Beethoven’s Five

From the Classical Vault Dept.: I remember this concert well. The aged audience at Memorial Chapel was usually given to odd coughs and eructations, but at some point during the first sonata, the geezer two rows back sneezed with enough velocity that I felt it on the back of my neck. Followed by more sneezes. Too self-conscious to change seats mid-piece, I waited it out but – too late! – came down with the flu a few days later. Is it any wonder I trust no-one in the age of Covid?

                                                                               

AS PIANIST WU HAN pointed out during last Sunday’s Union College concert, we’re fortunate to have a wide chronological spread of Beethoven’s five cello sonatas. The first two, written when the composer was 25, show the first stirrings of rebellion in the context of fairly well-behaved classical pieces.

David Finckel and Wu Han

The third, which is the most famous of the three, dates from the time of the fifth symphony, fourth piano concerto and the “Ghost” Trio. The last two are the work of a 45-year-old who had lost his hearing and was about to begin work on his ninth symphony.

Which meant that we were able to enjoy a program that was at once a panorama of Beethoven’s styles and an intimate exploration of the sound of cello and piano, in the able hands of David Finckel and Wu Han, whose many visits to the Union College Concert Series have made them audience favorites.

They have long ago demonstrated the degree of technical mastery that makes all effort transparent. Add to this that Finckel played the cello parts from memory, and you can understand that the music itself would not be an issue. What we were there to witness was their unique interpretive stamp.

Boot Camp Blues

From the Theater Vault Dept.: Here’s a memory-lane piece that reminds me of folks in the area theater community who became friends, and one – the immensely talented Doug de Lisle – who died far too young. As productions reawaken, here’s a reminder of who was doing what 34 years ago.

                                                                                

COMMUNITY THEATER is often more of a collaboration between audience and actors than professional productions: you find yourself rooting for your neighbors to pull off the difficult masquerade onstage without too many flubs or departures from character. In Doug de Lisle's production of “Biloxi Blues,” which opened Friday evening at the Albany Civic Theatre, there are uncommonly long stretches where no such silent cheering is needed: the worthy cast acts with bravura assurance, and the only intrusions upon your suspended disbelief come from the author.

Doug de Lisle   

Neil Simon wrote the play as the middle of an autobiographical trilogy; following its successful Broadway run it has burst upon the local scene. ACT’s is but one of many that have played or play in the area; if you plan to see just one, see this one.

We have a collection of characters in boot camp, including our simple Simon hero, Eugene Jerome, played by Robert Weidert with a very authentic Brighton Beach dialect and just the right kind of Harold Lloyd-ish innocence.

The cheerful problems of Sergeant Bilko’s day, when TV-writer Simon trained for this kind of sit-com, have been replaced with the more explicit stuff we now expect from the barracks. And it’s funnier.

Gregory Bradley, as the pushups-happy drill sergeant, is rather more youthful than we’d expect this career man to be, but he otherwise gives a splendid performance as he goes up against the half-dozen recruits bunking with Eugene.

By Any Other Name

From the Food Vault Dept.: I’m delighted to see that the Rose and Kettle is still holding strong, having weathered the pandemic (so far) in its off-the-beaten path location. Ownership has long since changed since I wrote the below review: it’s now under the aegis of chef-owner Matt Begley, who has cooked there since 2010 and bought the place two years later. Dana Spiotta and Clement Coleman now inhabit the Syracuse, NY, area; Spiotta’s novel Wayward was just published to the usual great acclaim, and Coleman, when he isn’t working as chef at that city’s Otro Cinco, creates thoughtful, original music.

                                                                                   

EVEN THE TOWN’S NAME strains credulity. Cherry Valley sounds absurdly nice or ironically Bates Motel-ish – but it’s a charming village with a Revolutionary War-era history that has welcomed the likes of Willa Cather and Allen Ginsburg. “The rumor is that there’s lithium in the water,” says Dana Spiotta, so maybe the name is appropriate.

Photo by B.A. Nilsson

Spiotta and her husband, Clement Coleman, own and operate The Rose & Kettle, maintaining a moniker used by a former owner but adding a fine-dining philosophy that centers around fresh, locally obtained ingredients.

Which is a recurring theme in these reviews of late. As it should be. As the mighty maw of Monsanto threatens to envelop all mega-farm fields, replacing heritage produce with frankenfood (even as it populated groups like the FDA with its own former employees), we have to depend on small-farm foodstuffs for purity.

Boulanger at Bard

 YOU CAN ARGUE that Stravinsky or Schoenberg was the most influential classical-music figure of the 20th century, but they vie for the limelight only because they’re men. It was a woman who cast the longest shadow, and the Bard Summerscape celebration of Nadia Boulanger paid a long-overdue tribute even as it only scratched the surface of her profound effect on the music world.

Nadia and her sister, Lili, were musical prodigies, born to a composer who won the Prix de Rome in 1836 and fathered the girls when he was in his seventies. Feeling a burden of family responsibility, Nadia entered the Paris Conservatoire when she was ten and won many prizes there by the time she was 17 – although the Prix de Rome eluded her. She soon decided to forego composition and devote herself to performing and teaching.

The younger Lili went on to win that prize at the age of 19 – the first female to do so – but intestinal tuberculosis would end her life when she was 24. Nadia then became the caretaker of her sister’s legacy even as she became the incredibly important musical pedagogue that we remember today.

The Bard Music Festival planned a Boulanger celebration for 2020, but it suffered the fate of all such events that year. The 2021 version recaptured the glory of the past such festivals, but with a slightly muted feel as we remained masked and, when possible, distanced, vaccination certificates in hand. But, as director Leon Botstein would note in a passionate speech he made towards the end of the Festival, gathering in person to share the experience of live music is a vital act of community, bridging those gaps imposed by politics and media.

Sign Language

From the Computer Vault Dept.: Not only was the piece below written 26 years ago, I also have practically no memory of writing it, so assembly-line was my process of cranking out technology pieces back then. The technology herein described is laughably ancient, but I still have the “Hands Off” coffee mug described – and its label remains firmly intact.

                                                                                       

THE PROBLEM: You run a small retail business, you want to post the store hours on the door, and you don’t want to hang some cheesy paper sign that will get yellow and dog-eared in a week. What do other retailers do? They hire a sign painter. Or post a supplier-sponsored sign with a garish ad. Or, worst of all, put up one of those boards whose letters are all but guaranteed to fall out over time.

You and I know better. We harness the computer, which already has better typesetting ability than any sign painter. And when you use Roland Digital Group’s Stika—a compact hybrid plotter and stencil cutter—and SignMate, the included software, those signs are made from sturdy, colorful vinyl.

The uses go way beyond “Open Daily” signs. If you already have a printing or sign-making business, this technology puts words and pictures in unusual places. Think of any situation where you can’t easily print directly onto a surface: a car door, a filing cabinet, your computer case.

Paper labels aren’t visible enough or won’t withstand the weather. Vinyl is colorful. And this gadget cuts letters up to 2 inches high.

The stuff adheres tightly. I made up some lettering for a coffee mug, and it’s been through the dishwasher a couple of times already with my “Hands Off” label intact. SignMate lets you reverse the image for use inside a window, and by using a special transfer tape, you can iron a label onto a T-shirt.

With a Songbird in My Heart

OFFENBACH’S “LA PÉRICHOLE” offers a terrific mezzo-soprano role, if you don’t mind appearing drunk and morally dubious, and Isabel Leonard shines as the title character in the pared-down version presented as part of the Glimmerglass Festival’s on-the-lawn season this summer.

William Burden and Isabel Leonard
Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

Reworked here into a much shorter piece, it’s moved from Peru to an equally exotic setting: New Orleans. But this is operetta, and this is from the composer who practically created the genre that starred Gilbert & Sullivan and birthed an American musical comedy cousin. So what’s most important is to have fun, and take nothing too seriously.

There’s trouble from the start (there has to be), with a penniless performing couple realizing that they’re probably not going to earn enough to eat on this particular day – even though their opening duet is marvelous. But who ever recognizes such talent in a seedy bar, even one with the improbable moniker “The Muses.”

Vest-Pocket Verdi

THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL continues its pandemic-wary season with another 90-minute version of a popular opera, in this case Verdi’s “Il Trovatore.” It usually has a running time of about two and a half hours, if you don’t count intermission, so this means lopping about an hour off the piece.

Michael Mayes, Kameron Lopreore,
Gregory Kunde, Ron Dukes, & Latonia Moore
Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

And it’s also a kind of hybrid performance, with the orchestra playing in the theater and the performance itself on an outdoor stage. So there’s no conductor’s entrance and no chance for an opening round of applause. And, in this opera, there’s not even an overture, so we’re launched right into the opening number, which in this case is the top of Act Two, the mighty “Anvil Chorus,” rendered without apparent onstage metalworking.

But you can’t get too fancy what with the lean casting. We have only a handful of Romani in the encampment, and those singers do double- and triple-duty as soldiers and nuns. This production focuses more on the principals than the ensemble numbers, so, staying in the second act, we start right off with Azucena’s story.

Listen to the Women

From the Classical Vault Dept.: There’s been a struggle for recognition that women in the arts have been waging for far longer than current events might suggest, and the Albany-area chamber ensemble L’Ensemble was fighting the good fight at least 35 years ago, when my review that follows was written. (And here’s another Beach-centric review.)

                                                                                        

IS IT STILL NECESSARY to highlight the work of female composers with all-women’s-work concert programming? L’Ensemble artistic director Ida Faiella still finds it difficult to secure the sheet music of some of the stuff she likes to sing and play - so, yes it is.

Amy Beach

Enlightenment usually requires something of a revolution, but the exploration of music by women requires that no shots be fired - this one can be fought with bows.

“Women’s Work” was the title of a program that opened L’Ensemble’s eighth summer season at a converted barn in Washington County. The concert yesterday afternoon had fine weather (a novelty worth reporting this week) as the artists presented the music of four significant composers.

Amy Beach, condescendingly known for years as Mrs. H. H. A., already has a reputation among the cognoscenti, and a recent recording of her Violin Sonata in A Minor has brought some deserved attention to that piece. There is no reason why this sonata should not appear on any recital as a substitute for the overplayed ones of Brahms and Franck: it is easily the match of the better-known works.

The performers, violinist Barry Finclair and pianist Sean Gallagher, achieved the partnership this piece requires. Not only is the music skillfully crafted, it also boasts a keen sense of the sound of the individual instruments.

Brunch with Bubbly

From the Food Vault Dept: Here’s one of my earliest restaurant reviews, from the days when Metroland had no budget for meals, so we asked for a freebie in exchange for the article I’d write. Fortunately, we got away from this fairly quickly. My companion on these excursions was photographer Drew Kinum, whose work unfortunately survives in my archives only as crappy photocopies of newsprint.

                                                                                       

MY HEART GOES OUT to all who work a Sunday-brunch shift. In my salad days as a waiter, I suffered through the Saturday night to Sunday morning turnaround, when it seems there’s barely enough time to brush your teeth before you have to go on the floor again.

Photo by Drew Kinum

And, oh, how I coveted the eye-openers the patrons downed by the bucket – libations I needed much more than the wide-awake customers.

Not that, as a customer myself, I fail to seize the hair of the dog that’s traditionally offered with
brunches: When a chilly bottle of Cordorniu was brought to our table at the Parc V Café last Sunday, I was first in line for the bubbly.

Lensman Drew (“The Ballad of Lensman Drew” – sounds like a Robert W. Service poem) is very familiar with the place, having done some previous photo work for the Parc V, and had already been through much of the menu on previous visits. I haven’t seen the place since the remodeling two years ago.

Power and Authority

From the Classical Vault Dept.: These hot, moist summer days put me in mind of just a such a day thirty-five years ago, when my wife and I journeyed to a park in Schoharie County that shared space with a power-generating dam. That’s where we heard a fine concert by the ever-resourceful Catskill Conservatory Chamber Players, as I explain below.

                                                                                            

OUT ON ROUTE 30, just past Blenheim, there is a state park on a reservoir used by the New York State Power Authority as a pumping station. Beside the park, the authority has a visitors center that features a done-over barn equipped with literature and displays to explain just what it’s doing in the big concrete buildings visible beside the lake.

NY Power Authority Visitors Center

Saturday there was electricity of a musical kind generated in the barn as the Catskill Conservatory Chamber Players gathered for a concert that featured the premiere of Conservatory founder Carleton Clay’s new woodwind quintet.

There seems to be some antipathy between classical music and air conditioning or so it seemed last weekend. The noisy fans in the barn were shut off for the performance and the stage lights were hot but, as Schoharie County Arts Council president Janet Brennan observed when introducing the players, at least this concert wasn’t being rained out – as was the case with outdoor events that evening.

Staying Sharp

From the Vault Dept.: Here’s a piece I stumbled across while seeking something else on the internet, reminding me that somem of the goodies strewn across its fabulous breadth years ago may still be there to haunt you. This appeared on a Metroland magazine blog.

                                                                                           

I AM TRENDY only by accident. Sometimes I’ve been in a place for years and the retro-seekers catch up. (Hats, for example.) Sometimes we arrive independently. It seems that I am no longer as alone in my passion for the Blackwing pencil as I was when its manufacture was ended. The choice of many illustrators from the 1930s on, it also attracted a fan base of writers (Steinbeck among them) and composers (Bernstein, Sondheim).

They are now manufactured by Palomino, and I have stocked up. I like to draft the stories I write by hand. As Sondheim points out, the soft pencils need frequent-enough sharpening to keep you from drowsing. And the sharpener itself is an impressive two-stage affair in which you first achieve a rough-hewn cone, then, in the second hole, hone it to a potentially lethal point.

I can’t say that it’s improved my writing. But it feels good to get away from the computer every now and then.

– Metroland Tech Life Blog, 17 September 2015

Grandma

WHAT DO WE KNOW about H. W. Hanemann? That he lived from August 8, 1895, to September 2, 1968. That he wrote the screenplay for “Flying down to Rio,” as well as “The Great Jasper,” “Rafter Romance,” and “The Meanest Gal in Town,” all from the 1930s, but only the last-named offering the – what’s the opposite of “timeless”? Whatever it is, that’s what describes Swedish-dialect comedy of El Brendel. We know that Hanemann wrote books, and that two of them are “As Is, a Book of Miscellaneous Revelations” (1923) and “The Facts of Life, a Book of Brighter Biography.” And that he wrote songs, many of them spoofs of past-century weepers. The songs appeared in “Judge” magazine, and were collected in a volume titled “Heart-Wrecking Songs.” The most enduring of them seems to be the one performed below, which I first heard in a lively Spike Jones version.

Opera on the Grass, At Last

WHILE SOME MUSIC VENUES are opening to audiences, opera – especially as presented by an institution like The Glimmerglass Festival – needs to plan ahead. Way ahead. They lost a year, of course, as did we all, but they spent it planning a careful return to live programming that could take advantage of the Festival’s beautiful grounds.

Eric Owens and Lisa Marie Rogali
Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

And as music by Mozart filled the air, as a dignified and friendly Sarastro settled into a fancy chair, we were ushered into a new Glimmerglass era. “Glimmerglass on the Grass,” in fact, featuring a season presented on a specially built outdoor stage, with socially distanced seating on the facing lawn.

An ever-changing forecast was borne out by the mix of sun and clouds that greeted the 11 AM “Magic Flute” performance last Saturday, but it was a good backdrop for a fast-moving production that came with its own plentiful thunder. Glimmerglass resident artist Eric Owens – who has been a great success in productions from several previous seasons here – sang and spoke the role of Sarastro, also offering narration that helped trim the piece down to the 90-minute, intermission-free length that characterizes all of this summer’s productions.

Blow, Ye Winds

I HOPE THAT COMPOSER JOSEPH FENNIMORE has still more recordings that have been made of his works over the years. Every so often, but not often enough, a CD is released that offers another handful of those gems. The latest, “Blow,” is a collection of works for winds and piano. As Fennimore writes in the accompanying notes, “Winds marry better with piano than strings ... Strings have their undeniable place in the instrumental Pantheon given the repertory they command but it takes at least three of them in unison to mitigate one player’s monotonous vibrato.” Take umbrage as you will, cat-gut scrapers, but Fennimore’s music makes convincing arguments in favor of reeds, horn, and flute.

His Clarinet Sonata dates from 1968 and was recorded eight years later. It’s a twelve-minute piece that kicks off with Poulenc-like merriment; the movement that follows, marked Moderate, is a captivating byplay between clarinet and piano as they trade wistful phrases, seeming to dance away from the resolution that, of course, overtakes their tired selves at the end. They recover for a fast finish – it is, in fact, marked Fast – characterized by the deliberate uncertainty of trills and truncated phrases. But it is, again, a dance that gives way to a dreamlike middle before whirling us to a delightfully syncopated finish with a wistful tag. Clarinetist David Niethamer and pianist Charles Schneider were the worthy interpreters here.

Given the grab-bag nature of this collection, it’s no surprise to find a variety of performers represented. What’s surprising, however, is the protean nature of Fennimore’s voice. The Sextet for Woodwind Quintet and Piano premiered at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1985, the year it was written; what’s on this disc was recorded two years later at Loudonville’s Siena College. Fennimore’s voice changed during the 17 years that separate this from the Clarinet Sonata – or he at least consulted a contrasting muse.

Benny Rides Again

From the Music Vault Dept.: We just enjoyed a performance in my town by Dan Levinson and His Palomar Trio with superb vocalist Molly Ryan – their first live gig since the start of the pandemic shut-down. Which got me nostalgic for a big-band appearance Dan and Molly – and fellow Palomarians Mark Shane (piano) and Kevin Dorn (drums) – made in the area in 2009.

                                                                                    

DOESN’T IT SEEM LIKE ONLY YESTERDAY when Benny Goodman and his band scored such a success at the Palomar Ballroom that the Swing Era officially started? All right, then. Maybe I live in a different era. But whatever your perspective, music of the late 1930s was characterized by the punchy, brassy arrangements of the likes of Fletcher Henderson, himself a bandleader, and Jimmy Mundy, and played by the bands of Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw and many, many others.

Dan Levinson
Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Performing the tunes called for tremendous virtuosity, and gave us a generation of players still revered for their skill. It’s something of a shock to realize that there’s a current generation of musicians able and eager to play in that style, and can bring to life music heretofore trapped on decades-old recordings.

Clarinetist Dan Levinson is a musical chameleon whose specialty is channeling styles as far back as the ’teens. His heart seems to be in the ’30s, though, and he plays music of that era both with a small group (his Swing Wing) and large ensembles like Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks.

For this event, he fronted James Langton’s New York City All-Stars, a fifteen-piece band sporting the caliber of player Goodman would have been delighted to hire. The program opened as Goodman would have opened it, with a short, rousing “Let’s Dance” that he took almost immediately into “Bugle Call Rag,” a Mundy arrangement that quickly showcased many of the individual players.

The Spirit of Philidor

HERE’S ANOTHER of my video collaborations with Musicians of Ma’alwyck, in which we imagine a visit by composer-chessmaster François-André Philidor to Albany’s Schuyler Mansion to meet General Lafayette – where he meets a more portentous personage instead. With Ethan Botwick as Philidor and Steven Patterson as du Mortier.

Back to Tanglewood

From the Classical Vault Dept.: More summer venues have announced their 2021 seasons, and Tanglewood will be back with the kind of programming you expect – the kind of programming that drew me there 35 years ago to write the review that follows.

                                                                                

The lush lawn at Tanglewood just got its summer crewcut as the Boston Symphony Orchestra season got under way with two concerts by guest conductor Charles Dutoit. Saturday’s was a slam-bang beginning.

Charles Dutoit

The 200th birthday of composer Carol Maria von Weber was saluted with the overture from his opera Der Freischuetz and the Piano Concerto No. 2 in E-flat. The overture is a staple of the orchestral repertory and offers the better groups a display of dynamics and color. Dutoit, best known as music director of the Montreal Symphony, has a terrific hand for bringing out just those characteristics.

The drama of the overture was brought out nicely by Dutoit’s treatment of the piece as a voiceless aria; like Mozart, Weber informed his melodies with a singing quality. A thickly textured sequence for horn quartet is a mean thing to hand the horn-players so early in the concert but these players were superb.

Malcolm Frager was the concerto soloist. A Tanglewood favorite for more than 20 years, he brings a zest to his playing that is the true essence of virtuosity. The Weber concerto provides plenty of opportunity to strut the technical stuff and Frager pulled it off pretty much without a hitch –  the bobbled couple of notes in the faster passages are worth mentioning only to illustrate the risks he takes to achieve his effects, something many other artists should try.

What They Had Laid Out for Their Vacation

Guest Blogger Dept.: George Ade’s famous Fables tended to get longer as their popularity grew and his column spread through newspaper syndication. But here’s an unusually shorter one that seems appropriate to the season ahead.

                                                                               

A MAN WHO HAD THREE WEEKS of Vacation coming to him began to get busy with an Atlas about April 1st. He and his Wife figured that by keeping on the Jump they could do Niagara, Thousand Islands, Atlantic City, The Mammoth Cave and cover the Great Lakes.

Getting Busy with an Atlas
Drawing by Harry Smith

On April 10th they decided to charter a House-Boat and float down the Mississippi.

On April 20th he heard of a Cheap Excursion to California with a stop-over Privilege at every Station and they began to read up on Salt Lake and Yellowstone.

On May 1st she flashed a Prospectus of a Northern Lake Resort where Boats and Minnows were free and Nature was ever smiling.

By May 10th he had drawn a Blue Pencil all over a Folder of the Adirondack Region, and all the Hotel Rates were set down in his Pocket Memorandum Book.

Ten days later she vetoed the Mountain Trip because she had got next to a Nantucket Establishment where Family Board was $6 a Week, with the use of a Horse.

No Child Left Behind

From the Vault Dept.: The Glimmerglass Festival is on the brink of opening again, after the inevitable Covid-inspired summer off. Plenty of info to be gained at their website, and keep in mind that the reduced season has its own seating challenges as well. But they tend to do such things well, as was the case a decade again ago when I penned the below.

                                                                                     

MURDERING YOUR CHILDREN always grabs headlines, and Greek mythological Medea long ago grabbed the title of most famous filicide. Her story varies from source to source, but by the time Luigi Cherubini got hold of it, she was a sorceress who’d already murdered her own brother in aid of her beloved Jason, of fleece-hunting Argonauts fame. Cherubini was a Beethoven contemporary whose music was lauded by that composer, and his work on this opera, which premiered in 1797, shows unexpectedly forward-thinking musical techniques.

Alexandra Deshorties
Photo by Julieta Cervantes

The opera has been tinkered with over the years, acquiring an Italian text (it was written in French) and musical recitatives set by Franz Lachner. As the Glimmerglass Opera production proved, the piece packs a wallop, especially when in the hands of a talent as strong as Alexandra Deshorties.

The title role gives her a grand entrance and an even bigger exit, but the heart of the piece is her struggle to justify the horrible, revenge-driven act she’s contemplating. Deshorties skillfully mined the edge of madness written into the part, reinforcing subtle messages in the music without ever going over the top.

Brick-Oven Harvest

From the Food Vault Dept.: It’s been a decade since the review below ran in Metroland, and I’m pleased to note that the restaurant is still going strong.

                                                                          

THE OVEN IS AN ARRESTING SIGHT. It’s Le Panyol Model 120, if you want to get technical about it, from a French company that dates back to the 1840s and specializes in refractory earthenware products fashioned with a special white clay called terre blanche that’s quarried on the edge of Provence.

Photo by B. A. Nilsson

“I did a lot of research to find it,” says Harvest & Hearth chef-owner Peter Michelin. “And I spent a couple of days in Maine learning how to cook in an over like this, at a cooking school called Stone Turtle run by Michael Jubinsky.” Jubinsky is a legend in hearth-cooking circles, and his classes sell out months in advance.

Harvest & Hearth’s most recent incarnation was as Chameleon on the Lake, but it’s undergone a remarkable change inside and out. Some of it is subtle – I didn’t realize that a drop ceiling was gone until Michelin pointed it out – some dramatic, like the glistening wood floors. But nothing tops the sight of that oven, poised like a large stone Dalek at one end of the dining room, its mouth a rictus of dancing flame. Pizzas go in and mere moments later emerge, transformed into crisp, bubbling pies.