picture of the assembled armies necessary to perform the piece: it is called "The Symphony of 1,000", and it's only slightly facetious.

But while the accouterments are nice, I still don't buy cds (especially at $30 a pop) because they look nice. And this series doesn't just look nice, they sound fantastic. There are a number of Mahler cycles in progress right now, such as the Valery Gergiev/London Symphony, and my own Pittsburgh Symphony is recording a cycle with new music director Manfred Honeck. Of these, Tilson Thomas and San Francisco absolutely set the standard for consistency in high quality musicianship and interpretation. The soloists are impeccable, crisp and clear at all points, brought to the front of the orchestra to stand out as they should. This is, believe it or not, a problem in some recordings of Mahler 8, where trying to record that sheer mass of musicians leads to compromises that diminish the efforts of a handful of critical parts. The balance between the choirs and the orchestra are maintained as required throughout, showing Tilson Thomas's habitual sensitivity to the line and to parity among voices. The opening of the symphony, a dramatic interplay between organ, orchestra, and chorus, is forceful and immediately present, setting the tone for the remainder of the work, with the opening "Veni, creator spiritus!" declared with conviction that would certainly draw out any self-respecting muse.

Of the several recordings of Mahler 8 in my collection, between the sound quality and excellent performance, this one is almost certainly the new favorite, continuing (if not concluding!) the standard of excellence laid out previously by conductor and ensemble. And now I will start eagerly waiting for the (presumptive!) final cd in the cycle!

In praise of musicians who inspire me

A few posts ago, Lauren said something about every great romance needing a bad breakup. I kind of hope that's not true, but I can vouch for the idea that my own great romance with the trombone has gone through a number of periods of distance and mistrust. Usually it starts with me setting a goal that's too ambitious, goes through a stretch where conscientious practice doesn't achieve the goal, moves on to a period where I don't practice and get worse for it, and eventually get so frustrated I put the horn down for a time.

The usual path back for me is a reminder of why I do this. Usually this comes from hearing some other musician do something I really want to be able to do, usually through a recording, and oddly enough, almost never from another trombonist. Most often when I hear a really good trombonist, the Joe Alessis and Alain Trudels of the world, I think, "I could never do that!" and come away discouraged. Most often it's not a trombonist at all.

One of the most vivid instances of a non-trombonist pulling me back into trombonery happened a few years ago when I re-discovered the great German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Every male who sings lieder- which is probably every male who's taken more than two or three voice lessons- knows Fischer-Dieskau as one of the best lieder singers of the past century. (I can't vouch for the women, I'm sure they've got their own lieder virtuouso! Although Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson comes to mind as my personal pick.) He has his detractors- people say his voice is too small for opera, and that's probably true, and they say that his low range is not as good as it should be for a serious baritone, and that's probably true too.

But for my money, among baritones, there is simply no one better at providing the range of emotions and characters necessary to flesh out the gamut of German art song, whether it's the delirious joy of parts of Schubert's Schöne Müllerin or the horrible melancholy of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, his impeccable phrasing, near perfect technique, and loving attention to detail and character bring out the stories behind the songs, without any compromises to the soul of the music. And once, when I had laid the trombone down with the full intention of never picking it back up, I listened to a cd I had of Fischer-Dieskau, with Leonard Bernstein playing piano, of Mahler's Rückertlieder, and I remembered why I do this: there are some events, some emotions, that are simply inadequately expressed through any other medium, and some places you can only get to through playing music.

So I got the horn back out. I think it still took me a couple of days, but it was inevitable as soon as I had heard that cd again. And temporarily chastened, I set back to the diligent study of the Rochut etudes to try to find the places that people like Fischer-Dieskau take me when I hear them perform, and some small fraction of his ability to take people with him.

Speaking of John Adams

I was in a very good mood yesterday. Along with the usual trappings of a good mood, like an inspired reading of the Wicked Witch of the West in the latest nightly bedtime chapter of the Wizard of Oz, I found an immediate karmic balance in an unaccountable compulsion to listen to Rutter's Gloria. To excise this piece of musical pablum from my mental ipod, I decided today to listen to a cd I bought a little while ago: John Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony, as recorded by David Robertson and the Saint Louis Symphony.

The piece is based on the opera of roughly the same name, most of which I heard when it was simulcast from the Met in October 2008. Due to circumstances out of my control, I missed the middle, but heard the beginning and end. What I remember of it are some of Adams's distinctive musical constructions: obviously the signature minimalist perpetual motion, but the falling interval that described Joseph's angst at finding his wife pregnant in El Nino and a terrorist's attempt at explaining his motive in Death of Klinghoffer found its way into Robert Oppenheimer's existential discourse on the atomic bomb, sung by the amazing baritone Gerald Finley in the original production. There was a lot of play on "Trinity"- the name of the test, appearing in the libretto (through texts by John Donne, I found out later) and in a number of allusions throughout the other chosen texts. (I should point out that having read some of the libretto later, I was kind of glad that I got more of the music than the words on a first listen, but that's another post!) The ending was especially memorable: the warning siren signaling the first detonation of an atomic bomb is overlaid with a recording of Japanese woman asking for water, shifting from the pre-bomb world to the post. It was a very effective moment, I thought.

So I went into the recording of the Symphony with a number of expectations and preconceived notions, and came away a bit disappointed on the first listen. The piece is divided into three sections, The Laboratory, Panic, and Trinity. The first section has the normal moto perpetuo that defines a lot of Adams's work, punctuated by irregular percussive bursts from the brass section. This is what I missed on a first listen, while trying to hard to make sense of the piece in terms of the opera. While these certainly happen in the opera, and the opening of the symphony is essentially the same as the opening of the opera, the opera opening is necessarily setting up for dialogue that doesn't occur in the symphonic version.

The second movement passes vocal lines through the brass, creating an orchestrational dichotomy between the ragged, harsh spikes of the first movement and the melodic, if perhaps delirious, lines in this movement. Solos in the trombone, trumpet and tuba are clearly adaptations of sung parts, following the patterns set out in other Adams operas and choral works. The liner notes list Michael Sanders as the tubist, and Timothy Myers as principal trombone. Myers (presumably, since soloists aren't listed and it wouldn't be the first time I've mistaken instruments) does some wonderful playing on some very difficult passages, but Sanders (again, presumably) does yeoman work on what sounds like an incredibly difficult solo, coming across as in complete control at all times.

The ending movement mirrors the first- the powerful ending of the opera is changed, but the new ending brings closure to the themes developed as a necessity of the new medium. The very end invokes the same percussive brass, although more insistent and more often this time, with the strings clawing away through the moto underneath, until the entire affair is cut off abruptly with a final crash. This is definitely a reimagined symphony, and not a suite from the opera.

I don't know that I would recommend this as a starting point for folks who don't know Adams- I still think Naive and Sentimental Music is his most accessible large-scale work, and Short Ride in a Fast Machine the easiest to get in touch with overall. And it will probably confuse people who are expecting a Paganini-esque suite from the opera. But for those already familiar with his body of work and compositional tendencies, it's another solid entry to his catalog, and absolutely worth a few times through to get in touch with.